Before this Deity of the earth, while in the plenitude of his power, the Spirit’s witnessing prophets had to stand in all the breadth of his dominion. The One Body and the Earth that helped it were the Mordecai in the gate, who, in all the west, refused to salute him and to do him honor. But the time was at length approaching when their mission for a while would be fulfilled; and a substitute would be found for them in their testimony against the Antichrist, though not in their exhibition of the engrafted word for salvation, in the antipapal rebellion soon to blaze forth.

As I have shown, their mission was warlike as well as doctrinal. In the prophecy, what "the earth" executed as the minister of divine wrath, both were said to do; unless we understand the plural to refer to the multitude of which "the Earth" was composed. "If any will to injure them" -- if any power undertake to fan upon them with the sword -- "fire burst forth out of their mouth and devours their enemies; and if any wills to injure them, thus must he be put to death." This is prophetic of the wars that would be waged against the forces raised by the antichrist for their extermination. The Deity of the heaven did not require the members of the One Body to stand and be murdered by their enemies without help. If persecuted in one city they were to fly to another; but "the Earth," not believing in non-resistance and passive obedience to ecclesiastical tyranny, stood their ground, and devoured their enemies, after the introduction of gunpowder in war, at the cannon’s mouth. In this way "the Earth" performed their part. This was their mode of prophesying against the Antichrist; which, "in all their days of the prophecy," was very effective in the preservation of civil and religious liberty, and the rights of man; and in perpetuating them to succeeding generations. Moreover, being not without political organization under their Counts, they were enabled to exercise a will in these matters. They could will to make war upon their enemies at pleasure; and, in so doing, they had "power to shut the" antichristian "heaven, that rain might not fall in their days of the prophecy." I say, the antichristian heaven -- the heaven of Antichrist’s inhabitation; the heaven in which "the God of the earth" dwells, under the whole of which "the Earth" and the "Holy City" stood while testifying or prophesying against him. To shut up any sort of heaven that rain might not descend upon those who lived under it, is figurative of divine wrath upon the sufferers. This appears from Deut. xi. 17 -- "And Yahweh’s wrath be kindled against you, and he shut up the heaven that there be no rain." This shutting up was the effect of divine displeasure. The shutting up of a heaven is never significative of blessing upon any people, but always of calamity of some sort. The genial, refreshing and fertilizing character of the administration of human affairs by the Mystical Christ -- Jesus and his Brethren -- is compared to an opened heaven from which rain descends in gentle showers upon the grass newly mown: as, "There shall be a ruler over mankind, a Just One, ruling in the righteous precepts of Elohim. And as the brightness of morning, He shall rise the Sun of an unclouded dawn shining forth after rain upon tender grass out of the earth" (2 Sam. xxiii. 4); and, "He shall descend like rain upon the mown grass; as showers that water the earth." The meaning of which is, that "In his days shall the righteous flourish; and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth" (Psa. lxxii. 6,7). But, when the heaven is shut, the reverse of this obtains -- the righteous do not flourish, but are "in sackcloth;" and there is no peace. Thus, by way of illustration, while I now write, the atheistic abolition faction is prophesying against their brethren in Antichrist dwelling in the South. Until the day of their own judgment comes, "they have power to shut the heaven that rain fall not in their days of prophesying," neither upon themselves nor upon their enemies. In other words, while they have the ability to carry death and desolation to the hearths and altars of their coreligionists, they prevent the righteous flourishing, and peace descending with its blessings upon the people. Hence, this infidel faction is the Deity’s scourge upon communities of religionists, who corrupt his way, and make void his word by their traditions. The faction is itself a compound of "abominations of the earth" -- an aggregation of pious and profane infidels, being chories christou and atheoi en to kosmo, without Christ and atheists in the world (Eph. ii. 12). Hence, they are fit only for a providential work of blood; in which, while they are blindly executing vengeance for him, they are preparing disaster and ruin by which they will be themselves submerged into "the lowest hell" -- !Hebrew! sheol tachtiyah (Psa. lxxxvi. 13; ix. 17). As delighting in carnage and desolation, they must be scattered, and all their knavish devilry confused; for so the Spirit taught the Psalmist to pray -- "Scatter thou the people that delight in war" (Psa. lxviii. 30).

But, his witnessing prophets of the Holy City do not delight in war. The Earth that helps them only draws the sword to "turn the waters into blood, and to smite the earth with the plagues" of war, when the rulers of those waters, or "peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues," will to deprive them of civil and religious liberty and the rights of men. Hence, these rulers in the antichristian heaven bring the evils of war upon themselves. But, it must be noted, that civil and religious liberty and rights are only sacred in the sight of heaven when it is the liberty and rights of his people that are in question. He has granted a dispensation to no set of men to worship him "according to the dictates of their own conscience". This is a liberty and right that he has granted to none. All that he has granted is liberty to enter his august presence, and to do him worship according to the dictates of his word. All else is mere "will-worship and voluntary humility," of which he has recorded his contempt (Col. ii. 18,23). This is the character of the worship offered by the State Harlots and Dissenting Abominations of their Great Mother. They are worships according to their unpurified, and therefore evil, consciences; for none of them are to be found in the living word of the Deity of the heaven. All of them, therefore, being of this category or order of things, they are an offence to him, as offerings superseding his appointments, and which he has not required at their hands. Such worshippers as these are the worshippers of the unmeasured or excommunicated court; the worshippers of the Beast and of his Image, and the mark of whose name is indelibly impressed in their foreheads. To such he had granted neither liberty nor rights. The liberty he grants is the freedom with which the truth makes free (John viii. 32,36); a perfect law of liberty, into which whoso looketh narrowly and continueth therein, not being a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, shall be blessed in his deed (James i. 25). This is the only true liberty, to which none have any right save those who repudiate the worships of the Court, and become the adopted freemen of the Holy City.

But, while all others, not of the Earth and the Holy City, are mere liberty-brawlers, "promising liberty to others, while they are themselves the slaves of corruption," the Deity of the heaven has granted the right to none to forbid men adopting any worship they please. In this negative sense, the rights of all men are in themselves a common birthright. Hence the Antichrist has no divine right to compel all men to be papists; nor have the State Harlots such a right, though they often experimented in that direction even to the shedding of blood. The right exercised by the Antichrist he derived from the Dragon Imperiality of the East, styled by Daniel the Little Horn of the Goat; a right afterwards recognized by that other Little Horn, which came up in the midst of, and after, the Ten Horns of the European Commonwealth. "The Dragon gave him his power, and his throne, and great authority" (Apoc. xiii. 2); and it is by virtue of this, which is mere right based upon might, the right of brute force, that "the Devil and his Angels" -- Antichrist and the Sin-Powers of the Court -- have sought to force men, thus given into their hands, to worship what they call God according to their dictates. Now, it is in opposition to this blasphemous assumption, and in the negative sense already defined, that the witnessing prophets of the Deity of the heaven, champion civil and religious liberty and the rights of man. The enemies of these are their enemies; for if the spiritual and temporal Sin-Powers were to deprive society of these, their testimony or prophesying would inevitably be suppressed also. The conflict, therefore, which raged for ages in the Court of the Gentiles was one of life or death to the witnessing existence of the One Body, and the defensive self-devotion of the Earth. This conflict of ages was long and bloody for all concerned. The saints of the Holy City fell by thousands under the savage and merciless hand of the Roman God. His Spouse of Babylon became red and drunk with their blood, which, like the righteous Abel’s, still cries for vengeance upon the ruthless harlot that sits upon the beast (Apoc. xvii. 3). The Earth valiantly helped her, but could not destroy the murderess. It gave her papistic myrmidons frequent and signal overthrows. It gave them blood to drink, and smote them with the plagues of war; so that, if they were determined to trample the Holy City of the Faith, they should not be permitted so to do with impunity.

But in process of time their power of resistance was diminished. This was attributable to the testimony of the One Body being enfeebled by the admixture of traditions which had crept in, and, in so far, rendered it ineffectual. The pastors, whose business it was to keep the lightstand well supplied with golden olive oil of truth, were deteriorating in faithfulness and aptitude for teaching. Hence, the light grew dim and smoky, and men did not see their way as in former years. In consequence of this enfeebled perception, their christian virtue became too easy and tolerant of the traditions of the apostasy, until at length their individuality converged towards, and was finally lost in, the indefiniteness and confusion of the Lutheran and Calvinistic novelties of the sixteenth century. This fatal termination of their labors is styled in the prophecy, the finishing of their testimony. Their word having lost its power, the energy of their ancient helper, the Earth, was enfeebled likewise. When men’s hold upon principles is relaxed, they lack that enterprize and force which is necessary for their preservation in this evil world. A worldly and "charitable" spirit generates indifference, by which the pointedness and sharpness of the truth are destroyed. The word handled in a worldly spirit is always "charitable" or tolerant of traditions, which make it of none effect. The word being ministered thus, the power of energetic resistance, and of a bold and valiant advocacy of their ancient principles, was wanting, and deprived both classes of witnesses of their efficiency. Hence, the spirit had no longer any use for them; for the protestantized testimony they were now only able to give, was not of that brightness necessary to constitute them the Golden Oil Light of the world. Men may testify against the Roman Antichrist, and denounce both him and his co-religionists as idolators, which is unquestionably true; but such a testimony leaves the Court as much in the dark as to what must be believed and done for remission of sins, and for obtaining a right to eternal life, as though nothing had been said. This is Protestantism. It protests truly, that the pope is a blasphemous impersonation of the Christ; but it cannot delineate Christ Jesus according to the prophetic and apostolic testimony. It is, therefore, simply a negation; it denies every thing, but can scripturally affirm nothing. Such a witness as this is of no account in the premises; its doctrine and institutions are devoid of all power for the salvation of the soul.