Note 11 — Chapter I · (continued 2)

“The most serious and thinking people among all denominations begin to see something more than ordinary providence in the recent overthrow of state after state, and kingdom after kingdom, upon the continent of Europe. People without any pretensions to religion see a fatality attending almost every state that has hitherto exerted itself against the French empire.” The Gospel Magazine then compares Buonaparte to Cyrus, because having destroyed the persecuting spirit of Romish Babylon, and restored the liberty of religious worship, he had so far laid the foundations of the New Jerusalem. “It is of no avail,” says the writer, “to object to any such character that he is a man of blood, for such was David; and yet as his wars were necessary to bring in the peaceable reign of Solomon, so the present wars, and the manifest destruction of the enemies of truth, may introduce the reign of a greater than Solomon, who shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth.” This sample may suffice, one of many which might be adduced in proof of the text.