* Vid. a discourse on this subject by Timothy Dwight, D.D.  President of Yale College, printed at Newhaven, A.D. 1798.

It deserves particular notice that all these strange declensions, which were foretold, as to take place in the church, and world, are represented as antecedent to Christ’s reign on earth, and terminating before the commencement of that blessed era.

It is farther to be observed that during the whole antichristian defection, God’s “two witnesses were to prophecy clothed in sackcloth.”  God would have a small, but sufficient number of faithful servants, who, in low and humble circumstances, would maintain the truth and be witnesses for him during the reign of man of sin.  But about the end of his reign, they will have finished their testimony.  Their enemies will then prevail against them and destroy them, and for a short term there will be none to stand up for God +—­none to warn the wicked, or to disturb them in their chosen ways.  And they are represented as exulting in their deliverance from the society of those who amidst their departures from the living God, had tormented them,++ by warnings of future wrath, and an eternity according to their works.  For this is the way in which God’s witnesses torment the wicked.

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+ Comparatively None.  The number will be exceedingly small—­the times resemble those just before the flood, when Noah was said to stand alone.  The pageantry of Romish worship may be kept up in that church, till mystical Babylon shall be destroyed, in the awful manner foretold in the Revelation; but infidelity hath long since, tipped the foundation of catholic religion, being grafted on the ruins of superstition.  The absurd doctrines, and legendary tales of popery, may have been credited in the dark ages, when many of the clergy were unable to write their names, or so much as read their alphabet; but the belief of them is utterly inconsistent with the light everywhere diffused since the revival of literature.

++ Tormented them.  This language is remarkable.  It intimates that the pains occasioned in the wicked, by the warnings of the faithful are the same, in kind, as those of the damned, and that they are often severe.  This accounts for the mad joy of infidelity—­for the frantic triumphs of those who have persuaded themselves that religion is a fable.  It accounts for the representation here given of the conduct of an unbelieving world, when infidelity shall have become universal, and the dead body of religion lie exposed to public scorn.  Such is the time here foretold—­a time when the age of atheism may be vauntingly termed “the age of reason.”

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