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PART III.

THE

PROGRESSION OF EMPIRES.

ALTHOUGH there be nothing comparable to that progression of the true Church, which I have represented to you, the progression of Empires, which I come now to set before your eyes, is of no less consequence to great princes like you.

I. The Revolutions of Empires are ordered by Providence, and serve to humble the spirit of Princes.

IN the first place, those empires have for the most part a necessary connexion with the history of the people of God. God made use of the Assyrians and Babylonians, to chastise that people; of the Persians to restore them; of Alexander and his first successors, to protect them; of Antiochus Illustris and his successors, to exercise them; of the Romans, to support their liberty against the kings of Syria, who breathed nothing but their destruction. The Jews continued until JESUS CHRIST under the power of the same Romans. When they

disowned and crucified him, those same Romans unwittingly lent a hand to the divine vengeance, and exterminated that ungrateful people. God, who had resolved to gather at the same time a new people, from among all nations, then first united both seas and lands under that same empire. The commerce of many different nations, formerly strangers to one another, and afterwards united under the Roman dominion, was one of the most powerful means that providence made use of for the propagation of the Gospel. If the same Roman empire persecuted for the space of three hundred years that new people, which was rising up on all sides within it, that persecution established the Christian church, and made her glory shine forth with her faith and patience. At last the Roman empire yielded; and having found something more invincible than itself, received peaceably into its bosom that church, against which it had waged so long and so cruel a war.

The

emperors now employed their power to make every thing obey the church, and Rome became the head of that spiritual empire which JESUS CHRIST meant to extend over all the earth.

When the time was come that the Roman empire must fall, and that great empire, which had vainly promised itself eternity, was to undergo the fate of all others, Rome, though become a prey to Barbarians, yet by her religion preserved her ancient majesty. The nations, that invaded the Roman empire, learned by

degrees that Christian piety, which softened their barbarity; and their kings putting themselves, each in his respective nation, in the place of the emperors, found none of their titles more glorious than that of protectors of the church.

But I must here discover to you the secret judgments of God upon the Roman empire, and upon Rome herself: a mystery which the Holy Spirit revealed to St. John, and which that great Man, Apostle, Evangelist, and Prophet, hath unfolded in the Apocalypse. Rome, who had grown old in the worship of idols, had extreme difficulty to get rid of them, even under the Christian emperors; and the senate made it a point of honour to defend the gods of Romulus, to which it attributed all the victories of the ancient_republic *. The emperors were wearied with deputations from that great body, which required the restoration of its idols, and which thought that to turn away Rome from her old superstitions was, to do injury to the Roman name. Thus that assembly, composed of the greatest dignities of the empire, and an immense multitude of people, among whom were nearly all the most powerful men of Rome, could neither be drawn from their errors by the preaching of the gospel, nor by so visible an accomplishment of the ancient prophecies, nor yet by the conversion of almost all the rest of the empire, nor, in fine, by

Zosim, iv. Or. Symm. ap. Amb. tom. v. lib. v. ep. 30. Aug. de Civit. Dei, 1. 1.

that of the princes, all whose decrees authorised Christianity. On the contrary, they continued to load with reproaches the church of CHRIST, which they also accused, after the example of their fathers, of all the misfortunes that befel the empire; ever ready to renew the old persecutions, had they not been restrained by the emperors. In this condition were things in the fourth age of the church, and an hundred years after Constantine, when God at last called to mind the many bloody decrees of the senate against the faithful, and at the same time the furious outcries with which the whole Roman people, thirsting after Christian blood, had so often made the Amphitheatre resound. He delivered up therefore to the Barbarians, that city drunk with the blood of the martyrs, as St. John speaks*. God renewed upon her the terrible chastisements which he had inflicted on Babylon'; Rome herself is called by that name. new Babylon, a faithful copier of the old, like her, puffed up with her victories, exulting in her delights and her riches, polluted by her idolatries, and a persecutor of God's people, falls also like her by a mighty fall, and St. John sings her overthrow t. The glory of her conquests, which she ascribed to her gods, is taken from her: she is a prey to Barbarians, thrice, nay four times taken, plundered, sacked, destroyed. The sword of the Barbarians spares none but the Christians. Another

This

Rome, wholly Christian, arises out of the ashes of the former; and it is only after the inundation of the Barbarians, that we see the victory of JESUS CHRIST completed over the Roman gods, which are not only destroyed but forgotten.

Thus it is that the empires of the world have ministred to religion, and to the preservation of the people of God: wherefore that same God, who caused the different states of his people to be foretold by his prophets, caused the succession of empires to be also predicted by them. You have seen the places where Nebuchadnezzar was pointed out as the person that was to come and punish the haughty nations, and especially the Jewish people, for their ingratitude to their Maker. You have heard Cyrus named two hundred years before his birth, as him who was to restore the people of God, and to punish the pride of Babylon. The destruction of Nineveh has been no less clearly foretold. Daniel in his wonderful visions, has made the empire of Babylon, that of the Medes and Persians, that of Alexander and the Grecians, pass in a moment before you. The blasphemies and cruelties of Antiochus Illustris have been there prophesied, as well as the miraculous victories of God's people over that violent persecutor. We there see those famous empires fall one after another, and the new empire, which JESUS CHRIST was to establish, is there described so expressly by its proper characters, that it is impossible to mistake it. It is the empire of the Saints of the Most High; the empire of the Son of Man; the empire that is to stand