elegancies of fashion, been introduced here from abroad. And to this source may readi

ly be traced that shameful oblivion of the restraints of conscience, the obligations of honor and friendship, and of the common sense of moral rectitude which has been rapidly upon the increase amongst us; and has made a still more rapid and extensive progress in some of those nations which have lately been made to "drink of the cup of fury," not originally prepared for them.-"For thus saith the Lord, behold! they whose judgment was not to drink of the cup, have assuredly drunken, and art thou he that shalt altogether go unpunished?"*

The levelling principles of anarchical republicanism, and the inordinate appetite for plunder, whetted by a pre-conceived and too well founded contempt and hatred of the religious orders, and borne out to all lengths by an atheistical spirit of free-thinking, have proved such an ulcer to the worshippers of the beast and his image. It is an evil bred in the very con

Jeremiah xlix. 12.

stitution and frame of THE MAN OF SIN, and the natural effect of his previous wickedness and total corruption; and it has, at length, broke out suddenly into the wasting drain of the French revolution, which was still only "the beginning of sorrows" to the kingdom and confederacy of antichrist.-" Behold! all ye that kindle a fire, that compass yourselves about with sparks; walk on in the light of your fire, and in the sparks that ye have kindled. This shall ye have of mine hand, ye shall lie down in sorrow."*

"And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea, and it became as the blood of a dead man and every living soul died in the sea." The former plague seems to have in*fected chiefly the higher orders with its malignant effects, and punished the "blind leaders of the blind," by laying the foundation of the miseries consequent upon their unprincipled licentiousness; and which soon overtook

* Isaiah 1. 11.

† As insects lay their noxious eggs in a proper nidus where suitable nourishment will be administered to them, for the time required.

them, when the same infection was communicated to the lower orders by this second vial, poured upon the sea, or people, and nations of the popish connection. Thus, in the sixth plague of Egypt, (of which the first vial has a resemblance,) the boil fell upon the magicians themselves, who had successfully opposed the finger of God by counterfeiting some of the divine miracles, to support the pride and obduracy of the tyrant.

In consequence of excessive both political and religious corruption, and the total decay of all moral principle, (which must ever be the uniting cement of civil society, and the vital principle of political prosperity; for as "by righteousness a nation is exalted,so contrariwise, sin is the ruin of any people;" by the constitutions of nature, and by the ordinance of God:) THE SEA, or mass of the people, becomes like the blood of a dead man.-Fatigued and worn out by the continued and shocking display of shameless immorality, and the most palpable imposture and wickedness in their church and state, the former ardent spirit of

the people, so favorable to the support of both, is changed and gone. They are frozen with an immoveable apathy towards the support of the throne of iniquity, and agitated with the same wild passions, and detestable principles of selfishness, and cruelty in the pursuit of them, which they have learnt of their superiors, no longer to be called so; but by violence about to be dragged down to the common level of liberty and equality, in the grossest sense of the words. The EMBLEM which represents this scene of universal anarchy, is very expressive of the thing. The blood of a dead man is deprived of those vital principles in every respect, which rendered it fit, by regular circulation over the whole animal system, for the support of the vis vitæ, and the natural union of the soul with the body, which can no longer by art be perpetuated, when the languid and congealing fluid can be propelled no more through its wonted channels, or runs off in a dissolved and putrid state. Just such is SOCIETY without any principles of morality, any sense of conscience, any rational belief of futurity. The famous REVO

LUTION IN FRANCE, at its opening (which I have supposed to be the period of the pouring out of the second vial) exhibited numerous and strong symptoms of such a total want of natural cohæsion in the principles of which society is compounded: instances of the most shocking depravation of moral feeling and common humanity—an utter extinction, as it were, of the customary ties of affection, acknowledged by religion and nature, and a trampling under foot, with scorn and derision, all laws of men, of God, and of nature.

This was a time for choice spirits of the glorious revolution, to display to the affright ed world the horrible wickedness that human nature is capable of, when the fear of controul or punishment for crimes of the blackest die is removed. It was the triumph of libertinism, disloyalty, ingratitude, treachery, revenge, and every detestable immorality which degrades mankind below the brute creation in its worst forms, and sinks them to a level with the fiends of hell. "None calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth: they trust in