rld, you would doubtless
tremble at your own solitude, and ask, 'Of whom are we the governors?'

"It is a human right that every man should worship according to his
own convictions ... a forced religion is no religion at all.... Men
say that the Christians are the cause of every public disaster. If the
Tiber rises as high as the city walls, if the Nile does not rise over
the fields, if the heavens give no rain, if there be an earthquake, if
a famine or pestilence, straightway they cry, Away with the Christians
to the lions.... But go zealously on, ye good governors, you will
stand higher with the people if you kill us, torture us, condemn
us, grind us to the dust; your injustice is the proof that we
are innocent. God permits us to suffer. Your cruelty avails you
nothing.... The oftener you mow us down, the more in number we grow;
the blood of Christians is seed. What you call our obstinacy is an
instructor. For who that sees it does not inquire for what we suffer!
Who that inquires does not embrace our doctrines? Who that embraces
them is not ready to give his blood for the fulness of God's grace?"

[Sidenote: The woman's flight]

Under the figure of Michael and his angels, the early church is
represented as victorious in casting down the powers of heathenism;
but under the symbol of the woman, the church is apparently
represented as defeated; for after the casting down of the dragon it
is said, "To the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she
might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished
for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent"
(verse 14). This agrees with verse 6, where it is said that "the woman
fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God,
that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and three score
days."

The flight of the woman into an obscure place in the wilderness
presents a striking contrast with her first appearance in the
planetary heavens, where she was "clothed with the sun, and the moon
under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars." By this
sudden change in the symbolic representation of the woman's position
is set forth the ecclesiastical change that took place in the early
part of the church's history. First she appears as the glorious bride
of Christ adorned in beauty and splendor and radiating the light of
his glorious gospel. She was then "the light of the world." Later we
find a great c