the Image of the Beast, shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth, and to distinguish them by sealing the one with the name of God in their foreheads, and marking the other with the mark of the Beast. Him that overcometh, I will make a pillar in the Temple of my God; and he shall go no more out of it. And I will write upon him the name of my God in his forehead.  So the Christians of the Church of Philadelphia, as many of them as overcome, are sealed with the seal of God, and placed in the second Temple, and go no more out.  The same is to be understood of the Church in Smyrna, which also kept the word of God’s patience, and was without fault.  These two Churches, with their posterity, are therefore the two Pillars, and the two Candlesticks, and the two Witnesses in the second Temple.

After the reign of the Emperor Julian, and his successor Jovian who reigned but five months, the Empire became again divided between Valentinian and Valens.  Then the Church Catholick, in the Epistle to the Angel of the Church of Laodicea, is reprehended as lukewarm, and [6] threatned to be spewed out of Christ’s_ mouth_.  She said, that she was rich and increased with goods, and had need of nothing, being in outward prosperity; and knew not that she was inwardly wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.  She is therefore spewed out of Christ’s_ mouth_ at the opening of the seventh seal:  and this puts an end to the times of the first Temple.

About one half of the Roman Empire turned Christians in the time of Constantine the great and his sons.  After Julian had opened the Temples, and restored the worship of the heathens, the Emperors Valentinian and Valens tolerated it all their reign; and therefore the Prophecy of the sixth seal was not fully accomplished before the reign of their successor Gratian.  It was the custom of the heathen Priests, in the beginning of the reign of every sovereign Emperor, to offer him the dignity and habit of the Pontifex Maximus.  This dignity all Emperors had hitherto accepted:  but Gratian rejected it, threw down the idols, interdicted the sacrifices, and took away their revenues with the salaries and authority of the Priests. Theodosius the great followed his example; and heathenism afterwards recovered itself no more, but decreased so fast, that Prudentius, about ten years after the death of Theodosius, called the heathens, vix pauca ingenia & pars hominum rarissima.  Whence the affairs of the sixth seal ended with the reign of Valens, or rather with the beginning of the reign of Theodosius, when he, like his predecessor Gratian, rejected the dignity of Pontifex Maximus.  For the Romans were very much infested by the invasions of foreign nations in