of the Popes, that it was about the year 583 that the then Pope, Pelagius, first assumed the Divine attribute of INFALLIBILITY. And perhaps no consideration has tended to keep its members so fast bound to its communion, and so completely to depress the true church, as the universal recognition, throughout the Papal world, of this daring pretension. It has been the charm which has retained all ranks of persons for so many centuries within its magic circle; the magnet which has attracted the desultory and unstable within its sphere; "the foundation of its whole superstructure, the cement of all its parts, and its fence and fortress against all inroads and attacks." On the occasion of the above Pope meeting with some opposition from the bishops of Istria, against his pontifical pretensions to meddle with the affairs of that church, he used the following language: "As Peter could NEVER ERR, nor his faith fail or be shaken; so his successors in office could never err, nor their faith fail; and that it is presumption to question the orthodoxy of their belief." It may be added, that this daring assumer of one of the prerogatives of Jehovah, died in the great pestilence of the year 590.

In considering the period of "seven times," the parallel was drawn between the series of

events that occurred in the fifty years between the first and second commencement, and the corresponding fifty years, as far as they have transpired, between the first and second termination; in other words, between the events that occurred from 727 to 677 B.C., and from 1793 to 1843 after Christ. It will greatly increase the interest of the present "half period,” as well as place the connection of the two periods of 2520 and 1260 years in a stronger light, briefly to notice the still corresponding series of events that took place in the intervening fifty years, from 533 to 583.

Gibbon, in closing his history of the Reign of Justinian, concludes the chapter" with the comets, the earthquakes, and the plagues, which astonished or afflicted" the empire during this eventful period. First, as it regards the comets, which appeared from 531 to 539, he says, "In the fifth year of his reign, and in the month of September, a comet was seen during twenty days in the western quarter of the heavens, and which shot its rays into the north. Eight years afterwards, while the sun was in Capricorn, another comet appeared to follow in the Sagittary the size was gradually increasing; the head was in the east, the tail in the west, and it remained visible about forty days. The nations, who gazed with astonishment, ex

pected wars and calamities from their baleful influence; and these expectations were abundantly fulfilled.".

He then names the earthquakes, and observes, Without assigning the cause, history will distinguish the periods in which these calamitous events have been rare or frequent, and will observe that this fever of the earth raged with uncommon violence during the reign of Justinian. Each year is marked by the repetition of earthquakes, of such duration, that Constantinople has been shaken above forty days; of such extent, that the shock has been communicated to the whole surface of the globe, or at least of the Roman Empire. An impulse or vibratory motion was felt; enormous chasms were opened; huge and heavy bodies were discharged into the air; the sea alternately advanced or retreated beyond its ordinary bounds; and a mountain was torn from Libanus, and cast into the waves, where it protected as a mole the new harbour of Botrys in Phoenicia."

"Two hundred and fifty thousand persons are said to have perished in the earthquake of Antioch, whose domestic multitudes were swelled by the conflux of strangers to the festival of the Ascension. The loss of Berytus was of smaller account, but of much greater

value," and was overthrown by an earthquake in the twenty-fifth year of Justinian, A.D. 551.

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"The fatal disease which depopulated the earth in the time of Justinian and his successors, first appeared in the neighbourhood of Pelusium, between the Serbonian Bog and the eastern channel of the Nile. From thence, tracing as it were a double path, it spread to the East, over Syria, Persia, and the Indies; and penetrated to the West, along the coast of Africa, and over the continent of Europe. In the spring of the second year, Constantinople, during three or four months, was visited by the pestilence". Every rank and profession was attacked by its indiscriminate rage, and many of those who escaped were deprived of the use of their speech, without being secure from a return of the disorder. The order of funerals and the rights of sepulchre were confounded: those who were left without friends or servants lay unburied in the streets, or in their desolate houses and a magistrate was authorized to collect the promiscuous heaps of dead bodies, to transport them by land or water, and to inter them in deep pits beyond the precincts of the city.....The public consternation was expressed in the habits of the citizens, and their idleness and despondence occasioned a general scarcity in the capital of the East."

"Such was the universal corruption of the air, that the pestilence which burst forth in the fifteenth year of Justinian was not checked or alleviated by any difference of the seasons. In time, its first malignity was abated and dispersed; the disease alternately languished and revived; but it was not till the end of a calamitous period of fifty-two years that mankind recovered their health, or the air resumed its pure and salubrious quality. No facts have been preserved to sustain an account, or even a conjecture, of the numbers that perished in this extraordinary mortality. I only find, that during three months, five, and at length ten, thousand persons died each day at Constantinople; that many cities in the East were left vacant; and that in several districts of Italy the harvest and the vintage withered on the ground. The triple scourge of war, pestilence, and famine afflicted the subjects of Justinian, and his reign is disgraced by a visible decrease of the human species, which has never been repaired in some of the fairest provinces of the globe." (Chap. 43.)

A finer comment on the general character and calamities of the Fourth Seal could not have been given : "A pale livid-green horse; and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him." On reading it, as marking the