POPULAR PROPHECIES IN EUROPE.

Evening Star, Issue 3409, 24 January 1874, Page 3

POPULAR PROPHECIES IN EUROPE.

{Continued from our last.) The most notable of modern European prophecies refers to the fate and fortunes of the Papacy. It would perhaps be more correct to say that a whole cloud of prophetic Witnesses hovers about the Vatican, and the really startling circumstance connected with these witnesses t is, *that they all concur in "predicting the same event., Ernest Renan, the well known writer of the Tie. rfe Jesus, in no spirit of mystic faith, but simply as a political divine, foretells that the Roman .Church will not fall to pieces from doctrinaT divisions from within, but that there will happen a Papal election which will he deemed invalid by one party, aud the result will be the rise of two competing Pontiff*, and a revival of the fourteenth century‘Strife' between the sees of Rome and Avignon. This is merely a shrewd political guess; but a monkish prophecy, bearing the name of John of Vatignerra, and first published in the Liber JUirabiHs in 1524, foretells clearly the French Revolution'and the troubles following it, and these . amongst others “ Between the Arragonese , and the Spaniards great troubles and divi■ions shall break forth, and they shall fight . with each other; and there shall be no peace between these two kingdoms until one of them is entirely destroyed. Before the i World shall arrive at the year 1525 (a mys tical number), the' church universal and the whole world will shudder at the spoliation, the devastation, and pillage of that most - famous city which is the capital and mistress of the entire kingdom' of France. The church-throughout the world shall be perse- . cuted in a lamentable and dolorous manner; it shall be despoiled and stripped of all its temporal possessions; and the greatest personage in the church will bo happy if barely his life is left to him. . . , . . The .chief -pastor of the church will change his 1 abode,: and: it will be happiness for this same pastor and his brethren who shall be with "B-m if they can find a place of refuge where ; they may eat of the bread of sorrow in this valley of tears. For all the malice of ,men .shall be turned against the church universal, and the more so because of the fact .. - that it shall have no defender ■ for a space of five-ami-twenty months, during all which time there shall be neither Pope nor.Emperor at Rome, nor Regent in France.” _ The prophecy proceeds in the same dark strain, fortelling the rise of a Pope of lingular zeal, sanctity, and humility of life, who, aided by a p ons Emperor, in whose veins runs the remains of the sacred blood of the Kings of the French, shall restore peace and unity to the church, but ending with a warning that the wickedness «f men,, after an interval of peacefulness, will break •forth, worse than .before, and will precipitate ; the end of the world through the anaer of the Almighty. The quotation here given is •literally translated from the French classbook mentioned above, which contains many' others of similar import. The general tenor of all these prophecies is that the spoilalion •oh the temporal, possessions of the papacy, accompanied with much persecution and affliction to the ocoupint e£ St Peter’s chair,, will, mark Its approaching downfall, and the nearness of the end of the world. Rut there will be an interval of restoration and peace,, during which a pope of great genuis and energy shall reign, and shall be aided by a .powerful and pious King of France. The leading apocalyptical interpreters, jboth in .England, and Germany, agree in fixing the date of the fall of the Papacy some- • time about 1860, Robert Fleming, a Scotch Presbyterian minister in London during the reign of; William (If., clearly marked out the period from 1794 to 1848 as the revolutionary epoch, or time of the Fifth Vial, when the throne of the Pope would begin to totter and decline. The mystical 1260 years of the revelation'are supposed to'commence from the date of Gregory ihe Great (606), and, therefore, to.end about 1866. But a correspondent of ‘ The A rgus ’ in 1870, before the intelligence of the occupation of Rome, by the King of Italy reached Melbourne, showed that the 1,260 years are the apocalyptical expression for exactly J { Boo years-the mystical scale of numeration being septenary, not decimal—and that the period covered by them extends from the fall of. Judaism to that of the Papacy—namely, from A.t» 70 to ad. 1870. A subsequent mail brought the intelligence that the last vestiges of the temporal yower had been taken from the hands of Pius the Ninth.

Further,. there is an ancient Latin prophecy, which has been current for centuries in the Roman Catholic Church, to the effect that until the time of the end no Pope should occupy the chair, of St. Peter for the same period as the great apostle himself—namely, five-and-twonty years; and that the first Pope whose feign should exceed; that period would be also the last. Now, it is a noteworthy fact that Pius the Ninth has already reigned twenty-* even years, and is the only Pope in the long line of Pontiffs who has exceeded this period of the apostle. Pius the Sixth comes next, his reign extending to twenty-four and a-half years. [To he continued.)