kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces, and consume all these kingdoms, and shall stand for ever." Now, it is certain, that, in the historical sense, these visions relate to the four great empires, the Assyrian, the Persian, the Greek, and the Roman. And it is equally certain that these empires represent, spiritually, the four churches, the Adamic, the Noetic, the Jewish, or Representative, and the Christian. The description given of the fourth kingdom as being partly strong and partly broken, shews the anomalous existence of the Roman power. "They shall mingle themselves with the seed of men, but they shall not cleave one to another," refers not only to the situation of Rome itself, as divided into nobles and people, but to the state of the provinces; all the people of which were portions of the Roman population, but yet were far from cleaving to the empire, either by policy or by affection. Force alone kept them together, even as force alone can keep iron and clay united. At the time when the Roman empire was in its decline, Christianity arose. But the Roman power, though falling, remained long before it passed entirely away. It is, however, the consummation of the fourth church that we wish principally to consider.
The descent of the New Jerusalem is, by almost all commentators, acknowledged to refer, not to the state of the blessed in heaven, but to some peculiar state of the church on earth.
That it does not refer to the state of the saints in glory, is evident from its being described as descending from God out of heaven, upon earth: and can,
