As the "Te Deum" sprang spontaneously from the lips of Ambrose and Augustine, each saint voicing an alternate stanza, so now the two witnesses hurled their fulminations against the Man of Sin:
"Thou heart of all foulness and deceiveableness, with the breath of His lips shall the Christ slay thee." Isa. xi. 4.
"Thou marked one, the Lord shall consume thee with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy thee with the brightness of His coming." 2 Thess. ii. 8.
"O thou enemy! Thy destructions shall soon come to a perpetual end." Ps. lx. 6.
"It shall come to pass in that day (when Jehovah shall deliver His people out of thy hands) saith the Lord of Hosts, that I will break thy yoke (Apleon Emperor, Man of Sin, Anti-christ) from off the 'peoples' neck." Jer. xxx 8.
"Judgment shall sit, and Christ shall take away thy kingdom, to consume and to destroy it unto the end." Dan. vii. 26.
"Tophet is ordained of old, yea for thee, thou Man of Sin, it is prepared: God hath made it deep, and large; the pile thereof is fire and much wood: the breath of the Lord, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it." Isa. xxx. 33.
"And thou shall be taken, and with thee The False Prophet, thy co-adjutor, he whom thou hast deputed to work miracles before thee, and in thy foul name, and with all those whom thou and thy False Prophet have deceived, who have received thy brand on them, and who have worshipped thine image.—These all, you, your prophet, and your dupes, shall be cast into a lake of fire burning with brimstone". Rev. xiii. 2, 3. Rev. xix. 20.
Low and mocking, a laugh broke from Apleon, upon whose brow there still played that lambent flame. The laugh was caught up by the multitude, until one far-reaching volume of mocking, derisive laughter went rolling out-and-away from The Broadway, to Gareth and Goab, and every other suburb of the city, and back again.
As the last echo of the laughter died away, Apleon called, to his Viceroy: