Having accepted Dan. 7:25, in common with the religious world, as applying to the papacy, and learning, as the result of investigation, that the days of the great persecution were to reach from the decree of Justinian (A. D. 538,) giving authority to the Bishop of Rome to become the corrector of heretics, to A. D. 1798—when the pope was carried into captivity, having received a wound with the sword agreeably to Rev. 13:10—these students of God’s word at once perceived that the next thing in order would be the completion of the restitution, which had begun in the taking away of his ability to put the saints to death, by a work equally called for in the inspired prediction; namely, that of rescuing from his hands the “times and laws” which he thought to change. Or, in other words, that the effort of the pope to remove the Sabbath of the Lord from the seventh to the first day of the week should be made to appear in its true light; namely, as the work of a blasphemous power which had held the world in its grasp for centuries. But, while they were clear in those convictions which led them in 1846, under the title of Seventh-day Adventists, to claim that they were fulfilling the prophecy of Rev. 14:9-12, they discerned that the same facts which brought them to this conclusion also compelled the conviction that theirs was to be the road of persecution: hardship, and privation. They read in Rev. 12:17, in these words, “The dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ,” the history of the last generation of Christians; and saw that, in God’s inscrutable providence, it was to be their fortune to be the object of diabolic hate, because of the commandments of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ, to which they cling with determined perseverance. Once more: In studying the 11th to the 18th verses inclusive of the 13th chapter of the same book, they saw that—if their view of the work which was assigned them was correct—that portion of the Scriptures was applied to the United States of America, and indicated that this country was to be the theater of a mighty contest between those who “keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus,” and the government under which they live, from which they could only be delivered by the coming of Christ. This view they unhesitatingly proclaimed. For twenty years, they have announced it as a part of their faith. When they first declared it to be such, they brought upon themselves ridicule and contempt, for, humanly speaking, every probability was against them. The government was ostensibly republican in form, and professedly tolerant to the very extreme, in all matters of religious opinion. The Constitution had even provided that “Congress should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”