g religious
assemblies, professing and teaching the doctrines of the gospel, and
celebrating the sacraments.

"They were distinguished for the simplicity and purity of their lives. It
was asserted by them, and repeated by the Catholics, that they were
induced to retreat to the secluded valleys which they inhabit, to escape
the despotism of the rulers and the corruptions and tyranny of the church,
soon after its nationalization by Constantine. They have continued to
subsist there to the present time, as a separate and evangelical
church."--_Exp. Apoc._, pp. 348, 349, 359.

Says Mr. Elliott:--"I must not pass on without pressing on the reader's
notice this notable pre-figuration of the seclusion of Christ's church in
the wilderness, as the true and fittest answer to the Romish
anti-Protestant taunt, 'Where was your religion before Luther?'
Protestants have not duly, as it seems to me, applied the answer here
given. For the wilderness-life necessarily, as I must repeat,--and that on
Bossuet's own showing,--implies the _invisibility_ of her who lives in it.
And consequently, instead of the long previous invisibility of a church
like the Lutheran, or Anglican Reformed, of the sixteenth century, in
respect of doctrine and worship, being an argument against, it is an
argument for it. The Romish church, which never knew the predicted
wilderness-life, could not, for this very reason, be the woman of the 12th
Apocalyptic chapter; that is, could not be the true church of Christ.

"For 1260 prophetic days, then, or years, she was to disappear from men's
view in the Roman world. Is it asked how her vitality was preserved?
Doubtless in her children, known to God, though for the most part unknown
to men; just like the 7000 that Elijah knew not of, who had not bowed the
knee to Baal; some, it might be, in monasteries, some in the secular walks
of life; but all alike insulated in spirit from those around them, and as
regards the usual means of grace, spiritually destitute and desolate; even
as in a barren and dry land, where no water is.--Besides whom, some few
there were of her children,--some very few,--prepared, like Elijah of old,
to act a bolder part, and stand forth, under special commission from God,
as Christ's witnesses before Christendom."--_Horae Apoc._, pp. 55-57.

The flood of water cast out after the woman, is an appropriate symbol of
the various tribes which subsequently overran the Western empire. Waters
symbolize peo