Page:Mahometanism in its relation to prophecy - or, an inquiry into the prophecies concerning antichrist, with some reference to their bearing on the events of the present day (IA mahometanisminit00philrich).pdf/148

 of Queen Anne by one Fleming, a Dutchman, a raving Calvinist, who came over to England from the fens of Holland with William the Third, and who backed up his master's hatred of the pope and Catholicism by fanciful citations of Scripture. Fleming foretold that in 1848 the papacy would be extinguished. Never shall I forget the rapture of the ultra-Protestant party, when in that very year the pope was driven from Rome; and for the moment it seemed as if the Dutchman had made a lucky guess. But two years sufficed to prove he was a false prophet, in spite of first appearances, and the eagle once more flapped its wings in the face of rampant democracy and infidelity, as it had heretofore so often done in the very teeth of the Mahometan dragon; and that the event might be more marked and fixed in men's minds, Providence decreed that the pope should be restored to his temporal sovereignty by the armies of republican and democratic France. Thus, that the Word of God might be fulfilled, a republic overthrew a republic, lest the wings of the eagle should be severed from the mystic woman, who was to be guarded by them "for a time, and times, and half a time."

The question may here be put, if it be said "that the wings of the eagle are given to the