University of Virginia Library

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5

Beside its intrinsic difficulties, the subject labors under a disadvantage too obvious to have escaped notice. It has so generally occupied the imaginations of believers in the Scriptures, that most have adopted respecting it their own notions: whoever selects it as a theme, therefore, exposes his work to criticism on account of its theology, as well as its poetry; and they who think the former objectionable, will not, easily, be pleased with the latter. The object, however, was not to declare opinions; but simply to present such a view of the last grand spectacle as seemed the most susceptible of poetical embellishment.