comfort your hearts and establish you in every good work and word.
With all this evidence before him, the intelligent reader will now be enabled to judge for himself, and to adopt for his own that opinion which appears to be the best supported by circumstances and facts. The labors of the above learned men have certainly narrowed the principal subjects of inquiry; and we may now safely state that, in this very obscure prophecy, the Spirit of God had in view either the Jewish or an apostate Christian Church, possessing great spiritual and secular influence and jurisdiction. That the words appear to apply best to the conduct of many of the popes, and the corruptions of the Romish Church, needs no proof; but to which of these Churches, or to what other Church or system, we should apply them, some men, as eminent for their piety as for their learning, hesitate to declare: yet I must acknowledge, that the most pointed part of the evidence here adduced tends to fix the whole on the Romish Church, and on none other.