Note 483 — Chapter IV

In illustration of this, a volume might be filled with extracts from the writings of the Scotch divines of the seventeenth century. The following passage is, perhaps, as good as any. ‘Yea, it can hardly be instanced any great change, or revolution in the earth, which hath not had some such extraordinary herald going before. Can the world deny how sometimes these prodigious signes have been shaped out to point at the very nature of the stroke then imminent, by a strange resemblance to the same, such as a flaming sword in the air, the appearance of armies fighting even sometimes upon the earth, to the view of many most sober and judicious onlookers, also showers of blood, the noise of drummes, and such like, which are known usually to go before warr and commotions.’ Fleming's Fulfilling of the Scripture, 1681, p. 216.