first act was to erect two chief idols as substitutes for the worship of Jerusalem. He was pronounced thenceforth the "man who made Israel to sin." A war of unexampled slaughter followed; but the idolatrous kingdom stood, until it was finally given into the hands of Babylon, B. c. 721.-From that captivity it never returned.

The kingdom of Judah resisted longer. It sometimes destroyed the images, sometimes relapsed into their worship. At length it was punished by an army of the tribes of the desert, Syrians, Moabites, Ammonites, and Chaldeans. A further punishment fell upon it in the storm of Jerusalem (B. C. 528.) It was then carried wholly into captivity.

The veneration of saints and martyrs had menaced the Church at an early period. It was sometimes vigorously denounced; but, from the death of Justinian, it had rapidly returned.Gregory the Second, Bishop of Rome, revolted from the Greek emperor on the ground of an imperial command forbidding image worship; The Pope declared that "Rome revered as a God on earth the image of Peter." The relics of St. Peter and St. Paul became the two-fold chief objects of veneration. A war of great bloodshed followed, in which the emperor was forced to relinquish his authority over Rome. Charlemagne (A. D. 800) gave the Popedom its final supremacy. From that epoch the dark ages began in Europe;

the power of excommunication extinguished all spiritual liberty; the Scriptures were unknown. The Western Church was in the dungeons of the captivity. From that captivity, Rome has never returned. She still retains images on her altar, still exercises spiritual despotism, and still refuses the Scriptures to the people.

The history of the Eastern Church forms a striking contrast to the precipitate criminality of the Western; and follows, with not less exactitude, the career of Judah. The emperor, Leo III. had attempted to purify the universal Church of image worship: the result was the rebellion of Rome. He then determined to exonerate at least the Eastern Church of the charge, by convening the seventh General Council, at Constantinople, A. D. 754. In this Council, three hundred and fifty-eight Bishops pronounced, that "all bowing down to images was heretical." Yet, thirty years after, the empress Irene, an image worshipper, summoned the Second Council of Nice. This Council pronounced, "That the worship of images is agreeable to Scripture and reason:"-the only matter of doubt being, whether the Godhead and the statue of Christ were entitled to precisely the same homage. (A. D. 787.)

For thirty-eight years the struggle was carried on. Nicephorus allowed liberty of choice to the worshipper; Michael was an image worshipper; Leo the Fifth expelled the images and their

worshippers; his successor Michael was hostile to image worship; Theophilus, his son, was reso lute in its destruction. Let the reader of this portion of Eastern history compare those fluctuations with the alternate virtues and idolatries of the kings of Judah. The hand of a woman, the empress Theodora, at length achieved the ruin, by establishing image worship as the law of the Eastern empire, A.D. 842. The decree of the Second Council of Nice was accepted by Pope Adrian as one of the General Councils; and the Greek Church was pronounced to have arrived at the faith of the Roman. Judah was now in the captivity, which had already engulphed Israel. The universal Church was in Babylon, and image worship was the universal chain.

But a Divine promise had been given that Judah should return. While the West remained insensible, a small body of individuals became persecuted in the East for combining the adoption of the Scriptures as their sole guide, with the most resolute refusal to bow down to images. Their chief residence was in the country bordering the Euphrates; as if the real Babylon were to point out the spiritual.

About the middle of the eighth century, the Emperor Constantine, who was hostile to the worship of images, transplanted many of those Christians to Constantinople. From the capital their doctrines passed into Europe.-Those were

the Paulicians, the original reformers, the small returned remnant of Judah. The majority of the empire remained in spiritual captivity, as the majority of Judah had remained in Babylonia. The remnant came forth, by the imperial command, to rebuild the temple of the faith, and restore the walls of their spiritual Jerusalem. Under the various names of Bulgarians, Cathari, Waldenses, and Albigenses, those exiles, thus returned from the captivity, were the first founders of Protestantism.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

THE REFORMATION.

THE history of the returned exiles of Judah, is the counterpart of the history of the German Reformation; even to the particularity of individual characters. Of those, but two can be mentioned here-Ezra and Nehemiah. Luther was the representative of Ezra; the Elector of Saxony of Nehemiah.

Ezra was a priest-dwelling in the captivity— distinguished for his knowledge of the Scriptures. -He went forth to instruct his returned brethren in the Law. He found them much debased by heathen intercourse, and urged them to break off the connexion.--He proceeded to restore the religious polity of the nation, and received the aid of the elders. At length Nehemiah, a Jew, one of the great officers of the empire, moved by compassion for his people, went forth for the especial purpose of fixing the civil polity of the nation; of raising up her “walls and gates," and of putting