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From Historical Hastings
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and three measures of barley for a penny”, indicating a state of famine; and the facts completely justified this explanation. The pale horse, whose rider was Death, followed, and was accompanied by Hell, which last word, he need not tell them, did not always mean a place of torment, but Hades, or, according to the Saxon term, a hole or grave. And power was given to them to kill the fourth part of the earth with sword and hunger. This described a state of plague, super added to the other calamities; and Mr. Elliott had shown with irresistible force by referring to an historian not prejudiced in favour of Christianity, but an infidel – Gibbon, that most wicked and unsanctified historian, that the facts answered to those symbols. The lecturer asked his hearers to read this historian and judge of these facts for themselves. The infidel writer thus unconsciously and unsuspectingly added his testimony to the truth of those prophesies in which he did not believe. After the seven seals there were the seven trumpets, which contained the prospective history of that total destruction and desolation of the Roman power. The study of these prophecies with the facts as recorded by history was most interesting and instructive and showed again how unconsciously the historian added his testimony to the fact that God’s word was truth. When Constantine embraced Christianity, its followers had no longer to remain in the dens and caves of the earth, and its ministers were no longer persecuted men. It at once leaped into the sunshine of royal favour. Its worship was conducted in the basilikas, beautiful churches and gorgeous cathedrals, and its ministers were raised to the dignity of princes. But the idolatry became so fearful that it was not wonderful that judgement came upon them. The lecturer said it might be his Scottish ignorance, but he had always had an impression that a church required no adornment with pictures and images. The only pictures he would place on the walls were texts of Scripture, and the only image he would have was the Word of God. He had shown in his former lecture the high probability that the first vial began to be poured out in 1792 or 1793, when the beast, the little horn came under the judgement of God – when the system that had so long been dominant and unopposed came to be gradually consumed, previous to its utter destruction at the advent of our blessed Lord. If they would read the account of the outpourings of the seven vials in the 16th chapter of the Apocalypse, and then the history of Allison, whose style, though -