"A great earthquake," that is, "a most stupendous change in the civil and religious constitution of the world." "The _sun_"--the ancient Pagan government of the Roman empire, "_was totally darkened_; and like a black hair sackcloth, was degraded and humbled to the dust. The _moon_--the ecclesiastical state of the same empire, _become as blood_, was totally ruined; their sacred rites abrogated; their priests and religious institutions desecrated; their altars cast down; their temples destroyed, or turned into places of Christian worship. The _stars of heaven_--the gods and goddesses, demi-gods and deified heroes, of their poetical and _mythological heaven_, prostrated indiscriminately, and lay as useless as the figs or fruit of a tree shaken down before ripe by a tempestuous wind. _And the heaven departed as a scroll._ The whole system of Pagan and idolatrous worship, with all its spiritual, secular, and superstitious influence, blasted, shriveled up, and rendered null and void as a parchment scroll when exposed to the action of a strong fire. And every mountain--all the props, supports, and dependencies of the empire; whether regal allies, tributary kings, dependent colonies, or mercenary troops, were all moved out of their places, so as to stand no longer in the same relation to that empire and its worship, support, and maintenance, as they formerly did. And _island_:--The heathen temples, with their precincts and inclosures, cut off from the common people, may be here represented by _islands_."[9] Like the former passage, therefore, this is rendered nugatory as a proof of the dissolution of the universe; and rendered so, too, by the admission of its friends. As that referred to the _Jewish heaven_ which passed away at the destruction of the city of Jerusalem, so this is affirmed to apply to the _mythological heaven_ of the Pagans, which was dissolved at the conversion of Constantine to Christianity; and to have no allusion to the system of material nature. Here are two of the strongest passages thrown aside as useless in the controversy; and we shall quickly perceive that, when closely examined, the advocates of the doctrine equally cast off, if not the whole, at least the greater part, of the remainder. Indeed, as I have already remarked, the connexion of the passage is such as will by no means admit of any literal burning of the earth; so that, even though its inapplicability to the subject had _not_ been allowed, yet would the inconsistency attendant on such a meaning, have pleaded loudly for its rejection.