"■•-"" HHli -*.■■■■•:'.•■■• '"'" si '"''■' ' ■■•■ '■'" ' jx'£ffitt~fl 1J.: r/.. ■■■::■■.■■■■.::■■..■.■■;*.:"■■ ■ '•■••_<"- 1I0ILE APOCALYPTIC^; OB, A COMMENTARY OS THE APOCALYPSE, CEITICAL AM) HISTORICALj [NCLUDINQ ALSO AN EXAMINATION OF THE CHIEF PROPHECIES OF DANIEL. ILLUSTRATED BY AX APOCALYPTIC CHART, AND ENGRAVINGS PROM KEDALS AM) OTHEB EXTANT MiiNTM ENTS OF ANTIQUITY. WITH APPENDICES ; CONTAIMM",, BBBIDB8 OTHER MATTER, A SKETCH OF THE III9TORY OF APOCAL1 ITU I MTMiPKETATIOX, CEITICAL REYIEWS OF Till: i/HlKF AI'olALYPIIC COUNTER-SCHEMES, AND INDICES. BY THE REV. K R ELLIOTT, A.M. INCUMBENT OF M. MARK'S UUUMOHj KFMPTOWN, I1BIGIITON, PRKHF.NmKY OF IIBYTKSBUBT, AND LATE FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBBIDCU. FIFTH EDITION, ; I.LY REVISED, CORRECTED. I'M LBSBD, UfD OCPBOVBJ) THROUGHOUT i WITH ADDITION A I. l'l, K I l:s. \M> A HEW IKKl'ACE. vol. i\. SEELEY, JA< KSON, AND HALL] D \ V. ..!. il.l.l.l STREET, LONDON. MDCCCLXII. " Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein : for the time is at hand." Apoc. i. 3. "The word of prophecy ; whercunto ye do well that ye take heed, a« unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn." 2 l'ctcr i. 19. JOHN GUILDS AND *ON, PRINTERS. TABLE OF CONTENTS TO VOL. IV. PART VI. C8AF. I\..t; 1. .r.H.V 01 THE 8EVENTH VIAL .. .. .. 1 § 1. Till: THIRD FLYINO ANGEL, AND HARVEST AND VINTAGE OF THE EARTH .. .. .. 2 § 2. THE BKVJEHTH VIAL, AND EXPOSURE AND JUDG- MENT OF PAPAL ROME AND THE PAPAL ANTI- CHRIST .. .. .. .. .. 19 II. § 1. Daniel's last prophecy: — the first half 55 § 2. — THE SECOND HALF 79 § 3. OTHER OLD TESTAMENT PROPHECIES OF THE CONSUMMATION .. .. .. .. 113 III. THE MILLENNIUM .. .. .. .. 130 § 1. THE CHIEF MILLENNARY THEORIES .. .. 134 §2. APOCALYPTIC PREMILLENNIAL EVIDENCE .. 14G §3. GENERAL SCRIPTURAL PREMILLENNIAL EVIDENCE 157 IV. INTRODUCTION TO THE MILLENNIUM; AND T11K NEW JERUSALEM . . . . . . . . 190 V. § 1. OUR PRESENT PLACE IN THE PROPHETIC CALEN- DAR . . . . . . . . . . 224 § 2. APOCALYPTIC PHILOSOPHY OF THE HISTORY OF CHRISTENDOM, AND CONCLUDING APPLICATION -l'-> APPENDIX. KBIOB PART I. HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. I. FROM ST. JOHN TO CONSTANTINE .. .. 275 II. ROM CONSTANTINE TO FALL or ROMAS EMPIRE .. 310 111. FROM FALL OF ROMAN EMPIRE A.D. 500 TO A.D. 1100 W, IV. FROM A.D. 1100 TO THE REFORMATION .. 881 VI PONTENTS. 1-1 MOD TAGE V. i:i;a \m) ckntiuy of the eefobmation .. 436 VI. FBOM END OF CENTURY OF THE REFORMATION TO THE I'HKM II l;i;\ OLUTION .. .. .. 485 vii. from french revolution to present time . . 529 § 1. from 1789 to 1820 . . . . . . 530 § 2. from 1820 to 1862 ; and conclusion . . 551 part ii. critical examination of cnief count- chap, er-schemes of apocalyptic interpretation 564 i. § 1. german neronic pbjetebist counter-schem e 505 § 2. bossuet's domitianic pbjeterist counter- SCHEME . . . . . . . . . . 585 II. § 1. FUTURIST ORIGINAL APOCALYPTIC COUNTER- SCHEME . . . . . . . . . . 598 § 2. MODIFIED FUTURIST COUNTER-SCHEMES OF BABKER AND W. KELLY . . . . . . 630 § 3. PATRISTIC VIEWS OF PROPHECY AND ANTI- CHRIST MAINLY NON-FUTURIST . . . . 653 III. dr. Arnold's prophetic expository principle 664 IV. examination and refutation of the recent counter-millennary theories . . . . 680 part iii. chap. i. adamic world's neab ap- proach to its seventh millennary accord- ing to hebrew scbiptube chronology . . 701 ii. premonitory indications compared of nearness of Christ's first and second personal ADVENTS .. .. .. .. .. 710 PLATES TO VOL. IV. PLATE XXXVII. IMPERIAL ROME SEATED ON THE SEVEN HILLS, HOLDING A SWORD; AND PAPAL ROME SEATED, HOLDING OUT THE CUP OF HER APOSTASY . . 34 XXXVIII. DIAGRAM SHOWING THE CON VE11GENCY TO THE PRESENT jERA OF THE CHIEF PROPHETIC PE- RIODS . . . . . . . . . . 210 CORRIGENDA TO VOL. IV Fage (i"»t Note *' \ read Dp-TOft — 82, line 12 from bottom; read aliene from — S3, last line but one of text ; for broke read spoke — 89, Note '. line 1 ; read on the verb "72^ (Pie] 1^2 ), — 1 IS, Note »j >•--'./ Dan. vii. <), 10, 22. — 252. line 12 ; ,/br ) read ( — 258, {art line; for 75 read 275 — 332. Zm • 12 ; for inexplicable read explicable — 305. Note :; >vW confota ; and for 357 rcorf '■'>'>'.) — 395, .tfbfe " ; read 272, 309 — 898, Note ' ; /w/i/ cUemonas — 403, line 12, read Babylon (oi* Roman power) — 421 ; The Tabular Scheme should have faced inwards. — -492, lines 1, 5 ; transpose of so as to pn a do new — 563, line s ; read also by — 578, Note 3; for tins read his — G30, Note ■ ; ;vW 622 ; ond -Vote *, G09— 611 — G57, Note ' ; >W 62 I. 625 : and Note *, 628 — (57s, Imm 15 ; dele the first that — 679, tow 14 ; ,/or these Lectures rwoeJ this Book; and Xote \for 07!) read 678 — 700, 4 lines from bottom; read about Premillcnnarians like myself — 703, /) have followed up to heaven," at an epoch when her destruction was imminent. Compare too Acts x. 4, " Thy prayers and alms have come up for a memorial before God ; " said of Cornelius at the time when the answer of blessing was immediately about to be given. 4 Ilcb. iv. 9, &c. : where the word oa(3(3ari(Tfiog is used, as one parallel to rcrra- navaic, used ib. 1, 3, &c. 5 2 Thess. i. 7 ; " To you that are troubled rest {avimv) with us, when," &c. 6 See Apoc. x. 4, and my comment. ( II LP. 1. $ 1.] , TI1K IIAUVF.8T OF TUT. EARTH. 7 Christ's saints from immediately after death, in intended opposition to the Romish purgatorial doctrine, so as souk1 have explained it.1 In that ease the phrase used would rather have been, " Messed are they that die in the Lord, from after death " in assertion of the blessedness of aM dead and dying saints from the time of their dying: not "from henceforth" so as to make it date from a time subsequent to the date of the voice in vision. Nor, again, can it well mean, so as certain other expositors have imagined, simply that persecution would he at the time figured so severe, or coming judgments so fearful, as to make death a happy refuge from them.2 Where then the distinctive appropriate- ness oi the voice at this point in the prophecy? For, although doubtless another notice, just previously given, did intimate that the «n prefigured is to be eminently one of trial both to the faith ami the patience of Christ's true saints, and one to show very notably whether they will keep, as their one rule of action, " the commands of God," and of doctrine " the faith of Jesus," yet many such times of trial had been prefigured as coming before. — It may be added that, on the viewr here advocated of the heavenly intimation, it would seem almost to imply a general settlement of the minds of the faithful at the time figured on the great premiUennial t' judgment ? of the good, or of the bad? On this point commentators differ: the majority of the modem English expositors taking it, I believe, in the form- er view;1 the majority of the earlier Protestant interpret- ers, and of those too of the more modern German school, taking it in the latter.9 The symbol, we must observe, is of itself indeterminate. In our Lord's notable parable, — the same which ends with the explanatory statement, "The harvest is the end of the world, (or age, ou(ovog,) the reapers are the angels,"3 — there is described a two-fold produce, of wheat and of tares, as alike grown up in the harvest-field ; and a two-fold reaping correspondent, of judgment and of reward, the former, it would seem, to precede the latter : " Gather ye together//*^ the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them ; but gather the wheat into my barn." Simi- larly St. Paul speaks of men reaping at the last what they sow, in two different kinds of harvest : " He that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap destruction ( Apoe. xiii. 6, Sec. — Compare Phil. iii. 20. s Thus the epithet sharp is applied to the instrument spoken of presently after as used in the vintage, for a sickle of judgment. Daubuz (p. 646) allows that this its dl agnation implies something violent and painful in the act done by it ; and so ex- plains it of t)i'j i'V7>-* of the Reformation. 6 i£npav6n. 7 The Scriptural view of the time for cutting the corn, is given in two passages a little while onee referred to : — the one, John iv. 35, where the fields are said to have been " white unto the harvest; " the other, Mark iv. 29, where the harvest-time is said to have come, and the sickle to be immediately put in orav irapalui o (capn-of, i. < . when the fruit hath put itself forth, as come to maturity. Sic Behlenaner on wapattSttfU. -Compare the application of the term dried to a plant in the tense of its being withered and dead, Matt. xiii. 6, where the Oreek verb, rendered withered away in our authorized version, is as here iZqpavOn, dried up; and so too in James i. 11, i.24. Of ancient classic writers I shall quote with Daubuz from Virgil and Columrlla. The farmer (Eclog. iv. 28) notes the time to be when " Molli paulatim flsYeecet cam- pus arista:" where mark the molli, as well as the flaeeteet.' The latter Will " ^Equaliter flavescentihus jam satis, anteijuaiu ex toto grana indurescant, cum rubi- 10 apoc. xiv. 14— 1G. [part vi. grapber infers from the simple word e§T)pav$7), especially considering its use in that sense in the Septuagint, that a harvest of judgment is here intended.1 — 4. Nor is such a use of the harvest-emblem unknown in other prophecies.* Especially in the only parallel one where the symbols of lut r rest and vintage are conjointly used, in symbolization of tlic events of the great consummation, viz. in Joel iii. 13, there cannot be a doubt, I conceive, as to the one, as well as the other, being symbols of judgment. " Let the hea- then be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat : for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about. Put ge in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe : come, get you down, for the press is full, the fats overflow; for their wickedness is great." In fact it is scarcely possible to read this passage without an impression of its being the actual original of the Apocalyptic imagery of the harvest and the vintage ; relating to the same events, and marking their character. Thus, on the whole, we may, I think, confidently con- clude on the harvest of the earth here figured depicting the first grand act of the judgments of the consummation on Antichristendom ; as the vintage was meant to signify the second. And, judging from what we find stated in the other series of Apocalyptic prophecy, and its two-fold dis- tinction of the judgments of the consummation into one bg fire on Babylon, and a second by fire and the sword on the Beast and his followers, I can scarcely hesitate at iden- tifying this harvest of the earth with the first-mentioned judgment of burning? I am confirmed in this by the s^r^avSrj, the dried up state of the figured harvest. For the cundum colorem traxerint, messis facienda est."— -And Pliny ; "Oraculum biduo ce- lerius messem facere, potius quam biduo serius." Nat. Hist, xviii. 30. And so too the modem Agriculturists' precept; "Do not let the corn become too ripe before you cut it." I cite from Thorley's Farmers' Almanac. The stalk, it is said, should be white at top ; but through the sap, still not wholly descended, retain still a measure of greenness below. 1 " Ex multorum interpretum sententia per metaphoram innuitur ad pcenam ma- turuisse adversarios religionis Christians, mensura peccatorum impleta : quod eo magis verisiraile est, quo magis constat %r]patvto9ai in versione Alex, de pernicie, interitu, et pa-nis divinis baud raro usurpari. Zach. x. 2, Is. xli. 17, xlii. 14, Amos ii. 9." Schleusner on Siipaivto. 2 E. g. Isa. xvii. 5, 11, (cited by Mede,) spoken of a harvest of judgment: and Jer. Ii. 33, with special reference to Babylon, " Yet a little while, and the time of her harvest is come." ' Such is very much the view of Mede and Vitringa. CHAP. 1. J 1.] THE HAKYKST 01 Till'. BARTH. 11 dry and noxious weed is lit only for buniin/> in preparation lor foirmng, than white in preparation for har- vest." 3 — If the earth itself have to sutler, as in the time of Noah, with its evil produce, what wonder? "The earth which drinketh in the rain that Cometh oft upon it, and bring- eth forth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed, receiv- eth blessing from God : but that which beareth thorns and briars is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned." 4 This main point of the vision settled, we need not to be long detained by its details. — It was one like a son of man, sitti)uj nn a white cloud, that appeared holding the sharp sickle of execution, and to whom the charge was trans- mitted from the inner temple, " Thrust in thy sickle, for the harvest of the earth is ripe." And both his likeness to a son of man,5 and the white lightning-cloud 6 his chariot,7 concurred to point out the God-man, Christ Jesus, as the person intended. — Yet not so as to indicate this being the occasion of his great predicted second advent with the clouds of heaven, when every eye shall see him. We must remember that the visibility of Christ to the Evangelist, here in vision, no more shows that he would be personally visi- ble at the time and in the events so foreshown, than his 1 Compare the Jewish proverb, " If they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry ? " Luke xxiii. 31 : also John xv. 6, " It is cast forth as a branch, and is withered (iZnpavdn) ; and men gather them, and cast than) into the fire, and they are burned." Compare too the burning of " all that grew on the ground," in the case of Sodom; Gen. xix. 25. * Horn. xii. ad tin. ' " Agerque potius arescere vidcatur ad ignem, quam albescerc inveniatur ad mes- sem." Pope Gregory X's Letter of convocation to the 2nd Lyons General Council. Hard. vii. 670. So too, I see, Bernard, in his Letter to Pope Eugenius, ii. 6, De Considerate me ; " Leva oculos, . . et vide regiones, si non sunt magis siccce ad ignem, quam alba; ad messem." — And somewhat similarly also Hernias, of old, in his 3rd and 4th Simili- tude. * 11, b. vi. 7, 8. 4 Compare John v. 27, Apoc. i. 13, where the article before son is also wanting. 8 Xiutn viqi\i]. Compare the Xtweoc iZaorpairruiv of Luke ix. 29. : " Hu niaki th tlie clouds his chariot ; " Psalm civ. 3. Vitrin^a, p. 894, compares Isa. xix. 1, where the Lord is spoken of as riding on a swift ckjud to aiewtfl judg- ment on Lgypt. — See too my Vol. ii. p. 4^', Note -. 12 apoc. xiv. 17 — 20. [part vi. appearance in an earlier part of the Apocalyptic visions robed in a cloud, and with his face shining as the sun; ' which, we saw reason to believe, symbolized the spiritual discovery of his gospel-grace and salvation at the Reform- ation. I conceive it was intended to designate Christ as the great initiator of the final judgments, just as the sub- sequent notice of his treading the wine-press ■ marked him out as their completer: agreeably with his own declaration, " The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son."3 — The golden crown that he wore, implied his having come forth in the character of a con- quering warrior over his enemies : 4 — so is each symbol of power, at first attached to the world's potentates, now transferred in the figuration to their rightful owner.5 — As to the Angel's cry to him from out the sanctuary of the divine presence, declaring the time of the harvest-judgment to have fully come,6 it well illustrates another of Christ's sayings, in his prophecy of the judgments attendant on the second advent. " Of that day and hour knoweth no one ; no, not the Angels that are in heaven, nor the Son : [i. e. not in his human character, as a son of 'man :] but the Father only." (Mark xiii. 32.) So He that sat on the cloud cast down his sharp sickle upon the earth ; and the earth was reaped. 4thly, — and as the ending of the outside of the Apoca- lyptic scroll, (if my view of the tvriting-without be correct,) — there followed a figuration of the earth's vintage and winepress-treading,1 in indication of judgment unto blood, 1 Apoc. x. 1. 2 Apoc. xix. 15. 3 John v. 22 and 27. It is possible that this vision may also have allusion to Christ's statement, in his memorable prophecy of the end of the world, Matt. xxiv. 30 ; " And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven ; and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn : "— i. e. if, as some think, the sign of his coming be something distinct from, and the immediate precursor of, his coming itself. 4 Compare Isa. ix. 5 ; " For every battle of the warrior is with confused noise, and garments rolled in blood ; but this shall be with burning and fuel of fire. For unto us a child is born, &c. And the government shall be on his shoulder : " &c. 5 See Vol. i. p. 106. So too Apoc. xix. 12, in the other prophetic series, to be considered in the next Section of this Chapter. 6 The circumstance of the harvest of wickedness having grown more than ripe, as the word t£>/pav0>j seems to indicate, marked the prolonged forbearance of God. 7 With these two great judgments of the consummation,— that of the harvest and that of the vintage,— against apostate Christendom, we may compare the two con- summatory acts of judgment against the Jews, whereby their total subversion as a CHAP. I. $1.] Tin: V1NTAGI 01 tiik EARTH. 13 as all allow, very dreadful : this being the last judgment visible 1 1 ] >« >i i the earthly scene (as the vintage was the last natural gathering) against apostate Christendom. The rinr to be gathered was called " ///> rinr of the earth:" and designated, 1 imagine, first and chiefly, the ecclesiasti- cal body and church of Antichiistcndoin ; inclusive, how- ever, of its chief' secular supporters also.1 — Like as of ancient Jndah, so of Christendom it might have been said, "I planted thee a noble vine, wholly a right seed ; how then art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine onto me? M| For too soon, notwithstanding all its privi- leges, the Christian church and people apostatized ; " their vine degenerating into the vine of Sodom, their grapes be- coming grapes of gall, their clusters bitter, and their wine the poison of dragons."3 For a greatly-protracted period the long-suffering of God was foreshown as bearing with it. But now that period was over; its clusters were more than ripe ; and its fated time of punishment, like that of the Jewish vine long before it,4 fully come. — The agent in the preliminary act of gathering the vine's clusters appeared in the vision to be an Angel with a sharp sickle or prun- inghook in hand, issuing forth from the inner temple in heaven. By his egress thence the divine origin of the coming judgment was intimated, just as in the previous cases of the judgments under the Trumpets and the Vials ;5 by the sharpness of the sickle, the severity of the judgment intended.0 — As to the Angel that had to announce to the one nation was effected: viz. 1st, the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus; 2nd, the tre- mendous slaughter of their armies and people, fifty years after, by Hadrian. In which latter, after the battle of Bittera, the Rabbins in the Codex Taanith of the Jerusalem Talmud, adopting, very remarkably, the Apocalyptic language lure used, say that " blood Howca up to the horses' noses for 1600 stadia." Vitringa, p. 902, quotes this from Lightfoot. 1 So the Jewish vine signified, T conceive, the Jewish nation as a church, and with church privileges. See the figure in Isa. v. - Jer. ii. 21. — Just before, Judah had been represented by the prophet as an un- faithful wife So that there is a similar variety of images to figure Judah's apostasy dure, with what we find to figure Christendom's apostasy here ; — in one place as a harlot, in another as a corrupt i mm 3 Deut. xxxii. 32. Compare one of the Apocalyptic designations of Anti-christen- dom ssM the great city which is spiritually called 8odom;" Apoc xi. 8. Another represented its popular constituency as the nominal but spottati liratl; Apoc. vii. I>r. A. Clarke, in his n-marks on the wild grapes in Isa. v. 2, observes, that in 1' tim- there were Some fruit- of the grape kind that were poisonous. 1 I -a. v. 6. — In Matt. xxi. :J.'i, Arc, the figure IS varied. 5 Ap<>c. viii. 2, xv. 8. 4 See what I have said on the reaper's sharp sickle just before. — The word Sptira- 14 apoc. xiv. 17 — 20. [part vi. just mentioned the precise moment for his putting in the sickle of execution, (such is the division of offices among the angelic host in God's providential government,) his de- scription is remarkable both as being the one " that had authority over the fire,"1 (that is, the altar-fire,) and as appealing to come forth " from out of the altar." 2 He answered evidently in the Apocalyptic temple of vision to those Levitical priests of the Jewish earthly temple, whose office it was to keep the sacred fire ever burning on the altar, in order to the consumption of the daily holocausts and of the voluntary burnt-offerings and peace-offerings; as also to look to the ashes left from the burning,3 and which had dropt into the grate beneath the altar.4 Thus his bearing part in the prefigured judgment might seem to indicate two things respecting it. 1st, it indicated that it was as a sacrifice to the divine justice that the vine was to be gathered, and its clusters trod in the wine-press ; very much as in a famous, and probably not uncorrespondent, prophecy of Ezekiel,5 as well as in that of Apoc. xix. 17, and others also : 6 — the heaven-derived altar-fire being the perpetual visible symbol among the Jews of God's justice ; 7 and of vov is used in ancient authors as well for the instrument of pruning or cutting shruhs as for reaping. See Daubuz ad loc. p. 652 ; who quotes Aristides Quintilianus say- ing, wc k\i)hcl dpt7ravi{) reftfiv. Also Virgil Bucol. iv. " Non rastros patietur humus, non vinea falcem:" and Horace, Od. i. 31, " Premant Calena falce quibus dedit Fortuna vitem : " &c. 1 t\wv riZovoiav mi rov irvpoQ. 2 tErjXOtv (k rov OvoiaaTTipiov. Observe etc, not airo. 3 Lev. vi. 9 — 13. — With regard to the altar-fire, (that which had originally fallen from heaven,) he had to supply it with wood every morning, that it might never go out. As regarded the ashes ofuood, consumed with the burnt-offering, it was his direc- tion first, • and while in his linen garments, to put them beside the altar ; then in other garments to carry them away to a clean place without the camp. — This was quite a different office from that alluded to in Apoc. viii. 3, (I beg attention to this point,) of receiving and offering incense. * See Exod. xxvii. 3 — 5. Also my notice on the subject in the Appendix to Vol. ii. pp. 513, 514. s Ezek. xxxix. 17. 6 E. g. Isa. xxxiv. 6. In Apoc. xix. 17, the image is that of a supper. But the bauqmt and the sacrifice were, as is well known, continually united ; both in the Jewish religions rites, and in those too of the heathen. — Daubuz observes on the frequent application of sacrificial words, such as 6vu>, niacto, &c, to the slaughter of enemies : e. g. by Virgil, " Pallas tc hoc vulnere, Pallas, immolat : " also how in some cases, as in that of the slaughter of the Midianite by Phinehas (Numb. xxv. 13), it was accepted as a propitiatory offering. Let me add in illustration Jer. xxv. 30 ; where, after notice of the wine-cup of God's fury being given to the nations, it is said, " The Lord shall roar from his holy habitation ; . . he shall give a shout, as they that tread the grapes, against all the in- habitants of the earth." 7 See the observations, including Note'-, at p. 215 of my 3rd Volume. CHAP. I. | 1.] TIIK VINTACiE 01 THE EARTH. 15 its preparedness to consume all exoept those that might have made a covenant with Him in his own appointed way by saeritiee,1 and, through faith in (he substituted offering Ot tin' Land) of ( rod, saved themselves. x!ndly, it pointed to one sprcial cause of dud's wrath against the earth's inhabitants, — namely, their daughter <>/ the martyr*; whose ashes, BS of acceptable self-devoted holocausts, mixed with those of the great propitiatory burnt-offering, had long been accumulating (under this Angel's charge, it is to be supposed) beneath the Apocalyptic altar. Already early in the drama a voice had been heard by St. John from the souls of witnesses slain for Christ beneath the altar, " Lord, how long dost thou not avenge our blood on those that dwell on the earth : " and it was then said that they were to wait for this avenging, till a second and additional band of martyrs had been completed in number, besides them- selves.2 As late as the third Vial a cry from the same point indicated, that not the full predicted vengeance, but only a preliminary judgment, had then begun.3 Now, however, (and perhaps with some last notable act of martyrdom marking the epoch,) the cry of this Angel issuing forth from the interior of, or hollow beneath, the altar, proclaimed that their number was completed, — their moment of full avenging come ; — the asserted power of the two witnesses to bring down fire from heaven against their injurers, to consume them,4 about to be fearfully illustrated before the world ; — and the earth to disclose her blood, and no more cover her slain.5 As to the remaining particulars of the figuration we may observe, in passing, that the gathering of the vine's clusters by the Angel's sharp priming-hook, and the casting them into the wine-press of the wrath of God, seemed to indi- cate acts preparatory to the winepress-treading : 6 the form- er perhaps meaning some signal separation, by sharp judgments, of Antichrist's members from those of Christ ; 1 Tsulm 1. ■".. • ASM. vi. 11. Sic Vol. i. p. 227, &C. PL 7: where, as before remarked, the text of the beat ji'iov ; viz. Isa. xvi. 10, Joel iii. 13, Ilag. ii. 16, and Zecfi. xiv. 10. The winepreu itself, he says, (in Latin the torculor or calcatorium) is in Hebr. called rj, or ITT S. Near it was the lacus : (Columella xii. 18. 3, Ovid. Fast. iv. 888 :) a large open place, or vessel, which by a conduit received the swat, mustiu/i, or blood of the grape, from the winepress; and which in hot countries was often dug under ground, or out of the rock, for coolness, that the heat mi;.rht not cause too great a fermentation in it. So too Burmann De Vectigal. 16, in reference to Ovid's line, " Pra>mia dc lacubus troxima mu-ta tuis." And let me refer also to the Scripture Expositors, Patrick, on • v. wiii. 39, with regard to the vintage and winepress at the Feast of Tabernacles, and Bishop Lowth on Isa. v. 2. 2 ri 3 LfOgh 4 The Greek word Xnvoc, which is used here, alike in verses 19 and 20, is a word applied in either sense ; that is, both to signify the winepress aud the winevat. 9 hleusner on the words Xrjvoc and i'i7roX>ji/iov. * The expression in the original is t£r)\0ii> ci'ipa ik rrjc \tjvov a\pi roiv xaXn'ajv rwv 'nrTTujv aTTO araliwv x'Xiwi' iZaicuniuiv. And the parallel passage adduced to justify this nse of the avo, is John \i. 18; "Bethany was nigh Jerusalem, i»c l.l> IN. Ill !■: SKYKNTH VIAL; DOWN TO THE WINBPRE88-TREADING, AND DESTRUCTION or THE BEAST AND FALSE l'Koi'ill.T, IMMEDIATELY BEFORE THE MILLENNIUM. It is the Part within-written of the Apocalyptic scroll, with its fuller and more particular series of preh'gurations of the events of the seventh Vial, that now calls for atten- tion. " Behold I come as a thief: blessed is he that wateh- eth and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they sec his shame ! — And they gathered them together1 to the place'-' which is called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon.3 And the seventh [Angel] 4 poured out his Vial on the air .'' and there came a great voice from the temple of heaven,'1 from the throne, saying, It is done. And there were lightnings, and voices, and thunders : and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men7 were upon the earth, — such an earthquake,8 so great. And the city the great one9 was divided into three parts: and the cities of the nations10 fell. And great Babylon was re- membered before God, to give unto her the cup11 of the wine of the fierceness of his anger. And every island fled away ; and the mountains were not found. And there 1 rni itvvtiynytv avrovq. It scorns to mc very obvious that this rtvvtjyaytv in the singular has for its nominative the neuter plural of Tri'tv/iara SckfXOvutv, agree- ably with a weO-known ran of Greek grammar; the pronoun accusative avrovci meaning the kings, being governed by it. Compire verse 14 : uti yap Trvivfiara t a i fi o %• itii v iroiovvra arifitta, a ktt optviTai m i rovg /3amitti*, fte., where it may probably have > meaning extending beyond the Boom world: as well as mod. 2, 9, and w:i. i">, where i* soouu need restrictedly of the Latinised Christians of the Pop " to 7rorr)oiov. 2 • ~0 apoc. xvi. 15 — 21. [part vi. foil upoD the men l great hail out of heaven ; [every stone] about a talent's weight. And the men blasphemed God because of the plague1 of the hail ; for the plague thereof was exceeding great/1 Apoc. xvi. 15 — 21. I. And here then, iniroductoribj to the outpouring of that Vial, and next after the vision of the three spirits like frogs issuing forth " to gather the kings of the whole earth to the war of the great day of God Almighty," there came first that solemn warning-voice by Christ from heaven, " Behold I come as a thief: blessed is he that watcheth and keepeth his garments, that he may not walk naked, and his shame be seen ! " A warning this suited to every age of the Church ; but doubly so, of course, when the spirits of delusion were to be thus abroad, the night thus far spent, and the cry already raised, as it would seem, of the day of Christ's coming being at hand.3 For then surely, if ever, He might expect his servants, and especially the min- isters and watchmen of his temple,4 to be awake and look- ing out for his appearing : 5 then, if ever, that they should be watchful against putting off, like indecorous slumberers,6 or men drugged into sleep by the poison-draught of some spirit of delusion, those garments of righteousness7 and sal- 1 Literally, " there fulls; " KaTafiaivu tin tbq avOpuTrsi;. 2 tK TT}Q TrXrjyrjg. 3 Rom. xiii. 12 — 14. 4 I thus particularize, because many expositors, with Vitringa, (p. 985,) think there is an allusion in the text to the Jewish custom of the Prefect of the Temple going his rounds at night, to see that the watchmen there were awake at their posts. Which watchmen seem alluded to in Psalm cxxx. 6, and elsewhere. 1 Compare Luke xii. 35 ; " Let your loins be girded, and your lights burning ; and ye yourselves like men waiting for their lord:" 2 Peter iii. 12; "looking for, and hasting unto, the coming of the day of God : " &c. 6 Though the Eastern habits are in many respects different from our own, yet they have very much the European custom of putting off day-clothes on lying down to sleep at night, and putting on a loose and open night-dress. This is alluded to figuratively in Rom. xiii. 12 ; " It is high time to awake out of sleep. . . . The night is far spent, the day is at hand ; let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and put on the armour of light:" — or, as he says verse 14, "Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ." Again 1 These, v. 8 : " Let us who are of the day be sober ; (and watch, verse 6 ;) putting on the breastplate of faith and hope, and for a helmet the hope of salvation." The need of attention to the avoidance of spiritual self-exposure, was strikingly symbolized to the Israelites in the charges given about outward decency. So in Deut. xxiii. 14 ; " The Lord thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp : . . therefore shall thy camp be holy ; that He see no unclean thing (or nakedness, so the Hebrew) ill thee." Abo Ezod. xxviii. 42, 43 ; a passage referred to by Daubuz. ' lsa. lxi. 10. CHAP. I. $ 2.] THK SKVl'.NTII VIM,. 21 vation of which He himself waa the giver:1 lest, Beeing them naked, I le should shut them out from liis heavenly temple and kingdom;1 and their spiritual nakedness and shame I);' exposed before the world!*— Next alter which follows a passing notice of the three unclean spirits of de- lusion advancing successfully in their object of gathering tin1 kiims of the earth (inclusive of course of the people of their kingdoms) towards the scene of the great con- tact, called in the Ileluvw tongue Armageddon :A — an appellative this et ymologicallv explicable either as the mountain of gathering, or the mountain of destruction ;,r' and on which, and whether designative of some actual locality, or wholly figurative, I deem it best, as the conflict falls 1 Apoc. iii. 17, 18 ; " Because thou knowest not that thou art poor and naked, I counsel thee to buy of me. . white raiment that thou niayest be clothed, and that tho shanie of thy nakedness do not appear." \- the slumbering watchman of the temple would be excluded; or as the man that wasted the wedding-garment 3 So in the ease of tlie watchman of the temple thrust out in his night-clothes. I might add that, in ease of detected unfaithfulness in the wife, exposure was one of the punishments sometimes inflicted So Hoaea ii. 2, 3 : "Let her put away her whoredoms ; . . lest I strip her naked, and set her as in the day that she was horn : " I . Hut the idea of the marriage relation docs not seem to me referred to in the verse before us. 4 It is agreed, I believe, on all hands that the war of Armageddon must be con- sidered a- taking pine under the seventh Vial, and constituting the conflict imme- diatelv prior to the judgment of the consummation. Hence the notice here made mint either be antieip ttive, or the U£ construed in the sense of towards, so as in Apoc. \ii. •'>. See my Vol. iii. p. 46, Note8. 5 Huth Qrotiua and Vitringa derive it from -- a mountain, and -ns which signifies alike to destroy and to collect; the former as in Dan. iv. 14, 23, in the Chaldee; the latter, as in Micah v. 1. Of which meanings Grotius adopts the latter for ■is etym dogy of Armageddon, Vitringa the former. Male, p. 522, prefers to derive it from mm txeidimm, and pro turma; in a sense of the word very much the same as Vitringa's. It was probably from one of these words that Mcgiddo derived its name : a town of jfanairflfh famous as the scene of the battle in which the good king .losmh was killed by Pharaoh Necho, 2 Kings xxiii. 29; and also near to that of the battle in which ; wis overthrown by Barak, Judges v. 19. And some expositors have supposed this precise plan- Megiddo to be intended as the actual Armageddon of the prophecy ; or, if ii< it so, ;i reference to be meant to one or other of these battles fought near it. — I should think however that thne is hardly reason tor this opinion. Of the two battles that of Barak and Si-.ra was scarcely of sufficient importance to be singled out as a precedent ; and that of Josiah and Pharaoh Necho was of an issue and cha- t the direct reverse to that of Armageddon. On the other hand M. Stuart supposes a reference to the occasion told of in X> eh. xii. 11 ; when, after tin- final gathering of the nations against Jerusalem, and their de- struction, there is t<> be a great mourning in Jerusalem, "like the mourning of II. i- dadrimmon in die valley of Megiddo." The locality of the Apocalyptic warring, on this supposition, would be not .Megiddo itself, but Jerusalem and its neighbourhood. And Vitringa and others identify the conflict of the Yail-y of Jehoshaphat, mentioned by Joel, with that of Armageddon. — I purpose to notice these points on occasion of noticing the w;ir itself, at the conclusion of my next chapter onl)anie] \i. xii. Probably the name should be considered simply mystical ; so as tho>e other appel- latives mentioned in the Apocalypse, — Sodom, Egypt, Babylon, Madden, 22 apoc. xvi. 16 — 21. [part vi. later, under the seventh Vial, to reserve my remarks for a later Chapter. And then at length, and without further delay, the out- pouring is described by the Evangelist as taking place of the seventh and last Vial of judgment; an outpouring, it is said, on the air, or atmosphere, of the Apocalyptic world : — the immediate sequel of which outpouring was voices, thunderings, and lightnings, and a great earthquake such as had not been since the men were upon the earth, affecting the sea, or maritime parts, as well as the mainland, and causing the disruption of the Great City into three parts. Immediately following on which was the further plague of a tremendous hail ; which, however, though so severe, was ineffectual to induce repentance among the peo- ple : and then a yet more terrible judgment on " Great Babylon ; " (so " the city the great one " is here first call- ed ;) which now at length came up in remembrance before God, " to give to her the cup of the wine of the wrath of his anger." Of the primary part of which prefiguration the sense, translated from symbols into realities, (let me here, A.D. 18G1, reprint my explanation just as originally given in 1844,) — realities yet future, but apparently quickly coming, v seems to be this : — that, after a certain progress of the three V unclean spirits now abroad, viz. (as I conceive,) those of infidel and perhaps revolutionary irreligion, of popery, and of an tichristian priestcraft, such as to marshal their strength in Western Christendom and its colonial dependencies in hostility against Christ's cause and Church, and after |/ a cry too of Christ's coming as near at hand, such as seems now surely begun,1 there is to arise, all suddenly 1 I here wish to take the Scriptural expression of Christ's coming with a certain latitude of meaning ; so as to include the voice of many who may yet not be distinctly expecting his personal manifestation, or the great judgment of quick and dead. So, e. g. Dr. Arnold. Christ, he says, is to come again after his resurrection in three different senses: — 1st, and in the highest sense, when this world shall end, and we shall rise to judgment ; 2ndly, when individually we each receive Christ's call at death ; Srdly, when lie comes to bring on the whole earth, or on some one or more nations, (as on Jerusalem at the time of its destruction by the Romans,) a great sea- son of suffering and judgment. Then he adds, that to all of us now living it may be said that in the 1st sense Christ may come " in this generation," since we know not the times and seasons which the Father hath in his own power; and also that in the 3rd too He mag come to us " in this generation ;" " there not being wanting signs which make it probable that He will so come." — In his Lectures on Modern History, p. 38, ( HAP. I. § ~.] TiiK si.\i\ru VIAL. ~3 and fearfully, some extraordinary convulsion, darkening, and vitiation of its political atmosphere: the permitted effect perhaps, in Gods righteous judgment, of the working . to b crisis 01 those evil principles. — 1 thus explain the air in the Apocalyptic vision to mean the European political / and moral atmosphere, after the analogy of (the Apocalyptic firmament; winch has been construed, on 1 think undoubted evidence, to Bymbolize the political firmament. And I speak of the effect of the disturbance caused in this figura- tive atmosphere by the Vial's outpouring as of that three- fold character; because, a> the natural atmosphere (whence the symbol is derived) is alike the region of storms, the me- dium through which the heavenly luminaries slune on us, and the element we breathe, a great physical disturbance wrought therein must needs affect it in respect of each of those functions:1 which being so in the symbol, it seems but reasonable to suppose the same in the thing symbolized. Besides that in the only other instance in the Apocalypse wherein the air is spoken of as affected, — viz. on occasion of tin' issuing from the pit of the abyss of the smoke and miasma of Mahometanism, " whereby the sun and the air were darkened,"- — we know from history that there resulted an agitation and tainting of the moral and political atmo- sphere of Greek Christendom, through the spread of that false religion ; as well as an obscuration of the lights, or ruling authorities, in its political heaven. — Nor does it seem to me improbable that some ominous derangement of the natural atmosphere may furnish a literal groundwork for the figure, nearly contemporarily.3 — Doubtless under the judgment of the seventh Vial (if I have rightly explained it) we must expect this convulsion, vitiation, and darkening of ^ the political and moral atmosphere in Western Europe to be unprecedentedly awful : the very elements of thought there is a r^markabl" passage yet more to my point, which I reserve for citation to ray 6th and concluding Chaptt r. 1 Somewhat as in that remarkable case alluded to by Cowper ; And Xature seems with dim and sickly eye To wait the close of all. I have quoted this already in my Vol. iii. p. 3 to ; and stated that it alludes to a very remarkahli- fo$ whirh OOfBred both Bwope and A>ia the whole summer of 17SIJ, and v in one country • prerented tin- son being se.-n fur three rente. ' Apoc. VL.% See Vol. i. pp. 411, 41J. • Sue Vol. ii'i. pp. -J 1 7 . 24 apoc. xvi. 1C— 21. [part vi. and feeling, of social affection and moral principle, whereby * society and its national polities are in God's wonderful wis- dom constituted and preserved, being so affected as very tnueh to intercept all genial influences of the ruling author- ities in its system, — to minister disease instead of health to each body politic, — and perhaps, with terrible convul- sions, to resolve society for a while into its primary ele- ments.1 So as to the Vial's outpouring on the air : the only new symbol in the figurations before us. And then as regards the thunders, lightnings, and voices of the vision, they indi- V cate of course wars and tumults following, so as always elsewhere in the Apocalyptic prophecy: while the notice of the fearful hailstorm attendant may perhaps further indicate that France, the most northerly of the Papal kingdoms, is again to enact the part of a chief instrumental operator of the plague,2 very much as in the earlier judgments of the 1 As the symbol of the air is a new one in the Apocalyptic visions, it may be satisfactory to the reader to have the explanations of it given by two other comment- ators,— one of an earlier age, one (in 1844) a contemporary, — who have paid most attention to the figure ; viz. Vitringa and Mr. Cuninghame. Vitringa, p. 988, after noting that the word air is here to be taken in its largest signification, goes on thus to describe the effects (as he supposed them) of the Vial's outpouring on it. " Ad Phialam banc effusam tenebrae obducta? sunt ccelo mystico illius terrse cujus imperium sibi vindicaverat Bestia. Rectores utriusque ordinis, qui in hoc ccelo fulserant, de sedibus suis visi sunt deturbari : . . omnia au- tem in rcgimine politico et ecclesiastico illius magni imperii eum in modum con- turbari, ut aer deesset populo illius civitatis quern biberet, et a quo refocillaretur ; (sunt enim Principes et rectores populorum, quatenus populos sibi subjectos fovent, et in illos cura et institutione sua influunt, [qu. infiant ?] veluti spiritus oris po- puli, hoc est veluti aer quern bibunt et hauriunt, ut vocantur apud Jeremiam ; (Lam. iv. 20 ; ) et aer ille conturbatus locum faceret, et occasionem Deo pneberet gravissimis illis judiciis, quae Imperio Bestiae ad totalem status ejus subversionem decreverat." Mr. Cuninghame. " It is through the medium of the natural air, or atmosphere, that the natural sun, moon, and stars communicate to us their ligjit, heat, and in- fluences : it is the same air which is in us the principle of vitality. Now, through what air or atmosphere do the symbolic sun, moon, and stars communicate to us their influences, light, and heat ? I answer, through the medium of the political and ecclesiastical constitutions of the states. These constitutions are also the prin- ciple of vitality to the body politic." And thence he argues that the outpouring of the seventh Vial is to be upon the political and ecclesiastical constitution of the ^ Roman Empire ; causing a tremendous agitation throughout the government and politico-ecclesiastical system of the bestial empire, destroying the general balance of power, and superinducing the horrors of a political storm, pp. 305, 306. — There is no very great difference, it will be seen, in our explanations. Besides which expositors let me also cite the explanation of M. Stuart, as repre- sentative of quite a different system of Apocalyptic interpretation. " We are probably," says he, " to regard the air in this case as the element by which is to be engendered the dreadful storm that follows, which is to overthrow the principal cities of the Beast and his confederates." 2 The precedent of the first Trumpet seems at any rate to indicate, if its analogy CHAP. I. $ 2.] TIIK SEVENTH VIAL. 25 seventh Trumpet.1 — For the result m most remarkable revo- lution is foreshown as destined to befall the European Com- monwealth; viz. the final breaking up of that aecemregal form of the Papal empire, which has now characterized it for near thirteen centuries, into a new and tripartite form : the tripartition meant being probably, like the earlier separ- ation of the tenth of the lireat City, conjoint lv religion* * and political: In which form the Great City, or R.OME, — including, I presume, both its subject Ecclesiastical State, and the third of the tripartition connected with it, — is to receive its own peculiar final and appalling fate : as it is said, "And great Babylon was remembered before God, to urive her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath." — So that whensoever, after fearful wars and con- vulsions, a tripartition like this shall take place in the European commonwealth, it must be regarded as the proxi- mate sign, and very alarum bell to Christendom, of the i judgment from the North. Many expositors prefer to explain it of the llmsimi power. And on revising my Work, and comparing this prophecy with one in K/ckiel xxxviii., xxxix., which seems to point to Russia's taking part in the great pre-millennial conflict, as will be noticed at the end of my next Chapter, I must admit that thi< view of the symbol is also not improbable. It is to be observed that the mention of the great hail falling comes after, not before, that of the neat city's tripartition. 1 See Vol iii. pp. 337 — 339. — Vitringa, p. 994, explains the hailstorm simply to indicate a judgment immediately from heaven. He compares the hail which fell in the seventh Egyptian plague, and that which fell on the Canaanites after Joshua's victory over them at Gribeon, Joshua x. 11; the latter especially a very notable case for comparison. lie might not unfitly have added the case of Barak's victory near lo, where "the stars in their courses" fought against Sisera : for Josephus - II irsley observes on the song of Deborah) explains this of a hail-storm directed against him.— Compare too the as yet unfulfilled prophecy of Isa. xxx. 30; "The Lord shall cause his glorious voice to lie heard; and shall show the lighting down of his arm, with the indignation of his anger, and with the fiame of a devouring fire, with Mattering, and tempest, and haS-tt It si .in- to me very possible that there may be here too that which shall literally \ an-wer to the prediction. See the Note, Vol. iii. p. 346. But the analogy of all J the Apocalyptic preflgnrations requires primarily a symbolic explanation. - vitringa conjectures that one-third will be adherents to the J'apaei/, or Beast; another third favourers <■/ superstition, but not the Papacy; and the last third on the sidt- <■/ the true Protestant Church: '.' totum illam civitatcm scindendain ease in partes sive footiones tree; quarum una roperstitioni et idololatria Bomanenri adhuo adhsBrebit ; altera auctoritati Pontineis renunoiare parata Bit, sed superstitionem taimn reterem uon Eadle deseret; tertia in partes transibit eoeleauB, eujus oausM Ileum viderant aotabfli Providenfeti faviase." p. 991. Mr. Cuninghame's general view is to the effect that the division will have relation to the work of the three unclean spirits, as understood by him : one division ranging under the standard of atheism and anarchy, another of despotism, another of po\ In his la-t Edition he still advocates, though with a certain variation from hi- former opinion, a tripartition of pol ii pies, not territorial division. Which latter however seems to myself certainly included; just as in Apoc. xi. 13. 26 apoc. xvi. 16 — 21. [part vi. judgment, the great judgment being then at length close at hand. [Such was the explanation of this Apocalyptic symbol- ization given in my three former Editions, published successively in 1844, 1846, 1847. And can it be right for me to republish the Work again, now in 1850, (so I added in my 4th Edition, and yet again, on the 5th reprinting of my Work ten years later, in 1861, I see no reason to alter the opinion there and then exprest,) without asking whe- ther what occurred at the revolutionary outbreaks of 1848 did not singularly coincide with the expectations so stated as to the probable characteristics of the com- mencing effusion of the seventh Vial ? For, first, there was then a vitiation of the natural atmosphere over all Europe, such as to awaken the general attention and awe, — a vitia- tion affecting with its poison alike the vegetable world, and the health and life of man ; x and then, almost coincidently therewith, convulsions altogether unprecedented in charac- ter, outbreaking primarily in France without any adequate apparent cause,2 and thence propagated lightning-like throughout Europe, which disordered and imperilled the whole social3 as well as political relations of men, alike in France, Sicily, North and South Italy, Rome, Germany, Austria, Hungary. Truly the current language of the day seemed almost like an adoption of the Apocalyptic figure, 1 In his speech on the Public Health Bill, as reported in the Times of Aug. 8, 1848, Lord Morpeth cited a then recent Number of the British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review, "which proved," he said, "by induction from a mass of facts, that certain atmospheric conditions and electrical states concurred in the production of the cholera." — Again, in the 18th meeting of the British Association for advancement of science, the Athenaeum of Aug. 26, 1848 notices a very elaborate paper by Col. Sykes on "the Atmospheric Disturbances throughout the world : " — a paper, it says, which "characterizes the atmospheric disturbances and anomalies that presented themselves in various places in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, for some months past, as not less remarkable than the political agitations and storms which swept lately over Europe." The maimer in which the potato blight was a sign and consequence of the atmo- spheric vitiation over a large part of Europe, as well as the cholera morbus, is noto- rious ; and to how alarming an extent in some countries, above all in Ireland. 2 In France the revolution of 1848 was but a fresh shock of the great original re- volution of 1789. So M. Montalembert justly observed, as cited in my Vol. iii. p. 476. 3 So in Count Mole's Address to the Electors of the Gironde on his election, at the beginning of October, 1848. "It is society itself which is in danger. The contest has commenced between civilization and barbarism. On the one side is placed family and property : on the other the abolition of those eternal laws of which the roots are implanted in the heart of man, and which emanate directly from his divine Creator." up. Evening Mail, Oct. 4, 1848. GHAP. I. §2.] T1IH SKVKNTII VIAL. 27 and confession to the effusion of a vial on the air.1 — And, as results, who even now sees the end? Does not all seem as 1 It may be curious ami instructive to mark the applications of the figure to the fact, by persona of different character ami view, in thai extraordinary oruia, 1. The memottatie revolutionists. — M. Lamartine, May ;>, lsis, thus made Ins Re- port to the National Assembly. " Before the Revolution no European thought wia permitted us. We wen 88 millions isolated on the continent. .. The system was one of repression and force: our Aortas* was exceedingly limited: air was wanting to our dignity, as to our policy. At present our system is the system of a democratic truth, which shall swell to the proportions of a social universal faith : our horizon is the futurity of civilized nations: our vital air is the breath of liberty in the tree breasts of the whole universe.*' From the Galignani of that date. And so, near about the same time, the Oiomale Custituzionale of Naples, (where I was then residing,) of May 20, IMS. Alter mention of the Frankfort Assembly, gathered with the view of forming a new Germanic Constitution, it thus wrote: " Hannovi dei tempi in eui L'opuuone pubbHca, oomt I' aria aimorftrica, riempie tutti gli spaisi vuoti, in cui questa viene respirata da taluno, c da lui nuovamente infusa negli altri." And then the writer adds, that the aristocratic element, which for 1000 years had been so prominent in Italy, "svanl dinanzi al soffio del volere popolare." 'J. The philosophic observer, as in the Taper of the British Association cited above, called attention to the remarkable analogy between the physical atmospheric disturb- ances, and the political agitations and storms which had been BWeeping over Europe. And so too, more than once, the Times, the Illustrated Loudon News, and other* newspapers. Let me abstract from the leading article of the Illustrated News of Oct. 25, 1851. " Long before the great Revolution of 1789 skilful mariners . . were aware of the signs and portents of the approaching tempest. In like manner the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 betrayed their coming by a premonitory darkening of the atmosphere, by a sudden fall in the social barometer, unintelligible to the many, but full of meaning to the few. The air u-as surcharged with electricity ; and the weather-wise were enabled to calculate when the clouds would meet, the thunders roar, and the lightnings flash upon societg." "Similar warnings," it is added, "are heard at the present time, There are clouds on the verge of the horizon laden with lightning, and which are cer- tain to break somewhere. The cry of danger comes loudest from Frame. It is still the focus of revolution." Resides which, the writer then particularizes Germung, Hungary, Ita/g. In 1861 may we not repeal this r 3. A* a specimen of the practical Christian's feelings, let me select the following from the Bible Society's Report of May 1848. " The storms of political agitation have gathered round the close of the year." [i. e. of the Bible Society's year, ending May 1.] . . . "The present state of the Continent of Europe makes the work of the highest importance. The fashion of the world passeth away. Thrones are being overturned, nations shaken. Is it not on a dark stormy night, and in the tempest, that the compass is most useful, the skilful pilot, and a correct chart ? So the hea- venly chart, ike. . .The political atmosphere however of this country [Belgium] is less troubled than that of either of the neighbouring nations." Again, at the conclusion of the Report : " Recent extraordinary events have brought the continent of Europe before us under a most unexpected aspect. . . The hurricane of political revolution has already swept away barriers which have for ages impeded the free circulation of truth. . . Your Committee watch the events with anxious emotion. . . But they do not think it necessary to wait till the sea of agitation is calmed, till the broken frame- work of society is reconstructed, and the world once more at rest. Why should we not now go forth ; and, taking our stand amidst the nations rocked to and fro by the 6torm, fearlessly hold up before them the volume of inspired truth? . . Cod hath come out of his place. He arises to shake terribly the earth. It is as though the oracle had again broken silence, I will overturn, overturn, overturn. Yet let not our hearts be troubled, . . for it may be after these things, that there shall be heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of great waters, and many thunders, saying the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth." 4. Ot prophetic students mauy, as might be expected, recognised the correspondence 28 APOC. XVII. [part VI. if the European Commonwealth was on the eve of some new construction: France leading the van in the revolution, and Germany and Italy following? Does there exist a states- man who can look upon the coming future without awe ; or one who can have any confidence in predicting its issues? — After all that has happened, how can it be but that with increased solemnity of feeling we now bethink us of those awful words, "And he said, It is done: " or re- peat, that if, after fearful wars and convulsions, there result in Papal Christendom a tripartition like that predicted in the Apocalypse, it must be regarded as the actual proxim- ate sign, and alarum hell to Christendom, of the judgment, the great judgment, being then beyond a doubt close at hand ?] II. But proceed we to mark the description of the judg- ments next following, as detailed in the two or three next Chapters: first subjoining Chapter xvii., for the convenience of the reader ; though given indeed before, already, with a view to its comparison with Apoc. xiii.1 " xvii. 1. And there came one of the seven Angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying, Come hither ; I will show unto thee the judgment of the great harlot, that sitteth upon many waters : 2 2. with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication ; and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her for- nication. " 3. So he carried me away in the spirit into a wilderness:3 and I saw a woman sitting upon a scarlet-coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. 4. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scar- let, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls ; having a golden cup in her hand, full of abominations and of fact and prophecy ; and loudly exprest their conviction of the seventh vial's effusion into the air having begun. 1 Viz. in Vol. iii. p. 71 et seq. 2 For critical notices I beg to refer generally to Vol. iii. pp. 71 — 74. The chief variations in A and 15 from the received text are there given. The Codex Ephraemi, or C, it should be understood, is wanting in all this Chapter. I here only add, or repeat, just a few critical notices on the text. a «c tpt)pov. No MS. or edition prefixes the article here. CHAP. I. § 2.] EXPOSURE OF PAPAL HOME. 2(J filthiness1 of her fornication. 5. And upon her forehead was a name written. Mystery, Babylon ike Great, the Mo- ther of harlots «n Part iv. chap. iv. CHAP. I. § 2.] i:\iMsiur, Of PAPAL ROMS, 31 large the mystery of t hi* Roast's seven, or rather eight * beads : its eighth head's ten horna ; and also its general his- tory and character. So thai it is only the Woman, its rider, i. e. Babylon, ox Rome personified, (of whom bu1 little com- paratively has been said before,) and her connexion with the Beast, that now seems to call for explanation or illustration. And here, tirst , let me call attention to one point in the Angel's description, (a point some time since very passingly noticed by me,1) which, both as regards the ten horns on the Beast, and as regards the Woman, refer to them, I doubt not, in a state of existence previous to that pictured in the vision of Apoc. xvii.; — I mean his statement about " the ten horns hating the 1 larlot, and making her desolate, and eating her flesh, and burning her with fire." Now in our present vision the pictured relationship of the Beast and its ten horns to the Woman is that evidently of closest friendship : and this seems meant to figure the normal kindly relationship between them, during the 1260 years of the Beast's life under its last head. Moreover, as re- gards the AVoman's final sudden destruction by fire, de- scribed in Apoc. xviii, there is plainly figured a judgment from God, like that on Sodom ; not a burning by the ten >/ kings : indeed the kings of the earth, whatever their liuin- ber, are depicted as then lamenting over her destruction. How then are we to explain the verse in question, and what it says of the ten horns hating, and desolating, and burning the harlot with fire? Just in this way. It is evident that the Angel, in his explanatory remarks, includes the whole history of both Beast and Woman, from the beginning of their existence ; not that alone depicted in the vision before us: — of Rome, as the city reigning over the kings of the earth in St. John's time, (verse 18,) that is, im- perial Rome with its sword of conquest ; as well as of Rome Papal, with the drugged cup of her superstition, as pictured in the vision : ■ of the seven successive earlier ruling heads my Ynl. iii. p. .?0f>, Note «. tmpare the rery illustrative runlals of Rome imperial, and Rome 1'apal, in mv r olivi, a Franciscan monk of tli>' riiitb centory, (noticed hereafter in my H • ■■ A \ ■ I Hon,) thus similarly in Ins PoetQa on the ,\; - - of tin- two EUmu - :i- alike included in the description. " Sax nnilier stat pro Uomani gentc it [nperio, tam prout fuit quondam in statu paganimii, qoAn 32 APOC. XVII. [part VI. of the Beast, five of which had fallen in St. John's time ; as well as of the second seventh, i.e. the eighth, under which the revived Beast or Roman empire was again to prosper, bearing on it the ten horns as its constituent kings, and together with them supporting, and fornicating with, the cup-bearing Rome, or Rome Papal. Just so, I conceive, there was indicated by the Angel the prior history of the ten horns, as well as their later history ; — their history as hinted at in Apoc. xii., before they got their diadems, and when Rome was still imperial: and that then they would desolate v the Harlot, (a title equally applicable to Rome imperial, as to Rome Papal,1) and eat her flesh, and burn her with fire. Now all this, we know, was most strikingly fulfilled by the ten Gothic powers spoiling and desolating and burning imperial Rome in the 5th and Gth centuries ; in- deed so desolating her campagna as in fact to originate that eprypa out of which she rose up again as Papal Rome; and which attached to her ever after, even when the self- same Gothic powers, in their diademed and second stage of existence, had become unitedly subjected, so as is depict- ed in our illustrative vision, to her harlotry.2 This premised, and that the Harlot-Woman, as figured in vision, or Papal Rome, must, as Mother and Mistress of all Churches of the Papacy, be considered to include as part and parcel of herself, not only the ecclesiastical State, or Peter's Patrimony, in Italy ; but also the vast domains, convents, churches, and other property appertaining to the Papal Church elsewhere, both in Europe, and over the world,3 there seems nothing more needed, in order to the prout fuit in fide Christi, multis tamen criminibus cum hoc mundo fornicata. Voca- tur ergo Meretrix magna." 1 In either case and character the title of harlot would suit Rome. It is applied to heathen cities, e. g. to Tyre, Is. xxiii. 16 ; to those in covenant with God, under the old dispensation, both Judah and Israel, Is. i. 21, Jer. iii. 1, 8, Ezek. xvi., xxiii., &c ; and, under the gospel, to an unfaithful wife, Matt. v. 32, xix. 9. 2 See p. 36 intra. * Vitnnga understands the Great City in its largest sense, and as comprehending its decem-regal empire, both in xi. 13, where a tenth part of the city is said to have fallen, and in xvi. 19, where it is said to have been divided into three parts; but in this xviith chapter he seems to understand it in a stricter sense of the City of Rome exclusively. And so too Daubuz, p. 800. I think it more reasonable however to understand it, as elsewhere, with a larger latitude. It is observable that both in Jeremiah's Lamentations, Jerusalem personified is spoken of sometimes as Judah ; (compare Lam. i. 1, 3, 7, &c. ;) and that in the medals struck after the Romans' capture of Jerusalem, the personified City has the legend Judtca Cupta. CHAP. 1. $ 2.] BXP0BUR1 oi' PAPAL KOMI, 33 Complete exposition of this part of thr vision, than the ob- servations following. — 1st. as in the emblem the Hc;i the power of its ten secular kingdoms and many peoples, upheld, and was also at the same time ruled by. Papal Pome, as the recognised Mother and Mistress Church of Christendom : the Pope too for the time being, or Beast's ruling head, fully concurring and taking part in the same act ; ntttaMng his Church upon the seven hills, even as one married to her,1 to use the phraseology of the Roman Law;2 and gloryinglj up-bearing and exhibiting her, somewhat as the heathen Jove might be represented as carrying, or rid- den by, his concubine.3 — 2ndly, as the Woman was here depicted before St. John under a double character, viz. as a harlot to the ten kings, and a vintner or tavern-hostess vending wines to the common people,4 (just according to the custom of earlier times, in which the harlot and the 1 See Vol. iii. p. ITS). Notes ' and*. — " The proud Church of Rome," says Bale in titter phrase, " the paramour of Antichrist." — Somewhat similarly in the medals of ancient Home there waa often an association of Rome and Rome's emperor: e. g. Roma Pea was sometimes depicted as crowning the Emperor, sometimes as crowned by tlie Emperor. See Rasche in verb, Roma, col. 1132, 1144. 3 •• t imponit marito mulieria nutmtotiontm sufferre." Ulpian Digest. I, 2. tit. 3. leg. 22. — In Martene De Rit. ii. 90 I read, in the prayer on a Pop 'a consecration, that, as M*s wuvtrtte Ckristionitatis molem sHperimposuisti," so God will strengthen him that a tetletiattiett imtwrntatu onus Hook fcrat." The tmivtrta Ckrittianitat and the • miivcrsitas are precisely that which Rome rf yet larger pretensions, but not so correct, figured as Atlas bearing up the whole globe on his shoulders ; with the legend, " Immune Pondus, I >aubuz, p. 7o0, illustrates from a picture of the rape of Europa, as described by Achilles Tanas, the manner in which we may consider the woman to have sate on the Boast ; \i/. sideways, as women generally ride in our country. He savs ; 'n irapOiroc fierroig nrticaGtjTO roic. wrote; rov [Soog, ov 7ripil3aCj]v, aXXo Kara ttXiv- pav, nri £i$iq. (TvpiSaoa. tui noli. Erot. Lib. i. So on coins of Sidon. Rasche iv. 939, &c. In medals of the middle ape I have observed Rome depicted as sitting on a couch, of which the end on either side are heads of Beasts. Under a different kind of tijrure the great city of the seven hills is represented elsewh ruliiiLT Pope's throne, <>r scat. So apoe. xiii. 2; "The J>raL">n pave him up his power, and liis tirom : " that is, his scat on the seven hills ; spoken • wi. io. — similarly Zion is at one time represented in holy Scripture as the Lord's tkrem, at another as his tpoum: c. g. Jer. iii. 17, Isa. l\ii- 6. 4 Compare Apoc. wii. 4, " Having a golden cup in her hand, full of abominations and tin- Blthineas of her fornication;" xiv. h, "Babylon hath fallen becansi hath made all nations to drink of the wine of her fornication ;" and wiii. 3, "All the Dations have drunk of the wine of her fornication, and the kinys of the earth have committed fornication with her." VOL. iv. 3 34 APOC. XVII. [part VI. hostess of a tavern were characters frequently united,1) so, the Church of Rome answered to the symbol in either point of view ; interchanging mutual favours, such as might suit their respective circumstances and characters, with the kings of Anti-Christendom 5 and to the common people dealing out for sale the wine of the poison 2 of her fornica- tion, her indulgences, relics, transubstantiation-cup, as if the cup of salvation, &c, (see again the late Pope's most illustrative medal, here given, pointing the application,)3 therewith drugging, and making them besotted and drunk. — 3. With regard to the portraiture of the Woman, as " robed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls," 4 it is, as applied to the Romish Church, a picture characteristic and from the life ; the dress colouring specified being distinctively that of the Romish ecclesiastical dignitaries,5 and the ornaments those with which it has been bedecked beyond any church called Christian ; 6 nay, beyond any religious body and religion probably that has ever existed in the world : — not to add that even the very name on the harlot's forehead, Mystery, (a name allusive evidently to St. Paul's predicted mystery of iniquity,1) was once, if we may repose credit on no vul- 1 So Daubuz 754. — For example, the reader may remember disquisitions in vin- dication of the character of Rahao, founded on the frequent identity of the iravdox*vc and the iropvt). 2 See Note || p. 42 infra. Medc too had construed the word Gvpov to the same effect, before Daubuz. 3 It was first struck just after the commencement of the 6th Vial's outpouring ; and exhibited now in a Protestant country just before the 7th Vial's effusion : — the precise time, if I mistake not, that this vision is to be referred to. — Compare this example of allusive contrast with that given Vol. ii. p. 61. * The comment of Tichonius is ; " ornatu vario et lapidibus pretiosis ; id est om- nibus illecebris simulate vcritatis." (Qu. virtutis ?) • 4 For these colours appertain to the dress of the ecclesiastical dignitaries of no other church, I believe ; — e. g. neither of the Greek, Armenian, or Coptic : of course not to that of the English. 6 Bishop Newton exemplifies from the riches of the chapel of " our Lady" at Lo- retto : " The riches of whose holy image, and house, and treasury, — the golden angels, the gold and silver lamps, the vast number, variety, and richness of the jewels, of the vestments for the holy image and for the priests, with the prodigious treasures of all sorts, are far beyond the reach of description : and, as Mr. Addison says, ' as much surpassed my expectation as other sights have generally fallen short of it. Silver can scarce find an admission ; and gold itself looks but poorly amongst such an in- credible number of precious stones.' " — This is but a sample. " " Thr mystery of iniquity doth already work : only he who now lettcth will let until he be taken away : and then shall that Wicked One be revealed," &c. 2 Thess. ii. 7, 8. See my Vol. iii. p. 96, &c — There is a contrast in this to the mystery of godliitfs*, l Tim. iii. 16. On which contrast see my Vol. iii. p. 186. Bishop Newton and others observe that there is an allusion here also to the custom [MPBJUA1 ROM] SITTING ON MM' SEVEN H1LL8 EOLDING II l.i; \lli,n wis BWORU OF EM I'll; i. I'Al'Al. KOMI-: MOTIII-Ii AM) IHSTRES8 BOLOHTG HIT HI'.U INTOXK ATINC. (IT (H- A Nil ( II R I STI A N AI'0>T\.'V pal i CHAP. I. $ 2.1 RXP08URS 01 PAPAL BOMB. 35 gai authority,1 written Oil the Tope's tiara ; and the Apo- ealvptic title. "Mother of harlots and of the ahoiuinat ions of tlu' earth," the very parody, if I may s.. Bay, of the title Rome arrogates to herself, " Rome, Mother and M is- tress."8- 1. As to the Harlot's depicted drunkenness with the blood of the saints, the fact of its applicability to the Romish Church, throughout the latter half at least of its patron the Beast's L260 predicted years of prospering,8 is written in deep-dyed characters on the page of history; and superabundant evidence thereof given by me in other parts of this hook. In these several points I have embraced, I believe, all the main characteristics of the depicted seven-hilled Harlot's protraiture and history.4 It would seem from the picture of her here given that whatever injury might have been sustained by the Woman during the time of the pre- ceding Vials, whether from the outpouring of the 5th Vial upon the throne of the Beast, so as we saw it fulfilled in the anti-Romish acts and fury of the French Revolutionists,0 or again from the progress of the Angel with the everlast- ing Gospel, would have been at the time of the vision, just a little before her final destruction, in appearance repaired. of certain notorious prostitatei baring their nanus written on a 'label on their fore- head- : — as Seneca saVB; •• Xonien tuum pependit in fronte ; pretium stupri BOG pisti : " and Juvenal Sat. vi. i22; Nuda pupillis Constitit auratis, titulum mentita Lysiscae. Vitringa supposes the name to have been thus written ; MYSTHPloN BABV.U2N 11 MKPAAH "H MHTHP TUN UOPNQM KM TOM BAEAYPMATQN thx rax. n the authority of an informant of the Duke of {Montmorency whilst at Boom. Ami so again Francis Le fcfoyne and Broeardus an ocular evidence, they saying that Julius III removed it. See Daubuz, Vitringa, and Bishop Newton ad loc. the Tridentine Council ; " Romana Ecclesia, qua.- omnium Eoclefliarum Matt r >tra." Hard. x. 63, Whence tin; eonunon phrase our ll"l>i Mother tin Ok* Bee my VoL ii. pp. 20, 28, (23 129, &c. 4 The prophecy was one much noted by the early Fathers. " Lege A] alypsin JoannU; et «|uid de muliere porpuratft, ft scriptd in ejus frontc blaspnemia, w pfem montibu>, aqma multi-, et Babyionis eantetnr exitu, oontoere. Exite, inqnit 1 >• mii- nu-. . v." So in the Epistle of Paula and Eustachian] to Mar- cilla. apod niexonymi Op, it. ii. 851. The object of the letter was to urge afarcella to Leave Borne for Bethlehem: it being allow.d that there was a holy i-hurch i h- r.- ; but the ambition and greatness of the < ity deprecated, as alieire from the spirit of nun don. tap, v. in my Vol. iii. p. 895, &c 3 • 30 APOC. XVII. [part VI. And so in truth we see it now.1 For Rome's Harlot- Church appears at this present time putting on all her former bravery, and boastings, and charms.2 Still, as of old, she holds out to the world her cup of abominations ; 3 still, as of old, breathes out, and acts out, her spirit of bloodthirsti- ness against the saints of Christ.4 As to the ultimate promised victory of the saints persecuted by her, — " Christ's called, and chosen, and faithful ones," — its fulfilment is yet future ; but surely, judging from the signs of the times, not so very far off. Thus much as to the figure in the foreground of the pic- ture now exhibited to St. John. We have next to consi- der the local scene associated in the picture with it. " He carried me away in the Spirit to a desert place (or plain) ; and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet-coloured Beast; &c." "A desert:" — such is the graphic descrip- tion primarily given of the local habitation of the figured Harlot. And, with a view to its right understanding, it will be important first to notice the absence of the article prefix ;5 for thereby this desert scene is pointedly and at once distinguished from that into which the Woman, the true Church of Apoc. xii., was previously said to have fled and hidden, for her destined 1260 days of obscurity, soli- tude, and trial :6 the latter being called r) sprjfxog, the desert, 1 So first -written in 1844. Yet more did she so appear after the storm of 1848 — 1851, on L. Napoleon's inauguration as President, and then Emperor, and courting and patronage of the Romish Church, so long as his policy seemed to require it. 2 Daubuz notably observes, p. 784, that St. John's here wondering (he being a lymbolic man) shows that even to the end Babylon will be powerful, and the true worshippers affrighted : — that, having recovered from former judgments and losses, Rome will again appear invested with very great power ; and having no apprehension of her future destruction, which is to be very sudden and unexpected, will revive all her former pretensions : whereupon Protestants, who judge according to human wis- dom only, may think that what she has done before (in the way of persecution) she may do still ; until ministers of God, like the Angel, are made use of as instruments to show their fellow Protestants that the Romish Harlot is just about to be suddenly destroyed. 3 See again the late Papal Jubilean medal. — Earlier examples of nearly the same medal may be seen in Bonanni, ii. 497, 737, &c. * So, for example, at Lisbon and Madeira, as Hewitson notices in 1844, Life, pp. 126, 269, &c. ; so at Florence, as in the case of the Madiai, &c. * tiq tpij/xov. The absence of the definite article is the rather observable ; as it is the only instance, I believe, in the New Testament in which the word occurs as a sub- stantive without it. 6 See my Vol. iii. pp 65—68. — Mr. Brooks has fallen into the mistake of identi- CUM1. I. § 2.] EXTOSURE OF PAPAL BOMB. 37 distinctively;1 or that which answered on the Apocalyptic earth to the great and desolate wilderness in which, under the older dispensation, the nation and church of Israel, and afterwards Elijah too, and then Christ, were lor a longer or shorter period of time hidden from the world. J — But what then this desert scene, pictorially associated with the Apocalyptic Harlot; and what its significancy in thi' prefiguration r There is predicted elsewhere a state of sor.ixia A/A// and final, that is destined to befall the Woman at last through the judgment by fire from Almighty God. And BOme have supposed this latter to be anticipatively signified by the desert in question.4 But the whole cha- racter of the Harlot's symbolization seems to me to nega- tive the idea of this being the desert scene here depicted: for she is here pictured, not as suffering under judgments either of human or divine origin, but in all the wantonness, pride, and gaudiness of a prospering harlotry. — Putting this then aside, it may be worth observing that, in the course of the Angel's explanatory statement, a certain fur- ther characteristic was noted of the desert scene's appear- ance to St. John ; viz. that it appeared to a considerable extent flooded with water, round where the woman was seated on her subject Beast : — "The waters," it is said, " that thou sawest, where the harlot sitteth."5 And hence in fact Vitringa draws his explanation,6 to the effect that the local scene exhibited was imaginatively designed to answer to the chorography of the Euphratean Babi/lon ; which, being finally surrounded by marshes, from the cir- cumstance of the waters of the river overflowing and stag- nating round it, was designated by the Prophet Isaiah as IVillg the two epjjfioi ; — the stepping-stone to his identification of the two women. An ( rror fatal, as it seems to me, to all true interpretation of the Woman of chap. xii. 1 See Home's Introduction, Vol. iii. p. 53. 2 1 Kin^-s xix. 1. B; Matt. iv. l. See, to tin- effect, Michaelur' Note on "the de- sert" of Chri-t'.-> temptation, a- cited and approved by Middleton on the Greek Arti- cle, when commenting on Matt. iv. 1. apoe. xviii. l'.t ; -For in one hour per, which (especially at the time of Gregory's elevation) had "rushed with irresistible violence into the valleys of the seven kills ," and there bred pestilence from "the stagnation of the drlii'i> ."' And, after remarking on the awful "depopulation, vacancy, and solitude of the city," he observes that, "Wee Babylon, the name of Koine might have been erased from the earth, if the city had not been animated by a vital principle, [viz. that of being St. Peter's See, and the depository too of his sacred relies, as well as of those of his brother-martyr Paul,] which again restored her3 to honour and dominion:" —restored her to it in the new character of "Rome, Mother and .Mistress," the Harlot -Church of the seven hills. Nor, though the city rose again by degrees, in its new and eccle- siastical character, did the Campagna change from being a scene of desolation. In Robertson's sketch of the state of Western Europe after the subsidence of the barbarian inva- sions, in the earlier part of the middle age, he observes that, in consequence of the existing depopulation, districts once tin1 most cultivated, above all in Italy, were in some parts converted into forests, in others into marshes, by the over- Mow of rivers and stasmatino; of the floods:3 insomuch, that in some of the earliest charters extant, lands granted to monasteries and individuals were distinguished into such as were cultivated, and such as were eremi, or desert; the reason of the grant being frequently this, that the grantee had reclaimed them ab eremo, from the desert} Now, in every where §ee also other illustrations of the fact cited. Pope Gregory's own account may be seen in the- Appendix to 1'. Paolo's Council of Trent, p. 774. Engl. Ed. on alludee, in a Note, to an account of this inundation brought hy one of his Deacons to Gregory of Tours (x. 1.) : with the farther report of Wonum. 3 Charles the Fifth; Proof o. Also Hallam iii. 365. * Ducauge on Ertmut. 40 APOC. XVII. [part VI. other of the countries referred to, the recovery of the lands from this state of barrenness, and desert, was by degrees successfully accomplished, together with the advancing pro- gress of civilization and population. But not so in the vast plain round Rome. There, age after age, from the time of the Goths and Gregory, down even to the present time, where is the traveller to Rome that has not been struck by the waste and dreary Campagna that surrounds the "Eternal City ; " whether approaching it by those desolate fifty miles from Civita Vecchia, or viewing it from the hills of Alba or Tivoli? Besides that the Tiber still from time to time fearfully overflows his banks, as of old ; l and Rome is thus still often to be seen from those distant hills sitting upon many waters. Thus we see that the desert scene associated with the Woman, in the Apocalyptic scene pictured to St. John, was a landscape admirably perfect, as from the life:2 — a true and faithful picture of the Campagna of Rome itself, such as it appeared at the time when under Gregory the Harlot first established her supremacy thereupon ; and such as she has appeared ever since. — Nor was the pictured scene ad- mirable in this point of view only ; but also for its having an emblematic, as well as literal, significancy and truth. For, as the seven hills in the landscape were not merely a natural feature of the scene, but also symbolized the seven several forms of government that Rome would previously have ex- perienced,3 so the floods that inundated the base of those hills where the Harlot had her seat were not only literally true, as a feature of the Campagna after Papal Rome rose to dominion, but also furnished the Angel with an apt symbol of the barbarian floods which, after pouring into and deso- lating the empire, would at length constitute nations, tribes, and languages subject to Papal Rome's dominion.4 Again, such as was the physical ep-q/x/a and barrenness all round it, 1 Visitors in the winter of 1847, 1848 saw this strikingly exhibited before them. 2 See the Section in my 1st Vol. on the local appropriateness of Scripture Symbols, beginning p. 420. 3 Apoc. xvii. 10. See my solution, Part iv. Chap. iv. ; Vol. iii. pp. 114, &c. * Apoc. xvii. 15. — To Bossuct's objection that, were this Woman an apostatized Christian Church, or City, she would be called an adulteress, not harlot, or 7ropvt), I may again refer to Matt. v. 32, xix. 9, and also Isa. i. 21, &c. in the Septuagint; passages already before noted, p. 32. QHAP. I. $2.] EXPOSURE 01 PAPAL KOMI. 41 such has ever been tin' spiritual sorbin characteristic of her dominion.1 This seems to me the perfection of symbolic figures; a perfection frequently observable in those of the Apocalypse. — Besides which it must be observed thai t he presence of the flood in this picture, whence we may sup- pose the Beast to have emerged on which the Woman sate, made it, it' 1 might so say, the precise pair ami counterpart to a notable one shown in an earlier vision to St. John : ■ 1 mean to that which represented a flood cast from the Dra- gon's mouth, in order to drown the faithful woman, or Church ; out of which, after her escape and disappearance, and when the earth had so drained off the waters as to leave but the remnant of a lake remaining, (so I infer from the description, !: a seven-headed ten-horned Beast, like this very one, appeared to emerge. — It is a new tache of connexion be- tween Figurations in this and the other Apocalyptic series. It only remains that I add a remark on the Vial-Angel who showed this vision to St. John, and the reason of John's being spoken of as carried away in the spirit to see it.4 The latter point is explainable, perhaps, from the cir- cumstance of the vision being thus far out of the usual routine and order, as exhibiting a phaenomenon of 1260 years' duration ; and consequently that which Christ's people, living at the time of the Vials, would only be able to see nhnfall;/, not by the bodily eye.5 — As to the Angel, I think that particular Vial-Angel must be supposed the revealer, in the time of whose vial-outpouring a full understanding might prove to be given of the mystery of the Woman and the Beast : — that is, doubtless, the seventh and last} So was the mystery of the Woman and her subject Beast 1 Xw\v that I am reprinting the 6th Edition of this Work in 1861, has doI tin's hot, politically, socially, and morally considered, forced itself on men's minds, v< ry gi Hi i illy ? - ApOC. vii. 10, xiii. 1. See my Vol. iii. pp. 71, 83. 3 See Vol. Hi. p. 71, N">' -'. * •• And he earned mt; away m tht spirit to a desert place; and I saw," &c. 5 Compere the letiospsetfa riew of the two Witnesses' history riven in Apoc. xi. The Angel gives it all m the form of retroaptetivt narrative, nntu he has brought down their bistort to the time oorresp nding with that of his descent. Whereupon (but not before) the witnesses are brought on the scene in actual vision. See Vol ii. pp. 482—464. • So the Angel, xxi. 9, that showed St. John the New Jefmalan, was evidently the seventh of the rial-Angels. 42 APOC. XVIII. [part VI. made manifest to St. John, in all its details, just before the figuration of their total and final destruction. — And, let me ask, has there not of late been some advance to a fulfilment of the vision ? III. Next came the vision of another Angel, and of the destruction of Babylon following on his appearance ; which began as follows : — "And, after these things,1 I saw another Angel coming 1 The whole chapter xviii. is as follows. I. " And after these things I saw another Angel coming down * from heaven, having great power ; t and the earth was lightened with his glory. 2. And he cried with a strong voice,J saying; Fallen, fallen, is the great Babylon, and is become the habitation of demons, and the prison-house of every unclean spirit, and the prison § of every unclean and hateful bird : 3. for all the nations have drunk of the wine of the poison || of her fornication ; and the kings of the earth have committed fornica- tion with her ; and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her luxury. It 4. And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partaker of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues ! 5. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities. 6. Re- ward her even as she rewarded [you] ; * * and double unto her double, according to her works : in the cup which she hath filled, fill to her double ! 7- How much she hath glorified herself, and lived luxuriously, ft so much torment and sorrow give her ! As to that XX sae sait^ in ner heart, I sit a queen, and am not a widow, and shall see no mourning, 8. therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, §§ and mourning, and famine ; and she shall be utterly burnt with fire : for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her. 9. And the kings of the earth who have committed fornication, and lived luxu- riously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they see the smoke of her burning; 10. standing afar off for the fear of her torment : saying, Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city ; for in one hour is thy judgment come. II. And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more: — 12. the merchandise of gold and silver, and precious stones, and pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyinc wood, and every kind of vessel of ivory, and all manner of vessels of most pre- cious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble; 13. and cinnamon, and amomus,|||| * KarafiaivovTa. f or authority ; i%ovf men. 14. And the fruits t that thy soul Lusted after axe departed from thee, mid all thing* that wen dainty and goodly an departed from thee : and they shall find J thi in no more at all. l"). The merchants of these things whioh wen made rich by Iter, shall Btand afar Off, for the fear of her torment, weeping and wailing: 1«. and saying, Alas, alas, that gnat city, thai was clothed in tine linen, and purple, ami scarlet, ami decked with {Told, and precious stones, and pearls ! For in one hour so great riches is come to nought. 17. and every shipmaster, and every passenger sailing to the place,} and sailors, and as many as trade hy sea, stood afar oil'; 18. and cried, when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, What city is like unt<> this great city ? 19. And they •lust on their beads, ami cried, weeping ami wailing ; Baying, Alas, alas, that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea, hy reason of her Costliness ; for in one hour is she made desolate. 20. K.joice over her, thou heaven, and ye saints, and apostles, || and prophets; for God hath avenged you on her. 21. And a mighty angel took up a stone like a threat mill-stone, and east it into the sea ; saying. Thus, with violence, shall that great city Babylon he thrown down, and shall he found no more at all. 22. And the voice of harpers ami musicians, and of pipers and trumpeters, shall he heard no more at all in thee : and no craftsman, of whatsoever craft he he, shall be found any more in thee : and the sound of a mill- stone shall he heard no more at all in thee : 23. and the light of a candle shall shine no mote at all in thee : and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be In aid no more at all in thee. For thy merchants were the great men of the earth : for hy thy sorceries were all nations deceived. 24. And in her was found the blood H of prophets, and of saints, and of all that had been slain upon the earth." •* xix. 1. " And after these things I heard as it were a great voice of much people in :iiir. Alleluia ! Salvation, and .ulory, and honour, and power unto the Lord our God! "ft -• For trui' and just are his judgments :+£ for lie hath judged the i harlot, which did corrupt the earth with her fornication, $$ and hath avenged the blood of his servants at ner hands. 3. And a second time tiny said Alleluia ! And lor smoke riseth up for ever and ever.||;| 4. And the four- ami-twenty elders and tin tour living creatures fell down, and worshipped God that sat on the throne, say- men; Alleluia!" 1 So the Lord, who announced to Abraham that he was come down to inquire into which one of the most esteemed ointments of the ancients was made. See Schleusner on the word. * aw/.tarwv. t o-n-uipa. Compare the emblems of the harvest and vintage, Apoc. xiv., discussed in tlie preceding section of this Chanter. + ivpijaovaiy. So A, 0 ; instead of the cvpsjffyc of the received text, $ 7rac 6 nri roirov nXtwv. So A and C. in 13 we read rov ronov. Compare uvii 2 ; (uXknrrtC tXuv thq Kara ttjv kaiav ro7rsg. || tat o't ayiot icai oi uttootoXoi. So A, B. The received text omits the second tat n't. H The MS. 15 and Bchohl read a'l/iara, in the plural : — a form of the word of which no other example occur-, I believe, in the New Testament, except in John i. 13. In the Beptuagint it is not very infrequent. •• Daubuz, p. 8.53, has justly animadverted on (he improper division of chapters BS the four rir-t verbis of Apoc. \i\. evidently belong to Apoc. xviii. ft Or, "is our God's;" according to the reading of the critical editions; >) irwr/jpia icat i) So$tt) BSM i) iiyifttr rov Olov >'///u>v. * + Kinitir. \\ Compare Apoc. xi. 18. j|| tic tuvq aiuivar, ruv aiutvuv. 44 APOC. XVIII. [part VI. And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Baby- lon the Great hath fallen, hath fallen ; for all the nations have drunk of the wine of the poison of her fornication : &c." It seemed a repetition, and in almost precisely the same terms, of the cry of the second flying Angel of Apoc. xiv.,1 though with the notable added circumstance that "she was become the habitation of demons, and prison-house of every unclean spirit ; " 2 and, moreover, like that former voice, (notwithstanding the use of the past tense in the sen- tence,) seemed to be still anticipative : 3 but anticipative at the very smallest interval before the catastrophe : and not without an effulgence of light, as well as strength of cry, correspondent with the urgency of the time; even as its last, as well as loudest echo, upon the ear of nations. — And then followed a warning voice from heaven, heard loud and dis- tinct by St. John, in his symbolic character, as I presume ; that is, as the representative of Christ's true saints and serv- ants then living: "Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues : for her sins have reached unto heaven." 4 A warning like that of the Covenant-Angel to Lot, on the eve of the destruction of Sodom ; 5 or that from God, through Moses, to the surrounding Israelites, the moment before the earthquake that swallowed up the tents of Dathan and Abiram:6 and which indicated two things respecting them ; 1st, that there would be even then some of the holy seed in the wickedness of Sodom, preparatorily to judgment on it, was himself that judg- ment's executor. Compare Gen. xviii. 20, xix. 22. On the propriety and force of epithets attached to Apocalyptic agents, as having reference to what they had to perform, compare what is said of the ?nix of Apoc. vii. 2, and the ioxvP°Q of Apoc. x. 1, in my Vol. i. p. 274, and Vol. ii. pp. 41, 42. So again Apoc. xviii. 21. ' See my Vol. iii. p. 491, on xiv. 8. 2 Compare Apoc. xx. 10 ; where we read that, after the millennium, " the Devil is to be cast into the lake of fire where the Beast and the False Prophet are." 3 For the cry, " Come out of her, my people," follows. * So when Sodom's cry was said to have come up to heaven, Gen. xviii. 21, its judgment was close at hand. — In proof that the voice from heaven to St. John indi- cated a conviction strongly to he made on the minds of God' s saints at the time pre- figured, I refer the reader to the notable precedents of Apoc. vii., x., &c. See in my Vol. i. Part i. Chap. vii. § 4 ; and, in my Vol. ii., the whole historical comment on Apoc. x. 1— xi. 3. 5 Gen. xix. 16—22. 6 Numb. xvi. 23— 33.— I might add that of Christ to the disciples, with reference to the time of the siege of Jerusalem, commencing, "Then let them that be in Judea flee to the mountains," &c. ; Matt. xxiv. 16 : — a warning doubtless impressed on their minds by the Holy Spirit at the intended crisis, though uttered long before. — Compare too Jer. Ii. 6, " Flee out of the midst of Babylon, &c." CHAP. I. $2.] JUDGMENT ON PAPAL ROME. 45 the mystic Babylon ; 2ndly, that their danger of participa- tion in its coming destruction, whether through mistakes of judgment, or sluggish lingering, would be extreme and im- minent.1— After which that same voice apparently, address- ed still and all through to the saints,2 described in vivid detail the catastrophe, even as if enacted before the Evange- list s eyea on the scene of vision ; though with that mixture of the future and past with the present, which is so common in the descriptions of prophecy.3 — in the first place depict- ing the nature of the catastrophe ; — its suddenness when least expected,4 — its instantaneousness, as all completed in an hour,5 — its totality, such that all life was quenched in it,6 - — its manner, with violence like as of the shock of a mill- stone hurled into the waters,7 — and the instrumentality employed, viz. that of fire, eternal fire, of which the smoke goeth up for ever :8 — then detailing the lamentations over its fall ; first of the kings of earth that ere while com- mitted fornication with it ; 9 next successively of the mer- chants and shipmasters and sailors that were enriched by, Vol. iii. pp. 295, 296. - Vitringa supposes the verses 4 and 5, only, to be the voice to St. John from heaven, and that the cnrXwcraTt avry, "Double to her," &c., is addressed to the kin_'- mentioned xvii. 16. A strange hypothesis surely! — For the saints, not the king", are the injured ones; and the saints the avengers of those wrongs, in God's retributive justice. 5 The future is in fact the characteristic tense of the description, until verse 17, when it is changed for the pott ; the past tenses previously used being those of speakers that are themselves introduced in the future. For example it is said in \' nee 10, 11, "The kings of the earth 8haU bewail her, standing afar <>ti', Alas, that gnat city; in one hour hat thy judgment come." But in the 17th it is said, "And every shipmaster stood afar off." Yet even after this, in verse 21, the Angel that took up the mill-stone uses the future, "Thus shall great Babylon be cast down;" oi>T(oc, j3\i)6r)(JtTai. In verse 24 the past is used again. In prophecies where the future may be used with reference to the actual time of the prophet's seeing the vision, as well as with reference to the thing represented in the prophetic vision, the tenses used must be reasoned from with great caution. I hare spoken of this before. Compare the interchange of tenses in the Angel's nar- rative of tin two witnesses, Apoc. xi. : also in xvii. ; and again in xx. 4, 6: where (efiaoiXivoav) and '■'■shall reign" (fiaaiXivffovvt) are used inter- changeably. For notable examples elsewhere see the prophecies in Deut. xxxii., Isa. liii.. &c. • So verse 7 ; " She saith, I sit as a queen, and shall see no sorrow." • Bo Torsos 1", 18, 19 ; fi<<} o>pa npijpwGi]. — In verse 8 it is said, " In mm iftzy shall thy plagues come, — pestilence, and mourning, and (amine ;" as if for some short time before tin final e:ita>trophe by fire, there were to be some terrible visitation of Rome with pestilence and (amine. 22, 23, " And the voice of harpers, &c. &c, shall be heard no more in 7 Verse 21 . • So verses 8, 9, 18 of chap, xviii., and xix. 3: in which last a very strong >x- pn"ion is used to depict the eternity of the (ire; "Her smoke riseth up iif rove. aiwiac Tijjv atwvwv, for ages of ages." 9 Verse 9, 46 APOC. XVIII. [part VI. or took part in, its various branches of traffic ; ' all stand- ing alar off (the expression is most graphic) for fear of the smoke of her burning : — and, finally, stating two reasons for the judgment ; one, that all nations had been deceived by her sorceries,2 the other and chief reason, because of her having been the persecutor of the saints, and of the blood of their successive generations being found in her.3 — After which, and the completion of her destruction,4 a burst of songs of praise was heard to resound from a great multitude in heaven, saying, " Alleluia ! The salvation, and the glory, and the power is our God's: for true and just are his judgments ; for he hath judged the great Harlot ; " &c. Twice was that song of praise uttered: and then the twenty- four elders and four living creatures took it up, and repeat- ed it: {it is the last act related of them:) worshipping in prostrate adoration the Divine One that sat upon the throne ; and saying, Amen, Alleluia ! From which passage I draw the following conclusions, as to the probable progress of events in the fast coming future. 1st, (and this with strong conviction in my own mind of its truth,) that the destruction of Rome, the mystic Babylon, — comprehending not the mere city of Rome, but, at the least, the Papal Ecclesiastical State in Italy, or Papal Me- tropolitan Bishopric, and probably, together with it, that third, or more, out of the political tripartition of Christen- dom, a little before described as occurring,5 which might 1 Verses 11, 17.— The wares traded in maybe thus classified: — 1. Gold, silver, precious stones, pearls, ivory, brass, iron, marble, wood; — 2. Linen, purple, silk, scarlet : — 3. Cinnamon, odours, ointments, frankincense ; — 4. Wine and oil, wheat and fine flour, sheep and cattle ; — 5. Horses and chariots ; — 6. Bodies and souls of men. — The last 4>vxaq avQpioirwv appeai-s at first sight, as applied to the mystic Ba- bylon or Rome, very remarkably applicable in a spiritual sense. But it is an expres- sion used elsewhere simply to mean persons, especially slaves; e. g. in Numb. xxxi. 40, \pvxcu avOptoirwv £K km Siica %(\(a£c£ : and ib. 35, i^v\ai av9pio7rojv ano rwv yvvaiKtitp, for women-slaves : and so Hesychius explains \pi>xayojyoi as av^panoSi(rrai. Consequently it must not be insisted on as implying Rome's traffic in souls ; though I can scarcely myself believe this to be unintended. 2 Verse 23. Compare Apoc. ix. 21; where the same word f a subterranean connexion probably existing between Vesuvius, Solfatara, .Ktna. Stromboli, ami the Ocean. Ws liiul in history that Borne, in the reigns of botb Titus and Commodus, felt tbe shock of earthquakes, and the accompanying outbursts of volcanic Same. See l>ion. 1 I wi. 24, and Ilrnnlian, i. 11. In the latter case, (one referred to VoL i. p. 1.60, in illustration of my 2nd Beal,] when the Temple of Peace was burnt down, Herodian suggests the alternative explanation of lightning or volcanic lire; urt OKil^r-rov vvnTujit Kartve\9tvro<;, art rcfl 7repnr; ttoQiv tK tov (Tttrr^tov luMMmtVTO£. Thi< physical aptitude of Italy tor Buch an end i- noted, though with his usual . by Gibbon. "The country which for religions motives had been chosen tor igtn and principal Bcene of the conflagration, was the lust adapted for that par- ty natural and physical causes : by it- deep caverns, beds of sulphur, ami numer- ous volcanoes; of which those of -Etna, of Vesuvius, and of Lipari, exhibit a very imperfect representation." Ibid. .1062 says that the Angel's strong cry, and accompanying re- fulgence of light, .-how, first, that the report of Babylon's fall would be published through the world ; secondly, that there would be in it a most illustrious manifesta- tion of God's majesty. Ami Daubut [p. 802) observes similarly, that no Angel is -aid ipture to nave appeared with such a light, without its being implied thereby that <;. id would enlighten bya further knowledge of Eimself those to whom the Angel was sent: whence he infers that both the idolaters of the corrupt Chunk would be enlightened and converted by the fall of Babylon, and this event followed by a conversion more general. For the former of which expectations, however, I scriptural reason. Both Vttringa and Daubuz compare Bzek. xliii. 2; "The glory of the God of from the way of the Bast, and hi- voice was like ;i noise of many waters ; and the earth shined with his glory." Let me add K/.ek. xxxix. '21; "I will set my glory among the hi athen ; and ail the heathen shall see my judgment that I have 1 " that i- on Gog's destruction. 81 Paul's words J These, ii. 11, 12, "God sball send them -)!• delusion that they should believe a lie, that they all might be damned who belil Ved not the truth," sc., with the Apocalyptic Babylon's confident boast, M] .-hall not be a widow, subsequent prenguration of the Beasl and his army -how- that the number of them that would resist all evidence, from hatred to the truth, will • the last be very large. o. w. 8. See my VoL iii. pp 1 \\\r)\oii", answering to the Hebrew -- *'"~, IVasaj Jehovah .' Lightfoot res that the Hallel is tirst used in Scripture at the end of Psalm I iv. and that vul. iv. 4 50 APOC. XIX. [part VI. cumstance certainly very remarkable, and noted by many previous commentators as having the meaning I suggest : ! — not to add that its probability is enhanced, as I think, by the fact that the Jews themselves, or at least some of the most learned of their Rabbies, have supposed that the restoration of their people is to follow on the fall of Rome.2 — 4thly, I infer that down to the time figured by this chorus of song, no translation of the living saints, or resurrection of the saints departed this life, will have taken place ; the scenery of the inmost temple, with its throne, and seated Divinity, and the elders and living creatures attendant near it, the mystical representatives of the expectant Church in Paradise? remaining still figured in vision, as before. — Whether the scene continued so afterwards, and the same inference might be made with regard to time at all later, is another question. But it is one which will more pro- perly come under consideration in the Chapter next but one following.4 4. Next after this the Evangelist tells of a command is- suing " from the throne," which called to all God's serv- ants, and all that feared him, " Praise ye our God ; " 5 and how thereupon a far louder voice than that heard before, even as of many waters and of mighty thunderings, (including in it probably that of very many princes and people,)6 was heard to burst forth in a new anthem of the Jews note respecting it, that this Hallel comes not till there be tidings of the destruction of ungodly men ; " Let the sinners be consumed out of the earth, and let the wicked be no more. Bless the Lord, 0 my soul ! Praise ye the Lord ! " So Daubuz. — I observe that Tobit, xiii. 18, speaking of the rebuilding of Jerusalem, says; " And all her streets shall say Alleluia ; and they shall praise Him, saying, Blessed be God who hath extolled it for ever." 1 So Brightman, Vitringa, Daubuz, &c., more or less : and, among contemporaries, Mr. Bickersteth.* 2 Kimchi says in his Comment on Obadiah ; " This is the hope of the nation, — when Rome shall be desolated, then there shall be the redemption of Israel." Vitringa, p. 1066, refers for comparison to other testimonies given in Buxtorf on the word nwt\ * See Vol. i. pp. 86—93. 4 Viz. that on the Millennium. 5 We should mark the expression " our God." There is no various reading. 6 Compare Apoc. xiv. 2, and Vol. iii. p. 31-5. In that case the voice was as that * Compare Augustine's observation on St. Paul's use of the Hebrew and Greek words, Abba, 6 7rar?/p, in Gal. iv. 6 ; " Intelligitur non frustra duai'um linguarum verba posuisse idem signiticantia, propter universum populum qui de Judeeis et de Gentihus in unitatem fidei vocatus est ; ut Hebrceum verbum ad Judceos, Grcecum ad gentes, . . pertineat." CHAP. I. § 2.] JUDGMENT ON THE BEAST. 51 praise \ ' its two tlienu's being the now oloftely instant estab- lishment of Christ's kingdom, and bis marriage! the bride, Df "a great thunder," /fyoj-rrjc t"ya\r)c in the lingular : in tliis "ill) a stronger adjective, anil the noun in the plural, "as tin \oiee bf mighty thiindeiings," /fyoi'rwi' MVMMtl*. * 1 I subjoin the chapter, a< befogs. \i\. •'). "And a voice OHM "nt from tin- throne, saying, Praise mir find, nil ve hi- servante, and ye that feat him, both small and neat (i. And 1 heard ai it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and la the roice 6t mighty thundering*, saying, Alleluia, for the* Lord God omnipotent reigneth.t 7. Let ns be glad and rejoice, and pre honour to him : for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready. 8. arid to her it was granted t that she should he arrayed inline linen, bright and (dean: § for the fine linen is the righteousness of the saints. 9. And he saith unto me, Write, blessed are they who have he-n called J unto the marriage supper of the l.amh. And he saith unto me, These are the true sayings of Qod. 10. And I fell before his feet to worship him : and he saith unto me. See thou do it not : I am thy fellow-servant, and (the fellow- servant c of thy brethren, that keep up** the testimony of Jesus : worship God : for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of the prophecy. ft 11. And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon it was called Faithful and True; and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. 12. His eyes were ;1s a Same id' lire, and on his head were many diadems ; and he had a name written, that no man knew but he himself. 13. And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood, and his name is called, The Word of God. 14. And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in tine linen, white and clean. JJ 15. And out of his mouth goeth a sharp }§ sword. that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule out them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God. 1(5. And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a|||| name written, King of kings and Lord of lords. UU 17. And 1 saw an Angel *f standing in the sun: and he cried with aloud voice, Baying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together unto the great supper of God; *J 18. that ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the tlesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses and of them that sit on them, and the liesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great. 19. And I saw the beaot, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered ier to make war*} against him that sat on the horse, and against his army. * B and Scholz add iifiiop, " our God." Other critical editions omit it. t f/3«TiXti'fft. So xi. 17. X Km ito8n avru. Perhaps, " And it hath been granted to her ; " as one of the joyful subjects ofsong to the liymni-ts. § fivomvov \afiirnov icni icnGapov. || ol kik\ij[aivoi. U ovvCovXor; ti)v p\aprvpiav. So Apoc. xii. 17 ! also vi. 9 ; iita ttflf /.taprvpiav i)v a\oi>. + t Of th$ prophecy, rnc 7rpo0rj7H«c. So i. 3, xxii. 7, 10, 18, 19, distinctively of the Apocalyptic prophecy. Of prophecy generally St. Peter says n-po^qrtux, without the article ; 2 Let. i. 20,21. — Alike lh, Angel in this revelation, and the Apottle, and all his successors of the true Apostolic line, in their lite and doctrine, witnessed for J' Xt fiviraivav \tvicoi> KaBapov. §\ B, Scholz, and Wordsworth insert diffro/ioc, two-edged. So too the Vie. Bchols reads to swobs, the name, with the article. " * Bekhel, fin. 'J'.is. speaking of some peeudo-ntoneta in which is a hone with n mark on his thigh, thus \< marks j " Roto femori impresssa treterum morem indicant." A omits the words tm to i/janov *cai. *t Scholz and other critical editions write iva ayyiXor. one angel. •1 fiC ro Ctmvov to pfya rov fttov. So A. li. and the critical editions. * J tuv iroX«/io»'. So Scholz and other critical editions read it, both here and in I .. 4 * 52 Aroc. xix. [part vi. it appeared, having had it granted her to he arrayed in the finest white linen,1 (which linen, it was said, was the right- eousness2 of saints, so marking the saints as the bride,) and the song retaining still the form Hallelujah. — But an enemy yet remains to be overcome, ere" the completion of the anti- cipated blessedness. As the harlot must be exposed and branded and destroyed ere the manifestation of the bride, so the usurper Antichrist, (the self-vaunting King of kings and Lord of lords,)3 ere Christ's establishment of his kingdom. And, — after a passing mention of the Angel's declaring the blessedness of those who were called to the Lamb's marriage- supper, (whether a class the same as, or a class distinct from, the Bride herself?) and another of St. John's falling down and worshipping the revealing Angel, (still I suppose in his symbolic representative character,5) and being rebuked for it; — there follows a most striking and remarkable vision of Christ issuing forth to the destruction of this long usurping Antichrist. The heaven appeared opened to make way for 20. And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him,* with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worship his image. These both were cast alive into the lakef of fire burning with brimstone. 21. And the remnant were slain with the sword of him that sat upon the horse, which sword proceedeth out of his mouth : and all the fowls were filled with their fiesh." xx. "And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottom- less pit, and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand years," &c. 1 Buffutvov. This was linen of the finest kind ; such as kings and priests and no- bles wore : for example Joseph, Gen. xli. 42 ; David, 1 Chron. xv. 27 ; the priests, Exod. xxviii. 39 ; and the rich man in the parable, Luke xvi. 19. — On the possibly intended meaning of the word here, as suggested by Daubuz in a very interesting critique, I reserve my observations till the chapter iv. following. 2 SiKaiwfiara' used in the same sense, I conceive, of justification, as SiKaioj/ia in the singular in St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, v. 16, and, in the plural, Hub. ix. 1, 10. The plural is here perhaps adopted, rather than the singular, in order to signify the badges of that justification on the many justified. 3 So Gerson (ap. Gicscler, Text Book iii. 256,) speaks of this as applied to the Pope by the Papists of the day ; " Papa, cujus in femore scripsit Christus, Rex regum, Dominus dominantium." — He too had the sharp sword of anathema going out of his mouth. " A)tatheni«tis gladio feriantur ; " or " Anathematis mucrone percussus." So Innocent III, against the Waldenses and Albigenses. See generally my sketch of Antichrist in his full-grown greatness, Part iv. Chap . v. § 2. * I may have again to advert to this in chapter iv. following. 5 So Daubuz. 8. Usually, as in xii. 17 and xiii. 7, the article is not added. It seems to be the war of Armageddon, before resolved on. * B, Scholz, and Wordsworth, o /uer' avrav i^(vSoTrpo(pt)Tt]Q. f TTfv Xifxvrjv row nvnot; ti)v Kaiofitvi/v tv Qfitp. Our translators have rendered it " a lake ; " not marking the definite article: a mistake of no inconsiderable im- portance, as will appear afterwards in my comment. CHAP. I. $2.] JUDGMENT on Till', bkaST. Uii his descending. His appearance had in it all that was most aiiuru->t of Buperhuman majesty. His emblems were those of royalty ami triumph, — the white horse, the sharp sword, the many diadems, the red or purple robe; — red, however, with blood, as that of One that had already begun t<> tread the wine-press of God's wrath. (Was it not the w ine- press long before prophesied of as trodden in Ho/rah?1) J lis names enunciated were, The Faithful and True, the Word of God, the King of kings and Lord of lords, besides that secret as wel] as incommunicable name Jehovah.8 And hosts, already " m heaven*'9 (were they not his saints, "the called, and chosen, and faithful?"4) appeared following him; themselves also on white horses: the partakers (so did the end contrast with the beginning of this great drama5) of their Lord's triumph. — Meanwhile the Beast and his False Prophet, and the kings and armies that still supported him, are represented as having gathered to the scene of con- flict. And, — after a proclamation from an Angel that Beemed "standing in lh>> sun" (whether to denote his uni- versal visibility,6 or the supreme royalty that dictated his words,7) inviting all the birds of prey that might fly in the mid-heaven, to assemble and partake of the great supper about to be prepared in the judgments of God Almighty,8 — after this, I say, the conflict was joined ; the Beast, or Antichrist, and his False Prophet taken, and cast alive into "the lake of fire," (mark the definite article,) that same "which was burning with brimstone;"9 the kings and other earthly adherents of Antichrist slain by the sword of Him that sat on the white horse, a portion for the birds of 1 Isa. lxiii. 1. I shall have to make the comparison in my next chapter. : Such 1 conceive to be the name meant. Compare Judg. xiii. 18; "Why askcst thou alter my Dame, Meing it is secret •" 3 ra arpaTivfiara ra iv T ovpavif). pare xvii. 14 ; — " Tin Me tnal] war with the Lamb : and the Lamb shall over- came tin in, (for //' is Kins of kings and Lord of lords,) and they that are with Him, tin- called, and chosen, and faithful." Bi e VoL i. p. 106. 6 8o the late Ber. Robert Hall, in his noble Sermon on the Discouragements and Suppe: .listian inini-Ti r. :i 1 r.,nri hi- to be at least part of the meaning of the symbol ; so as, for ex- ample, in the notable case "l I lathed with tkt nm in Apoc, \ii. 1. riel's prophec] of God's great sacrifice and supper, and the birds invited to it, in Biek. x\\i\. 17. >">.e.. CBfl Man. fail of OCCUrring as B probable parallel to the ■ r. Hut 1 reaerrc to my next Chapter a notice of this, and a few other such prophecies. '' See Xutc t on the page preceding. 54 APOC. XIX. [part VI. prey ; ' and the Dragon taken, and imprisoned in the abyss for a thousand years. — And so the MILLENNIUM appeared to begin. Prom this prefigurative vision thus much may I think be inferred respecting the coming future; — viz. that some sig- nal, total, and most tremendous destruction of the Papal Antichrist, (that false usurping king of kings and lord of lords,) with the Papal Priesthood and Kings (perhaps king- doms too) adhering to him, is to follow very soon after the catastrophe of Rome and its Italian dependency : — a de- struction to be accompanied with some striking manifesta- tion of Christ, and of his glory and power, who is then to be made publicly manifest as the true King of kings and Lord of lords : and to be wrought by the agency of earth- quake and fire, (probably volcanic fire,) so as to involve the reprobates, thus destroyed, in the same fiery lake as Rome itself and its subject territory just before.2 — The fact of their destruction following after, and so being in point of time distinct from, that of Rome, as would seem to be the case,3 is perhaps to be accounted for by the supposition of Antichrist and his army being, at the time, gathered to some country or place without the territories of the Pope- dom : — a supposition already suggested by the intimation in the parallel prophecy of chap. xiv. that the wine-press of God's wrath was to be trodden "without the city ; "4 and partially confirmed, I think, by other and earlier prophecies of the last crisis. As to the nature of the manifestation then to be made of Christ's glory, — whether personal or simply providential, — again, whether the hosts attending to participate in his triumph are angels or saints, and, if saints, 1 Compare Christ's proverbial saying, " Where the carcase is, there shall the eagles (or vultures) be gathered together." 2 Compare Dan. vii. 10, 11. 3 At tlit; same time it is to be remembered, as possible, that the second description may be only added in particular, of what was described previously in the general, respecting parties suffering from the same catastrophe ; the one picturing being terri- torial, the other personal. * Apoc. xiv. 20. See p. 16 supra. — The Beast's separation from his proper seat, at the time of his destruction, may be compared with Pharaoh's and Korah's from theirs. 1 shall have again to advert to this point at the end of the next chapter. — Moreover the distinctive notice of the False Prophet's destruction may be compared with that of Elijah's slaughter of Baal's prophets, distinctively from the other wor- shippers of Baal, at Mount Carmel. CHAP. II. Jl.] DAKIBL'i last riOPHSOT. 58 whether in tile Mrtktyot the TeSUrrtoUm state, a point in- volving that other, already mooted,1 whether the bride and the parties Coiled to tin' bridal BUpper are identical, or dis- tinct,)— finally, what the nature of the lake »/ fire mention- ed, and whether identical or connected with that eternal and penal tire of which we read such awful notices in other Scriptures, — on all these points of solemn and surpassing- interest, it is evident that the answer to he given must in- volve a consideration of the great question of the Millen- nium and Second Advent ; and can therefore only fitly be given in the Chapter next but one following, in which the whole millennial Bubject has to be discussed. — Before which, however, it may be well to look carefully to those apparently parallel prophecies respecting; the final crisis, whether in Daniel or other of the Old Testament prophets, that have been just referred to. CILYPTER II. CHIEF OLD TESTAMENT PROPHECIES RESPECTING THE CRI- SIS OF THE CONSUMMATION. $ 1. — THE FIRST HALF OF DAMEl's LAST PROPHECY, FROM DAN. X. 1 TO \i. 31. Tin. date of the vision that I am now about to notice, — I mean I )anid's last vision, given in chapters x., xi., and xii. of his prophetic Book, — is stated by the Prophet to have been the third year of the reign of Cyrus;3 its local scene by the banks of the Hiddekel or Tigris.3 Now it appears from Ezra that it was in the first year of his reign that Cyrus issued hi- memorable edict for the Jews' emancipation from Babylon, and that Xerubbabcl and other Jews, acting on it, returned to Jerusalem : v also that it was in the seventh Jewish month (or October) that they set up an altar there.'' and in the second month of the second year of 1 p. 53. i Dan. x. 1. 3 Dan. x. 1- tL 1,6; ii. 2. 5 Ibid. iii. 1—6. 56 THE FIRST HALF OF [PART VI. their coining that they laid the foundation of the new Tem- ple :J — after which there began from the people of the land a system of harassing and interruption, — in part by per- sonal opposition, in part through the agency of accusers sent to vilify them at the Persian Court, — which at once put a stop to the work ; and suspended it through what re- mained of the reign of Cyrus, and for some years after, till the accession of Darius son of llystaspcs.2 Such then had already begun to be the state of things at Jerusalem in the April 3 of that 3rd year of Cyrus, in which Daniel (now, like St. John in Patmos, an old man of eighty or ninety)4 saw the vision we are about to consider. It seems im- portant to bear this in mind in examining the prophecy before us. — We can scarce but suppose that his fasting and prayer, which preceded and was answered by the present vision, had reference, like that which preceded a former re- velation,5 to the then state of trial and disappointment attending the returned remnant of his people. The Angel's words, on occasion of a former vision, about the street being built in troublous times,6 seemed already beginning to have fulfilment. When were better times to come, — the times of the Messiah promised ? His heart was set to under- stand the things predicted.7 Of the quadruple series of Gentile dominant empires which, it had been 70 years before foreshown to him, were to precede the full and final establishment of Messiah's kingdom,8 the second, of Persia, had already come, a guarantee for all the rest. But the third, — that of Greece, as expressly foreshown to him,9 — had as yet not come forward. When was that next step in the great chain of events to take place ? Wrhen the fourth empire to appear, under which apparently Messiah was to 1 Ezra iii. 8, &c. 2 ibid. iv. 1, 11, 24. 3 The vision was seen on the 24th day of the Jewish first month, or month Abib : which was part March, part April. Dan. x. 4. 4 Daniel was carried away from Jerusalem, on the first deportation of captive Jews, in the third year of Jehoiakim and first of Nebuchadnezzar. At this time he must have been nearly grown up ; as we find him in Nebuchadnezzar's second year ex- pounding to him his dream of the great quadripartite image : after which there had now elapsed the seventy years and more of the captivity. Dan. i. 1,6; ii. 1. 5 Dan. ix. 3, &c. regarded the acta, word-, or functions ascribed to im. See, for example, in Matt, xxviii. 8, 4, the description of the created ai that attended Christ's resurrection. -Similarly in Apoc. xiv. 11 lie that appeared on the white cloud, Ukt /« a mm uf man, could only be judged from tin adguncU of the vision to be Christ. See pp. 11, 12, supra. Aud so too in Apoc. i. 13. 58 THE FIRST HALF OF [PART VI. Thus it seemed, I say, to be the Lord, the Messiah, Him- self. His priestly garb marked him out in that character of the priest, the ottering priest of the great propitiatory sacrifice, which it needed that he should fulfil ere he took the kingdom.1 His silence, all the while that an attendant Angel detailed to the prophet the prediction we are about considering, might seem to have been the silence of one me- ditating on the mighty work before him. Again his position, with his feet planted on the waters of the Hiddekel, now the great characteristic river of the dominant Persian Empire, symbolized apparently his claim to that domination and empire as his own : 2 — on the realization of which claim those times of Eden that the river Hiddekel might suggest to the prophet's mind 3 would return ; and its waters flow again through a Paradise restored. It is generally supposed by commentators that the Angel who touched and strengthened the prophet, when struck down by the glory of the vision, and then in a predictive narrative informed him respecting the coming future, was the Angel Gabriel. And, as Gabriel is specifically men- tioned twice before as the appointed communicator with the prophet,4 this seems very probable. He tells him that on the first day that he chastened himself before God his prayer was heard : and, after a mysterious intimation or two on what for awhile hindered him from coming,5 and what he was afterwards about to do, in regard both of the Prince of Persia and then the Prince of Greece,6 — intimations indi- cating the fact of angelic ministration in influencing men's minds, and so bringing about the appointed issues and changes in human affairs,7 — he proceeds, in the notable pro- phecy of chap. xi. and xii., to unfold the then coming fu- 1 Compare Dan. ix. 26 : a prophecy of Messiah given Daniel about four or five years before ; it being dated in the first year of Darius the Mede, or two years before the first of Cyrus. 2 Compare Apoc. x. 1, and my remarks on it Vol. ii. pp. 42, 43, 61, 87. 3 Gen. ii. 14. — Wintle places the scene near its confluence with the Euphrates. 4 Dan. viii. 16, ix. 21. — It is observable that in the former of these two passages, it was " a man's voice from between the banks of the Ulai" that directed Gabriel to make Daniel understand the vision then given: just as here the Covenant-Angel stood on the waters of the Hiddekel ; while the Angelic attendants were on its banks. 5 Dan. x. 13 ; " But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me 21 days ; &c." 6 Dan. x. 20 ; " And now will I return to fight with the Prince of Persia : and when I am gone forth, lo, the Prince of Grecia shall come." 1 The Jews supposed angels to have their distinctive appointments over nations. CHAP. ii. § 1.] danifj/s last pbophbot. 59 tare, first under Persian, and then under Greek supremacy, — the second and third in the great tetrarchscal succession of prophecy: with the addition of a sketch of the sequel of events, specially with reference to the future fortunes of Daniel's own people,1 (whether that meant the literal Israel, and Jews only, or in part too the later-formed ( firistian I srael and Church,) even until the consummation. For " the time appointed was long." 2 The prophecy thus naturally divides itself into two parts : 1st that from xi. 1 to xi. 81, sketching the times of the Persians and Greeks; 2ndly that from xi. 81 to the end of chip, xii., sketching the sequel. Now it is not my inten- tion to enter fully into the details of the earlier half of the prophecy. For these I refer to Jerome, or Bishop Newton.3 My object is only to give such a general view of this part, in respect of its literal meaning, and its historic fulfilment, as may serve fitly to introduce that second and more diffi- cult part which has a direct bearing on the time and events of the final crisis ; questions which we have hitherto been considering simply by the light of the Apocab/ptic pro- phecy. It may be well to consider the two divisions of the prophecy each in a separate Section : and I now proceed accordingly, without further delay, to the discussion of that which belongs to the present Section ; viz. The earlier half of the prophecy. The Angel's prophetic narrative begins from the time then present.4 Three Persian kings, he says, were to rise after Cyrus, (these were Cambyses, Smerdis, and Darius Hystaspes,) before any mutation needing notice in the See Dr. M'Caul's Kimchi on Zechar. ii. 3. — So too Jerome on Isaiah iv. : " Angeli qui singulis praeant gentibus." 1 " I am come to make thee understand what shall befall thy people in the latter days." Dan. x. 11. ' Dan. x. 1. 3 In tli i-i Chapter of my Book I have referred continually to Wintle on Daniel for the Hebrew, u well as to Bishop Ninoton ami Prideaux tor the history. They both give copious authorities, — In revising for my 1th Edition 1 have also compared my ex- £lanations throughout with Venemcti ; who. down to rene 31, takes the same general istoric view of the prophecy U Newton, Wintle, and myself. * I purpose to subjoin the prophetic text in detached passages; and, beneath, the comment that illustrates them; making such critical remarks on each u may seen to bm uefbJ for readers unskilled like myself in Hebrew. 1 mud trn-t to the cou of Hebrew scholars to exeoM it. if of these Notes some appear to them to be aeecf< ■articular, or relative to points clear iu themselves. CO THE FIRST HALF OF [PART VI. world's affairs : * then a fourth, (Xerxes,) pre-eminent for his riches and power ; who, by stirring up the whole em- pire against Greece, was to bring Greece directly into con- tact with Persia ; an aspirant thenceforward for the su- premacy. And then " a mighty king " was to stand up,2 evidently the famous Greek \ang Alexander the Great: (here is the first grand transition in the prophecy; and one to be well marked as a precedent for comparison, in regard alike of what is unexpressed in it and of what is expressed, and as being a passage, per saltum, to another and later age, as well as to another country :f — I say this king was evidently the famous Greek ruler Alexander the Great: no other king having risen up in the 150 years between him and Xerxes, of whom it could be predicated that "he ruled with a great dominion, and did according to his will;" besides that what is said of the quadri-partition of his kingdom after his death " to others, and not to his own posterity," agrees very exactly, and so as it can be shown to do in the case probably of no other conqueror of antiquity, both with what is historically recorded of the division of Alexander's king- dom, and also with what was clearly foreshown about it in 1 The prophecy, Dan. xi. 2, begins thus. xi. 2. " And now will I show thee the truth. Behold there shall stand up yet three kings in Persia ; and the fourth shall be far richer than they all : and by his strength, through his riches,* he shall stir up all f against % the realm of Grecia." § 2 3. " And a mighty king shall stand up, || that shall rule with great dominion, and do according to his will. 4. And when he shall stand up 11 his kingdom shall be broken, and shall be divided towards the four winds of heaven : and not to his posterity, nor according to his dominion which he ruled : for his kingdom shall be plucked up, even for others beside ** those." 3 Viz. to that of Javan, or Greece ; mentioned in the preceding clause. * Wintle; " When he is grown strong through his wealth." f On the peculiar suitableness of this phrase to depict the preparations for Xerxes' expedition into Greece, see my Vol. iii. p. 445, Note 2. j px. The sense of against, here given, attaches to the word in 1 Chron. xx. 5 ; " There was war with (Px) the Philistines." § w\ Javan ; the usual word for Greece. So in Dan. x. 20, just before : also in Dan. ▼iii. 21, observed on in my Vol. iii. p. 426. || -173. The same Hebrew verb occurs in the verses 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 14, 15, 16, (twice,) 17, 20, 21, 25, 31; also xii. 1, 13. In verse 8 it is rendered continue, in verse 15 withstand; in the other cases stand up, as here, or simply stand. Gesenius says it is a word used particularly of a new prince ; instancing Dan. viii. 23, as well as xi. 2, 3, 20. — Besides which cases it occurs in verses 11, 13, 14 in the Hiphil form ; in verse 14 in the sense of to make to stand, establish, confirm ; in verses 11, 13 in that of lo_ stir up, to excite. 11 Or, when he shall have stood up. ** n??tt exclusively, or to the exclusion of; very much as in Exod. xii. 37, 0* Ezra ii. 65 : — the word " those" meaning his posterity ; the Hebrew rv^rjis, rendered posterity, being used as a concrete. ell IP. II. § 1.] I'Wlll.'s LA8T PROPHECY. I'»l another and earlier of Daniel's prophecies.1-— II is the sub- sequent history of two distinctively, out of these four divi- sions of the Greek conqueror's empire, thai the revealing Angel proceeded to sketch; viz. of what be called "the A" \g of the South" and " the King of the North." Now . from this simple designation alone, we might a priori pretty con- fidently have conjectured that the dEgypto- Macedonian and Syro-Macedonian dynasties were intended, of the Ptolemies and the Seleucidw; the seats of government of these princes being respectively South and North of Judea. But, in effect, conjecture is not Deeded on the point; the country of the KiiKj of Ihr South being expressly in an early passage of the prophecy called Egypt* — And the considerate read- er can scarce tail of seeing good reason for their selection. as special subjects of prophetic description to Daniel : not merely from the circumstance of their continuing longer, and making a much greater figure in history, than the other two post-Alexandrine Macedonian kingdoms;3 but yet more on account of the Holy Lund of Judea being involved more or less in their quarrels and wars;4 and the Jewish eminent being a dependency for the most part of one or other of them, until its occupation and subjugation by the Romans.5 And in regard to the earlier part of the prophecy con- cerning them, — i. e. from verse G to verse 81, where the question arises whether there may not then be made a trans- ition to the Roman subjugation of Judea, — there has been 1 Dan. viii. S; ""When he (the Grecian he-goat) was strong the great horn was broken ; and for it came up four notable ones," Sec See my Vol. iii. p. 428. — I ob- serve that Dr. Arnold heads the chapter 30 of his Roman History, a chapter relative to the kingdoms of Alexander's successors, with this verse of Dan. viii. 8. S; "He [viz. the King of the South] shall carry captive their gods into ■ ." compared with the notice oi the same event in the verse following, "The Km;: of the South shall com.' into hit own kingdom, and return to hie otcn land." Macedonian kingdom of Lysimachus was early overthrown by the tir-t Selencns, B.C. 281, about twenty yean after the battle of Ipsus: and again the daman kingdom of Cassander was finally overthrown by the Komans, as the result of the battle of Pydna, B.C. 108: whereas Syria \\a- nol made a Roman province till B.C. 66; Egypt not till ill'. 30. * So Jerome, an. Venema, p. 2. following comprehensive tabular view maybe useful of the dates of the rive kings of the Ptolemaic and Seleucidean dynasties, through the century and a half comprehended [as 1 inppose in this prophetic sketch. 1 premise thai the of Alexander the Great's aeath i> B.C. 323; of thai of bis ball-brother Philip Aridams, 316 ; oftbat of !.. under Signs, by Boxana^SOQ; a short time ait. r which (tie ■ • chiel Macedonian governors and princes assumed the ruyal title; — Ptolemy, however, u little befoi 62 THE FIRST HALF OF [PART VI. exhibited, I tliink, such satisfactory evidence of a continu- ous parallelism between the predictive description of the The Ptolemies. Ptolemy Soter, (son of Ptolemy Lagus) Governor of Egypt. . takes the title of King of Egypt Ptolemy Phi'ladelphus associ- ated with his father Sole king on his father's death (Under him the Septuagint Greek version of the Old Testament was made ; or, at least, be- gun.)* Ptolemy Euergetes 4. Ptolemy Philopater . 5. Ptolemy Epiphanes . 6. Ptolemy Philometor , B.C. B.C. 323 323 312 306 285 283 280 261 246 246 226 223 222 204 187 181 175 164 146 The Seleucidec. 1. Seleucus Nicator, Governor of Babylon. recovers Ba- bylon : and the JEra of the Seleueida begins. 2. Antiochus Soter. 3. Antiochus Theus. 4. Seleucus Callinicus. 5. Seleucus Ceraunus. 6. Antiochus Magnus. 7. Seleucus Philopator. 8. Antiochus Epiphanes. 9. Antiochus Eupator ; of whom 7. Ptolemy Physcon 146 Some takes the guardianship. After this fourteen more Syrian kings reigned, in reigns of short and uncertain power, till Syria was occupied and made a Roman province, B.C. 65, by Pompey : (at which time the JEra of the Seleueida properly ends, though sometimes used much later; see my Vol. i. p. 31 :) also six more Egyptian princes, to the death of Ptolemy Auletes : who dying, B.C. 51, left his kingdom and children to Roman guardianship ; one of them the Cleopatra famous in the histories of Caesar and Antony. * For it was not completed at once, but made at intervals : the Pentateuch first, under Philadelphus ; the prophets, it has been thought by learned men, not till perhaps 100 years, or more, after. Hence we can only partially argue from it against the objection first made by Porphyry, and which has been revived of late years by sundry rationalistic writers ; as if this prophecy of Daniel was written after the times of the Antiochi and Ptolemies to whose history we refer it. Nor indeed is it needed. As regards Daniel's earlier nine Chapters, there is, 1st, the internal evidence of the language used ; in part Chaldee, as by one in Babylonia, and during Babylon's supremacy ; viz. from ch. ii. 4 to the end of ch. vii. ; in part Hebrew, of a character most like to that of Daniel's contemporaries, Ezekiel and Ezra : 2ndly, the evidence of prophecies, the fulfilment of which is demonstrable, reaching far beyond the times of Antiochus Epiphanes and the Maccabees ; alike those in Dan. ii., vii., which prefigure the history of the Roman empire down to its resolution into ten kingdoms, and subsequent final supersession by the empire of Messiah ; and that in Dan. ix. respecting Messiah's manifestation in humiliation and death, after the 70 hebdomads, or 490 years, from some Persian king's decree for the rebuilding of Jerusalem. Then, as regards chaps, x., xi., xii., now specially our subject, we have the evidence, 1st, of the Hebrew language used, still of the same character as before ; not that of Greek, as in the post-Malacnine Apocryphal books: — 2ndly, that of the all but impos- sibility of these three chapters being fraudulently inserted into Daniel's canonical books in the Maccabean, or post-Maccabean times: — 3rdly, that of the absurdity of the idea of a Jew's forging them, with a view to its appearing a prophecy of Macca- bean times; and yet, by its mention of the 1335 days' period (as well as the 1260 days'), and of Daniel's standing at the end of them in his lot, and, together with the other just, shining as the sun and stars for ever and ever, furnishing its own refuta- tion, if so applied. All this besides Christ's own testimony to the genuineness of the whole book of Daniel, as then in the Jewish Old Testament Canon. OHAP.n. § I.] daniel's last prophecy. 58 two kings hen given, and tin- international history of the Ptolemies and Seleucids, as to leave no reasonable dottbt as to the meaning so far of the prophecy ; and thus to offer us the immense advantage of a sufficiently clear intro- duetion, at the outset, to that which is more obscure. 1. Whereas the Kinff of the South was to lie stroii"1 and the King of the North, (another of the gnat Greek King's princes or governors.) though later apparently in assuming the royal title, to become stronger than the King of the South, then contentions (as it is implied) to arise and continue between them, until composed by the expe- dient of a family alliance through the marriage of a daughter of the King of the South to the King of the North, — so 1 5. u And the king: of 'be south shall be strong, and one of his princes : * and he shall be Btrong above him.t and have dominion i his dominion shall be a great dominion. 6. And in the end of the years J they shall join themselves together: J fox the king's daughter of the south shall come || to the king of the north to make an agreement."!! * Wintle translates ; " The King of the South, that is, one of his (Alexander's) princes, shall be strong ; " observing that two manuscripts omit the *„ or and, before '.• and that, if retained, it must be taken as only explanatory. Then in the next clause he translates, " Yet shall another exceed him iu strength : " instead of " he shall." — On the other hand the Septuagint translates, "And one of his princes shall be strong abOTe him;" omitting the second connecting -,, or and. And Newton thinks that there is manifestly cither this redundance, by error of transcription, in the v text ; or an omission of " the king Of the north," after this second and. But no alteration of the received text seems to me necessary. It only needs that we anderstand " shall be strong," from the clause preceding, after " one of his (Alexander's) prinoes." And so indeed, I now observe, Venema, p. 3, explains it. It is to be remembered that Ptolemy became King of the South ere Seleucus assumed the royal title; and consequently while he was yet professedly only a governor, governor of Babylon. — We have in this clause an early example of Daniel's use of pronouns, in reference not to the next immediately preceding noun, but the one before. t .Mark the Is and him, in the sense of, " the latter above the Tomer." X Sept. /ura ra trr\ avrov reading TOB ; — i. e. after Seleucus' death. § Th" II. on w word (the Ilithpael form of "Oln to join) is used also 2 Chron. xx. 3o, 37; " Jehoshaphat Aid Join him.se/fviith. Ahaziah : " i. e. in the partnership and alliance of a joint undertaking. I " Propne intrant in donmm ejus et thalamum, tanqoam sponsa ad sponsum. Verbnm enim s*c seape introenndi poteetatem axaerit, opposite ad (bras sen iwi 1 et de intimo sumitur ac familiarissimo commercio (e. g. Judg. xii. 9, Cant. i. 4) quale ater conjuges." Venema, p. 14. 1 Eebr, B3*»^g^O Tthyb. Literally, " To do or make rectitudes :" so Venema: I . to make t hings straight; Gesenius, /o make peace. The latter compares 17, where the root "-* occurs, and where the Septuaginl renders it (more correctly probably than our English translation) tvdna iravra fitr' avrov iroin. Si A Bra explains the pi I make peace hetweeu them ; " as also the Rabbi 8aadtah. 04 THE FIRST HALF OF [PART VI. Ptolemy the First became strong as King of Egypt, and Seleucus, the Macedonian governor of Babylon, on subse- quently assuming the title of King, much greater and stronger:1 and, a quarrel having soon arisen between the immediate successors of these two kings, war ensued ; ~ and continued until composed by the second Ptolemy giving his daughter .Berenice in marriage to the third of the Se- leucidean dynasty- — 2. Whereas this scheme of family alliance was prophesied of as to fail,3 and both the South King's married daughter, and the King her husband, and 1 So Appian, apud Bishop Newton. In fact Seleucus' empire extended from the Indus to the iEgean. — At this time lived Megasthenes and Berosus. 2 So Newton, and also Venema, pp. 10, 11, from Jerome and Pausanias. 3 6. " But she shall not retain * the power of the arm ; f neither shall he stand, nor his arm : " I hut she shall be given up ; and they that brought her, and he that begat her : § and he that strengthened her || in these f times.** * The same Hebrew word occurs in Dan. x. 8 ; "I retained no strength." f SVvj, fioa\a»v, is a word frequent in the Old Testament, both in the singular and plural, to signify strength., power, whether of an individual, or sometimes of a military host. So yi-fl uhK, Job xxii. 8, " a man of arm, or strength ; " and Gen. xlix. 24, " The arms (i. e. power) of his hands were made strong by the God of Jacob." — In Isa. li. 9, andlxii. 8, the double phrase " strength of the arm" (ivivtiov avrwv, with their molten images : a meaning very different from our English rendering, princes, but which attaches also to the Hebrew word D"O0$. For the root of the word is rp3, to pour out : and it thus applies alike to mage* melted in fusion, fas the cognate word in I- ;. xli. 29,] and to princes poured upon with the anointing oil, as in Josh. xiii. '21 Paalm hwiii. 12, kc. Probably the Septuagint rendering, molten images, is the more correct: as it so w< II carries on the idea of their gode in the clause preceding ; and was also so striking a point in the historical fulfilment And so, I see, Gesenius ad verb, explains it. BSWeU a- Wintie. Venenw thinks either rendering good, and suitable to the history, pp. t7. 18. U nr--- --;. veest b of >h< w desire : — a phrase used also of the sacred Jewish \ ea- sels carried off to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar, 2 Chron. zxxri. in. Compare mj re* m irks uii somewhat similar phrases in fanes 16, 37 infra. v..i.. iv. 5 GO THE FIRST HALF OF [PART VI. the ill-treatment of the daughter of the King of the South, then this Southern King to invade the Northern King's territories, take his fortresses, capture his treasures and princes, and (as it is singularly added) their gods, and re- turn triumphantly with them into his own country and kingdom, Egypt, — so the third Ptolemy, forthwith on com- ing to the kingdom, invaded Syria, (then under the rule of the fourth Seleucidean king, Seleucus Callinicus, son to Laodice,) overran the whole kingdom to the Euphrates, and indeed beyond almost to the Indus, plundered it of 40,000 talents of silver and of 2500 images of gods ; and with these, and numerous captives, returned triumphantly back into Egypt.1 — 4. Whereas the sons of the King of the North {sons in the plural) were to be stirred up,2 and assemble great forces, as if with a view to the recovery of gold ; and he shall continue more years than the king of the north. 9. So the king of the south shall come into his kingdom, and shall return into his own land."* 1 So Wintle from Jerome. An inscription on an ancient marble, which he notes from Calmet, thus records this exploit of Euergetes ; " Sacris quoe ab Egypto Persie abstulerant receptis, ac cum reliqua congesta gazii in Egyptum relatis." The" inscription was published by Allatius at Rome in 1631. Hence it would seem that Euergetes brought back among these idol-gods those that Cambyses the Persian king had carried away two centuries and a half before out of Egypt. But, as Ve- nema observes, they could not be meant specifically here ; the gods spoken of being said to be made captive. 2 " 10. But his sons f shall be stirred up,J and shall assemble a multitude of * This verse seems recapitulatory. — It is to he observed that there is no his prefix- ed to kingdom in the Hebrew. So that the natural translation would be ; " And he (viz. the King of the North) shall enter into the kingdom of the King of the South, and return to his own land ; " i. e. without effecting anything. Compare Is. xxxvii. 34. And so, I see, Venema translates and expounds it, pp. 51 — 55; with an extract from Justin in illustration : — " L»tus malis suis. . . Seleucus, vcluti par virihus, hel- ium Ptolempeo infert : sed quasi ad ludibrium tantum fortune natus esset, nee prop- ter aliud vegni opes recepisset quam ut aniitteret, rictus prselio . . trepidus Antiochiam confiufit." f That is the sons of the King of the North, the last mentioned, according to the explanation above given of the verse preceding. The King of the North, spoken of in the next verse as the southern King's antagonist, was apparently one of these two sons. So Aben Ezra and Saadiah. We should observe that wherever, as here, there is the pronominal suffix, there is no distinction in Hebrew between the plural and the dual. So that we cannot argue fur a duality of sons as here expressly defined. I The Hebrew is i~:rn, the same verb that occurs again, and in the same Hith- pahel form, near the end of this verse, and also in verse 25 ; and quite a different one from that in verse 2. Its root is ~-a : a verb not used in Kal ; but which in I'iel signifies to stir up contention, as Prov. xv. 18, "A wrathful man stirreth up strife : " and in its Ilithpahel form (as here) is used, 1st, says Gesenius, in the sense to be ex- cited, as to anger, 2nd, to contend, to engage in ivar. So Deut. ii. 5, 19, " Meddle not with them in war ; " also Jer. 1. 24. CHAP. II. $ L] DANIKI.'s LAST PBOPHXCT. 87 their losses and to revenge, and one out of them om only) to overflow, (whether over bia own recaptured territory, or over that of his enemy the Kinjj; of the South,) and the King of the South to inert him in battle, and utterly over- throw him,— so diil Seieuetu Ceraumts, and, on his Bpeedy death a year or two after, his brother and successor Antio- chus, called the Great,1 assemble great forces to recover their father's dominions, and the latter achieve the object, recover Seleucia and Syria, and proceed to invade Egypl with a mighty army ; * whereupon ensued the (to him) dis- astrous battle of Kaphia, on the Egyptian frontier, in which he suffered a total defeat from Phihpator, the then reign- ing Ptolemy, — 5. Whereas ' the King of the South \\;i> great forces; ami UN shall certainly come,* and overflow, and pass through, then ■hall he return. f and be stirred up.j even to his fortress, j 11. And the king of the south shall he moved witn oholer, and shell come forth, and fight with liim, area with tlie kinir of the north: and he shall set forth || a great multitude; but the multitude shall be given into hisli hand." 1 So Justin x\v. 1 ; " Antioehaa tea Syria), vetari inter se regnorum odio stimu- 1 into, repentino bello niultas urbes ejus (I'toleniaji) oppressit, ipaamqne iEgyptum aggreditnT." the following dates will be useful towards the illustration of this prophetic sketch of Antiochus the Or.. it's bistarT. it. i'. 217 198 192 190 187 Antiochus succeeds to the Syrian throne. ited in the battle of Kaphia. S paa in the battle of 1'anias, on returning from his Eastern con- quest ; and recovers Judea and Jerusalem. War with the Romans begins, and lasts three y> its. Battle and defeat of Ifagneaia. Antiochus killed. 3 Polyoma daaeribea the army and its amount ; G2,000 foot, 6000 horse, and 102 inta. Newton and Wintle. 12, " And whi •!! he hath taken away** the multitude, hi- hear! aha]] be lifted up: * The change from plural to singular is as marked in the Hebrew as the I — The clause i- literally, " And be shall come, coming." + The Hebrew rerb -•- i> the same thai is used in verses 18 and 19 subsequently with -. in the sense of ml ' towtrdt a phut. It often mean-, when joini d with another verb, to do a tliinn mjfiiii. Bo Venema, p. 58, " Phrasia titration** eontini t." Bo here it may perhaps mean, that after his //,•*/ acting out of bia angi r, wing, he should be agam excited to urge the wax nius supplies "and march" even to his fortress; i.e. the fortress of the Southern KiiiL'. id nmnitiaaimnm locum." Bo Venema, p. 66 ; explaining the ji •• - d the end of the word i/m/ioz, as giving it the force of a superlative ; and the actual place alluded to t" be the famous fort ■■, in defence of which :t m ar it. - rarse 18. Bae p. 60, N • The /" and hit in the two ancoearive clam dently to dii •• srr ; a word u-' d not unfreijuentlv of taking away with vi«lt net. 68 THE FIRST IIALF OF [PART VI. not eventually to be strengthened by this great victory, his and* he shall cast down many ten thousands ; hut he shall not he strengthened by it. 13. For the king of the north shall return, and shall set forth a multitude greater than the former; and shall certainly come after certain years, f with a great army, J and with much riches. 14. And in those times there shall many stand up against the king of the south : also the robbers of thy people § shall exalt themselves to estab- lish the vision; || but they shall fall.H 15. So the king of the north shall come, and cast up a mount, and take the most fenced cities: ** and the arms ft of the south shall not withstand, neither his chosen people;!) neither shall there be any strength to withstand. §§ 16. Hut he that cometli against |||| him shall do according to his own will ; and none shall stand before him : and he shall stand in the glorious land : f If ivii. 34, Job xxvii. 21, xxxii. 22, &c. But in these examples the verb is in Kal ; in the text in Piel : to which latter form of the verb however Gesenius also gives the sense, to take away ; adducing Amos iv. 2, as an example of it.— Or the verb may be here taken as in the Niphal, passively. * Wintle, " Wherefore though." f Margin, Hebr. at the end of times, even years. X Venema, p. 85, renders the clause come to, instead of come with : " Veniendo veniet ad rohur magnum et possessionem multam." Such, he says, is the usual use of the verb in this Chapter. § Marg. the children of robbers : used as sons of Belial, &c, for men of that charac- ter.— The word B^Sf^S, rendered robbers, is often used of violent and latcless men. So Psalm xvii. 4, "The ways of the violent ;" Ezek. xviii. 10, "If he beget a son that is a robber, a shedder of blood;" Jer. vii. 11, "Is this house become a den of robbers in your eyes ? " Again in Isa. xxxv. 9, of ravenous beasts. Lee expounds it here as violent lawless men, of (or belonging to) thy people. The Sept. translates it oi vioi rwv \oifiwv, rov Xaov gov. Compare 2 Chron. xiii. 7, ovvrjxQnoav irpoc, avrov av&pic, \otp.oi uioi irapavofiof also Mac. x. 61. — Venema, on the other hand, explains it in a sense less opprobrious of high-spirited revolters against the yoke of slavery : " impetuosi ad libertatem grassatores, sese superbia et teuieraria spe effe- rentes, jugumque excutientes." p. 102. || Lit. " To make to stand a vision ; " the definite article not being in the original Hebrew. So the Sept. rov o-rrjaat opaaiv. — So, for example, in case of a vision being pretended by false prophets among the revolters, in order to stir up the more violent to take up arms in favour of Antiochus, as an appointed deliverer, and to attack the castle of Jerusalem, then garrisoned by a strong Egyptian force; like as by Ahab's false prophets, when urging the expedition against Ramoth Gilead. Compare too Isa. xxviii. 7, Jer. v. 31, xiv. 14, &c. Such occurred to me as a not unlikely solution before consulting Venema. I find that he, not very dissimilarly, supposes a vision urged in order to this purpose: only not such a pretended vision as I have suggested ; but the vision of Jewish restoration and final prosperity that is the burden of so much of Old Testament prophecy, p. 103. He compares Isa. xxvi. 17, 18, speaking of Israel's previous disappointed hopes on this head ; " We have been with child, we have brought forth wind, &c." IT Or fail : literally, totter, stumble. ** Or, city of munitions. ff fipaxiovtg. XX Literally, the people of Ms choices. Marg. §§ Or " stand," as before. || "Against," hyi : a word meaning more generally to ; but also used in the sense of against, as Gen. iv. 8, "Cain rose against Abel;" Ezek. xiii. 8, 9, "Behold I am upon, or against you : " &c. — Venema however prefers the usual meaning ; and renders the clause, that whoever comes to him (the King of the North) will conform to his will. p. 114. UH "^"""sa ; i. e. literally, " in the land of the beauty, ornament, honour." In Dan. viii. 9 the same word "'asrt is used, perhaps of Judea, and with the definite article, "waxed great toward the pleasant land;" the word land, however, not being there expressed. So again Dan. xi. 41, 45, " the land of glory, the glorious holy mount ;" Jer. iii. 19, "goodly heritage, or heritage of beauty ;" and in Ezek. xx. 6, 15, "the glory of all lands;" also 2 Sam. i. 19. — In Isa. xiii. 19, "the glory of kingdoms" is an appellative used of Babylon, N. B. In Psalm cvi. 24, "They despised the pleasant land" Jer. iii. 19, " Give thee a pleaxant land," and Zech. vii. 14, "They laid the pleasant land desolate," the He- brew phrase is different ; being rnttfi-y-N, " laud of desire." chap. ii. { 1.] daniel's last prophecy. 69 heart being lifted up (perhaps, as in Sennacherib's1 or Da- lian's case,9 againsl God himself) with thai vanity which often precedes a tall, ami after certain years the King of the North was to return, with great riches and a greater army than before, and in confederacy moreover with various other states ami persons, including among them certain re- volters or violent men of Daniel's people, — and, there being DO power in the arms of the South to withstand him. would both take the city of munitions, and also stand in the glori- ous land, or land of the glory and beauty, that is, of Jerusalem and its sacred temple, which by his hand, whether in respect of its buildings or otherwise, should be perfected and made complete, — so Ptolemy Philopator, the victor of Raphia, instead of aggrandizement by his victory, abandoning himself thenceforth to his lusts and passions, made peace with Antiochus that he might the better indulge them ; showed how his heart was lifted up by attempting, on a visit to Jerusalem now again subjected to him, to force his way into the Holy of Holies ; and then in a few years died of his debauchery:3 — whereupon (his infant son having succeeded him) Antiochus, who had meanwhile been indefatigably reconquering the eastern pro- vinces of his ancestral dominion, returned after some fifteen years, as to an easy prey, against the Egyptian rival king- dom, with great riches and a mightier army than before, — the King of Macedon having confederated with him, the Jewish insurrectionists and profest patriots thrown off their which by his hand shall be consumed." * (Iff arg. perfected.) ' Isa. xxxvii. 23. • J i nron. xwi. 16. 3 So the Univ. II i>t. ix. -J20, referred to by Wintle. • "It shall be consumed, or perfected, in, or Jy, hit hand." Here, 1st, as tin verb i> in the maaculmt form, we might naturally deem the it masculine also: in which we should suppose, it would not answer to the yx, uth» land," which is femi- nine; but either to the word beauty, or the He, viz. the Kiny of the North. Hut where the subject is in .1 state of construction with another noun. I am told thai the predJ _ r>, in gender and number with the hut, >•. not the former. So e. g. v. in. 1 Sam. ii. 4, Lev. xiii. 9. In the last of which DBMS tin' literal reading is thus : "when the plague (ma-c. aoun) of leprosy £1 (fern, verb) in a man." It is to l>.- observed too that the Hebrew language is, a* Qesenius says, sparing in the dm of the feminine forms. Thus Isa. \\\iii. 9, literally ; "The land (fem.J mourneth (masc.) and languished) (fem.)."— "2. The Septuagint, agreeably with the Margin, fives tin- tense TiXintirimrai, "shall be perfected," or completed. And so Wintli and lishop Newton. The verb is used Bxod \\xi\. 82, 1 Kin^s vi. 88, of the com- pletion of the tabemaelt ami templt. Ami hen- ton it may rent to tin temple, 1 of holiness ; though without tbu -'"- of K ne i.">. 70 THE FIRST HALF OF [PARTVI. allegiance to Egypt, and many of the Egyptians them- selves rebelled, — defeated Scopas utterly who was sent against him, besieged and took Sidon, the " city of muni- tions," where Scopas' had taken refuge, together with other fenced cities,1 and then recovered Judea: where, as the Jews welcomed him as a deliverer, he acted like a deliverer and friend towards them ; and, by repairing the city walls, gathering together to their awn land more out of the Jewish dispersion, assisting the completion of the temple,2 and other ways, did not a little contribute to the perfecting of the national restoration. — G. Whereas3 the King of the North was, notwithstanding this success, and just when setting his face to enter with all his strength the southern 1 Venema thinks Gaza especially referred to iD the designated city of munitions. 2 " Josephus informs us that Antiochus made a decree that the Jews should enjoy many immunities, and should live according- to their own rites and laws, and that the work of the temple should be finished." Wintle. So too Bishop Newton. 3 17. " He shall also set his face to enter with the strength of his whole kingdom,* and upright ones with him : thus shall he do ;f and he shall give him the daughter of women % corrupting her . $ but she shall not stand on his side, || neither be for him. 18. After this he shall turn his face unto the isles,f and shall take many : ** * Or, " to enter with strength his whole kingdom," i. e. the whole kingdom of the King of the South. So Venema and Wintle prefer to construe the clause ; meaning Egypt proper, the centre and strength of Ptolemy's kingdom. The verb sis, enter, is used thus transitively Vs. c. 4, Gen. xxiii. 10, 18: also 1 Sam. xii. 8, Amos v. 19. Perhaps the passage may be thus rendered and understood. " And he (the King of the North) shall set his face to enter with strength all his kingdom ; . . . and shall give him ... in order to destroy it :" the it thus referring to the kingdom of the South. t The Greek renders these two clauses, Kat tvQua iravra fitr avrov iroirfmr and so the Vulgate, " Et recta faciet cum eo ; " reading ~:::-ji instead of "©SI : the former being a reading supported by one manuscript, and which Wintle and Bishop Newton approve. Then the whole clause Tr^Jl "ms t^-ty, will be thus literally rendered ; " And he shall make rectitudes, or things straight, with him ; " that is, as in verse 6, alliances, or an agreement ; or, as Aben Ezra, peace. ~VS is as often to make, as to do. It is rendered deal in verse 7 ; practise, viii. 24. X Some one so called tear ££ox»/i', for rank or beauty. So Houbigant. History explains it of the northern king's own daughter. § Lit. "to corrupt or destroy her, or it :" the verb Mho being used (like the Greek fBtipio) both of corrupting, as Gen. vi. 12, "All flesh corrupted its way :" and of de- stroying, (a yet more common meaning,) as Dan. viii. 24, "He shall destroy the mighty ones," Isa. xiv. 20, 2 Sam. i. 14, &c. — Perhaps the rendering here should be "to destroy it;" the feminine noun kingdom, mentioned before, being understood; not her. For the historical sense well agrees thereto ; but very ill to the rendering of " to corrupt Iter." Besides which, is there any example to justify the sense being attached to this word of getting her treacherously to act for him (viz. her father) in her new marriage alliance ; so as Wintle, Newton, &c, would have it? So, I now see, Venema takes the clause; " ad corrumpendum regnum," p. 129. || " On his side," or " for him," is supplied from the clause following. It is not expressed in the original. H Df*S?. Lit. to islands, or maritime coasts. The word is the same as that used for the isles of Chittim, and the isles of Elishah, or Greece, in Ezek. xxvii. 6, 7. ** i. e. many islands : both substantive and adjective being masculine. CHAP. II. $ 1.] D\Mi.l.'s LAST PROPHECY. 71 kingdom, to break off the apparently meditated design, make an agreement and reconciliation with the king of t lie South, a plan of agreement invoh ing the giving him his daughter in marriage,) and, as if with new and other views of aggrand- isement, to turn his face to the isles, (the (Jrecian Isles,) and take many, till some prince or general, as one whose honour was shamed by the act, should repulse him, and make him return ignominiously to his own land, where he would Btumble, and fall, and not be found, — so Aniiochus the Great, when prepared to enter Egypt, changed his plan, made peace with the young Ptolemy, betrothed his daughter to him, and after a while conducted her to the marriage ; then, as considering all secure in that quarter, turned his face toward the Grecian Isles, and with a great fleet and army took many, thereby offending the majesty of the 'Roman Republic, whose confederates they were : where- upon the Roman commanders caused the reproach to turn on him, attacked and defeated him utterly both at Thermo- pylae and in the decisive battle of Magnesia, and so forced him to return to his own land a disgraced fugitive, the west- ern half of his empire being surrendered, and an immense tribute imposed on him j1 to obtain help towards the pay- ment of which, when he had entiled and sought to plunder Mime rich temple in Elymais, he was attacked, killed, and found no more. — 7. As the next successor2 of the King of the \orth was described as a raiser of taxes, or one that would cause an exactor to pass over the glory of his king- dom, then perish in a few days, but neither in angry brawl nor battle, — so Antiochus' son and successor Seleucm PhUo- pator was scarcely known except as a raiser of taxes, to pay but a prince • tor his own behalf,t shall cause the reproach offered by him to oi without $ hit own reproach he shall cause it to torn upon him. 19. Then shall be turn l*i— bee toward the fortj of bis own land: and he shall stumble, and fall, and not be found. " 1 The Articles of the Treaty are given in fall in the Univ. lli-t. i\. 268. - 20. "There shall stand up in hi> estate I a raiser of taxes in the glory of his * **-"t : a word used both ol . ttrate* ami military eomnumdtrt : of the liicah iii. 9, - Prino - or lodges, thai perverl equitj ;" of th< -h. i. 24, "the captains oi the men oi « ur." So I fudges ri. 6, to. + '•'-, •' in to him :" i. e. as regards this genera] himself. * Rather, "/.'mi./m, he shall make," \v. So Wintle. — He shall not only e proaoh from himself, hut torn it on his assailant. So too Venema, p. ill; who ■i. 1 1. i Lit. | Literally on hit bam : i. 8. on the baw, or in the plooe, of the former kin:.' 7. 'See p. 65 Note t. 72 THE FIRST HALF OF [PART VI. off a yearly tribute of 1000 talents imposed for 12 years by the Romans; his exactor of taxes, lleliodorus, being sent to gather them, not merely elsewhere and otherwise in the once glorious kingdom of Syria, but by plunder too of that which the revealing Angel might specially mean by "the glory of his kingdom," (though Seleucus did not bo appreciate it,) viz. the temple of Jerusalem: very soon after which sacrilege, and in the twelfth or last year for which the Roman tribute of 1000 talents had been imposed,1 hav- ing fulfilled his predicted character, he was killed ; that same Heliodorus, who had been his instrument for spoiling the temple, treacherously assassinating him.2 — 8. Whereas kingdom : * but in few days f he shall he destroyed, neither in anger, I nor in battle." 1 So Wintle. Bishop Newton has not remarked this characteristic fact. 2 21. " And in his estate § shall stand up a vile person,|| to whom they shall not * Literally, one who makes an exactor to pass over the glory of his kingdom. The Hebrew word for exactor, (br-!, so reading the word with the Lexicographers, instead of »".!,) and its cognates, are used of money exactions. So Deut. xv. 2, 3 ; "Every creditor, that lendeth aught unto his neighbour, shall . . . not exact it of his neigh- bour, or of his brother : ... of a foreigner thou mayest exact it again : " and 2 Kings xxiii. 35 ; Jehoiakim taxed the land " to give the money according to the commandment of Pharaoh: he exacted the silver and the gold of the people of the land." In Zcch. ix. 8, "And no oppressor shall pass through them any more," the same word is used. — "The glory" may mean simply the Northern king's (once) glorious kingdom : — or perhaps as Wintle explains it, the Jewish temple. See my Note 1W p. 68 supra, on verse 16. Venema explains the clause otherwise, thus. "There shall stand up an exactor against his offshoot : [so he translates 133 '-" :] and shall make the glory of the king- dom, or glory of reigning, to pass over to him." And so, he says, Heliodorus mur- dered Seleucus, and usurped the crown. But on this point of translation the almost uniform judgment of expositors is against him. And historically we may object the omission in this case of all notice of Seleucus from the prophecy. f Within a year. Wintle. X 0"ES3, from rs ; a contracted verbal, (root tjs to breathe,) which 1st signifies the breathing organ, i. e. the nose, or nostrils ; and 2ndly, because the breathing of the nostrils often expresses anger, means anger also. In this sense the word is often used: e. g. Gen. xxvii. 45, of the anger of Esau against Jacob, which made him seek to kill him ; Judges xiv. 19, of that of Samson against the Philistines, which issued in a murderous attack upon them ; and 1 Sam. xx. 30, &c, of that of Saul against Jonathan, under the influence of which he cast a javelin at him to slay him. So that this phrase in the text may very well mean, that the king should neither be slain in any private angry brawl or quarrel, nor in jxublic war. Hence Wintle's recourse to the Coptic version for the different reading of d^ts , signifying arms, or weapons of war, seems quite unnecessary. Compare Venema; p. 168, who explains the word of the ebullition of anger in a popular tumult, very much as I have suggested. \ m'S—tj. So verses 7, 20, before. And, as before, Venema prefers to render it, against his offshoot. His historical explanation, which refers to the same Heliodorus, a man of contemptible rank, standing up against Seleucus' son, and usurping the kingdom, but being rejected by the people, is independent of the : and seems admissible, if we construe the next clause, "And one shall come in," of Autiochus Lpiphanes. |! r.izz, one despised : the same word that is used in Isaiah's memorable prophecy CHAP. II. Jl.] I'WMi.'s LAST PBOPHECT. 78 tin* next kinix of the North waa to be a man every waj con- temptible, and yet, contrary to all probabilities attendant on such a character, to obtain successes eventually against his rival such ;is none before, to Bucceed in the firsl instance • th.1 honour of the kingdom : bat he shall oome in peaceably,! and obtain th. "in by flatteries.! --. And [with] § the arms of n Rood thai] the] l» i§ver« flowed 1 from before bun, and shall be broken ; yea alto the prince of the covenant. of Christ, liii. 3, "Ho is ieepieed," Ac; and the Niphil Partieip. ofnj^ to 1 lightly, to despite. Bo 9 Sam. vi. 16, 2 Kings rix.*21, fto. • i. e. "mi whom they (the people) shallrnot confer the hononr," Ac t r.'~tz, in quietness. The word is used Prov. xvii. l, " Better is a dry morsel, and euietneei therewith;'' as also Psalm oxxii 7; and again Dan. viii. 2tf, "In peace n. in the midrt of /nun) he shall destroy many." So too verse 24 infra, . tubriritotet, bkmdUimj Trommius. Thus the word has a doable - aw . being applied both to the slipperineea of a path, and the slipperiness or flattering and I nt' the tongue- In the former sense it occurs Psalm x\w. c>. " Lei their way be dark and slippery :" in the latter its originating verb, ~~~, Prov. ii. 16, vii. 0, MThe stranger tliat flattereth, or dissembleth, with her words: " and Ptot. xix. 5, " A man that flattereth or dissembleth to Ins neighbour." In this latter sense the verbal mi in- tn be need both here and in the verses 32, 34, below. — "Arts of dissimulation." us. j 1 he with is not in the Ilebrcw. Therefore rather, "The arms of the overflowing shall." Ac. So the Greek; icaj fipa\ioiig T0V KaraicXi^oiroc KaTaic\voOi)' Anal expedition against Egypt thai this could be said to be fulfilled. — The word r--- iteelf, is of as genera] application and sense in Hebrew as in English ; ami therefore Micbaelis' rendering, rex faderatue, quite sufficient to satisfy it; a ren- dering which Wintle approves. — The word t»js translated prince, \> also one of general meaning, and applied alike to thirls royal, militant, civil, and ecclesiastical .' 1 Bam. i\. 16, x 1, otSaul, the ruling ar Israel; 1 Chron. xiii. 1, 1 I run. xx\ii. 21, of military leaden ; 2 Chron, xx\iii. 7, of a ruler over the palace ; 1 Chron. ix. 11, and 2 Chron. xxxi. 13, of the priest that was ruler over the house or 1 of God.- -la Dan. ix. Jo. 26, it is used alike of the I'liiice Messiah, and of the I'rince that was to come and desolate Jerusalem, Such being the whole requirement of the two Hebrew words, "Wintle explains them historically of the then king of Egypt; as the rez faderatue, confederated by league with Antiochus Epiphanes, soon aft r the hitter's establishment in the k doin. In which application however of the clause, I think it would be bitter to r- 1. r rather to the previous treaty with the Egyptian king made by Epiph Esther Antiochus the Great : as history records no new treaty made with him by Epiphanes himself. This is the view thai I adopt in my text fin the Other hand Bishop Newton and others explain the words, chief of the 0OV8- nant of th' . '.. '■ lae, against whom Antiochus Epiphanes practised and Venema (p. 208) of the eupremt heavenly head of tin Jewish covenant, viz. the ii : against whom Antiochus acted effectively in these hi> attacks on the Jewish religion, even as Sennacherib against God, when attacking Jndah and Eezekiah. If holy had been added, as in verse 80, t hi> view ofthi covenanl meant would have been - word sometimes omitted; e. Lr. Pi. l\\i\. 20. || Or, as Prof. LOO, thedl be ttoept alontj, or, uxcay. 74 THE FIRST HALF OF [PART VI. to the northern kingdom by flatteries, (the arms of the overflower, its previous usurping occupant, being overflow- 23. And after * the league made with him f he shall work deceitfully. For \ he shall come up, § ami shall In-come strong with a small people. 24. He shall enter peaccahly || even unto the fattest places or the province: IF and he shall do that which his fathers have not done, nor his father's fathers : he shall scatter among thein** the prev.and spoil and riches. And he shall forecast his devices ft against the strong- hol'ds,++ even for a time.§§ 25. And he shall stir up his power and his courage against the king of the soutli, with a great army : and the king of the south shall he stirred * yafrom, out of; and sometimes after or by reason of. Compare the ^ratt in the important verse 31, and my Note on it p. 79 infra. t Lit. " And after the (i. e. their or his) being associated with him he shall prac- tise deceit: " Sept, Kai awo rwv avva.piZ,uov irpoc avrov noirjau SoXov. It is the Hitlipacl Syriac infinitive form (to join oneself), used as a noun, derived from ^art, to be joined or confederated ; a word so used Gen. xiv. 3. % ), and. § Or, go up. || Frfaoa, as in verse 21 ; where see Note f. Wintle would prefer to construe this word with the last clause of the verse preceding; "shall become strong by quiet measures .•" an idea with which the 1 of the next word well agrees. IF wnt 7/jttsnai, pinguetudines provincice. — The word "p«ra is thus used figur- atively in Isaac's blessings on Jacob and Esau, Gen. xxvii. 28, 39 ; " God give thee of the fatness of the earth."— nr-w, like the English province, is a word used of some smaller division of a country or kingdom. So in Ezra and Daniel (e. g. Dan. ii. 48, iii. 2, 3) of the provinces of the Persian empire very frequently. In one case, Ezra v. 8, Judea is thus specified, " the province of Judea." And, as there is no specification of any particular province of either the Syrian or the Egyptian kingdom, and Judea was in a Jewish mind the province par excellence, I conceive that this is the one here intended ; and not, as Wintle, the Delta of Egypt. This view best suits history, on Wintle' s own report of it : " When Antiochus went to examine the southern parts of his dominion (2 Mace. iv. 21) he sent Apollonius with his retinue into Egypt ; but it does not appear that he made an excursion thither himself." Aud so, I now see, Venema explains it : observing, p. 229, that Epiphanes reduced Judea to the subject state very much of a province. ** Among ivhom ? Newton supposes among his own Syrian people; citing Po- lybius and 1 Mac. iii. 30 in proof of his munificence in gifts and public shows, on which the spoil and riches he acquired were spent : Win tie, that it refers to the large donations and bribes, from out of the plunder, with which he courted the Egyptians, which is also noticed in the 1st Maccabees, i. 16. — But may not the on? rather mean belonging to them, viz. to his father's fathers : that is, as stored up by them ? So 1 Sara. xiv. 16, " the watchman of Saul," ^K'J1?, signifies of or belonging to Saul. This is a common sense of h. And so precisely, I now find, Venema explains it, p. 234 : " Possessio eorum, sc. patrum et majorum, sensu facillimo, qui tamen fugit interpretes ; qui pronomen an? ipsis vertunt, &c. " ft Or, devise his devices. The 25th verse should have begun, I conceive, with this clause. XX The Septuagint, for n^xa?, strong holds, seems to have read ff^SB, Egypt : its translation being tv' Aiyvirrov Xoyuirai Xoyianovg. — Venema thinks that the arces here referred to were the sacras arces of certain temple-treasuries which Antio- chus Epiphanes attacked, specially those of Jerusalem and of Diana in the Elymais ; the latter attack resulting in his death. Thus Venema makes this verse run on in a general sketch to the end of Epiphanes' career; and then return to a description of his expeditions into Egypt, more in detail. \k ^.V""1?; ""C Kaipov. Sept. Compare this with the " at the time appointed" of verses 27 and 29: also witli the notices of time in verses 13, 14. The word ny time, will be observed on in a subsequent note on verse 40. OHAP. II. 4 l»] l>ANIKl/s LAST PROl'H KCV. 75 c(l from before him,)1 to become strong with contracted means and a small people, to attack the King of the Sooth, albeit united by treaty with him, (apparently by his father's treaty noted before in the prophecy,) to defeat him and his armies, (adding thereby to his ancestral riches, and pro- fusely scattering the acquired plunder and treasure,) then, aided by treachery in the Southern King's court, to over- flow into Egypt, scheme mischief against its king under the same roof, while making profession of friendship, and re- turn (as if to give time for his policy to work) into his own land, there manifesting in some way or other a heart set against " the holy covenant," or covenant and religion of the Jews, Gods holy people, — so AniiochuB Epiphanes, bro- ther to the late King, and not the lawful heir to the throne, escaping from Rome, where he had been long time a host- age, did by flattering alike the Romans, the Princes En- menes and Attains, and the Syrian people, obtain the Syrian kingdom, overwhelming the adverse power of the usurper up to battle,* with a wry great ami mighty army : hut he shall not stand. For f they shall forecast devices i against him: 26. yea, tiny thai feed of the portion of his meat§ shall destroy him ; H and his army shall overflow,! and many shall fall down slain. 27. And both these kings' hearts shall be to do mischief;*- and they shall speak lies at one table : hut it shall not prosper :ft for yet the end shall be at the time appoint- ed. X J 28. Tina}; shall he return into his land with great riches: and his heart shall if against the holy covenant: ||H and he shall d . HH and return to his own land." 1 So on Orotius' and Newton's view of " the arms of the flood" in verse 22, as mean; of the usurper WeRodorus. If Venema's Egyptian reference be preferred, it ir covered in my running historic commentary by what is afterwards said of the overflowing into Egypt. * Or, stir himself up for tin war. t ^,fo>; because. t As invars* 24. They shall devise devices, or plots. So Wintle. { ;rrs, cos tli/ food «/<a. liii. 10, "The pleasnrt of the Lord shall prosper in his hand;" and Isa. liv. 17, " No wea- pon formed against thee shall prosj H Sept on tri irtpac, uc saifwv. So Wintle; as also the. authorized English translation. . and. ■■■--■ — - literally, tovenant of holiness. The phrase is also used in 30, 32; and in all of the holy -/i"i.>h rstt *" Or /ni,.y>,r ; or pihi;- ■••/./ hit hmr' -.■ ,• L e. the oppression of the holy covenant, or Jewish religion. 76 THE FIRST HALF OF [PART VI. Heliodorus, become strong, though with a kingdom now reduced and disgraced, attack the Egyptian Prince Philo- metor his nephew, albeit allied by treaty1 as well as blood, defeat him signally in a famous expedition, and enter and spoil Egypt of its riches ; by the squandering of which, as well as of his ancestral treasures, in shows, gifts, and page- antry, he sought and gained the title of Illustrious, his true one being the Vile:2 until, at length, having got Philometor into his hands,3 and the Alexandrians having set up his brother Physcon in his room, he planned at the same table with Philometor a scheme of discord and division between the two brothers, whereby it seemed he might best prepare Egypt to be a little after his prey ; then returning, while the scheme might work, to his own land, did in the way attack Jerusalem, massacring 40,000 of its inhabitants, and despoiling and profaning its temple, because of the Jews having broken into insurrection on a false report of his death. It was thus that he fulfilled the first part of the prophecy concerning him. — 9. As, yet again, at" the time appointed " (a phrase designative apparently of some nota- ble epoch) this same Northern King was to invade the king- dom of the South a second time, but with a result quite different from that of his former successful expedition,4 1 The treaty made by his father Antiochus the Great with Egypt, just before his turning his face to the isles of Chittim, was still uncancelled. 2 An example of allusive contrast. See my Vol. i. pp. 113, 272, &c. 3 This was when at Memphis. Alexandria had not yet submitted to Antiochus Epiphanes. For a brief sketch of the history, see 1 Mac. i. 17 — 23. 4 29. At the time appointed* he shall return, and come towardf the south : but it shall not be as the former, or as the latter, j 30. For the ships of Chittim § shall * See on verses 24, 27, p. 74, note \\, and p. 75, note %%, supra. t 2 ; perhaps rather into. So Wintle, "He shall advance again into the sotdh." X Or, i/s (at) the first time, or as (at) the latter time. — Wintle observes that the Hebrew may be rendered, " But the latter shall not be like the former : " and Gro- tius and Venema so translate it: not without reason. Compare Josh. xiv. 11 and 1 Sam. xxx. 24. Antiochus Epiphanes made indeed a primary demonstration against Egypt, and occupied the Province of Palestine, which more properly belonged to Egypt, before his grand campaign and success against it foretold in verses 25, 26. But it was not an expedition into Egypt ; though many have so represented it, and hence reckoned three as the number of Antiochus Epiphanes' anti-Egyptian expedi- tions. See Venema, pp. 273 — 276. — Some Hebrew noun signifying an expedition may be understood. § D"P3 D","x ; ships from or of Chittim. One manuscript, Wintle says, reads n^s, as in the famous parallel passage, Numb. xxiv. 24 ; of which, says Prof. Lee (Euseb. Theoph. p. cviii.), this is manifestly an echo. (See Bochart, Phaleg. iii. 5.) In Gen. x. 4, Isa. xxiii. 1, and Ezek. xxvii. 6, the word dts is spelt with one ', as here ; in Jer. ii. 10 with two. — Gesenius says, "What particular part of the West CHAP. II. § 1.] Daniel's LAST PROPHECY. 77 "ships from Chittim" coming against him, (the expression is most remarkable,) and causing his precipitate return to his own land, in indignation which would vent itself against "the holy covenant," or Jews' religion and law, and evil alli- ance with certain that forsook it, — so Anfiochtu Ehriphanes returned the next year in a second expedition into Bgypt, now prostrate before him ; but, when expecting to reduce it finally under his BWay, was stop! on a sudden by the un- looked-for intervention of Roman ambassadors, ju>t arrived in shipsfrom Italy, the scriptural Cltittini: and being forced to resign the prey, groaning and grieving, as Polybius describes it, vented his indignation against the Jews and their holy covenant ; attacked Jerusalem a second time with a detachment of his returning army, — a second time mas- Bacring its inhabitants, — a second time defiling its temple ; and, building a garrison-fortress in the city of David, in conjunction with Menelaus the high priest and other apo- state Jews of his party, issued a proclamation abrogating the Jewish religion and ritual, and enjoining the heathen wor- ship of Jupiter Olympius in its stead.1 Thus we come to the close of the first Part of this pro- come ■gams! him : therefore shall he be jrrieved,* and return, t and have indigna- tion l against the holy covenant : so shall he do: $ he shall even return, and have intelligence with them that forsake the holy covenant. "|| I See 1 Mace. i. 41—50. The following chronological tabular view of tbe chief events of the reign of Anti- ochus Epiphanes, referred to in the prophecy, may be useful : — it may nuan is doubtful." The writer of the 1st Book of Maccabees, i. 1, understands it of Greece ; Yitrin inverse 16: a word rendered in our English translation consumed; in other versions, we have seen, perfected : — a sense almost the reverse. Another example is connected with the word mWl of verse 6 : which the English translation explains as her father ; Wintle and Boothroyd as her son ; the Septuagint as the young woman ; Aben Ezra as her mother. But here the different meanings arise out of differences of reading or punctuation. Other exemplifications have been given as we have gone on. 2 Viz. verse 6, "Neither shall he stand;" a pronoun grammatically applicable either to the King of the North or King of the South : — verse 11, " And he shall set forth a great multitude, and the multitude shall be given into his hand;" where the sense requires different persons to be understood by the he and his : but who the one, and who the other, is only to be inferred from the history : * verse 24, " Scatter among them," or "Scatter what is belonging to them;" where the pronoun them may be referred either to Syrians or Egyptians : — verse 25, " But he shall stand." 3 Such is the series of particulars following; — the reconcilement of the primary difference between the two kingdoms by the marriage of the King of the South's daughter to the King of the North ; — the failure of this expedient from the circum- stance of her abandonment in the new country of her adoption, and apparently her murder ; the avenging of her wrongs by her brother, the next King of the South, his triumphant invasion of the Northern King's territory, and deportation into Egypt not only of other spoil, but of sundry gods also of the people of the land ;— the attempts of the next King of the North, and the next but one, at the recovery of their territory * The word " For," beginning verse 13 in our translation, does not help to de- termine the ambiguity : its original Hebrew being simply \ usually rendered and. CHAP. IT. $ 2.] HWII'l.'s LAST l'KOIMIKCY. 79 s nt's of points, tin* agreement with it of the Ptolemaean and Seleucidean history is so Btriking, that I oonoeive we may rest in the persuasion of its having being certainly tlms far fulfilled, so as explained, with full and well-grounded satis- faction. § '2. — Tin: becond r\iM' or Daniel's prophbct. In the second part (including from chapter li. 31 to the end of chapter rii.) the prophecy naturally arranges itself under five sectional subdivisions: — 1st, the prediction of tlic setting-up of the abomination of desolation, contained in verse 31 ; — 2nd, the sketch of events following thereupon, till the rise of the self-deifying apostate King, given in verses 31 — 36 ; — 3rd, the description of this apostate King in verses 36 — 39 inclusive; — 4th, the resumed notice of the Kings of the South and North, and their enterprises, in con- nection with the apostate King's time and reign, verses 40 — 45 ; — othlv, and finally, the sketch of the concluding catastrophe, issuing in the grand consummation and the de- liverance and blessedness of Daniel's people, contained in chap. xii. 1. Now with regard to the first of these sectional sub- divisions,1 were we simply to follow the course of history, # and honour; the total defeat of this latter in the first instance, and success in tli eond; and thereupon his making up the quarrel with the Southern King by some m irriage-eeheme, and turning his face to the isles of the Mediterranean, ana capturing It repulsed by some prince or general, on whom that attack deemed an indignity, and dying soon after ingloriously ; — then the reign of a mere raiser of tn nasi King of the North; — then his being followed bra king contemptible, and the wry reverse of tirujtavtiq (illustrious), and this last invading Egypt with in ire meceai than any of his predecessors, once and again, until Btoppeu by the vi ry singular intervention of thipt of Chittim ; and thru, anally, venting hi^ rage against the Jews and their religion, in alliance with certain apostates to heathen- ism from oat of their own body. — All these points seem to be pretty well anambigu- dike in the prediction and the historical fulfilment. 1 31. u And arms* shall Stand f on his part : J and they shall pollute the sane- * z'~~i fipaxtovie, as before* t ri"':?." > the same verb as in n rse •'(. &0. * m:'r~. from to properly ,/VtHn, out of. So versr 7, " Out of a braneli from her roots:" Dan. viii. 9, uOut of one of them came forth a little horH:" Sx. mnreovei it also indicates, chronologically, after, Venema indeed, p. 802, oontests this. But th>- following ezamplai will, I believe, prove I -Nehem. \iii. 21, " A thai (mm they did not oome on the sabbath;" 1 Chron. viii. 8, AfUr he had tent them away." 2 S:mi. x\iii. 1, u After rain." And snob I oonoeive to be the mean- ing here ; ondentanding him, viz. the King of the Ninth previously spoken of, ti the uoun after the preposition. So too Sir I. Newton, p. 208. — Wintls tr.tn-latea, 80 THE SECOND HALF OF [PART VI. we might naturally suppose the prediction it contains to have reference to that same Antiochus Epiphanes that was the subject of the verses preceding, and his setting up of what might well be called an abomination of desolation in Jerusalem. For history tells us, that after the repulse of this Syrian King from Egypt by the stern mandate of the Roman ambassadors, he did not only show "indignation against the holy covenant" by attacking the still holy city Jerusalem, breaking down in part its walls and houses, and massacring many of its inhabitants, — but that he also by a decree abrogated the Jewish worship, enjoined conform- ity on pain of death to the Greek heathen religion, defiled the temple by the blood of the Jewish worshippers, set up the statue there of Jupiter Olympius, and at the same time, placing a garrison in a strong fort built in the city of David, fell on all that might come up to worship after the Mosaic ritual, and thereby made the temple and the city desolate.1 — Yet, on more careful consideration, strong reasons will I think strike the careful inquirer against this historical application of the passage. For, 1st, it will tuary * of strength ; f and shall take away the daily sacrifice :J and they shall place the abomination that maketh desolate." § 1 Such however is Venema's view ; who supposes the history to be continued on- ward to the end of Dan. xii., all with reference to Maccabean events and times. " from these" viz. the ships of Chittim. And so, apparently, the Jewish interpreters mentioned by Jerome, and given in my Note ', p. 85 ; — " Post multa tempora de ipsis Romania . . consurget rex Vespasianus." But the ISWM is singular ; and therefore, if understood of the Romans, can only have that meaning by reference to a represent- ative of the nation. Our English translation seems to me not happy in its rendering of this preposition ; for it gives no idea of the various possible meanings of the phrase. * to?fi\ The verb is one of general application in the Pid, in the sense of pro- faning or defiling anything sacred, such as the priests, sanctuary, sabbath, name of God, &c. ; Lev. xix. 8, xxi. 9, Mai. ii. 11, Exod. xxxi. 14, Lev. xviii. 21, &c. f Literally, " the sanctuary t lie fortress." So Psalm xcvi. 6 ; "Beauty and strength are in his sanctuary :" — strength, not, I conceive, as some would have it, because of the temple being fortified, and therefore strong ; but as implying the presence and protection of Him in whom is everlasting strength. — On the prefixing of the two de- finite articles Aben Ezra compares Josh. iii. 14, Jer. xxxii. 12, where the word for strength is iy, from which the word here used, iwo, is derived. % So Dan. xii. 11 and viii. 11. Greek, rov ivdtXexio-fiov. Compare Exod. xxix. 42, Numb, xxviii. 6, Ezra iii. 5, Nchem. x. 33, &c. § D9$$ yi":£;~- The same occurs again in Chap. xii. 11 ; only without the article prefixed to the first word, and with the second in the Eal conj. not the Piel. In ix. 27 we have also the same phrase, but with the word abominations in the plu- ral.— The former word (translated in the Greek fititXvyfia) applies generally to things unclean (as garments, food, &c, Nahuni iii. 6, Zech. ix. 7) ; but is used specially aud most frequently of idols. CHAP. II. $2.] Daniel's last peophect. 81 lie round most difficult, if I mistake not, to explain the Bequel of the prophecy consistently with it. With regard to the people spoken of immediately after aa "knowing their Q /." l antithetically to certain that are styled covenant- transgressors, they must on this hypothesis of interpreta- tion be supposed the Maccabean patriots, thai rose up in in- surrection against Antiochus and his heathenish ordinance. But, as Bishop Newton observes, neither could it be said of them that "they instructed many?' ' for there is no record of any grand accession of proselytes to the Jews' religion through their teaching : nor again could it be said of them that " they fell by the sword, and flame, and spoil, and cap- tivity \many\ days"* indeed, as verse 35 seems to imply, until the time of the end: the fact being that (except in the case of some that would not resist when attacked on the sabbath-day)4 they were from the very commencement suc- cessful in their patriotic enterprises, at first in more petty guerilla warfare, then soon after in a decisive battle with Antiochus' chief general, Lysias ; 5 the result of which, be- sides probably precipitating the horrible death of Antio- chus,6 was the cleansing of the temple just three years from the setting up of Jupiter's image within it by Apollonius,7 restoration of the Mosaic ritual, and establishment of the high priesthood and sovereignty over the Jewish people in the Maccabean family, where it continued thenceforward for several generations.8 — Moreover in what follows after this about the self-deifying King,9 and the Kings of the South i V, : 2 Verse 33. 1 Applying the uthtv" U these interpreters do, to the faithful and understanding one9 of the former part of tl I shall remark under my next head on its pomtible, or rather probable, reference to a different class of persons In most MSS. indeed the word:-:-, days, Btanda without the addition of s-an man//. Hut thin conns in v. 3o, " to tin time of the tnd." 4 1 Mac. ii. 32 — 38. 8 Sec th'' history in tin' chapters ii., iii., and IT. of 1 Mace. 6 Ibid. vi. 5 — 16. Hi- death i~ ~:iid to hare occurred, A.S. 149. 7 Compare l Mi, . i. -~,\ and it. ~>i. From the former passage it appears that it was on tin- loth of the mont!: the ninth of the Jewish months, or January,) in the rear of the Greeks, i. e. of the Seleucidean -Era, 145, that the idol abomina- tion was set up by Apolloniui : from the latter, thai it was on the 25th of the Bams month A.S. l 48 that the temple was cleansed, and the altar re-dedicated. • Bee the nCaocabean Historyin the Apocrypha, as before; or Josephus. • The often io-called wilful King. But, as will !»• noted when I come to the ti i Us only claim to that title is because As would do aooordmg to hit will; the same thing tint i- pn dicated also of Alexander the Gnat in verse 3, and of Antiochu Great in rerse 16. iv. 6 82 THE SECOND HALF OF [PART VI. and the North pushing at him,1 the historical interpretation jails still as palpably as before : forasmuch as Antiochus Epiphanes, the supposed predicted King on this hypothesis, instead of not worshipping his fathers' God, like Daniel's self-deifying King,2 was as much given to the worship of Jupiter as his Greek ancestors before him ; 3 and neither was pushed at by Egypt's now prostrate king, nor (being himself in this prophecy the King of the North) could have had the King of the North come against him. — 2. There are two expressions in the verse under consideration, designative alike of the desolating arms or poivcr, and of the desolation itself, which seem to me to give intima- tion that the history of Antiochus Epiphanes is here broken off from, and another and different enemy of Daniel's people referred to. For the former is spoken of thus ; "And arms shall stand up from, or after, him: " a phrase hardly to be interpreted, I believe, agreeably with the precedents of other analogous Hebrew phrases in the prophecy, except of some new prince or power, arising after in respect of time, ox from him, in respect of origin, that was before the subject of de- scription.4 And the latter has the definite article prefixed 1 Dan. xi. 36, 40. J Verse 37. 3 Nothing can better illustrate this than the manifest failure of Vencma's elaborate attempt, from p. 382 to p. 421, at applying this prophetic passage to Antiochus Epi- phanes. Says Livy of him ; " Vere regius illi animus fiiit . . in Deorum cultu : mag- niticentire vero in Deos vel Jovis Otympii templum Athenis . . potest testis esse ; sed et Delon aris insignibus statuarumque copia exornavit." So again in his splendid games in honour of the gods. And indeed he forced the worship of Jupiter on the Jews at Jerusalem. How then could Epiphanes be said to have disregarded his father's god, as in verse 38 ? Because, says Venema, p. 420, he would so honour these gods " in specie" not in reality ; his mind and regard not being given them : whereas his mind aid regard would be given to a god whom his fathers knew not, viz. Flatus, the god of money ; who might be designated under the name Mahuzzim, because of his being god 01 the treasuries in the sacraria of the inner temples. But how so ? Did he then proclaim the worship of Plutus, and erect temples to him ? Not so ; as Venema frankly admits, p. 410. But his heart-idol was money. And was this love of money then peculiar to Antiochus Epiphanes, and aliene to the taste of all his fathers ?— As to the god called the desire of women, whom also Daniel's predicted king was to disregard, Venema explains it to be Venus. But could disregard to her be charged on Epiphanes, of all men? Yes, says Venema, because it was the Venus Ura- nia, or Venus of honourable love ! And was she then the desired and honoured of Syrian women ? 4 See my Note J on the Hebrew preposition, p. 79 supra ; also those on '/~\, /3pax««"', and "floj, to stand, or stand up, pp. 60, 64. — Venema, p. 314, trans- lating the phrase ex ipso, wonld have it to mean simply that the power that deso- lated was that which appertained to Epiphanes. But I think the parallel phrases that 1 have refi rred to show this to be improbable. Compare too, as to the figure, a somewhat different one in Vol. i. p. 143 Note4 ; QHAP.II. $2.] DANIEL'S LAST PROPHECY 88 io it, " The abomination making desolate:" as if to design nate either one particular desolating abomination previously made known to Daniel, (Dan. i\. 27,) 01 that winch WBB to be emphatically the grand abomination of desolation:1 on aeither of which grounds could thai spoken of in the pas- sage before us mean the idol set up in the temple by Anti- ochus Kpiphanes; there having been no previous prediction of it.-1 and the desolation it caused being one of very short duration. And in fact, while thus excluding the abomination set up by Antiochus, this little but very significant particle in the prophetic language seems to me very strikingly to point out that which was afterwards set up by the Romans, as the one intended: both as being that which introduced the longest and greatest desolation of the Jewish temple and city, and that which alike other previous prophecies,3 and more espe- cially the one communicated to Daniel himself a little before by the angel Gabriel/ distinctly foretold. — Nor is there want- ing yet other evidence to corroborate this conclusion as to the meaning of the prediction. 1st, the very singular cir- cumstance of Gabriel's adoption of the language of Balaam's ancient prophecy,5 when bringing the Romans just before on the prophetic scene, "And ships shall come from ( nittim," might naturally be supposed to indicate not only that the Bame power v\as here intended by him that was intended by Balaam, but that the desolation <>/ the Hebrew nation \i after spoken of by him was the same also with that which was next after foreshown by the Spirit that broke through Balaam ; which last was expressly said to be caused by them of the ships from Chittim} — :2. r. :i signify ;t Dew and different line of empi rots. • 6 p. 80 sujira. 2 In Dan. viii. 13, a tram *\ of, not an abotninatt And in proof of it* meaning Bomething very different from the abomin- ation Bet op in Jerusalem by Antiochus Epiphanea, tee mj i tplanation of thai pn - phecy, Vol. iii. p. 423, See. A di ilation of Jndah ia. often predicted, which was tolas! op to the tin hor ultima'.' restoration and conversion. So, for example, Esa iii. 26, compared with thf sequel, n. 11, x 1 i x . 8, 21, lw. id, kc. ■ Dan. i\. 27. 4 Numb. x\iv. '_'} ; •' And ■> I I Him. and -Irill afflict (or op- ad thall •■: ' ,n«l he too shall ]■< ri-h forever." I ' '1 heophania, Pref. p. c\iv. 6 \ , would explain Balaam' ration "he shall 6» 84 THE SECOND HALF OF [PART VI. Our Lord's specification of the abomination of desolation that was to be set up by the Romans as the one spoken of by Daniel the Prophet,1 though explicable by reference simply to the prophecy in Daniel's ninth chapter, does yet on the most natural interpretation imply a reference to this also.2 — 3. As from the second to the third? so from the third of the four great empires to the fourth, a transition might surely be expected in the Angel's far-ranging prophecy: and for this there could be no fitter epoch, according to the evi- dence of history, than that when the Roman ambassadors arrived in ships from Chittim at Alexandria. Tor, as Mr. Mede has observed, that precise year was the epoch of the overthrow of the Macedonian kingdom, and its conversion into a subject-province by the Romans : 4 and indeed the very act of their thus dictating terms between the Syro- Macedonian and Egypto-Macedonian dynasties, was at the time a notification to the world that the Roman arms held now the world's supremacy, having, like the emblem on one of their standards,5 stood up above the Grecian ; just agreeably with this prophecy, which might almost before- hand have been deemed to signify as much. — 4thly, and finally, it appears from Jerome that the Jews themselves in his time, who had the two interpretations alike before them,6 afflict Eber," not of the Hebrews, but of some quite different trans- Euphratean people. But I believe he stands nearly alone in this opinion. 1 Matt. xxiv. 15 : " When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth let him understand,) " &c. ; compared with Luke xxi. 20, "When ye shall see Jerusalem com- passed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh." 2 This is the only passage where the precise phrase " abomination of desolation " is used, except in xii. 11, the sequel of this same prophecy. In Dan. ix. 27 the wording is, "For the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate ;" — or, according to the reading of a manuscript of the 13th century, celebrated by Michaelis, and adopted by Clarke, — "And in the temple of the Lord there shall he abomination." In Dan. viii. 13, as hefore said, it is "the transgression of desolation.'" 3 In verse 3. See pp. 60, 61 supra. 4 After the overthrow and capture of King Perseus in the battle of Pydna, B.C. 168. — So JEmilius Sura, as cited by the Roman historian Velleius Paterculus, i. 6, and quoted by Mede and Bishop Newton ; " Assyrii principes omnium gentium ri'iuin potiti sunt ; dcinde Mcdi; postca Persse; deinde Macedones : exiude, duobus regibus Philippo ct Antiocho, qui a Macedonibus oriundi crant, haud multo post Carthaginem subactam devictis, summa imperii ad Populum Romanum pervenit." 5 On the top of one of the well-known Roman standards an open hand turned upwards was the terminating ornament. Engravings may be seen in Montfaucon, or other books on Roman Antiquities. So too on some of the Roman quadrantes and other coins. 6 For in the Book of Maccabees the application had evidently been made to Antiochus Epiphanes ; and the Christians of Jerome's time many of them applied it to Antichrist, so as stated in the next Note. chap. ii. $2.] daniil's last prophecy. s~> did apply this prophecy, not to the abomination of desolation set Up by AntwckuS, but to that far more awful our set up l>\ the Romans.1 This important preliminary point being settled, our course will he clearer for the Bequei. 2. The second and next subdivision of this part of the prophecy sketches the events that would follow on this Betting up of the abomination of desolation by the Romans as I suppose) in the Jewish temple, down to the rise of tie' self-deifying King: — a sketch contained inverses 32 — 35, inclusive.' 1 J,rom<\i he): — " Jmlan hoc nee dc Antioeho Epiphane, nee tie Antichristo, sad de ffnwiwi'i intelligi volant, de ambus supra dictum c.-t, ' Bl venient trieres (aire Itali ttqoe Romani), atqae humiliabitur.' Post multa, inquit, tempora dc i j »— i ~ Romania, qui PtolenUBO veiiere auxilio, et Antioeho coniminati sunt, OOB- • rex Vespasianus; surgent brachia ejus et semina, Titus filius com exercitu; et poUuent Banctuariuui, aut'erentque juge sacriricium, et templum tradent BBtenUB solitudiui." — On the tri, ,■<,■> MS the notice from Jerome, in Note §, pp. 76, 77 supra. una Father on Matt. xxiv. 16", after referring to Dan. IX. 27, thus gives his own judgment on the abomination of desolation, meant by Christ: — "Potest ant de iriste ai cipi, aut de knag* quod l'ilatus posuit in' templo, ant de // :ini tqtustri ttatui:" or, again, as he adds, ut' all wrong doctrine that may stand in tin Hi \, ]'■■■<>, i. e. in the Church, 1 have aire. itly iii my Vol. i. p. 632, given my own view of the abomination of d' rotation, in the time of the Romans, intended by Christ and Daniel; and shall have hereafter again to refer to it. •f>rose too, on Luke xxi. 20 (Lib. x. 15,) thus notes the Jews' opinion. "Vera Hierusalem ab azercitu obei asa est, et expugnata a Komano duce; unde Judsi pnta- verunt tunc factam abominationem detoiatkmu, [via. that predicted alike in Dan. ix. and xi.] eo quod caput porci in tcinplmii jecerint, illudentee Romani Judaiese ritum observantia'." Which explanation, however, Ambrose himself reprobates. Let me observe that the fed that Ambrose alludes to is confirmed and illustrated by nan medal of one of the Emperors, which on the obverse has the device of a wo- man in bondi standing under a palm-tree, with the legend Judtea Levicta, on the re- xitii its litter : it being said that the Emperor Claudius ordered a sow to be placed over the gate of the temple at Jerusalem. In one manuscript Wlntle observes, the word arms in this verse is followed by =", that is, of the sea, or of th> Watt : evidently, if a gloss, written by one who took the riew as the above of the meaning of the passage. 2 32. "And such as do wickedly* against the covenant shall he cormptf by • ""•r— :. the participle Hiphil, from TBr\ a verb (the opposite, says Qeseniui to "— - signifying, 1. to he guilty, 2. to be wicked, as Dan. ix. 15. This Hiphil form occurs again xii. 10, "The wicked shall do wickedly." t r-:~- •■• Hiphil form of BjjT, to be prof am d, or polluted; as 1'salm cvi. .'5S, '•'l'!ie land was polluted with blood." The Hiphil here gives the active sanseofew- faming or making profmu and hoathmiah. So Qesenius. And perhaps instead of ho : the nominative im", a word used as well of the Jews, while God's people, as of the Gentiles: just in this respect like the use of iij-, sometimes, e. g. Josh. x. 13, as observed by Venema, pp. 485, 486. \ VTQ,\ Greek avvr)oov follows the verb, as here. — It occurs in a different sense in verse 37 infra. § »„ and. Our translators vary much in the rendering of this conjunctive particle. — The ambiguity of the pronoun they should also be marked. || ifcttfej'", Sept. aoOevnaovoi, from 9B3 to be weak, to totter and so to fall: a verb used in the Niphal, as here, in verses 14, 19 preceding : and also in verses 34, 35, 41 following. Compare 1 Sam. ii. 4, " They that stumbled (or staggered) are girded with strength;" said with reference to weakness: also Jer. vi. 21, "I will lay stumbling-blocks before this people, and the father and the sons together shall fall upon (or over) them : " Psalm cvii. 12, "They rebelled against the words of God; . . therefore he brought down their heart with labour, they fell down, and there was none to help ; " and Jer. xxxi. 9, " I will cause them to walk . . in a straight way wherein they shall not stumble ; " said of the fa lling through God 's judgments on sin. II " try them, and to purge, and to make them white,} enn loj the time 01 the end :|| - it it yet for a tune appointed."1! * ~""":7- m v* '"' '-'•• "n which Bee my Note. Neatly the same word occurs also in Tene 32 just before.— The Greek version is, Kae npoffrtOijaovrai irpoc, avrovq woXXoi iv o\ioGt)[iaor Wintle'a J "Many shall be fastened upon them through flatten t ~1~*. " ami //■<>»» or out of;" i. e. some out of. Mark the selection here, in contrast with the 'jnierality of the statement in verse 33 just before. ffnlese indeed with Ve- we conned 36, nuking :si parenthetic. + '■•"" ""■' ".- z'"^~>.- The same words oeeur again in chap. xii. 10, "Many shall be punfied, and made white, and tried." An important corroboration, U it is to me, of the idea that the prophetic intimation m this rerse too, is very tar . indeed that it reachi - even to the time of the end. Wintle [on xii. LO] thus distinguishes the particular meaning of each : — "The word -" is borrowed from wheat cleansed from the chaff; "js? from cloth whitened by the fuller; bjjj, from goldemithawho try and aaaay the metal, and separate it from the dross." The preti\ ; in z~z seems otiose: or perhaps is in the sense of on them, as the objects of trial. — On the ~" compare Jer. iv. 11, "A dry wind, .toward the • iter of my people, not to fan, nor to ch-nnsr .*" where however the verb is in the Ilipliil. which is here in the Rel. And on the other words, Mai. iii, 2. " Ee is like a refni' r*i lire, and like roller's soap -. " the word there used for wap being r--r, which i> demed from '-, and so from ^"5, to dU \ ".v, either during t whilst, as Judg. UX. 20, Job i. 18 : or, more commonly, up to, rather (which is the more common sense) until, as in Dan. xii. 0, "Till the time of the end ;" also Gen. xlix. 10, " Until ShQoh come;" Josh. ii. 22, "Until the pursuer! returned, &0. : " — The two-fold opening of the word, however, should be obserred. - r?. So ii. 40, xii. 'J ■. in the tir^t of which parallel passages the phraat will be remarked on. — Vhi>iii,i, in order to make this suit with hi> idea of the Kpipliaiiie ration of the .lews being here ~- 1 i 1 1 described, explains the phrase, p, '■'•■'>•>. as "ad nnem adflictionis Epiphanies." B ach limitation is unnatural. H Mtde and Wintle connect this last clause with the next verse. 88 THE SECOND HALF OF [PART VI. till liolpen by the little help of Constantino and his de- scendants' adoption and establishment of Christianity in the Roman Empire.1 Then many shall cleave to them with flatteries, or hypocritically join themselves to the Church ; and divers of the true and sincere Christians fall afterwards by new persecutions, to try them, and purify them, till the time of the end." But I cannot but think that there may be here indicated tivo divisions of the people spoken of: viz. first, a division of the tvholc Jezvish peojjle into Jews rejecting Christianity, and Jews embracing it and becoming Christians : (this in the two former verses : ) then, a further division of the Idlicr, together with the Gentiles incorporated in their body, into the false and the true members of the professing Chris- tian Church. For besides that we might expect, as I think, some notice of the desolated Jezvish people at this sad crisis of their history, as well as of their desolate city, — just as in our Lord's prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem,2 and other earlier prophecies also,3 — besides this, I say, there are various expressions in the two first verses of the passage under consideration which seem to me scarcely applicable, except to that unhappy people. Is the phrase " they that do wickedly against the covenant," a fit desig- nation of the insincerity and worldliness in heart of such members of the Christian body as were ultimately induced in the time of Pagan Rome's persecutions to apostatize ? Or, if previously open transgressors of the covenant, did they need at all to be corrupted ? Again, was it the fact that the Roman emperors and chief magistrates did then seek by flatteries to draw Christians into apostasy from their faith ; and this on a scale such as to be marked in history, and to answer to a notice like this in prophecy ? Surely cruelty and violence, not flattery, were the charac- teristic weapons by which the Pagan powers sought to de- 1 Compare the figure of the two wings of the great eagle, &c, being given the woman to help her, in Apoe. xii. 14, 16. 2 Luke xxi. 20, 24 : " When ye see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. . . . And great wrath shall be on this people; and they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all na- tions; and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled." 3 Deut. xxviii. 32, 52, 64, &c. &c. CHAP. II. $2,] DVMi'.i.'s LA8T PE0PH1CT. 89 Btroy Christianity.1 -Further, did the Christians, at a body or people, fall during these times of Pagan persecution, so as the expression in verse 38 seems to indicate; or <»nl\ a certain few from among them?8- — And, once more, could it be said of such as Buffered in these persecutions, that they fell by captivity, as well as otherwise :— a word used in Hebrew, just like the words that represent it in the (iivck, Latin. English, and other versions, nol of imprison- ment by order of the civil magistrate, bul of the taking of prisoners in WOT, and holding them, so taken, in captivity and exile? 3 Thus my impression is that the Jews must be here meant, not Christian*. And on the whole, — supposing the first clause in ver. 32 to he read as by Wintle, "They that do wickedly against the covenant will dissemble in flatteries" * I would thus briefly paraphrase the whole passage: — "In connexion with this time and fact of Jerusalem's desola- tion, the Jewish people generally, though wicked .trans- gressors of the holy covenant, (a covenant just before con- tinued and illustrated among them by their Messiah,)8 shall yet unite with this their transgression of it the show and profession of religious zeal, hypocritically dissembling:" — a character of the Jews of that aera prominently set forth in the awful reproofs of Christ himself;6 and set forth also 1 No doubt on certain occasions the presiding magistrates, like Pliny, whom Bishop NewUn specially refers to, urged the Christians brought before them to spur thein- -. and lacrinee to the emperor's image. Hut these were not flattering offers. And as to the general and proper character of the Pagan mode of dealing with Christianity, let the reader, after perusing the history of the early persecutions in any eccli siastical historian, judge for himself whether flattery, or erueltyaai terror, was the weapon employed. Or see my historic sketch under the 5th Seal. Mark the oontrasl of expression between this general statement, " And they shall fall," &c, and the particular and restricted statement in verse 35, "And out of them of understanding some shall fall," &c. See my Note t on the word, p. 87. I :. i N ■ ••■ H p. 86. 4 Whltle does not L'ive this translation in support of the historical explanation that I advocate; fa he has followed Bishop Newton in his view of the prophecy. For tome corroboration to it, see the ancient Greek and Latin versions in the top p. 86. 5 So it had been foreshown to Daniel previously. " And He (the Messiah) shall confirm the covenant with many fa one week ; and in the midst of the we, k be shall the sacrifice and oblation to cease," &c. Dan. ix. 27- — I can scarcely err, I think, in supposing that this prcvioni prophecy was remembered and applied by Daniel, while Rearing tin- Angel's presenl revelations. * Matt, xxiii. 13 — 33: " Woe unto vou, seribes and pharisees, hypocrites," &c. : xv. 7, 8 ; •• Ye hypocrites, w» 11 did Iffmei prophesy of you. saying. This people draw- eth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lip-, but tin ir heart 90 THE SECOND HALF OF [PART VI. as awfully by their own historian Josephus, in his descrip- tion of them during the siege of Jerusalem.1 Or else, if Venema's translation be sustainable, then thus : — " And they, the Jewish transgressors, shall stumble and fall to be broken:" just as predicted in the notable prophecy long be- fore written by Isaiah.8 " On the other hand, they that know their God, even Jehovah their then-revealed Messiah and Saviour, (such I cannot but believe to be the intent of the expression, especially as considering the time referred to,)3 — the disciples who, taught from above, shall know what others cannot know,1 viz. that mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh? shall not only understand them- selves, but, strong in faith and spirit, shall instruct and disciple many. Thus the Jewish people, as a nation, shall fall ami be scattered, a monument of God's righteous indig- nation,6 by the sword and by name, by captivity and by spoil, many days : whilst meanwhile the understanding ones, or disciples of the Messiah, shall not only otherwise advance in their work, but be holpen even on this world's theatre with a little help.7 Then, however, and on this is far from me." — Compare Rom. ii. 23, written by Sf. Paul, characteristically in like manner of his nation, a few years later ; "Thou that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking the law dishonourcst thou God ? " Compare too the prediction in Isa. xxix. 13, 14, declaring that the curse of moral blindness would be adjudged and attach to this dissembling people ; even with the light shining around them. 1 One grand division of the Jews, — the most horrid and blood-thirsty perhaps of all during the siege, — was that of the zealots for the law. 2 Compare Isa. viii. 14, 15 ; " And he shall be . . for a gin and a snare to the in- habitants of Jerusalem ; and many among them shall stumble, and fall, and be broken, and be snared, and be taken." 3 The phrase is one, I believe (I mean with the noun, the verb, and the possessive pronoun all together) by no means common. A somewhat near parallel occurs in Isaiah xl. 9, "Say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God!" — a prophecy of the ultimate revelation of Jesus to them, as their Messiah the Lord Jehovah. — The passage in Isa. xi. 9, about the knowledge of Jehovah filling the earth," is also a partial parallel ; though the possessive pronoun is wanting. And there too Christ seems to be meant. So also in Isa. Hi. 7, "That saith unto Zion, Thy God reign- eth." And Jer. xxxi. 34, " They shall teach no more every man his neighbour, say- ing, Know the Lord," &c. 4 " He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, (and which were born not of blood .... but of God,) beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father:" &c. John i. 10 — 14. — Compare too 1 Cor. ii. 7, " We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, . . which none of the princes of this world knew ; for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. . . . But God hath revealed it to us by his Spirit." Also John xiv. 9 ; " He that hath seen me hath Been the Father :" and Col. ii. 9 ; "In him dwell- eth all the fulness of the godhead bodily." 5 1 Tim. iii. 16. fi I borrow the words " be scattered" and " indignation" from the verses xi. 36, xii. 7 infra. 7 See Note l, p. 88. chap. n. $2.] Daniel's last prophecy. !)1 gleam of visible prosperity, hypocrisy shall insinuate itself even into their body. Many shall cleave to them that arc mere dissemblers in religion,1 jost like the -lews before them, and so corrupt the professing people. And thus persecu- tion shall arise against the sincere ones, even oul of their Own body ; and this continue even to the time of the end. But the result shall he only, under the divine overruling, for their good: to try them, and purify them, and make them white; even as silver is purified, and the garment made whiter, by the fuller's soap and the refiner's fire."8 8. As to the third subdivision,9 containing the Angel's prophetic sketch of one who has been often of late, l>nt cer- tainly not very happily, called the wilful King, — 1 would lather designate him as fhc self-deifying King, — my judg- ment acquiesces in the well-known interpretation given of it byMede and the two Newtons: and this with satisfaction, 1 So I ren in apostolic times, "the apostasy," said St. Paul, " doth already work." - Compare and contrast with the above the comment of Ephrem Synu on the paralli I b \t in Dan. \ii. '.•, 19, u Many thatt be purified and moeU white," Ac. " Designat rataram apoetolorom electionem, et oredentiara ad eoedem andiendos conenrsnm, <|uos prsadicit boptismi hn/oero dealbandoe : JudsBos contra, Christi interfectoree, severe* j idi indos et pnniendos." And the kin? * shall do according to his will : t and he shall exalt him- self, and magnify himself above every god,^ and shall speak marvellous things against . j and shall prosper till il the indignation 1i he accomplished: fat • "Wintle translates " a king ; " but the Ihhrtw has the article, "P":~. As before noted, ]>. s7, he pn fixes hen the Uut clanse of \er;-e 35, thus ; " For still for an ap- pointed time a [tin] king shall even (•) act, Ac." t A phrase used before of Alexander the Great, verse 3 ; and also of Antiochns the Great, rerse 16, with reference to the time of his saccesses. Hen fed p. Si, the improprii ty here of the title of wilful king, especially as a distinctivi I Venema, whosnpposes Antiochns Epiphanee to oe still thesnbject of the pro- phecy, explains "every god'' here to mean omnt durinum, or dignities and powers i with godlike prerogatives; especially the angelic dignitiee, p. 369. This would will agree with the iravra Xiyvptvov tiiov ij aijiacfta of St. l'aul. So too Pa. lxxxii. 6. $ "-x -s. Compare here too the prophecy of 2 These, ii. 4, speaking of the tting in God's temp!'-, a> (jod ; also Dan. vii. '2f>. — Wintle observes on the strength of meaning in the two r< rbs exalt himself, magnify himself. II "?• j-. 71; « hi - •■ j;. S r?\ the same word as in rerse 30 of the indignation of the King of the North. — '■■ that it i- a word specially used of OotTe anger. So [sa. Ixvi. 1 1. '• Th' -..ill he know n towards his enemies : " Zech. L 12, "The cities of Jud.ih against whom thou hast had indignation'' Compare too [sa. x. •">, ••ii Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the staff in their hand i^ wum indignation : I will send him against an hypocritical nation : " also Esek. \\ii. 24, Mai u i. [as xwi. 20, Ac, —The Greek rersaon of this important clanaa is, kui KartvSwu u*X9'£ ou tjvv7t\tvt)y i) opy/;. 92 THE SECOND HALF OF [PART VI. in respect of most particulars. I conceive with them that the king mentioned means the king or ruling chief of that that is determined shall be done. 37. Neither shall he regard * the God of his fathers, nor the desire of women, f nor regard any god ■ for he shall magnify himself * ypi with the preposition V? following it, (I presume in the sense of con- ceming, as to,) before the noun ; precisely as again elsewhere in this same verse, and also in verse 30 supra, "Vsjy b'J HP], translated, " He shall have intelligence with them that forsake the covenant." The same verb is used in verse 33 of this chapter, and twice over in verse 10 of chap, xii., without the ~2, or an accusative, in the sense of to .understand. Thus our English rendering in verse 30 seems a just and happy one : and, following this precedent, the phrase here must be considered to mean, lie shall have no joint intelligence, or alliance of mind and action, with the gods of his fathers. So the Sept. Etri iravrac, Otovc, twv 7raTtpu>v avrov ov avvrjcti. f ditto rVparl, The question here is, Are we to consider ivomen as the subject of the desire, or its object ? in other words, the desire/^ by women, or the desire (as of men) for women } And the question is so important that it is right that the in- vestigator should carefully note the parallels that Scripture offers. Now examples such as occur in Psalm cvi. 24, Jer. iii. 19, Ezek. xxvi. 12, Amos v. 11, Dan. x. 8, xi. 8, 38, 43, &c. &c, where we read land of desire, houses of desire, vineyards of desire, &c., in the sense of desired objects, — all these examples, I say, and such like, (though they have sometimes, I think, one or another been referred to by expositors,) must be set aside as altogether irrelevant, because in the Hebrew, as the English, the word for desire there comes last, here first: the word man, desire, being in the constructive form, and so preceding the word for women. Setting these aside, then, it is to be observed generally that in the case of nouns, so as here with man, in the constructive form, the word following may be un- derstood either objectively or subjectively. E. g. ax'"ra rtfTt, Zeph. ii. 8, means the reproach which Moab inflicted on others ; whilst rpTSJ* hB*ih, ?s. lxxxix. 51, is the reproach which the servants of God themselves experienced. Again, \n rt)?S^ Prov. xxi. 13, is the cry which the poor utter : but aio MMJ, Gen. xviii. 20, is the cry (probably) which Sodom caused others to utter. And so again in Ezek. xii. 19, com- pared with Judg. ix. 24 : — where the Hebrew for violence being in the constructive form, the one phrase means the violence exercised by the inhabitants ; the other the violence felt, or suffered, by the 70 men of Zerubbaal. As regards the particular noun in statu constr. in the clause under consideration, we have the following clear examples where the noun after desire in the genitive, so as the word women here, indicates the subject, or feeler, of the desire : viz. 1 Sam. ix. 20, " On whom (or towards whom) is the desire of all Israel ; " that is, the desire felt by Israel: where the Hebrew is V$J"fe?. rrtjWi ; and 1 Kings xx. 6, Lam. ii. 4, Ezek. xxiv. 16, 21, 25, "the desire of thine eyes," ?pW "rana, &c. ; (the Hebrew being there a derivative word, cognate to the former;) in the sense of that which the eyes desire. To which might be added also, in my opinion, the famous passage from Hagg. ii. 7, B^"un~:>3 rnani, the desire of all the nations ; though this indeed is one of which the sense, albeit generally explained to a similar effect, as that which was the great object of the desire fit by all nations, is yet by some doubted. Which being so, I cannot but incline to prefer this sense of the clause to that which Jerome advocated of old ; viz. as meant of the desire or appetite for women. " Anti- christus simulabit castitatcm, ut plurimos decipiat." As also the yet older expositor Victorinus : who, so understanding the expression, and applying it to Nero revived as the Antichrist, speaks of the total change of character that he would then manifest ; "Ait Daniel, 'desideria mulierum non cognoscet,' cum prius fuit impurissimus." B. P. M. iii. 420. But what then is it, taking the phrase subjectively, which women desire ? By Mede, Bishop Newton, and many other Protestant expositors, it is explained to mean marriage ; a sense of the phrase itself well accordant with fact ; and the non-regard of it here assigned, as they conceive, to the Antichrist notoriously applicable to the Pioman Popes, as encouraging monasteries and vows of virginity, and discouragiug marriage. Moreover the correspondence of this with St. Paul's declaration that the CHAP. II. $2.] DAMii.'s LAST PBOPHBCT. 93 those raise Christians jnsl spoken of, that would in hypo- crisy and mere profession have attached themselves to the Christian Church j in other words, the great Head of the Apostasy, the Roman Pope. For the definite article before the word King seems to me almost to tie down the meaning to some notable ruler, either of these false professors, or of the power just before mentioned as brought od the Bceneby the ships from Chittim, the same that would place the abom- ination making desolate: the Syrian King of the North (the only other previously-mentioned potentate whom that article might refer to) being excluded both by considerations else- where specified (p. 82, &c.),and by the chronology of the pas- abovc all. 38. But in his estate * shall he honour the god of forces : f {margin, the "forbidding to marry " would be one marked "characteristic of the great predicted antichristian apostasy, both before and aft) r, will strike every reader. The only objection is that, as the statement comes in a clause which seems to have for its subject the fod» that Antichrist would reject, " Neither shall he regard the god of his fathers, imr the de-ire of women, QOr any god," this ouj;ht so to mean also. Accordingly Gesenius, in this view of the sense of the phrase, suggests some Syrian godd--* to be meant, that was the special object of the worship of tlie Syrian women. And Venema, p. 387, 39.5, in the same view of it, explains it of the goddess Aitarto, or '• heavenly Pmmm," (ooutradistinctively to the impure earthly Venus,) whose t' mple Antiochus Epiphanee invaded (•_> Mace, i. 13, 15); for Venema supposes Antiochus Epiphaaee to be still the subject of the prophecy. On the other hand, Protestant ex- positors ask. Why should not the phrase designate Him who to the Hebrew women was tie special object of desire; —the promised teed of the woman, the Meesiah t So 1 :. S.C. ii. 164. 169. I have also met with the following expression of Pro- Lee's opinion to the same effect, in his work on Busebius' Theophania; Pre- face, p. exxvi. : "This, occurring a- it doe- in a context Speaking of deities, was pro- bably intended to designate the Meuiah ; who was the desire of women, as it should seem, among the ancient BebrewB." • ;.-"~? ; cither in hit ttoad, or jdure, as the words mean in verses 7, 20, 21, previ- ous; that is, instead of the God of gods, or the god of his fathers, or any rod noted in the preceding rerse as rejected by him: <>r perhaps, as Wintle and other com- mentators prefer to explain them, in his suit, viz. in the seat of the God of gods; an expression which would then somewhat agree with the descriptive clause in St. Paul's prophecy of the Man of Sin (2 These, ii. 1), "sitting in thr temple of dud," Arc. — Faber on the Prophecies. L 401, explains it. "when he i- established:'' i.e. scat. kii ,,iin teat : and in his S. C (ii. 178) in his office, or official station. — Venema, as usual, " t ":- =""•; T-N". The '-■ prefij here may be explained either from the gorernmg verb to honour, or do honour to, which follows : as this verb has sometimes elsewhere the ~ame preposition marking the dative in construction with it; e. ";. I'salm Iwwi. 9, ~-r- "";;"•. "They shall honour, or do honour to, thy name ;" anil indeed in the before os nexf succeeding. NoldJUS considers - to he usi-d sometimes as a si_ni of the aci usativc : e. £. Lct. xix. 18, "Thou shalt love thv neighbour, &c;" -?"■? : 1 Sam. xx. 30, "Thou hast. a the son of Jesse;" -;- - .!-,. liii. 11. He compares the us,, by the Septuagint sometimes, and also by the K\anLrelists, as Matt. ii. n, John it. the phrase wpoowvti* ma, with the dative. lor arpomewuv rata with tie \ - of the iiative, so gorerned, which is explicable in the same way as 94 THE SECOND HALF OF [PART VI, sage ; a chronology now brought down into Christian times by the context immediately preceding. — And as to the other god Mahuzzim :) * and f a pod whom his Gathers knew not shall he honour with gold, and with silver, and with precious stones and pleasant things. £ 89. Thus shall he do in the most strong-holds with a strange god,{ whom he shall acknowledge * r>"o, Mahoz, in the singular means a fortress. It is used literal!;/ in verse 7 of this chapter; and in Psalm xxxi. 3, and elsewhere, is applied figuratively to God; "Thou art my strength," (Eng. Vers.) or "fortress." — In the present passage the question occurs whether the plural noun is to be taken, so as our English translation renders it, in the simple literal sense of fortresses ; in which case it must be the geni- tive after Eloah, "the god of fortresses:" (so Venema, u Deum arcium," meaning Flatus, the god of the treasuries in the temple-sanctuaries ; also Lee, " the god offor- tiflcations :" or whether, with the margin, as an appellative of certain gods so de- signated. In common with most commentators, — and in accordance also with the Greek and Vulgate, (" Deum Mahuzzim in loco suo venerabitur," Qiov Mau>£«/t tiri tottov avrov eo£aati,) — I cannot hesitate to prefer the hitter explanation. I am in- duced to do so by two obvious considerations, not to mention others: 1st, that the god of fortresses, the rendering of the clause offered by the former explanation, could only he a god answering to the Pagan Mars, and consequently one not merely not un- known to the ancient Romans, but one honoured by them almost above any other : 2ndly, that it is an historic fact that an appellative precisely answering to the word Mahuzzim was actually given to departed martyrs and saints under the Papal Apostasy ; to which Apostasy, and its chief, it is plain (without entering into historic particulars which belong rather to the text and will there be noticed) that this prophecy may possibly apply. Theodorct thus comments on the whole clause. — Tu>v irarepuw avrov rravrwv rrjv oiKitav (pvcriv eyvojKorwv, Kai rov tin rravruiv Qeov ffipag avrovq oi'Ofiaaai pi] rtroX- fintcoToiv, ouroc; Geov iT%vpov kui Svvarov (rooro yap aripaivti to Macj^iip, ) tavrov irpotrayoptvti. To yap tin. roiry avrov avrt rov tavrov tiQuki. Malvenda, Vol. ii. p. 82, has a chapter on this subject. In common with most Romish expositors he doubts not that Antichrist is the subject of the prophecy. And, as to the Mahuzzim that Antichrist is to honour, he proffers three chief solutions, as what had most found favour with Romish expositors : — viz. 1st, that the god might be Mars; — or, 2ndly, the Devil ; — or, 3rdly, Antichrist himself ; which last he most of all approves. And he cites Theodoret, as above quoted by me, suggesting this view : and going on thus ; " Eriget enim sibi ipsi templa ; et auro et argento et lapi- dibus pretiosis ipse exornabit." For the Greek of which see my Note, p. 95. f The " might be rendered even, in the exegetic sense which not seldom attaches to it : in which case the eloah, or god, next mentioned, will be in apposition with, or as explanatory of, the Mahuzzim. But I prefer to take it in its more usual and simple sense of and : and shall hope presently to give a most striking explanation of the descriptive statement as applicable to the Papal Antichrist. X The verb for honour is tj3, a word illustrated at p. 99 infra. The last clause is literally, "things of desire." See the beginning of Note f p. 92. § '$?. ~'"",.?~n>* D*W8 "^Satt? ~'vyr. Here the word Mahuzzim recurs. ' ?*IXaB is the same that is rendered strong-holds in verse 24. (See p. 74 supra.) The sense is very obscure. The Vulgate turns it, " Et faciet ut muniat Mahuzzim ciim Deo alieno ; " the Greek, Kai Trotno-ti roic. oxvpiopavi riov Karafvyiov ptra Qtov a\\o- rpiov ; the Sgriac, " Transibitque ad urbes munitas contra Deos alienos." — Of modern commentators Venema (p. 421) translates, "Et faciet munitionibus arcium cum Deo peregrinitatem." Mede, " And he shall make the strong-holds of the Mahuzzim withal (or jointly) to the foreign god.'* Bishop Newton, " Thus shall he do to the defenders of the strange god whom he shall acknowledge." Wintle, "And he shall provide for fortresses of .Mahuzzim together with God." Faber, on Prophecy, "To the upholders of his tutelary gods, (or S. C. ii. 148, " restraincrs of strong military protectors,") together with the foreign god," &c. Ounvnghame (Investigator, iii. 280), " And he shall make for his fortified cities Mahuzzim, together with the strange god." Mara- mensis (ibid. iv. 193), " And he shall make them [i. e. the images and temples which CHAP. II. f 2.] damul'i last pkophxct. 95 two solutions that have been offered, and which would l\f undaratrada to be the " pleural things " of the r< ne preoi din 1 1 into the strong- holds of the Mahuasim, together with the atrrage god." ^ 1 1 iatotx observed that r'rr, like the Latin /be**, h:i> tin- meaning fe wtawb*, aswellaa thatof foals.) M ib. 84, gives also :i list of rations, some the same, some different. Ee i<>n< 1 u sm :" or, " Btfaeioi mitstsMMfs iptnu Makmim, hue est templa Antichriati." To all nf theee versions, as m 11 a-- to the authorized Engliah, there aei m to be oh- iina. — Miiliu/zim, being an appellatwt before, mnat ran Ij be either the appellative ten, or else explanatory of the appellative; and not itrong-holdi, as the English ranion ami Cnck. If eoe overlooks the V Mr. Cnninghajne,andlthiiili the Vulgate, conatme a< if it ware ~*~uz :. no! *■-="?• Bishop Newton and Paher give thai same noun the flgnratiTe sense of defenden, upholder*; which sense, howeTer, it lias nowhere •: Scripture, being always uaed literally to signify fortresses, as in Numb, txzii, 17, 36, Joan. \. 20, \i\. 86, Isa. wii. :i i besides that they suppose it to designate the ]>ric.-t- of the Mahuzzim ; an application of the figure singularly inapt, as it seems to me ; especially considering that the Malmzzitn themselves bear in that very title a figurative name of almost precise!} (he Bame character. Nor does Eoubigant, quoted by Newton, at all justify it. Maramensis seems to be as little justified in explaining the " pleasant things " with which the .Mahuzzim arc to be honoured, as temple* : an explanation essential, however, to his solution of the clause in question; since it is that which furnishes him from the context preceding with what he may apph pronominal accusative, understood, designating the things which his so-called Wilful King will make into Mahuzzim's strong-holds. rhapa, if the preeent reading be retained, the clause might be construed thus; "And he shall practise and prosper [so Dan. viii. 12, 21.] in the strong-holds of Mahuzzim, together with a strange god:" meaning by their strong-holds their . as the nrx, or citadel, was often the site of the tutelary god's temple of old; ample the Parthenon at Athens, the Capitol at Home, and, 1 may add, the Sanc- tuary of strength at Jerusalem. But then there occurs this objection :— the "to- gether with '' makes the foreign gt»l a sharer in this his prosperity. Or perhaps the two syivnymous nouns may be taken mtensitively, explanatorily thus : — '• Ami he shall make them into the strongest fortresses." Or, if we may suppose a final z to have fallen out from the *~*-J-"?. — an omission the rather supposaole from the cireum- e ruming the word following, and the alight change of vowel points involved in this supposition, VIS. of u for X, being one of little importance, — then, the text thus simplv corrected. Mr. CunitiL'hanie's translation becomes admissible, ''And he shall make for fortified cities Mahuzzim :" or the Following, " Ee shall . • U - huxxii . as well as a strange god." Of which two the latter translation elf to my mind: becaua it both fornishee a reason for the appellative KIM, — how they would l)e so called because in some way made into "—iz'z, or tees; and also explains the cause of the apostate self-deifying King's honouring them, and his consistency in so d<>iii;r ; inasmuch as Ac would makt th<,n into what - objects of worship: and consequently, in setting them up for the popu- tion and honour, would be honouring himself, as their creator, still d — All this applies also to the strange god spoken of in addition to the Mahuzzim ; which god would apparently be of the same fraternity with these latter, only more emit. as : here used, I conceive, in the conjunctive sense of • a sense which it has in Eccles. ii. 16, and elsewhere. SeeOesenius, 1 i add that the word ":. strange, is similarly used in Gen. XXXV. 2, of the tt carried with her of reraS 86 i- BS follows. Km Tron/fti roic o\vnioficim Tiov KaTadvyutv (lira Btou aWorptov, bv (yvotptof, k<>/>'er — a supremacy that. might well be equalled even to that of Alexander the ( treat, of whom the same expression is used4 — is another point of correspondency. — And so too his character mul pride, as ex- alting himself above every god ; and thus, and therefore, disregarding alike the Pagan gods of his Roman ancestors, and the true God, and Christ " the desire of women ;" (for so I take the phrase;') and against the latter speaking marvellous things and blasphemies : — all which is hut an- other version of what is said of the Antichrist alike in Dan. vii., 2 Thess. ii., and Rev. xiii. ; and which, in respect of its application to the Pope, has been already elsewhere in other parts of this Book ,; abundantly illustrated by me. — A- to what is said of the self-deifying King's honouring of 1 Tin1 difficulty is not obviated by the explanation which some expositors of this • ■ the abomination "t desolation in verse 81, as it' one to lie >< t op by an infidel Antichrist, yet fatore. And the objection to it not merely from tin context of the present prophecy, bat from our Lord's prophecy in Matt. xxiv. 15, is one which, not be OTercome. - Dan. vii. 20 26. The horn had eyi - u of a man, like an twunoiroc, or * Compare my Not.' t. ]>. 91. The very different meaning of the English word u>3- ■ irord l"'iiiLr need by ni of cUtpotition and /■ whereas the prophetic phrase only indicates aisol constitute* an other objection to tin- app I ' Kin'_r. It i> indeed hardly l< ■ than absurd. Bee my critical Mote, p. 6 See my Vol. iii. pp. 189, 190, iv. 7 98 THE SECOND HALF OF [PART VI. the god Mahuzzim, and also of a god tvhom his fathers Icnciv not,1 and which was to be glorified tvith gotd and silver and precious stones, in place alike of his ancestors' gods and of the true God, it seems to me to be well and consistently explained by reference to the two grand objects of worship under the Papacy: — 1st, to those saints, (the Virgin Mary primarily inclusive,) and their relics and images, which the Apostasy from its first development re- garded and worshipped as the Mahuzzim, ox fortresses, of the places where they were deposited : 2 saints whom the Papal Chief of Anti-Christendom, on the grant of the Pan- theon at Rome,3 solemnly adopted as tutelary deities ; whom in the second Council of Nice he prevailed to have recog- nized as fit objects of worship, with apostate Christendom's most solemn sanction ;4 and whom afterwards, in the West, he elected and canonized as Mahuzzim, as his own peculiar prerogative, and by his own sole authority :5 — 2ndly, to the 1 Hence probably tbe general patristic explanation resecting Antichrist, that he would put aside, and be an enemy to idols, the gods of his Roman ancestors ; " idola seponens," as Irenams says. Which indeed the Papal Antichrist was, though a patron of image and saint-worship : assorting somewhat paradoxically the total difference of tbe two things ; and declaring that he who called images idols, was anathema. The real difference was this: — the one was his creation; under his management ; and moreover a most fruitful source of gain to him (as will be again observed presently) in Western Christendom : the other not. 2 See on this Mosheim vi. 2. 4. 4.— Sir I. Newton traces the progressive steps of the Apostasy to this point; first, the celebrating the ytvtBXiu, or martyrdom-days, of the martyred saints at their tombs ; then making these tombs places of prayer ; then attributing to the saints mediatorial functions ; then connecting the favour- able exercise of those functions with honour paid to their relics, and afterwards to their images. Whence those bodies, relics, or images, came to be regarded as pledges of the departed saints' protection ; and the saints themselves tbe defenders and for- tresses, as it were, or mahuzzim, of the places or persons dedicated to them. In fact they were called by this very name. So Basil in one of his Homilies, Anuarov rr/v iKKXt/Tiau ravri]v (ppovpovfitvi)v rpig /.uyaXoiQ irvpyoiQ tuiv fiapTvpuiv fiiarripriaov. And again; Outoi tiatv ol ri\v kuB' rjftag \oipav liaXafiovrt^,* oiovti 7r?v Daniel, he has established the rule that it must " he glorified/' or have rays of glory surrounding it, "of «f>U1 and silver ami precious stones," wherever practicable in the crystal monstranza in which it is elevated for the adoration of the people; such glory as best becomes the divinity.1 But how so, considering that he is represented as self-deified? Jnst because, as being the saint-maker and god-maker, he did, in promoting their worship, pro- it was at first the office of Provincial Councils, with a Bishop prosiliiiLT, to which of the more recently departed might be regarded as saints and media- tors, the demand for new saints having become large in corrupted Christendom ; ami the Pope was only referee on appeal in the matter: — then at length the Pope claimed it as his peculiar prerogative to create saints; the first saint so created hy him being Ddalric, Bishop M Aogsbnrgh, canonized A.D. 993. See Mosheim ix. 2. 3. 4, and x. 2. 3. 4. Ifoaheim's words. — ".The judgment of the Roman Pontiffs was ted in the choice of those that were to be honoured with saintsbip," til! •■ the Church of Rome engrossed to itself the creation of these tutelary divinities, which at length was distinguished by the title of canonization,"— are like a comment on the prophetic words, "Mahnzsunwhom he shall acknowledge and inereateurith honour;" and fif mv rendering be correct), " B> shall make into fortresses the Mahuszim." See on this Pope Alexander's Bull, Hard. ix. 1662 : also my Vol. iii. p. 180. — Under Pagan Rome it was the Senate's prerogative to grant an apotheosis : — the very word this, by the way. applied sometimes on Papal medals to the Mints' canonization : e. g. on that of Francis of Saic^ bj Alexander VII. Bonanni, p. 654. For -ome of the earliest ca>cs of saints deified in the Latin Church as Mahuzzim, see my Vol. i. pp. 333. 834. For an example of such deified saint-protectors take that 01 Hilary Pi-hop of Poicticrs, with the inscription on a pillar. " 1 I Mario, ttrbia uropugnatori fldelissimo, Banctissimo, certissimo, Picfavorum Episcopo." (Milner, i.) — In illustration of the Virgin Mary's worship as a Mahoz, take the extract following, from the authorized Litany iu her h mour ealled the Litany of Loretto. (ap. Cuninghame, p. 178.) " We fly to thy patronage, 0 holy mother oi (>od ! . . Deliver us Iron all dangers, o ever glorious and blessed Virgin '■ lower of Datid, Tatter of ivory, Ark of the Covenant Refuge of turners, Help of Christians, Queen of Aj Queen of apostles. Queen of martyr-. (i'Utn of ail tamts .' . . . We ilv to tliv patronage, 0 holy Mother of God! Deliver us from all dangers !" — In Vol. iii. p. }17 1 have exemplified the Mariolatry still established in Pome, and elsewhere in Italy. .So too the Greeks in their Prcees Borarisa ; " 0 thou Virgin Mother of God, thou impregnable wall, thou fortress of salvation." r'~"i;' vr^. Compare Psalm ixviii. >. 1 Quwuias says* on the verb ton *03, Honour, or glorify, the noun ■■" cognate to which, is used in verse 3s ; " mrr -23, cnS,a Kvpm, (Sept. ) tlu- glory of Jehovah : that i-. the shining splendour which surrounds the Deity when he appears to men, called l>v theBabbini tah. Fxod. xxiv. 10, xl. 34 ; 1 Kings viu. 10. 1 1 ; 'j ( hron. vii. 1 ; I-.. \i. 8, i : Esek. i. 28, iii. 12, 18, viii. 4, x. 4. 18, ri. 22. Compare n N. T. ii. 9." To which let me add Hebr. i. 2 ; where Christ i- called the a-nm rtaaua of the Father's glory. 'I he Bomish Dr. Pock, in his llierurgia i. 84, describ! i species of ve--i I employed forshowmgthe blessed sacrament [oi ■aerated wafer] to the people, to receive their wership ; and that it is corap* .dot a stem which sup; led with rays of glory." A magnil specimen of such a BHMMtranza, 7 or 8 feel high, and with the ray- of gl< • d ami precioas stones, was cxhihiud in the Spanish department of thi London Exhibition of 186L 100 THE SECOND HALF OF [PART VI. mote yet more and superlatively his own.1 How he caused the saints to " rule over man//," attaching to each country, town, monastery, and church its patron-saint, and how effectually he thus " divided the land among them both for gain," and " at a price," is a further point of corre- spondence with the Apostate King of the prophecy, which previous interpreters have well explained ; and which I have myself also, after them, illustrated elsewhere fully from history.2 — Let me add that as the Head of that Apo- stasy under which the saints were many of them to fall, (to try them, and make them white, &c.,) the Apostate King's character of persecutor of the saints seems also intimated : and that, I think, not obscurely.3 How this characteristic applied to the Popes of Rome I need not re- peat. Such I conceive to be the intent of the Angel's prophecy, and that it thus had its fulfilment in the great and then future Papal Antichrist. And mark the intimation given in verse 36 as to the term of his continuance in power ■ — viz. that it was to be " till the end of the indignation ; " meaning apparently thereby the indignation against the Jewish people.4 4. So we come to the fourth sectional subdivision of the prophecy.5 And as in Balaam's far-ranging prophecy the 1 Nothing can better illustrate my text than some of the engravings given in my 3rd Volume, pp. 180 and 185, from Bonanni and other Roman authorities; e. g. one with the Pope's transubstantiated god, with its "glory" ("Tias) of the jewelled mon- stranza of honour ; other of the saints deified by him, with the inscription " Their glory is his honour." (Compare Note *,p. 96.) See too, on the former, the descrip- tion of the bread-made God's part in Leo Xth's procession, Vol. ii. p. 59. 2 See especially my Vol. ii. pp. 9, 10, 17, 27, &c, with the illustrative Notes. How it was " at a priee" appears in Note 1 p. 27 ; "Coelum est venale, Deusque." See too ib. pp. 72 — 75, in further illustration of the Pope's dividing the land at a price. Also compare what is said in our Homily on Peril of Idolatry, Part 3, both on the Mahuz- zim, and on dividing the land for gain. 3 Mr. Faber objects the absence of this mark, in proof that the Wilful King (as he calls him) here mentioned was not the Pope. Let me suggest, besides what I have said in the text, that the direct mention of this characteristic is wanting also in St. Paul's prophecy of the Man of sin ; which yet Mr. F. explains of the Papacy. 4 Wintlc, on verse 36, notices the same point; citing that famous observation of Kimchi on Obadiah, which I have also myself elsewhere cited, that, "when Rome shall be laid waste there shall be redemption for Israel." 5 40. " And at the time of the end * shall the king of the South push at * "ttTyfb ; Gk. iv xaipov irtpan. This is a very important phrase, and one CHAP. [I. \ 2.1 DAN1 1 I - L LSI PROPHEl r. 101 prediction of tin1 overthrow, first of .\>lmr, and then <>!' Eber, by ships from Chittim, waa followed by one respect- him.* Anil the kitii^ of the north -hill come against liini like ;i whirlwind, with cha- riots, and with horsemen, and with many ships: and bet "nail enter into tht ooun- d ling careful investigation, in order to the right understanding of this pint of the proph r? is the oonunon Hebrew word for time ; and used thus generally in Dan. xii. 1, x — r-z'. at that time. To express the myetioal Hum of prophecy, " a (mm and lull f i at the appointed time;" meaning the end of the Syrian kind's schemes ofsubduing Egypt The two words occur together, as here, only 1 believe in Dan. xi. 85, "To make them white even to the time of the. ml," -," r™-", iwg Kainov ninety, — Dan. xii. I. '.', " The words are closed up ami sealed until the time of tin- (>,(/," (same Hebrew and .,) -and Dm. \iii. 17, " Understand, for at (or to) the (mm of the >>/'/. y~~~y.'-, shall he the vision." Di the two first of which passages the < pooh of the eonaummo- • nis pretty clearly referred to: in the third, if our English version at be re- tained, certain Utter timet ; via. times later than that of the quadruple division of A \ tinier* s kingdom, and flourishing of the four kingdoms eonsei|uent ; in tact (if my explanation he correct, given in Part v. Chap, vii.) those of the rise of the Turkish Empire. But the '■; mmj he rendered to, not tit : and then the time of the end will be there, as in the other eases, the epoch of the consummation, or term of the vision about the Turkman. — Compare the iv varipoic, KaipoiQ of 1 Tim. iv. 1, and IV ierxa~ rift xpo»'y, or 67r* ea\arov ruiv iiptpiov. of .hide IS and 2 Peter iii. 8 i used, the .it the timet "/' the great apottaey, which was to end in the Popedom; the probably of the times more immediately preceding the consummation. It is in the target and less strict sense, and .is tantamount to the ionpoi Katpoi of St. Paul, that Mede and the two Newtons here take the phrase; and so too Wintle on Dan. viii. 17. Certainly to myself it seems that the stricter sense is the more na- tural. Yet they are possibly justified in tlnir explanation by the voripoi caipot or xpovoi of the New Testament ; especially as the definite article is not prefixed to the word y7 in the Hebrew. Prof. Lee, in his Preface to Busebius1 Theophania, would of the '>ld Testament prophecies to signify in still larger sense the whole time of the Gospel dispensation. N.H. In Dan. ii. 13, =":r BW ',*"", "at the aid of the times, even years," said of Antiochus the Great's certainly then returning against Egypt, it is the end of (hms, not time v tov votov, " He shall push uith, or at. the king of the smith : " making the teif-deifymg king, before spoken of, the nominative. A \aii<>us reading to he : the ••time of the end" he construed strictly: also, yet more, that Cy mav mean conjointly withy as well as at or agaiiut. .i. who still applies the prophecy t.> the Bpiphanic history, explains the time of the end to be the end of hud's indignation at that time against Israel ; an ending marked by the success of the MaOCaoeea. Another difficulty in his Way! See pp. 81, 1" -k here the pronominal ambiguity : for he may refer either to the kitty of the 102 THE SECOND HALF OF [PART VI. in g the full of the Chittim poiver itself, (" lie shall afflict Asliur, and lie shall afflict Ebcr, and he too shall perish for ever,") so too may this section of Daniel's prophecy, with tries * and shall overflow and pass over. 41. He shall enter also into the glorious land ; f and many countries J shall he overthrown : and these shall escape out of his hand, even Edom and "Moab, and the chief of the children of Amnion. § 42. lie shall stretch forth his hand j| also upon the countries, and the land of Egypt shall not escape. 43. But he shall have power over the treasures of gold and silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt; and the Libyans and Ethiopians U shall be at his steps.** 44. But tidings out of the cast and out of the north shall trouble him : ft therefore lie shall go forth with great fury to destroy, and utterly to make away many. JJ 4-5. And north, or the self-deifying king, Antichrist. And hence in fact a variance, as will be seen, in the historic explanation. The early Fathers explained it in the latter sense, of Antichrist ; Venema of the King of the North attacking the King of the South. * rVlX^Sja, " into lands ;" the Hebrew word being as general, and as little distinctive of any particular lands, as the word lands in the English. t ""MBi "~S2 the same expression as in verse 16 preceding; and also in Dan. viii. 9, but with land understood.— Doubtless Judnea, says Venema, p. 451. X Many is feminine in the Hebrew ; and therefore some such feminine noun as r':u-s, lands, countries, must be understood. § Compare Isa. xi. 14; a prophecy in which Edom, Ammon, and Moab are simi- larly conjoined: conjoined, however, as those who are not to escape, when the Lord restores his people Israel. " They shall spoil them of the East together : they shall lay their hand upon Edom and Moab ; and the children of Ammon shall obey them." See too Jer. xxv. 21 ; where they are mentioned together as those that would have to drink of the wine-cup of God's fury. || An expression indicating the exercise of power over, on, or against (S) the countries. So in Exod. vii. 19, viii. 5, &c, of Moses stretching out his hand over the rivers of Egypt ; also in Isa. v. 25, Ezek. xvi. 27, &c., of God doing so in judgment. IT B'ttbl a'^api ; the Cushim meaning the Abyssinians, perhaps inclusive of those in- habitants of Upper Egypt that immediately adjoined Abyssinia : the Lubim the in- habitants of the northern coast of Africa, west of Egypt. So Acts ii. 10, "The parts of Libya about Cyrene." — They are mentioned together in 2 Chron. xvi. 8, as having united in the attack on King Asa : also in Nah. iii. 9, as joint supporters of " No," or the Egyptian Thebes. •* Gesenius explains the clause, "At his steps ; that is, in his train." The word is the common one used to signify a man's steps or paces : as in 2 Sam. vi. 13. Com- pare Judg. iv. 10, " Barak went up with 10,000 men at his feet." Venema here sufficiently shows his inability to carry the Epiphanic solution of the prophecy further. Admitting that it cannot apply in any way to Antiochus Epi- phanes himself, he refers this passage to Epiphanes' son Eupator. But did Eupator then conquer Egypt, and have the Libyans and Ethiopians at his steps ? Not so, Venema admits ; but he had them in imagination : " iEgyptum Cusha;am et Libyam actu quidem non intrabit; . . attamen eas partim sui juris esse, et sua3 potestati sub- jectas reputabit." " Successum imaginarium." pp. 454, 458. ft Venema (p. 458) compares Isa. xxxvii. 7, " I will send a blast upon him, and he shall hear a rumour, and return to his own land ; " said of Sennacherib. But mark here another ambiguity as to the intent of the pronoun. By the " him " thus to be troubled, is the King of the North meant, or the self -deifying apostate King ? The early Fathers, having understood the he in verse 40 of the latter, na- turally explained this verse also of the same Apostate King, or Antichrist. And they applied it in illustration of what is said in Dan. vii. of the Little Horn of the fourth Beast cutting off three out of its ten horns: — the three horns so plucked up being ex- plained by them to mean the Libyans, Egyptians, and Ethiopians. — Others explain it (so e. g. Venema, Newton, &c.) of the King of the North. t+ Wintle, " to devote to utter perdition;" the verb being one of devoting by a curse. Theodoret a little amplifies the Septuagint translation : 'H£« iv 0tjptu iroWy, tov avaOt/iarioai icai rov aipaviaai ttoWovq. ell \r. II. § 2.] DANUtli's I, Asr PROEHECT. L09 it ^ sequel next following, he a prediction of the same also. Hut it is a passage which has more than one Considerable ambiguity ami obscurity attached to it. The primaiv dillieultv of the passage, considered criti- cally, antl with a view to its historical explanation, arises out of those words at its very commencement, " at the time <>f tin' end" ' Taken in their strictest and most propel Sense, they mibt indicate the epoch of the end of the present numv, or dispensation : a sense which attaches to them in the two other places in which they occur in this Same prophecy. And then the predictions they introduce must he considered as for the most part still future. — If, however, the phrase may he construed less strictly, viz. in the sense of /A*' latter t<-* p. 100. just preceding. ! " In the latter days of the Roman empire." says Bishop Newton. s Besides assuming that " at " or " against him " is to be taken in verse 40 as tho tni'' reading and sense, I also assume that the him is to be understood, in it- most natural sense, of the apostate kin^ before spoken of. 4 p. 816. • ^-es. Gesenius and "Wintle refer, in illustration of the meaning of this word, to a •a Jonathan's Targum on Jer. xliii. 10, (" He shall spread his royal pa- vilion.") where the same word is used, and where it signifies royal beauty eeuA apt* ndow. Thus it is here thought to mean his royal military tmis. Venema explains the phrase as meaning tnits of a red colour : "Plantabit tentoria tunictr sure coccinea inter maria; " i. e. says he, " tents with a red flag above them, in sign of battle." pp. W8, 172. f Compare Joel ii. 20; "His face toward the east sea, and bis binder part to- ward the utmost sea ; " and Zech. xrr. 8; " In that day living waters shall go out from Jerusalem ; half of them toward the former sea, and bait' of them toward the hinder sea:" where the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean seem to be meant. — So \ n i explains the words, n* well as other expositors. t — ;j--- The word ■- iiLiv be a mountainout chain or range, as a tingle mountain. Thus it i- used of the hill country of Judab in Josh. sxL ll : and - :. w. 17, "Thoa shall plant them in the mountain of thine in ancc ; " Numb. xiii. 17: and Dent. iii. 26, M Let me go over, and see the good land is beyond Jordan, that goodly mountain, and Lebanon." Of which passages Adam Clark'-, on I-t. r. l. says; "Judea in general was a mountainous country, wl Compare on the other band Psalm ii. 6, xliii. 3; where the huly mountain is used specialty I Zion. 104 THE SECOND HALF OF [PART VI. plausibility to this as the true solution, that both the little that is here said of the King of the South's proceedings, and the fuller and more particular prediction of those of the King of the North, well agree with the history of the Sara- cenic and Turkish invasions of Christendom. The Saracen, after occupying Egypt, and so standing on the ground of the Ptolemies,1 did push from thenre against Western as well as Eastern Christendom ; and both conquered Spain and Sicily,2 and even attacked the Pope and Rome itself, in expeditions up the Tiber.3 Again, the Turk came after- wards against apostate Christendom like a whirlwind, with chariots 4 and horsemen, and with many ships ; and over- flowing like a flood, entered both into it and into the once glorious land of Judaea : — moreover, though Edom, Ammon, and Moab, or the Arabs of the neighbouring desert, escaped from his hand, yet did he further extend his dominion over Egypt,5 the Upper as wrell as the Lower ; and over Libya also, or Northern Africa ; so that from all the three Libyan principalities of Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco, " they were at his steps," i. e. sent forth auxiliary forces at his command. Of the terribleness of which invader to the Popes of Rome the Papal Councils for some four or five centuries furnish abundant evidence ; as also the solemn deprecatory processions at Rome, and efforts of successive Popes at rousing the secular powers of Western Christen- dom against him.6 — And, presuming the sense to be thus far as stated, and the Turkish invasion of Christendom to have been the thing predicted in verses 40 — 43, the inter- preters I speak of suggest further as the most natural, though not indeed necessary, explanation of the prediction in verse 44 next following,7 (" And tidings out of the East 1 Wintle, in explaining this of the Saracens, cites a quotation in Bochart from a book called Jaehasin, in which the appellation King of the South is given to the Sara- cen ruler. — All the Arabian part of the first Ptolemy's dominion was occupied by Mahomet ere he attacked any neighbouring country ; then the Cmle-Syrian province, which also was a part of Ptolemy's rightful dominion, was conquered by the Caliphs ; and then Egypt ; — whence at length they extended their conquests further westward. 2 A part, as I have observed Vol. iii. p. 171, of the Tope's own Metropolitan Episcopate. 3 See Vol. i. p. 466. 4 I mean the ctfia£ai which generally accompany a Scythian or Asiatic army. Ge- senius explains the word aiji as chariots, or waggons. 5 A.D. 1517. 6 Even up to the sixteenth century. For example, there was a deprecatory pro- cession at Rome, on this account, at the time of the fifth Lateral Council. 7 Not necessary, '^because of the ambiguity of the pronoun him. chap. ii. $2.] Daniel's last prophecy. 105 and out of the North shall trouble him") that it too should be referred to the Turkman, as being the Bubjecl of all tin- loin- verses previous: and thus that he must l>e considered as the Prince thai is to go forth \\ith great fury, and plant the tabernacles of his pavilion between the Beas, in the mountain-country probably of Jerusalem; and there come to bis end, and none help him.1— So, I Bay, these exposi- tors j as of an event yet future. But indeed it' the Turk be thf Kong of the North meant, it seems by no means impos- sible that even this part of the prophecy may have already and elsewhere had its accomplishment. Por, admitting that his early Seljukian greatness, though extended Westward as far even as to Jerusalem,' and with political influence too over Egypt, suffices not to answer what is said of the North- ern Kings supremacy over Egypt and Libya, and that to meet that part of the prediction we must pass on with Mede and Newton to the later epoch of the Othman Turk's ex- tremist extent of African greatness, vet we are not without prophetic precedent8 for Bupposing that there may be here perhaps a retrogradation to mark certain notable events in his progress to that greatness. Which supposed all an- swer.-. The tidings of Zenghis Khan from the ESast, and of the crusades from the North, troubled and for a while checked the Seljukian career of conquest:4 and so too, under the later Othman dynasty, that of the last onset of Prank chivalry in the war of Nicopolis from the North, and that of the Tartar Tamerlane from the East.5 Then he went forth in fury after that trouble, bent on destroying the Christian Empire; and taking Constantinople, fixed his scat of Empire between "the two seas" of Marmora and the Knxine, a local peculiarity often celebrated in the very 1 It is a curious (set that a prophecy somewhat accordant therewith has been long mong tin- Turks thsuueirea. I heard this myself in 1819 from a Jsniasary Tar- tar attached to t li < - British Embassy in Constantinople, who ipoke of it a- a oommou subject of talk in toe Turkish coffee-houses, [t was to tin- effect that die Moslem ut would he (breed bach from Constantinople in the latter day-, Bral to Brass, and thence to Damtuew; and that it would (for* continue waning till the mdofth* X -Compare tin- earlier Turkish prophecy noticed in the 7th Session of tin- 6th mcQ; ■• AHonoiua (regis Armenia (rater] in oriental] acribit bistori apud Mshumetanos hostes indubiam prophetism, cuius pretexts ad annum l Christi ortu daraturam eomm MOtem pro compcrto asaererat." Hard. i\. 1703. Also th.it mentioned by ne VoL i. p. 461. my Vol. i. p. i:i!». i See p. 71 Note t. * Bee my Vol. i. pp. 501, 502. » Bee Eb. pp. 631, 10G THE SECOND HALF OF [PART VI. terms of our prophecy:1 there in the mount of Santa So- phia,-' (a glorious holy mountain, as being professedly the Eastern Capital of Christianity,)3 pitching his royal tent; another singularly appropriate phrase ; as Montesquieu describes the Turks to be a people encamped in Europe.4 — If such be admitted as the solution, then all that yet remains to be fulfilled about the Turkish King of the North is that he shall come to his end, and none help him.5 But, if the expression "time of the end," in verse 40, in- troductory of this closing sketch of the history of the Kings of the South and the North, be construed strictly, then the chronographic phrase must indicate a time subsequent to the sounding of the seventh Trumpet;6 that is, a time sub- 1 Captain Slade, in his "Travels in Turkey," p. 242, (Ed. 1854,) states that over the Seraglio gate, or Sublime Porte, there is an inscription in Arabic, from which the following, as translated by him, is an extract, descriptive of the Sultan, its foundeij: " By the assistance of God, and his good pleasure, Lord of the two continents and seas, the shadow of God amongst men, . . .the victorious emperor Mahomet, son of Amu- rath, laid the foundation of this august building. . . May the Almighty perpetuate his empire, and exalt it above the lucid stars of the firmament." Hence, as Dellaway observes, (Constantinople, p. 41,) " the public style and title" of the Turkish Sultan is "Governor of the earth, and Lord of three continents and two seas." See too his notice of this characteristic of the site of Constantinople as between " the two seas," p. 15. Three centuries ago the great Luther, in his Table Talk, ii. 2, not only noted, but compared with the prophecy before us, this local peculiarity of the Turkish Capital : " The Turk ruleth between two seas at Constantinople." And somewhat remarkably, the same is remarked on in a work by Louis Napoleon, the present Emperor of the French, — " The geographical position of Constantinople is such as rendered her the queen of the ancient world. . . Situated between two seas of which she commands the entrance, &c." 2 The Sultan's own Palace at the Seraglio point is, as all visitors there well know, on the hill of the Santa Sophia, and indeed includes it within the royal enclosure. That famous Church, the metropolitan and holiest of Eastern Christendom, was origin- ally built by the great Constantine, and dedicated to the Santa Sophia, or Christ the Divine Wisdom ; then rebuilt, yet more magnificently, by Justinian, his architectu- ral masterpiece. See the authorities cited in Bingham viii. 2, 3 ; also Paul Warnfrid, B. P. M. xiii. 165. 3 Whether by expressions like this in Daniel, with chronological reference to Chris- tian times, before the Jews' restoration and conversion, we may understand the sacred localities of the Christian religion, or only those of the old Jewish, is one question that here meets the inquirer : another, whether a place or people may be called holt/ in prophecy from its professing Christianity, after having become corrupted. I have had to express my opinion on them in the affirmative, in my explanation of Dan. viii. some time since. See Vol. iii. pp. 438 — 440. — It should however be observed fur- ther that the Turk has pitched the ensigns .of one of his Pashaliks in the holy moun- tain of Jerusalem also, between its two seas. x Sur la Grandeur, &c. 5 The prophecy in Apoc. xvi. 12 of the end of the Turkman power by exhaustion, like as of the (Irving up of the inundation of Euphrates, seems not inconsistent with the view of its end thus given by me ; or with that given in Dan. viii. 25. And the present vain attempts by some of the Christian European powers at revivifying "the sick man," add peculiar force to the prophetic statement applied. 6 See, as before, Note* p. 100. CBAP. 11. §2.] nwni.'s i,\sr PBOPHBOT. 1:07 sequent to the French Revolution. And, if we so take it, I would suggest whether that reading of the manuscript Wintle mentions, and also of the Greek Septuagint, whioh omits "fop "at Asm," may not DC the true one:1 or els6, rather, whether the feu may not be construed coryointly with, instead of •£, of agamel him. In the former case all intima- tion of a King who includes Egypt in his dominions push- ing agaiasi the Roman self-deifying Sovereign, or against Papal Christendom, at the time of the end, (a tiling under present political circumstances so improbable,) is eliminated out of the prophecy. In the latter ease, which I prefer, the self-deifvim: Man of Home, and the last King of the South, (possibly the French Chieftain,)8 push together. Then, as to the last Kiiisz of the North coming against him like a whirlwind, with chariots and horsemen and ships, ami to overflowing thereupon into both other countries and the "glorious land," a question rises whether this " he " in the last clause of verse 40 is still the King of the North, or the self-deifying King, Antichrist, of verse 89 preceding ; including the Southern power confederate with him.3 The latter is the general explanation of the lathers.4 And so they bring Antichrist and his confederate hosts upon the mountains of the Holy Land, between its two seas, at the last great crisis. There, as it Mould then seem, he is to Overflow for a while with mighty power: then, on oc- casion of tidings from the North and from the Mast trou- bling him. to go forth in fury, bent on destruction. Hut in vain, "lie shall come to his end, and none shall help him." • p. 101 supra. * Fur the power so meant need not be one simply confined to Egypt. When the French under Bonaparte in 1 7 * » '- * occupied and ruled Egypt, they might bate been red the representatives <>f the former Kings of the South. The same were France, which already possesses the old Roman African province, jei again I rat; which has long been a favourite object with her. If so, i thin.' looks as if it would he in alliance with the Papacy. The intrigues of French missionaries in Syria. Egypt, Abyssinia, are sufficiently known; ami bare been by me in the last Chapter of my 3rd Volume. J Then i- nothing in the phraseology or construction to forbid this. See the. examples alluded to in Note - p. 7 s, of pronouns in the earlier part of the prophecy baring n ; ther persons, and aot those last spoken of. The,... tetuum, as Prof. Lee calls it, (on Prophecy, p. 181,) ha- to in. foUowed. * s,, 1 believe universally. See Notetr P< 102, just preceding. F. g. Iremsui •ir:-' ; " lratuferet regnom in Jerusalem:" a- if fron Jerm plifli ition sfalvi od 1 i. 698 ; who b on this particular 108 THE SECOND HALF OF [PART VI. — And then, and thereupon, as stated in the next Section, comes the fated time of Israel's restoration, with certain other extraordinary events accompanying it. To which we must now next turn. 5. It does not however need that I here enter at all fully or particularly into this fifth and last sectional subdivision of the prophecy before us.1 Its subject-matter is that which in more than one important point chiefly concerns the Mil- lennium, and consequently rather belongs to our next chap- ter. Suffice it therefore at present to note three points prior to it in time ; two clearly declared here, the other more ambiguously and obscurely. The first is, that there will be then (viz. at the time when either the Turk " shall 1 Dan. xii. 1. "And at that time shall Michael* stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people : and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time : and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book. 2. And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to ever- lasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. f 3. And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament ; X and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever. 4. But thou, 0 Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end.§ Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased. 5. Then I Daniel looked, and, behold, there stood other two, the one on this side of the bank of the river, and the other on that side of the bank of the river. 6. And one said to the man clothed in linen, which was upon the waters of the river, How long shall it be to the end of these wonders ? 7. And I heard the man clothed in linen, which was upon the waters of the river, when he held up his right hand and his left hand unto heaven, and sware by him that liveth for ever that it shall be for a time, times, and an half; || and when he shall have accomplished to scatter the power of the holy people, all these things shall be finished. 8. And I heard, but I understood not. Then said I, 0 my Lord, what shall be the end of these things ? 9. And he said, Go thy way, Daniel : for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.H 10. Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried: ** but the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand ; but the wise shall understand. 11. And from the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away, and the (or an) abomina- tion that maketh desolate set up, ft there shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety days. 12. Blessed is he that waiteth, and cometh to the thousand three hundred and five and thirty days. 13. But go thy way till the end be: for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days." X % * See on Michael my Vol. iii. p. 30, Note '. — I see that Wintle, on Dan. x. 13, follows Lightfoot in explaining the Michael of Apoc. xii. 7 as Christ. And so too Venema, pp. 479, 490. t The question as to the nature of the resurrection meant will be the subject of Ch. iii. next following. % Compare the remarks p. 86 on the same class of persons, as described verse 33 supra. § yj>m T'j, the same expression as in xi. 40. || Compare Apoc. x. 6, and my remarks on the passage, Vol. ii. pp. 128 — 131. If Same as in verse 40. * * See Wintle ad loc. Also my remarks Note § p. 87 on xi. 35. ft sjH yip^ nrVi. XX "fr"' w*tn tne artic^e- CHAP. II. $2.] DAMKI.'s LAST PBOPHBGT. L09 have come to an end, and none help him/1 or when the last King of the North, or the Roman Antichrist, with the secular power of tlu- King of the South supporting him, shall have overflowed in might into Judaea,) " a Beason of tribulation such as Qever was since there was a nation : " — an expres- sion this probably proverbial; but which, from having been used by our Lord in his prophecy of the Biege and destruc- tion of tin* ancient Jerusalem by the Romans, brings the horrors of that Biege irresistibly before the mind, as the standard of comparison. — The second is, that Grod's faithful servants then alive, (whether Gentiles, or .lews, or both,1) "all that are written in the book," shall (after partak- ing apparently in the tribulation) be delivered. — As to the third, it is one that lias reference to the chronology of the consummation : and both from its importance, and the measure of obscurity attending it, is one that needs a fuller explanation. It was the Angel saying then, we read, that the wonder, or mystery* should come to <^ question recurs whether Daniel's fellow-countrymen, the Jews, be meant, or the Christian Berrants of God. This is evident, thai if Jews it must be ted Jem, haying their names written in God's book of life. Compare Apoc. iii. ■"». \^. L3. Bee too Wintle ad loo. • "How long to thr end of the wonder* t" rene6; meaning, T conceive, Hon long from the beginning to the end of the grand m or mi i .insimm \tion. 11.", \N 3. Tin: CRISIS INTRODUCTORY TO Tin: JEWIBB RESTOR- ATION, \\n BLB88BDNBSS 01 rm. CONSUMMATION, As DESCRIBED BI CERTAIN OTHER PROPHETS. Of predictions of this kind by Other prophets (he most, cir- cumstantial and illustrative arc, perhaps, those by the four prophets Isaiah, Joel, Ezekiel, Xcchariah : the two fust dat- ing before the Babylonish Captivity, the third during its con- tinuance, the fourth after the. lews' return from it. There is here this advantage, that comparatively little of one kind of ambiguity attaches to them that attaches to much in Daniel's closing prophecy. They are at least in respect of grammar for the most part comparatively clear and simple. I will cite them in the chronological order of their delivery. 1. Isaiah xxiv., x\v. — xxiv. 17. "Fear, and the pit, and the snare, arc upon thee, 0 inhabitant of the earth. 18. And it shall come to pass, that he who flceth from the noise of the fear shall fall into the pit ; and he that coineth up out of the midst of the pit shall be taken in the snare: lor the windows from on high arc open, and the foundations of the earth do shake. 19. The earth is utterly broken down, the earth i-> clean dissolved, the earth is moved ex- ceedingly. 20. The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall be removed like a cottage; and the transgression thereof shall be heavy upon it; and it shall tail, and not rise again. 21. And it shall conic to pass in that day, that the Lord shall punish the host of the high ones that are on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth. ^.0. And they shall be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in the prison, and after many days shall they be visited. 23. Then the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed, when the Lord of hosts shall reign in mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before his ancients gloriously." — \\v. 1 : " O Lord, thou ail my God ; I will exalt thee, I will praise thy name; forthouhast done wonderful things; thy counsels of old are faithfulness and truth. 2. For thou hast made of a city an heap ; of a deteiiecd city a ruin \ a 114 isaiah's prophecies [part vi. palace of strangers to be no city ; it shall never be built. 3. Therefore shall the strong people glorify thee, the city of the terrible nations shall fear thee. 4. For thou hast been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat, when the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall. . . . G. And in this mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined. 7. And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations. 8. He will swallow up death in victory ; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces ; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth : for the Lord hath spoken it. 9. And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God ; we have waited for him, and he will save us : this is the Lord ; we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation."1 Also Chap, xxxiv., xxxv. — "1. Come near, ye nations, to hear ; and hearken, ye people : let the earth hear, and all that is therein ; the world, and all things that come forth of it. 2. For the indignation of the Lord is upon all nations, and his fury upon all their armies : he hath utterly destroyed them, he hath delivered them to the slaughter. 3. Their slain also shall be cast out, and their stink shall come up out of their carcases, and the moun- tains shall be melted with their blood. 4. And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll : and all their host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a fallen fig from the fig-tree. 5. For my sword shall be bathed in heaven : behold, it shall come down upon Idumea, and upon the people of my curse, to judgment. G. The sword of the Lord is filled with blood : it is made fat with fatness, and with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the 1 The song and subject continue onward in the next chapter xxvi. : at verses 18, 19, of which we read; ""We have been with child; we have been in pain; we have as it were brought forth wind ; we have not wrought any deliverance in the earth, neither have the inhabitants of the world fallen. Thy dead shall live: rny dead body they shall arise, &c. ; " — with reference to some kind of resurrection. OHII. $8.] OF THE CRISIS Of THE CONSUMMATION. II", kidneys of ranis ■. for the Lord hath a sacrifice in Bosrah, and a great slaughter in the land of [dumea. 7. And the unicorns shallcome down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls ; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made tat with fatness. B. For it is the day of the Lord's Vengeance, and the year of rccoinpeiiecs for the Controversy of Zion. 9. And the streams thereof shall be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone, and the land thereof shall become burning pitch. 10. It shall not be quenched night nor day ; the smoke thereof shall go up for ever: from generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it for ever and ever. 11. But the cormorant and the bittern shall possess it ; the owl also and the raven shall dwell in it : and he shall stretch out upon it the line of confusion, and the stones of empti- ness. 10. They shall call the nobles thereof to the king- dom, but none shall be there; and all her princes shall be nothing. 1.3. And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof: and it shall be an habitation of dragons, and a court for owls. 14. The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow ; the screech owl also shall rest there, and find for herself a place of rest. 15. There shall the great owl make her nest, and lay. and hatch, and gather under her shadow : there shall the vultures also be gathered, every one with her mate. 16. Seek ye out of the book of the Lord, and read : no one of these shall fail, none shall want her mate : for my mouth it hath commanded, and his spirit it hath gathered them. 17. And he hath cast the lot for them, and his hand hath divided it unto them by line : they shall possess it for ever, from generation to generation shall they dwell therein." '• \\\v. 1. The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them ; and the desert sliall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. 2. It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing : the glory of Lebanon >hall be given unto it, the excellency of Cannel and Sharon, they shall Bee the glory of the Lord, and the excellency of our God. S. Strengthen ve the weak hands, and confirm the feeble 8 • 116 ISAI All's PROPHECIES [PART VI. knees. 4. Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not: behold, your God will come with venge- ance, even God with a rccompence ; he will come and save you. 5. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. G. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing : for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert. 7. And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water : in the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes. 8. And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness ; the unclean shall not pass over it ; but it shall be for those : the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein. 9. No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon ; it shall not be found there ; but the redeemed shall walk there : 10. And the ransomed of the Lord shall re- turn, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads : they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away." Also Chap. lxvi. 6. "A voice of noise from the city, a voice from the temple, a voice of the Lord that rendereth recompence to his enemies. 7. Before she travailed she brought forth ; before her pain came she w7as delivered of a man child. 8. Who hath heard such a thing? who hath seen such things ? Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day ? or shall a nation be born at once ? for as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children. 9. Shall I bring to the birth, and not cause to bring forth ? saith the Lord : shall I cause to bring forth, and shut the womb ? saith thy God. 10. Rejoice ye with Jerusa- lem, and be glad with her, all ye that love her : rejoice for joy writh her, all ye that mourn for her: 11. That ye may suck, and be satisfied with the breasts of her consola- tions ; that ye may milk out, and be delighted with the abundance of her glory. 12. For thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the Gentiles like a flowing stream : then shall ye suck, ye shall be borne upon her sides, and be dandled upon her knees. 13. Asonewdiom his mother comforteth, ill. II. $8.] 01 Tin: crisis op TH1 CONSUMMATION. 117 so will 1 comfort you; and ye shall be comforted in Jeru- salem. 1 L Ami when ye Bee this, your bearl shall rejoice, and your bones shall flourish like an herb: and the hand of tin1 Lord shall In1 known toward his servants, and his indignation toward his enemies. L5, For, behold, the Lord will come with lire, and with his chariots like a whirl- wind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of tire. lii. Lor by lire and by liis sword will the Lord plead with all flesh: and the slain of the Lord shall be many. 17. They that sanctify themselves, and purify themselves in tin1 gardens behind one tree in the midst, eating swine's flesh, and the abomination, and the mouse, shall be consumed together, saith the Lord. 18. For I know their works and their thoughts: it shall come, that I will gather all nations and tongues ; and they shall come, and see my glory. 19. And I will set a sign among them ; and I will send those that escape of them unto the nations; to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, that draw the bow, to Tubal, and Javan, to the isles afar off, that have not heard niv fame, neither have seen my glory ; and they shall declare my glory among the Gentiles. 20. And they shall bring all your brethren for an offering unto the Lord out of all nations upon horses, and in chariots, and in litters, and upon mules, and upon swift beasts, to my holy mountain Jerusalem, saith the Lord; as the children of Israel bring an offering in a clean vessel into the house of the Lord. 21. And I will also take of them for priests and for Le- vites, saith the Lord. ^.0. For, as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, saith the Lord, so shall your seed and your name remain. 23. And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before rae, saith the Lord. 24. And tiny -hall go forth, and look upon the carcases of the men that have transgressed against me: for their worm >hall not die, neither shall their tire be quenched ; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh." . Joel ii. 30. — "And I will shew wonders in the hea- ven- and in the earth; blood, and fire, and pillars of 118 joel's prophecy. [part vi. smoke. 31. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the Lord come. 32. And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be de- livered : for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deli- verance, as the Lord hath said, and in the remnant whom the Lord shall call." l iii. 1. " Behold, in those days, and in that time, when I shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, 2. I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jchoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land. 3. And they have cast lots for my people : and have given a boy for an harlot, and sold a girl for wine, that they might drink. 4. Yea, and what have ye to do with me, 0 Tyre, and Zidon, and all the coasts of Palestine ? will ye render me a recompense? and if ye recompense me, swiftly and speedily will I return your recompense upon your own head ? 5. Because ye have taken my silver and my gold, and have carried into your temples my goodly pleasant things : 6. The children also of Judah and the children of Jerusalem have ye sold unto the Grecians, that ye might remove them far from their border. 7. Behold, I will raise them out of the place whither ye have sold them, and will return your recompence upon your own head : 8. And I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off: for the Lord hath spoken it. 9. Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles : Prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near ; let them come up : 10. Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruninghooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong. 11. Assemble yourselves, and come, all ye heathen, and gather yourselves together round about : thither cause thy mighty ones to come down, O Lord. 12. Let thehea- 1 This passage is referred to by St. Peter (Acts ii. 19) ; but evidently as being then only a primary accomplishment, as he judged, of a particular part of prophecy : St. Peter expecting that the rest would soon have its accomplishment also, as he supposed the second advent of Christ not to be far off. Compare Acts iii. 19 — 21 ; a passage that I shall have to comment on in my next Chapter. (Ml. H.fS.] 1 /I KM i.'s PROPHXCT 01 Till' C0N8UMM kTION. 1 1 9 then be awakened, and come up to the vallev of .lehosha- phat : fop there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about. 13. Put \e in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: OOme, get yOU down: torthe press is full, the fats overflow j for their wickedness is great. 14. Multitudes, nmlt itudes, in the vallev of decision: for the (lav of the Lord is near in the vallev of decision. 15. The sun and the moon shall he darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shining. L6. The Lord also shall roar out of /ion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem ; and the heavens and the earth shall shake : but the Lord will lie the hope of his people, and the Strength of the children of Israel. 17. So shall ye know that 1 am the Lord your God dwelling in /ion, my holy mountain: then shall Jerusalem be holy, and there Bhail no strangers pass through her any more. IS. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the mountain shall drop down new wine, and the hills shall flow with milk, and all the rivers of Judah shall flow with waters, and a fountain shall come forth of the house of the Lord, and shall water the valley of Shittim. 19. Egypt shall be a desolation, and Edom shall he a desolate wilderness, for the violence against the children of Judah, because they have shed innocent blood in their land. 20. Hut Judah shall dwell for ever, and Jerusalem from generation to generation. 21. Fori will cleanse their blood that 1 have not cleansed: for the Lord dwelleth in Zion." 3. Ezekitl xxxviii., xxxix.1 — " 1. And the word of the Lord came unto me, saying : — 2. Son of man, set thy face against Grog, the land of Magog, the chief prince of Mc- Bhech and Tubal ; [or rather, the chief of Ros, Meshech, and Tubal ;-'j and prophesy against him, 3. and say: Thus 1 Ch. xxxviii. follows Ch. xxxvii., with its vision of the valley of dry bones, indicating the risiirrc tion of the boUM of farad. : Hi b. ~y~'. ™~~ -s* s"-: :'■;. In the Septnagint the passage in xxxviii. 2—4 reads thus, Yit avQpuiirov artjnitov to irpoawirov eiov (iri Vuty. kcii Tt/v yr/i' tov M iir' avrov, Kat itirov avrtp, Tail \tyii ki'(i! the chief of Meshech and Tubal : 4. And I will turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws, and I will bring thee forth, and all thine army, horses, and horsemen, all of them clothed with all sorts of armour, even a great company with bucklers and shields, all of them handling swords: 5. Per- sia, Ethiopia, and Libya with them : all of them with shield and helmet : 6. Gomer, and all his bands, the house of Togarmah of the north quarters, and all his bands ; and many people with thee. 7. Be thou prepared, and pre- pare for thyself, thou, and all thy company that are assem- bled unto thee, and be thou a guard unto them. 8. After many days thou shalt be visited : in the latter years thou shalt come into the land that is brought back from the sword, and is gathered out of many people, against the moun- tains of Israel, which have been always waste : but it is brought forth out of the nations, and they shall dwell safely all of them. 9. Thou shalt ascend, and come like a storm ; thou shalt be like a cloud to cover the land ; thou, and all thy bands, and many people with thee. 10. Thus saith the Lord God; It shall also come to pass, that at the same time shall things come into thy mind, and thou shalt think an evil thought : 11. And thou shalt say, I will go up to the land of unwalled villages ; I will go to them that are at rest, that dwell safely : all of them dwelling without walls, and having neither bars nor gates; 12. To take a spoil, and to take a prey ; to turn thine hand upon the desolate places that are now inhabited, and upon the people that are gathered out of the nations, which have gotten cattle and goods, that dwell in the midst of the land. 13. Sheba, and Dedan, and the merchants of Tarshish, with all the young lands." So that the original European stock would seem to have come probably from them ; Javan, we know, being the chief father of the Greeks. The general idea about Gog is that his region of colonization was the Caucasian countries and Scythia : also that Meshech and Tubal colonized the Sclavonic Russian countries; of which the names Moscow and Tobolsk are still memorials. The colonizing progress of Magog and Eos seems traceable by the name Maotis, or Magogitis, still attached to the well- known lake north of the Euxine ; and by the name Eosh affixed by the Arabs to the river Araxes, flowing into the Caspian. See Bush on the Millennium, pp. 159 — 161. Of Gog and Magog Coquicus, ap. Benedictine Editors of Augustine C D. xx. 11, thus writes : " Eusebius Libro ix. De Demonstrat. Evangel, c. 3, arbitratur Gog esse Eomanum imperatorem, Magog Eomanum imperiitm. Ambrosius, Libro 2 De Fide, cap. ult. de Gothis cogitat." Augustine, like Ambrose, makes Gog the Getee or Goths. Jerome expounds Eos as an appellative. OH. II. $3.] OF TH1 CRISIS OF Tin: CONSUMMATION. 121 lions thereof, shall Bay unto thee, Art thou come to take a spoil? hasl thou gathered thy company to take a prey? to carry away silver and gold, to take away cattle and goods, to take a great spoil? It. Therefore, son of man, prophesy and say unto Gog, Thus saith the Lord God ; In that day when my people Israel dwelleth safely, shalt thou not know it? 15. And thou shalt come from thy place out of the north parts, thou, and many people with thee, all of them riding upon horses, a great company, and a mighty army : 16. And thou shalt come up against my people of Israel, as a cloud to cover the land : it shall lie in the latter days \ and I will bring thee against my land, that the heathen may know me, when I shall be sanctified in thee, O Grog, before their eyes. 17. Thus saith the Lord God: Art thou he of whom I have spoken in old time by my servants the prophets of Israel, which prophesied in those days many years that I would bring thee against them? 18. And it shall come to pass at the same time when Gog shall come against the land of Israel, saith the Lord God, that my fury shall come up in my face. 10. For in my jealousy and in the fire of my wrath have I spoken. Surely in that day there shall be a great shaking in the land of Israel: 20. So that the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the heaven, and the beasts of the field, and all creeping things that creep upon the earth, and all the men that are upon the face of the earth, shall shake at my presence, and the mountains shall be thrown down, and the steep places shall fall, and every wall shall fall to the ground. 21. And I will call for a sword against him throughout all my mountains, saith the Lord God: every man's sword shall be against his brother. 22. And I will plead against him with pestilence and with blood : and I will rain upon him, and upon his bands, and upon the many people that are with him, an overflowing rain, and great hailstones, tire, and brimstone. 23. Thus will I magnify myself, and sanctify myself: and I will be known in the eyes of many nations ; and they shall know that I am the Lord. " 1. Therefore, thou son of man, prophesy against G<>Lr, and say, Thus saith the Lord God j Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief of ltos, Meshech, and Tubal: .. L'22 ezekiel's prophecy [part VI. And I will turn thee back, and leave but the sixth part of thee, and will cause thee to come up from the north paffts, and will bring thee upon the mountains of Israel : 3. And I will smite thy bow out of thy left hand, and will cause thine arrows to fall out of thy right hand. 4. Thou shalt fall upon the mountains of Israel, thou, and all thy bands, and the people that is with thee : I will give thee unto the ravenous birds of every sort, and to the beasts of the field to be devoured. 5. Thou shalt fall upon the open field : for I have spoken it, saith the Lord God. 6. And I will send a fire on Magog, and among them that dwell carelessly in the isles : and they shall know that I am the Lord. 7. So will I make my holy name known in the midst of my people Israel; and I will not let them pollute my holy name any more: and the heathen shall know that I am the Lord, the Holy One in Israel. 8. Behold, it is come, and it is done, saith the Lord God ; this is the day whereof I have spoken. 9. And they that dwell in the cities of Israel shall go forth, and shall set on fire and bum the weapons, both the shields and the bucklers, the bows and the arrows, and the handstaves and the spears, and they shall burn them with fire seven years : 10. So that they shall take no wood out of the field, neither cut down any out of the forests ; for they shall burn the weapons with fire : and they shall spoil those that spoiled them, and rob those that robbed them, saith the Lord God. 11. And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will give unto Gog a place there of graves in Israel, the valley of the passen- gers on the east of the sea : and it shall stop the noses of the passengers : and there shall they bury Gog and all his multitude : and they shall call it The valley of Hamon- Gog. 12. And seven months shall the house of Israel be burying of them, that they may cleanse the land. 13. Yea, all the people of the land shall bury them : and it shall be to them a renown the day that I shall be glorified, saith the Lord God. 14. And they shall sever out men of con- tinual employment, passing through the land to bury with the passengers those that remain upon the face of the earth, to cleanse it : after the end of seven months shall they search. 15. And the passengers that pass through the Ul. II. § 3.] OF THE CRISIS 01 TH1 CONSUMMATION. 128 land, when am seeth a man's bone, then shall he set ii|> a Murn by it, till the buriers have buried it in the valley <>l' Hamon-Gog. It!. And also tin- name of the city Bhati be llamonah. Thus shall they cleanse the land. 17. And thou, son of man, thus saith the Lord Grod ; Speak unto every feathered fowl, and to every beast of the field, As- stMiil >lt- yourselves and conic ; gather yourselves on every side to my sacrifice that 1 do sacrifice for VOU. < ven a great saeriticc upon the mountains of Israel, that ye may eal flesh, and drink blood. Is. Ve shall eat the flesh of the mighty, and drink the blood of the princes of the earth, of rains, of lambs, and of goats, of bullocks, all of them fatlings of Bashan. L9; And ye shall eat fat till ye he full, and drink blood till ye be drunken, of my sacrifice which I have sacrificed tor you. 20. Thus ye shall be tilled at my table with horses and chariots, with mighty men, and with all men of war, saith the Lord God. 21. And 1 will set my glory among the heathen, and all the heathen shall see my judgment that I have executed, and my hand that I have laid upon them. 22. So the house of Israel shall know that I am the Lord their God, from that day and for- ward. 28. And the heathen shall know that the house of [srael went into captivity for their iniquity: because they trespassed against me, therefore hid I my face from them, and gave them into the hand of their enemies : so fell they all by the sword. 24. According to their uncleannesa and according to their transgressions have I done unto them, and hid my face from them. 25. Therefore thus saith the Lord God; Now will I bring again the captivity of Jacob, and have mercy upon the whole house of Israel, and will be jealous for my holy name. 26; After that they have borne their shame, and all their trespasses whereby they have trespassed against me, when they dwelt safely in their land, and none made them afraid. 27. When I have brought them again from the people, and gathered them out of their enemies' lands, and am sanctified in them in the sight of many nations ; 28. Then shall they know that I am the Lord their God, which caused them to be led into captivity among the heathen: but I have gathered them unto their own land, and have left none of them any 124 ZECHARI All's PROPHECY [PART VI. more there. 29. Neither will I hide my face any more from them: for I have poured out my spirit upon the house of Israel, saith the Lord God." 4. Zechariah xii. — xiv. " 1. The burden of the word of the Lord for Israel, saith the Lord, which stretcheth forth the heavens, and layeth the foundation of the earth, and formeth the spirit of man within him. 2. Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem. 3. And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people : all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it. 4. In that day, saith the Lord, I will smite every horse with astonishment, and his rider with madness ; and I will open mine eyes upon the house of Judah. ... 9. And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem. 10. And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Je- rusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications : and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn. 11. In that day shall there be a great mourn- ing in Jerusalem, as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon. 12. And the land shall mourn, every family apart : the family of the house of David apart, and their wives apart ; the family of the house of Nathan apart, and their wives apart ; 13. The family of the house of Levi apart, and their wives apart ; the family of Shimei apart, and their wives apart ; 14. All the families that remain, every family apart, and their wives apart." xiii. 1. " In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for uncleanness. 2. And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord of hosts, that I will cut off the names of the idols out of the land, and they shall no more be remembered : and also I will cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to pass out of the land." . . . xiv. 2. " For I OH. II. $8.] OF Tin; CRISIS 01 mi CONSUMMATION. 125 will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle: and the city shall he taken; . . . and halt' the cit\ shall go forth into Captivity, and the residue of the people shall not he cut off from the city. ;*. Then shall the Lord ro forth, and Ihdit against those nations. ... 4. And his feet shall stand in thai dav upon the Mount of Olives : . . and the Mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward tin- Mast and to- ward the West, and there shall be a very great valley ; and halt' of the mountain shall remove toward the North, and half of it toward the South. 5. And ye shall rice to the valley of the mountains; for the valley of the mountains shall reach unto A/al : yea. ye shall flee like as ye fled from before the earthquake in the days of (Jzziah king of Jndah: and the Lord my God shall come, and all the saints with thee. . . 8. And in that day living waters shall go forth from Jerusalem : . . 9. And the Lord shall be King over all the earth." In summing up and comparing these several prophecies, the first conclusion that we are I think irresistibly led to respecting them, is that one and all refer to the same great crisis of the consummation : — that which is to be marked by the apostate nations' last conflict against God's cause and people; and to end in the Jubilean blessedness of a regenerated world. As to particulars, we must turn to each prophet separately. 1. And, 1st, in Isaiah'* various prophecies, besides the general repeated notices of the gathering against God's people and destruction of the Gentile nations, just as in the Apocalyptic war of Armageddon, we have to mark that it i- especially on Edom that one grand part of the curse is described as falling ; whether the literal Edom, or some enemy of Christ figuratively designated under that name: also that that judgment is to be one b\ fire and by the sword; not without a tremendous earthquake accompany- ing: the fire being that which is to go up for ever; and the desolation of whatsoever of the territory is not destroy- ed by the tire and smoke and sulphur to be ;i perpetual desolation, the land being habitable only by wild beasts, like that of the ancient Babylon at the present day : — also 12G SUMMARY OF THE PROPHECIES OF [PART VI. that there is to be attendant on this some mighty revolu- tion, involving the dissolution of all the then ruling powers and systems of government both religious and political ; much like that of the old Roman Pagan religion and em- pire, as figured in the vision of the sixth Apocalyptic Seal. Once more there will be marked what is said of the glory of the divine revelation immediately after following, and the Lord Jehovah's reigning thenceforth in Zion before his an- cients gloriously ; together with some such resurrection of the dead synchronically, as to constitute a swallowing up of death in victory : the creation of a new heaven and new earth following ; whereof they that participate will go forth and look on the carcases of them that have fallen, whose worm dieth not, nor is their fire quenched, and who are to be an abhorring unto all flesh. — As to the real intent of the Edom mentioned, it can scarce be supposed different from that meant by Bozrah (which was Edom's capital) in the parallel prophecy in Isaiah lxiii. 1—6; where its destruction is spoken of under the figure of a winepress-treading by the conquering Messiah. And both the Apocalyptic evi- dence of the subjects of the final winepress-treading by Christ being specially the apostate nations allied with the Roman Antichrist, and the uniform testimony of Jewish opinion as to the Edom of Isaiah's prophecy meaning Rome, unite to fix us in that view of it. Whether the Zion meant be the literal Jewish Zion, or figuratively the Christian Church, is another question. But the two views of it are in no wise antagonistic, and may well be both included. For, in case of the Jews' conversion and restoration to their father-land, — a fact clearly .declared, I think, in Is. xi. 11 and elsewhere, — the earthly Zion would be the metropolis of the millennial Christian Church. 2. In Joel we have to mark the name of the scene of conflict, viz. the Valley of Jchoshaphat : a figurative name evidently, as no such literal locality was known in an- cient Palestine ; and which means the valley of God's judgment. We have to mark also that God's judgments are here noted under the Apocalyptic figures of the harvest and vintage of the earth : and further that among the sub- jects of it are specified Tyre, Sidon, Egypt, Edom ; the en. II. §3.] Till'. crisis Off OOMBUmiATION. 127 two latter of which arc specially singled out as destined to desolation. As to the question about SZion, it seems bere to be answered, to the extent of the Jews literally and nn- tionally having a pari at Leasl in the deliverance and the restoration. For the gathering ot the nations is represented ■a occurring on "the bringing back of the captivity of Ju- dah and Jerusalem:" a description inapplicable surely to the Christian Church. 3. In Eeekiel the fact seems clearly confirmed of the Uteral return at this time of the Jewish people. Also the conjecture is suggested by his prediction that the king of the North who is to be prominent in the last great conflict against Messiah, having come up from the North like a tempest-cloud with chariots and horses, may very possibly be the Russian power: the terms Bos, Meshech, Tubal an- Bwering too well to Russ,Moscoiv, Tobolsk, not to suggest a thought to this effect. Connected with which is the fact that two of the peoples that Daniel hints at as those that would he probably at the last Northern Kingfs steps, (though the pronominal ambiguity of the passage admits of the al- ternative exposition referring it to the steps of the Anti- christ, in confederacy with the last King of the South,1) viz. Ethiopia and Libya, are mentioned here as those that would be allied with the Ros or Gog invading. The scene of the great conflict, and of the defeat of the enemy, is said to be the mountains of Israel. And, as to the mode and instru- ments of destruction, we read that there is to be the judg- ment of pestilence and of the sword, as well as of hail-stones : also (a new feature this) that they are to perish in part by mutual destruction ; much as in the case of Midian before Gideon, where every man's hand was against his brother. To the field of slaughter the fowls of heaven are called, jusi as in the Apocalypse: and an awful idea given of the slaughter by the statement that for seven years the restored .lew- will be occupied in burying the dead, and burning the spears and arrow- of the foe. — Further, there is the remark- able fact foretold of a judgment of fire falling syiichmni- cally on Magog and them that dwell carelessly (or confid- ently) in the isles, i. <•. in the coasts of the Mediterranean 1 See p. 107. Daniel's Egypt probably included Ethif. 128 PROPHECIES OF THE CONSUMMATION. [PART VI. and Western Europe : also, and finally, that, after looking upon the conflict, the heathen not engaged therein will re- cognise God's hand in the judgment, and thenceforward praise and serve him; "God setting forth his glory among the heathen." l 4. From ZechariaJis prophecy we infer that the anti- christian enemies will form the siege of Jerusalem, after its being possest and inhabited by Jews of the national stock, now resettled in their native land and city: and that it will be at first taken by the besiegers, and half of the Jews go into captivity : also that there is to be then some such su- pernatural interposition as in Apoc. xix. 11 ; ("The Lord my God shall come, and all his saints with him;") and that in the destruction of the enemy ensuing there is to be both a mutual slaughter by the swords one of another, and the agency also of pestilence. Further, it would seem that there is to be then a great earthquake accompanying; whence, besides its other effects, there is to result a change in the visible localities of Jerusalem itself and Mount Olivet : and that then, and thenceforth, the times of holiness and happiness are to begin. " The Lord will be King over all the earth, and his name one : and those that are left of all the nations which came up against Jerusalem shall go up continually to keep the feast of tabernacles : " — Jerusa- lem being thus apparently the centre and capital of a Chris- tianized world. In fine all seems sufficiently to agree with what we have inferred as probable from the Apocalyptic prophecy, and (though with more of uncertainty and doubt) from Daniel's also ; to the effect that there is to be the destruction of some grand anti-christian confederacy in the mountain - country very probably of Judah, with fearful physical con- vulsions attending, and the agency of fire and sword, imme- diately at, or before, the final conversion and restoration of the 1 In comparing this prediction in Ezekiel with that in Apoc. xx. ahout Gog, the difference will strike the least observant, that the one is an event pre-millennial, the other post-millennial : also that whereas in what Ezekiel describes, hailstones were to be one agency of destruction, in the Apocalyptic it would be fire from heaven alone : also that while in the former case a sixth part were to escape (Ezek. xxxix. 2), in the case described in the Apocalypse there would escape not one. OH. II. $ 3.] PBOPHXCIE8 01 TH1 CONSUMMATION. l~i) Jews, and the commencement of the consequent glorious pre- dicted times of universal blessedness. So thai . a- it seems to me, we shall probably not err in Looking for i be Dearly coinci- dent occurrence of the two grand events following: — viz. I b1 , the homeward return of the -lews from their dispersions; in fulness and strength like as w lien the mighty Knphratean stream, on the willows of whose hanks the harps of their earlier captivity were suspended, was each day forced hack- ward by the mightier influence of the tide of the Southern Ocean-.1 x1. the gathering, and the destruction, probably in Judsea, of some great anti-Christian as well as anti- Jew- ish confederacy, including the powers of both the Roman and the Greek apostasies; the spirit of infidelity giving of course its meet assistance to those of antdchristian priest- craft and Popery. — Thus, as already before against evan- gelic doctrine and evangelic missions generally, so now in tine perhaps against the evangelization of the Jews specially, and their restoration to the land of their fathers, it might seem as if there is to be the last and fiercest outbreak of these spirits of evil.2 1 Psalm exxvi. 1 : "Turn our captivity, 0 Lord. u the rivers in the south." Sorely what I have hinted abore is the m—wing of this beautiful figure. The idea of stream- dried up in the southern desert flowing again (of course in their old chan- on the rains commencing, — an ideasuggested bv Lowth, Borne, and other com- mentatora in explanation, — ill suits the main point that the figure is evidently meant tn illustrate, ril. the turning bciek again of the Jewish captivity. — Nor, though fur I., tt. r. does the explanation of the great Lord Baoon, in his metrical version of the Psalm, seem suitieiellt. " 0 Lord, turn our captivity, A- winds that blow at south Do pour the tides, with violence Into the river's mouth." For rare indeed must he opposing winds of such force as of themstlveajui turn hark a river's current And the Psalmutfa reference seems to be to anoccurrem bviooa and i 01 on the other hand what I suggest is a figure perfectly correspondent with the thing figured; and one which to the captive Jews in Babylon must nave occurred a- a figure equally appropriate and grand. For the force of tin tide on the river, corn- in.'- up U it did as tar U BoSSOrah, must have been familiar to their minds : and have red to them fully as striking as it did to the Macedonian soldiers "t Alexander, brought from the tideleei coast of the afediterrani an, to see the ocean tidi ■ of the Persian Golf, or of the [ndian s, a. = I put the ease toiiuwhat doobtfolly as regards the Jews, nationally considered; though, as will appi ar yet further in the sequel, decidedly inclining myself to thi id. ■ ttonal restoration, and the conflict connected with it, being included in the •tire prophetic sketch of the future-. A- regards the final deadly war of the .m- tichri-tian pow< r- with chri-t's spiritual Lrad. ondi r the present dispensation, there - to me no doubt of its being a prominent fact in the predicted close of the great mundane drama. vol.. iv. 9 130 THE MILLENNIUM. [PART VI. CHAPTER III. THE MILLENNIUM. " And I saw an angel coming down ! from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit,2 and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the Dragon, that old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand years ; and cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations3 no more, till the thousand years should be ful- filled. And after that he must be loosed a little season. — And I saw thrones ;4 and they sate upon them ; and judg- ment was given unto them : and / saw the souls of them that had been beheaded 5 for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God ; and whosoever 6 had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their forehead, or on their hand : and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. But the rest of the dead lived not7 until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection : on such the second death hath no power : but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign 8 with him a thousand years. " And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison : and shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to war;9 the num- 1 KaTafiaivovra. 2 rt]Q afivaaov the same word that was used before in Apoc. ix. 1, xi. 7, xvii. 8. See my Vol. i. pp. 440, 441. 3 ra tQvr}. 4 So the Greek; Opovovg, without the article. 5 twv TriiriXtKio-fiivuiv. 6 OirivtQ' either those whosoever ; those bein? the accusative after / saw ; — or, of those whosoever; of those being the genitive after \pvxag. 7 The reading of the received text is avt^tjaav, lived again. But the reading in A, B, adopted by Griesbach, Scholz, Tregelles, Wordsworth, is t^vuv ; the same word as in verse 4. In Apoc. ii. 8 this latter word is used of Christ's resurrection ; 'Oq tytVlTO VIKpOQ Kai l^l)dt. 8 fiaoiXivo-ovai. So Scholz and Tregelles, agreeably with the received text. Wordsworth, after the MS. A, reads fiaaikivovo-i in the present tense. 9 itq top ■KoXtfiov as it to the war. So A, B, and the critical Editions of Scholz, Tregelles, and Wordsworth. Griesbach, in common with the received version, omits the tov. I'll \\\ III.] Till'. Mil 1.1 NNMM. I 8] bei <>!' whom is u the Band of the sea. And thev went up on tin- breadth <>f the earth, and encompassed the camp of tlu- saints about, and the beloxed city. And tire cam.' down from God out of heaven, and devoured them. And the de\ il that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and tin- false prophet are;1 and they shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.' ■ \\\<\ I <;i\v a greal white throne, and him that Bate QpOD it : from whose face the earth and the heaven tied away, and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, Standing before the throne:'' and books were opened : and another book was opened, which is the book of life : and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it. And death and hades gave tip the dead which were in them : and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.4 And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. 'And 1 saw a new heaven and a new earth : for the first heaven and the first earth had past away; ' and there was no more Bea." — Apoc. \x. 1 — xxi. 1. We now enter on the great subject of the millennium. In the Apocalyptic revelations, the vision of the Beast and False Prophet being cast into the lake of fire was followed by that of the binding of the Dragon, now again explained to be the old Serpent, the Devil, and Satan,0 (the same that from the beginning even to the end had been the 1 This vert) is not in the original. 2 tif rui-c atwvag tu»v aiwymv' the same strongphra.se of time ai in A.po& xix. 4 of the smoke of the Bra of Babylon. 3 tvun iov tov 9i< \. IS, and the critical Editions generally; in Otm> in the rec< i\> d t> \t. * A. li. and after them Bchol . and Wordsworth, read more fully thus : j 6 OavaToc 6 Ctvripoz ujtiv, t) Xifivt] rov irvpog. Qriesbacfa and .Mill omit the ir words. 1 onrnXOov. Bo A. B, and the critical Editions <>f GrieebacV Scholz, Ti Isworth. 'I li irapi)\Bt. In either case the aorist form of " had past away." Soaa"sA- ('u-. \' rse l • See mv Vol. iii. p. 13, Note", "n tb in Apoc \ii. 9. 'J • 132 THE MILLENNIUM. [PART VI. Spirit ruling in the hearts and the polities of the children of disobedience,) by an Angel that descended from heaven, and shut and sealed him up in the bottomless pit, or abyss, for 1000 years ; so as that he might during that time have no more power to deceive the nations : — it being added, however, that he would afterwards be loosed for a little season. On the other hand thrones of judgment and roy- alty appeared set in the vision, whereon Christ and his saints were seen to take their sitting : it being the privi- lege of these latter to live and reign with Him the thousand years.1 St. John specifies particularly, as if conspicuous among them,2 the souls of them that had been beheaded for the word of God and the witnessingof Jesus ; evidently the same individuals that he had beheld gathered under the altar, in a symbolic vision long antecedent, the victims of the persecutions of Rome Pagan ; 3 and others also, who- 1 That is, plainly, the, same thousand years. The article prefixed four times to that phrase, (viz. in verses 3, 4, 5, and 7,) after its first mention as the term of Satan's binding in verse 2, identifies the period. So Pareus justly observes, p. 506; in answer to Brightman's theory of the saints' millennium of reigning being one that would follow after Satan's millennium of incarceration ; a view advocated also by Bengel. 2 It seems to me that the souls of them that were beheaded, &c, were seen, not as the only persons that took seat on the thrones, but only among them. This is a point important to note ; as a contrary view of the intent of the phrase has by some been supposed, and argued from. Assuredly there is nothing in the text to negative my idea. For, 1st, it is not un- usual, either in common or in prophetic narrative, to specify but part only of objects that may have been seen. So, for example, in John xx. 18, where Mary Magdalene only mentions having seen Jesus, though she had actually seen two angels also. Or, to exemplify from this present Chapter, in the very verse under consideration Christ is not specified as seen enthroned, though he must surely have been there ; as verse 4 states it was with him that the 'risen saints reigned. And, indeed, his presence is afterwards expressly notified, on the not improbable hypothesis of the time of the great white throne of verse 11 being synchronic with that of the saints' thrones in verse 4.* Further, 2ndly, we know from abundance of other Scriptures, as Dan. vii. 22, Apoc. iii. 21, v. 10, &c, that the saints generally are to be admitted to a participation in Christ's millenary throne and reign. s Yi.nrtKiKi(j^tvwvy a verb derived from iztKtKvq, an axe ; which, together with the fasces, was conspicuous in the insignia of the consuls and other officers of the Roman Government, and signified their having authority to punish with death, f Hence the passive verb came to signify being put to death by sentence of him to whom the power of the axe belonged, whatever the mode of execution ; and not the mere particular death of decapitation. J So Vitringa. * Of this more hereafter. — On the usual hypothesis of the first placing of the great white throne being post-millennial there occurs the example in point of the dead only bciiur specified as those seen by John standing before it before judgment, though we know there must have been present also those alive at the time. f So Polybius, i. 7, &c. ; cited by Eichhorn ad loc. fiaoTiywffavTtc, airavrac, Kara to nap' avrotc, iQoe, nrtXiKioav. t Similarly Tertullian (Apolog. 5) uses the phrase " Caesariano gladio fcrocisse " (11 LP, in.] THF. Mil, I 1.NM1M. 1S9 Boever had not worshipped, and did not at the time of t he judgment worship,1 the Beast or his [mage.- In order thus to reign \sith Christ they rose to life again : whereas " the rest of the dead lived not till the thousand years were finished." 'This was the first resurrection. " Blessed and holy," it was said, "is he that hath pari iii the first resurrection ; on such the second death hath no power: hut they shall be priests of God and of Christ; and shall reigD With him a thousand years." And here the famous question opens, In what way arc we to understand this vision and prophecy of the Millen- nium? What the first resurrection spoken of, literal or figurative? Who the persons that partake of it? What the nature of the devil's synchronous binding and incar- ceration r What the state of things on earth correspond- ing? What the chronological position and duration of the Millennium ? What the sequel of events, on the devil's being Loosed again at its termination? Finally, what the relation of this millennary period and its blessedness to the New Jerusalem, afterwards exhibited in the Apoca- lypse : and what also to the paradisiacal state predicted in the Old Testament prophecies, as to be introduced on the .lews' conversion and restoration? — I propose in the pre- sent chapter to discuss and answer the general question, What the first resurrection, with which the Millennium is to open : then in the next to consider more in detail, upon the principle of interpretation thus previously established, the probable order of events introductory to its establishment, and state of things during the Millennium, and after it.* Under the emperors, as I have elsewhere observed, the sword came to be the ensign of this judicial power, in plaoe of the axe; (see my Vol. i. pp. L54 -158 ;) though not indeed to the supersession of the axe. For this was still used as an instrument of punishmenl at Rome ; tor those I presume that were condemned by the contular and other inferior <•< -iirt-, distinctively from the imperial. Thus we read in Dion Cassius that Caraealla found fault with the executioner of Papinian, in a$ivy avrov kch uu it\nr)naTO. 1 oir»v«c ov TrpoatKWTfuav. Mark here the use of the tirst aorist j and it- possible BomprehensiTC ngnifioancy of time past, at reaching continuously to time pr< bent, so as expressed l>y me in 1 So tBatravurav is used in Apoe. \i. 10. 2 In tin ally revising this Chapter, I bate hail the advantage of comparing its state* nit Edition; especially of Nero's persecution of Christians to death, generally; though in many cases thtir death wua by tire, wild beasts, 0Z I a an itixiou. 1^1 'NIK MILLENNIUM. [PART VI. $ 1. The chief Millennary Theories. With regard then to our present subject, — viz. the millennial first resurrection, — it is to be observed that there have been four principal solutions offered of it, to which yet a fifth has been recently added, in brief as follows. The first, — which was that of the earliest lathers of the Church, as Papias, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and other Fathers, a little later, of the third century, as Ilippolytus, Cyprian, Victorinus, Methodius, Lactantius, &c, — explained this resurrection to be literati// that of de- parted martyrs and saints, then at length resuscitated in the body from death and the grave : l — its time (agreeably with the order of the vision in the Apocalyptic narrative) to synchronize with, or follow instantly after, the destruc- tion of the Beast Antichrist, on Christ's personal second advent : — the binding of Satan to be an absolute restriction s of the powers of hell from tempting, deceiving, or injuring mankind, throughout a literal period of 1000 years, thence calculated : — the government of the earth? in this its millen- nial age, to be administered by Christ and his risen saints ; the latter being now i Se, Kat ti tiviq timv updoyvujfiovtq Kara iravra XpiGTiavoi, Kai crapKog avaaramv ytvi]mrr9ai tntcrraptOa, Kai \i\ia tri) tv 'ItpovcaXti/x oiKoio^tjBtirry Kai Koff/iriOtiny Kai irXarvvtitiTy., [wcj 01 7rpo0jjrat Ic£i)xt))\ icat 'Hffaiaf Kai 01 a\\oi bftoXoyovai. So in the Dial, cum Trypli. (Ed. Colon.) p. 307. And again, ib. p. 309. Ai'?/p nc. w ovofia Iioavvqg, lie twv a7ro Kai, ovvtXovTi i)ata9ai icai Kpiaiv. Moreover he speaks of this as the iraXiyytvtaia of those that expect Christ in Jerusalem. — 2. Tertullian. " Nam et confitemur in tend nobis regnum repromis- sum: sed ante ccelum ; sed alio statu ; utpote post resurrectionem in mille annos in civitate divini operis Hierusalem ccelo delata, quam et Apostolus matrem nostram sursum designat, &c. . . Post cujus regni cce-lestis mille annos, intra quam setatem concluditur sanctorum resurrectio, pro meritis maturius vel tardius rcsurgentium, tunc, et mundi destructione et judicii conflagratione commissa, demutati in atomo in angelicam substantiam, . . transferemur in cceleste regnum." Adv. Marcion, iii. 25. * The world to come, 7) oiKovfitvr] r) ptWovaa, of Heb. ii. 5. 3 Luke xx. 36 ; " but are as the angels, . . being children of the resurrection." CBAP. III. § I.] rivr. eimi kflLLBNNIAL THB0RIB8. L35 ami that under it, all false religion having been put down, the Jews and Baved remnant of the ( rentuea been converted to Christ, the earth renovated bi the fire of Antichrist's destruction, and Jerusalem made the universal capital, there would l>e a realization on earth of the blessedness depicted in the Old Testament prophecies, as well as of thai too which was associated with the descent of the New Jeru- salem in the visions of the Apocalypse: ' — until at length, this Millennium having ended, and Satan again gone forth to deceive the nations, the final consummation would fol- low ; the Dew-raised enemies of the saints, Gog and Ma- gog, be dest roved by tire from heaven ; and then the general resurrection and judgment take place, the Devil and his servants he cast into the lake of fire, and the mil- lennial reign of the saints extend itself into one of eternal duration.' The second chief theory of interpretation, — one suggest- ed in the Christian Church ere the end of the fourth cen- The angelic nature ■ >!' the risen saint-; in the Millennium is clearly stated by some of re. So Tcrtu1lii A'lv. Biaroion v. 88, and I)e Resat. e. 36; '•• Similes enim mint angelis, qua QOD Dupturi : " also Jtutm Martyr, obi supra : who, like Tertullian, expressly quotes Christ's Baying, Luke xx. 36, deolaring that the just, when raised, should neither marry nor be given in marriage, but be iffr/yyfXoi, like Ugels: also, again, Mtfhodtw: — BtfO/iMtfC yap Kai [lira tovtov tov aiiova yqg avayKn Trava imaQai Kai rovg otKnirovraf ovKiri rifivn^ofiivovi; Kai yafxt). Prom tin- last-mentioned Father let i ate. " I't, similee angelis effeoti, summo 1'atri ae Domino in perpetanm Berviamus, et simns sternum Deo regnum:" and again ib. 24 ; where he thus distinguishes between the raised saint-, and men Mill living in the body ; " Turn qui emnt in oorporibna vivi non morientnr, sed per eosdi m mille aimos intinitam multitudinem generabunt : . . qui autem ab inferifl suseitabuntur ii pre runt viventibus, vclut indict -." The reader should carefully observe this, as quite different representations have s imetunes been given Of the early Fathers' views of the milleiinarian state : Dr. Whitby actually saying that " Methodius i> the only one who denies that thev shall be thus employed after the resurrection.'' Se strangely mi-takes what was said of men stiU alive on the earth, u it -aid of tilt minis raited; though so expressly dis- tinguished, as e. g. by Lactantina. 1 So tn nets 1 speak of: a g. Tertullian and Justin Martyr, as above cited, l.aetantius however seems to make the rT( w Jerusalem state port millennial, Tii. 24 ; though the passage is by no means clear and decisive. * So. for example, /ssstM Marty* expressly. Speaking of the filthy garments on the lliu'h r riah'i vision, as not wintly depicting the blasphe- mies heaped on Christian! by the .lews, he adds: « pvirapa H'Svfiara, ntpiTilhira oDf iram roic. airo rov ovopaTOQ Invov fiVOfUVfHC Xpirrriafoic,, Culu alpOlltva a$' ifftutv 6 Otoe, orav iravraQ avanTi)iry, kiu rov£ ptv tv'autvia Kai a\vrift ftaniXuq. aipOaprouQ Kai aHavarov^ Kai akvirovc, Karaornvy, roue Si i»c WoKum* aituviuv 7ri'pof napaTTtfixl/ri. II). 3-1 o. — " ffWUMII t'">, V. 82, Ifffafcl of the mystery "justorum iwsiinmitionis ct regni" as "primoipitm imwrupttim : " uud 13G APOC. XX. 1 — XXI. 1. [part VI. tury,1 very much in consequence of the abuse and misap- prehension of the literal views just detailed, as if of carnal tendency,2 and which is best known from its full develop- ment by Augustine, — may be called the spiritual theory. It supposed the resurrection meant to be that of dead souls v from the death of sin to the life of righteousness : 3 — that the time of its commencement was to be dated from Christ's first coming and ministry, when the Devil, the strong man armed, was according to Christ's own saying bound and expelled from the hearts of his disciples,4 and so their reign over him, though indeed but a regnum militice,b made to again, v. 26, says; "Christus est lapis . .'qui destruet temporalia regna, et sternum inducet, quae est justorum resurreotio." And so again Laetantius, quoted p. 135. Also Victorinus. 1 Already in the third century Origen, and others of his school, had controverted the literal millenuary view ; but they do notjseem to have suggested any counter- view in its place, that gained hold in any degree of the mind of Christendom. Rather the course with them mostly was to throw doubt on the apostolic origin V of the Apocalypse, which seemed to favour the literal view. So in the case of Dionysius of Alexandria, of whom I have spoken in my Preliminary Essay, Vol. i. pp. 3 — 7 ; also of Emebius, whose opinion I have noticed ibid. p. 28. In his view or the jubilean times predicted by the Old Testament prophets, which we generally associate and identify with those of the Apocalyptic Millennium, the latter was na- turally influenced to an immense extent by the Ohristianization of the Roman world under Constantine. See my Vol. i. pp. 255, 256. As regards Origen himself, he opposed the literal view as Judaic : and spoke mys- teriously of some millennium of converse with angels ; oi yap t£ avOpwTrojv uq ayyiXovg (lETaffTavrec; j£i\ia iti\ \iaQi)TtvovTai vtto rtitv ayyiXutv" De Princip. ii. 11. 6 ; (cited by Gieseler i. § 61 ;) and ib. 12. But I am not aware of any millennary system worked out by that Father. Epiphanius says ; " There is indeed a millennium mentioned by St. John : but the majority of pious men look on these words as true indeed, but to be taken in a spiritual sense." Tijv Bi(3\ov avayivwoKovriq oi jtAhotoi /ccri iv\aj3ue, irtpi tuiv ■Kviv^iariKuii' uSoTtQ, kcii tv avry irvivfiaTiKiOQ ixovra \cifij3avovT(Q, a\rj9r) fitv ovra, tv l5aGvTTjri dt aa.(priviZ,oniva irEirMSTivKaaiv. Her. lxxvii. 26. ap. Whitby. -/ 2 Augustine tells us that he was himself induced by reasons of this kind to aban- don the older chiliastic theory, and embrace this other. " Quae opinio [viz. that of the literal and corporeal primai-y resurrection of the saints at Christ's coming, to the enjoyment of a millennial sabbath] esset utcumque tolerabilis, si aliquae deliciae spirituales in illo sabbato adfutune Sanctis per Domini pnesentiam crederentur. Nam etiam nos hoc opinati fuimus aliquando. Sed cum eos qui tunc resurrexerint dicant immoderatissimis carnalibus epulis vacaturos, &c, . . nullo modo ista possunt nisi a carnalibus credi." C. D. xx. 7. 1. A strange conclusion, surely ! — that be- cause some perverted the doctrine to carnal views, (as the heretic Cerinthus very early, and others after him,) therefore it should be rejected : though Augustine knew that the earlier Fathers had quite otherwise held it ; and indeed himself too, at one time, as we find it expressed in his 259th Sermon : " Regnabit enim Dominus in terra cilm Sanctis suis, sicut dicunt Scripturae ; et habebit hie Ecclesiam separatam atque purgatam ab omni contagione nequitioe," &c. * CD. xx. 6. 1. i CD. xx. 7. 2. 5 C D. xx. 9. 2. — Augustine's regnum militiae may remind my readers of those beautiful lines of our spiritual poet Cowper ; His warfare is within : there unfatigued His fervent spirit labours : there he tights, cum*, ill. § I.] KlVF, (U 1 11 MILLENNIAL THEORIES. 137 begin ; the Beast conquered by them meaning here the wicked world, and its inunjr a hypocritical profession: ' — that it was a resurrection, moreover, not then completed, hut one which would still go <>n wherever the gospel was preached; its subjects being the election of God, (so the n<<- tiOH8 or e$V7j of verse 8, whom Satan mighl not deceive, were explained,*) and its term of continuance all that re- mained of what Augustine regarded as the1 world's sixth chiliad of existence.'1 even until Antichrist's coming at the end of time: — which last enemy's manifestation and per- secution of the saints (including the .lews then at length converted.4 as well as the Gentile Church) was supposed to he prefigured under the emblematic appellation of Gog and Magog:— the destruction of whom by fire from heaven would introduce the literal and universal resurrection of the dead, a resurrection both of good and bad,) and conse- quently thereon, the final judgment : after which that eter- nal blessedness of the saints would begin in heaven, which alike the Old Testament prophecies, and the Apocalyptic prophecy in its two last chapters, (so Augustine explained the matter,) prefigured under the symbol of the glorified Jerusalem.5 And there obtains fresh triumphs o'er himself, And never-withering wreaths, compared with which The laurels that a Cicsar reaps are weeds. 1 C. D. xx. 9. 3; — " Btttia . . populus infidelium : imago vero ejus simulatio ejus mihi ridetar, in eu videlicet qui velut Bdem profitentur, et infideliter vivunt." 2 Those "'\ anions pradestinata constal eoclesia." O.D.zx. 7. t; B, l. Else- where, il>. '.t. 1, Angnstine markedly excludes from any part in this millennial reign with Christ the mere professors in the Church. " Regnant cum Christo etiam nunc sattcti ejus : .. nee t amen rum ill* > regnant zizmiitt ; quanivia in ecele-ia cum tritico at." Let this Angnstinian distinction never be forgotten. The abyss into which Satan was cast, Angnstine viewed as the hearts of the "multitud" innumerabilis impiorum : " C D. xx. 7. 3. 3 C D. xx. 7- 2. — I have before mentioned that Angnstine followed the Septua- pint chronology; according t<> which Christ's first coming had taken place at, or about, the middle of the world's sixth chiliad. Bee my Vol. i. p. 397. * •• rjltimo tempore ante judicium JndsBoa in Christum verum, id eai in Christum • dituros, celeberrimnm est in sermonibus cordibusque fidelium." CD. xi. 29. 4 It should be added that Augustine included the idea of the Church in ftsflSWH, (the souls of the martyrs specified being a part for the whole,) as well as the true Church on earth, participating in this r< iu»i With Christ. " Regnal I inn I hristo nunc primum eoclesia in \i\is et mortuis." C.I). \\. 9. -'. This view prevailed from Augustine's time, among certain writers more or !• the Angnstinian school, throughout the middle ages, down to the Reformation. Pot eiample in the sixth eenturv 2Ymsosmm advocated it; in the 9th Ambrom Antbrnt So too in yet later times Arelduhop L'thtr, as 1 infer Iroui Yitringa, p. 11JI. 138 APOC. XX. 1 XXI. 1. [part VI. The third chief theory and solution may be called the ecclesiastical theory of the past : — I say ecclesiastical, as dis- tinguished from Augustine's spiritual, inasmuch as the party triumphing over Satan was in it supposed to be not the mere chosen and faithful in heart individually, but the professing Christian Church as a corporate body ; and its millennial triumph over him one visible before men upon the world's theatre. — From the simple substitution of " the Church " for the true members of the Church (a substitu- tion which, as we have seen, involved in itself one main principle of the apostasy,)1 there arose a habit very early in the middle age of ecclesiasticizing in a manner Augustine's spiritual theory : the apostolic and (as some would say) post-apostolic miracles, the silencing of Pagan oracles, and travelling onward of the Church to political supremacy over Paganism, being appealed to in proof of the visible binding of Satan under the Church's power, even from the epoch of its first constitution.2 And in this more or less ecclesiastical form 3 Augustine's theory was perpetuated down to the Reformation ; 4 indeed yet beyond it, even to the present day.5 In order however to a presentable ecclesiastical form, the theory needed of course some marked commencing epoch 1 See my Vol. i. pp. 278, 282, &c. 2 So e. g. the bishop Andreas. — So too in later times Bossuet ; who particularly dwells on the martyrs' part in the reign, as shown by the miracles wrought by their relics, and their appointment moreover in the Canon as intercessors. 3 I say more or less ; because some were more simply ecclesiastical in their state- ments of the theory, some with more decided admixture of the spiritual. 4 At p. 470 of Vol. i. I have noted the general consternation of Western Christen- dom on the approach of the year A.D. 1000 ; a consternation arising out of this view of the prophecy. 5 After the Reformation various Protestant Doctors advocated it, with certain mo- difications. So e. g. Luther himself, Bullinger, Bale, Paraus, &c. : (Parous very elaborately:) the exacerbation of Papal tyranny under Gregory VII. A.D. 1073, as well as first rise of the Seljukian Turks, being supposed by them to mark the end of the Millennium. On the other hand many Romanists thought to see evidence of Satan's loosing, in the then rise of Waldensian and other heretics. In the present day the theory, in its mixt form, has been revived bv Dr. Words- Worth. Dr. W. dwells largely and earnestly on the earthly and visible Church's privileges. " It is not a corporeal but a spiritual resurrection." " Our first resurrec- tion is our death unto sin and new birth unto righteousness ; . . our incorporation [sc. by baptism] into the body of Christ." " The erroneous application of the passage to a mere bodily resurrection . . is ascribable to low and inadequate notions of our baptismal privileges and obligations." pp. 54—57. Dr. W. makes his millennium extend to the end of the present dispensation ; and so to include the long period of the reign of the Papacy, which nevertheless he identifies with that of the Apocalyptic Beast ! His explanation of this strange apparent inconsistency will be given in Note x p. 144 infra. CHAP. III. $ 1.] FIVE rim. i KILL1NNIAL THEORIES. 189 of the visible Church's visible triumph over Satan's power ; as well as some more consistenl solution of the Beasl as pre- millennial. Such b oommencing epoch presented itself in the Constantinian triumph over Paganism early in the 4th Centur) ; and in that alone of all the events of pasl eccle- lical history. Ami it was accordingly fixed on by one and another expositor, from soon alter the Reformation, as the commencing epoch of tin- Apocalyptic Millennium: — first, I believe, by the Romanist Genebrard;1 then afterwards by Gr otitts1 and Hammond, whose names are more famed as its authors. According to them the Apocalyptic Beast, (alike the ten-horned and the two-horned, | instead of figur- ing the then future Antichrist, so as all the ancient Fathers BUpposed, nit ant in fact only the then persecuting power of Rome Pagan: the destruction of which, through Constantine's instrumentality, these interpreters expounded to lie the ei ent Bymbolized in the preceding (i. e. the xixtli) chapter of the Apocalypse. The Millennium of triumphant Christian- ity, thus and then begun, was made by them to extend through the period of one thousand years thence follow- ing; i. e. from the 4th to the 14th century: at which latter time they considered the rise of the Othman Turks from Scythia, and their attack on Christendom, to have fulfilled what is said in the prophecy about Gog and Magog coming up and encompassing the camp of the saints. Upon the destruction of which Turkish Erfahommedan power, whensoever it might take place, they looked for the fulfil- incut of what was figured by the great white throne, and the standing of the dead before it, (verses 11, 1.0, &c.,) in the universal resurrection, final judgment, and subsequent hea- Venly and eternal blessedness of the saints. This millennial view, which followed naturally on Gro- tius' view of the Beasl as the symbol simply of Koine P<(- f/uiiK persecuting power, presented itself as one tit and easy ol adoption to various Roman Catholic expositors of a later a'ia. — With regard to really Protestanl expositors, ; S n hn Chronograph, Lih. rr. p. 688, a* refeucd to by Varrenda, V.-I. ii. p. ealraraTwaa ProfeoaoroJ Hebrew al Paria, m the latter half of the 16th oen- tun-. anh:ill this in- thr Dhnrcb of martyrs, became the spirit ami parity of the times of the primitive martyr- -hall return." — So ton Archhithop Whntilnj, in r on the Millennium in his EflBaja on a Future State. " It may signify not tin' literal raising of dead nun, hut the raising up of an increased Christian zed and holiness: — the revival in the Christian Church, or in tome considerable portion of the tpirii and MMryy of the noble martyrs of old, even as John the Baptist came in the spirit and power of Klias ; so that Christian principles shall be displayed in action throughout the world in an infinitely greater degree than ever before. lie adds; "And Hat for ■ considerable time before the ana of the world; though not perhaps for the literal and precise period of 1000 years." 142 apoc. xx. 1 — xxi. 2. [part vi. down to the time now present. To which I must add yet a fifth, first suggested by the late Mr. Gipps, and which may be called distinctively and explicitly the witness-resur- rection of the past ; — making the vision, as it does, to re- trogress to the commencement of the Beast's or Papal Anti- christ's reign ; and those who lived and reigned with Christ to be men endowed with the spirit of the early anti-Pagan martyrs, now revived as it were to testify for Christ against Papal falsehood : after which, and the end of the Beast's as well as witnesses' concurrent (!) millennial reign, the second and glorious resurrection of the rest of the dead is to be ful- filled, he thinks, in the Jews' conversion and restoration.1 This has made no way, however, in the credence of the Christian public,2 and therefore needs no such prominent place in any sketch of millennial theories as the four others. — As regards these theories it will now be my ob- ject to show that to all but the first there exist objections such, and so decisive, as to set them aside from the arena ; and so to leave to that first and earliest (that is, the literal view held by the primitive Christians) possession of the field. 1 The mode in which Mr. G. educes this from the sacred text is this. He pre- mises (pp. 133, 134) that the word TrpooiKvvr]//i'T)r< - by Vitringa. Dan. vii. 2. 10. 12. Thrones placed (y Thejudg obtained the kingdom. Ap. xx. 4. 1 saw tbron ••• oh them. Judgment was riven to them. They lived and reigned with rjhrist liitiii \. 144 APOC. XX. 1 — XXI. 1. [part VI. Eastern and Western Christendom the two grand Satanic delusions of Popery and Maliominedanism. Had Angus- tine himself lived to see this, I am well persuaded, consi- dering his evangelical views of Christian doctrine, that he would have been the first to repudiate his own millennial v theory, as that which had been falsified beyond dispute by plain matter of fact. For, though making the saints' mil- lennial reign to be spiritual, and in the hearts and lives of the faithful individually, yet his view supposed a multitude thus true and genuine to be living and energizing in the Church during the millennial period : insomuch that he considered Antichrist's manifestation, Apocalyptically fore- shown under the figures of Gog and Magog, and the con- sequent reduction of the true Church to a mere paucity, persecuted and opprest, to mark the end of the millennium. Strange that any Protestant expositor, who verily believes Popery to be the Beast, should yet positively, and in despite of such belief, even now afresh propound the Augustinian theory as tenable ! ! — 2. As to Hammond's and Grotius theory, it is an essential preliminary to it, admitting as they do the subordination of Apoc. xx. to Apoc. xix., that the Apocalyptic Beast be interpreted as Rome Pagan, not Rome Papal : a point as to which, after all that has pre- ceded in this Commentary,2 it will I trust be the reader's judgment that it would be a mere waste of words to offer any fresh evidence in refutation of it. Besides which there is that same historic objection to it as to Augustine's theory, of its making the dark ages, and earlier times of the delu- sions of Popery and Mahommedanism, to be those of Christ's reigning on earth and the Devil's incarceration. I ought to add that by expounding what is said respecting Gog and Magog as meant of the Turks and their invasion of Christendom, it makes the " little time " 3 of Gog and 1 I allude especially to Dr. Wordsworth. Is it asked, How can he possihly recon- cile such essentially contradictory views ? It is as follows. Christ hound the Devil, he says, iva yit] TrXavrjai], " in order that he should not deceive the nations : '' so marking object, not effect. And " the corruptions of Popish times and countries . . show that men have despised what Christ has done for them, and have loosed the enemij who was bound by Christ!" pp. 50, 51. But in Apoc. xx. 3, 7, is not tho time of Satan's actual incarceration defined as 1000 years; and the epoch of his actual loosing denned as not till the end of the 1000 years? 2 See my Part iv. Chapters iv — ix. 3 fitra ravra Sti avroi' \v9qvat fAiicpov \povov. ell. ill. § l.j TiiKi'K 01 THE i I \ 1 \r ONCE RJBF1 TED. I 1") Magog's insurrection to mean a period, according to these interpreters' own reckoning, of already above 500 years; that is, dating from tin- rise of tin' Turkish Othman dy- nasty : or, it' we more rightly compute the interval, <»t' near 800 years; Binoe we ought to date it from the Turkman power's earliesl epoch of rise, in the dynasty of Seljuk} — 8. As to Mr. Gxpps theory, (as if St. John, retrogressing to the times of the opening of the Beast's reign, meant, •• 1 Baw the souls of the old anii- Pagan martyrs revived in those who were now not worshipping the Beast/1) there are the obvious and decisive objections against it, 1st, that. there is no warrant whatsoever tor supposing such retro- gression. 2ndly, and no warrant for construing the aorist -^oTsx-rsr^av as an imperfect, ' Srdly, and none for con- struing "and whosoever" in the sense of " in whoso- e\er." Moreover, according to this view, Satan would be shut up in the pit of the abyss, and the pit closed, at the very time during which (as Mr. G. would with myself ex- plain Apoe. ix. 1) the pit was opened in order to the de- ceiving of the nations by the Mahommedan delusion :a — the time of Christ's Witnesses' sackcloth-robing, and per- secution even unto death, as pictured in one part of the Apocalypse, would quite self-contradictorily be made to coincide with that of the Witnesses' reigning and ruling in another: — and, once more, as the resurrection of the Wit- nesses, spoken of Apoc. xi. 7, would be the second resur- rection, i their first rising to protect against the Papacy being 1 So Vitrin£a. — Sec the continuity of the Seljukian and Othman Turks fully dis- Bom 'I :in<>lilicmm in the phrase 1 am discussing of natural death ; — that natural death from which their ris- ing would be at the general resurrection, preparatorily to the judgment of the great white throne.3 lint then what the character of the death of those whose abstraction left them the tottroi, viz. ofthe beheaded ones, &c«, mentioned verse f ? Of course the same; i. e. natural death. Very curiously Vitringa does not advert to this point. Had he done so he could scarce but have seen that it involves the overthrow of his millennial theory.4 — To the same etl'eet, fourthly, is the Use of the term " the ihihl" rarj in Apoo, \i\. 21 it i^ laid of the former, "And tin remnant (oi Xoittoi) were slain with the sword, ftc" Bat, with the notice before aim of the dead and men martyrs oing, in Apocxx. l. In- Nhrink> from insisting on it. " Tlf rest of the dead (oi Xoiiroi," says he, p. 287 —"dead, thai i-, in tin- nme tense in which tht •■!k-r :. in reaped ofthe cause they espouse." wr, iii. 834 ; Brown, \>. 286; Clemens, |>. 92 ; British Reviewer, \>. L89 which how i- it, were this explanation by Dr. Whitby correct, that avt^ijoav, or sonn' -mli word, i^ oot osed on mention <>i Gog's 'expedition ; to imli- of the inillrnni:il saints, the n loscitatioD of the (alien can 1161. Ei oalli this new of the da ttli of the \eiwoi " simplex 1 1 ol urns." * Since writing this ] [r. Gippa,atpp. Ill, L 12, nan preceded nie in urging . at bom •• the r$$tof tit. ,..i-t the Whitbyite millennarian th 150 APOC. XX. 1 — XXI. 1. [part VI. vsxptou, generically, in the announcement on the 7th Trumpet's sounding of what was to he fulfilled under it : the events announced as the grand result of that Trumpet being evidently, as indeed most of the Whitby ite exposi- tors allow, (alike Vitringa, Faber, and Brown,1) the very same with those symbolized afterwards in Apoc. xviii., xix., and xx. 1 — 6. " We thank thee," it was said, "0 Lord God Almighty, because thou hast taken to thyself thy great power, and assumed the kingdom : and the nations were angry ; and thy wrath is come ; and the time of the dead to be judged,2 and that thou shouldest give reward to thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and to them that fear thy name, small and great; and shouldest destroy them that destroy the earth." Could "the dead," thus generically exprest, designate in figurative sense a particu- v lar dead cause and party, viz. the Christian : — one by the way that at the epoch of the 7th Trumpet's sounding was clearly not dead ? Even so; say Vitringa and Mr. Brown. No ! says Mr. Faber ; the phrase is too large and generic : it means both parties, Christian and Anti-Christian.3 But how so? The old difficulty recurs : — could both causes and parties be dead at the same time ? Clemens appre- ciates the inconsequence and difficulty ; and will have " the dead " to mean here the literally dead, small and great, who were to be judged before the great white throne : 4 so handing over this judgment of the dead, for tvhich the time was said to have come at the sounding of the 1th Trumpet, (or at least within the period embraced by that Trumpet,) abso- lutely and altogether, to an epoch above 1000 years later! Can this be so ? It is surely more natural, while supposing 1 Vitringa, pp. 679, 680, 683; Faber, iii. 244 ; Brown, 211, &c. I may refer the reader on this point to my remarks on Apoc. xi. 18, at the close of my 2nd Volume. 2 The verb icpivtaQai is one' applied tojthe good as well as bad. So Apoc. xx. 12, 13. And so too Kpi/ia, and other cognate words ; as e. g. John ix. 39. 3 Mr. Faber's observations (p. 244) are curious. " Since, with reference to the literal day of judgment, the word dead imports universality as to the persons who are finally judged, either for acquittal or condemnation, in the final judgment of all man- kind,— so, analogously, with reference to this figwatwe day of judgment [viz. that of the 7th Trumpet] the word dead must similarly import universality as to the persons who are temporally judged, cither for acquittal or condemnation, in the temporal judgment of the Roman empire." So he proceeds to say that he considers " the dead [in Apoc. xi. 18 J to be first universally and collectively said to be judged ; afterwards, in the two succeeding clauses, divided into the saints who fear the name of God, and the wicked who destroy the earth." What! both figuratively dead together ? 4 p. 104. rn. ill. J2.] apoc. ruo-iJTi.KM, 1 st UI8UBB. E\ [DENCB. I 5] with him " the dead " in Apoc. \i. Is* to mean the tileroll// dead. to suppose with Brown, Faber, and \ itringa, that the opening time, at least, of the judgment on these dead is at the opening of the millennium: the righteous dead having then adjudged them an abundanl entrance into Christ'* kingdom; the wicked dead exclusion from it,1 prior to their other and final judgment. Thus in fine, and upon these four accounts, I find myself absolutely constrained to view the death that the martyrs and their associated brethren were raised from as death in its Uterat sense : and, by consequence, the resurrection pre- dicated of them as not, so as Whitby would have it, a Ji'jur- utice, but rather a literal resurrection. :2. To the same conclusion tend the following Apocalyp- tic intimations with reference to the resurrection itself. For, first, it is in this resurrection, together with its im- mediate precedents of the fall of Babylon and the Jicast, ^ that there is confessed to be the fulfilment of what was said in Apoc. xi. 18 of " the time having come to give reward (roy fuo-Qov, the reward) to God's servants the prophets and saints:" — confessedly, I clean, by most of the chief advo- cates of Whitby's hypothesis. "The reward meant," says .Mr. Brown, "is just the destruction of Babylon, as the enemy of Christ's truth and people, and their triumphant exaltation in her stead." ■ And so too Vitringa and Faber. 1 I beg attention to this point. I conceive judgment an the wicked to have thus, ( n /* begwt. Compare my remarks on Dan. xii. 2 and Isa. lxvi. 24, pp. 193, 194 infra. • l'r Cfanreb Magazine for 1846, pp. 270,271. "Tin1 reward given toGodfa •-." he adds, " i-~ not personal." I cite from his Letter addreat to me in the l anrch Magazine; as I hare not observed in the 2nd Edition of his published Work any so di-tim.t notioe of this particular point. Vitrimga on Apoc. xi. 18, p. >','* . " Martyrea Mnsn mystioo at spiritual] nuretdem dicuutur aedpire, qnando bit illornm pmdictionibua et expectation! saiisiit." in. 246 "The recompenoe here spoKen of . .must mean a re- nce of vengeance upon the heads of their long triumphant anwinimi and The BritM Q ■■. p. is:? half grants, half heeitatea at granting, h tin ant in Apoo. \i. 18 ii the tame with thai in the passage Before us. "Mr. K. has assumed the identity of I described in the two passa though he support-* himself in so doing by tlie consent of Vitringa. . . Grant that L 16 -is refers to the same epoch as Rev. xix. 11 — xx. 15 " (rather, — zx. 4j. onteat the point. ' howerex hei from the other Whitbyite theorists. He s.ems unable to bring him-i It to believe that aueh ii trd" held out to the taints, " 1: ■ an scarcely be suid that these things were fulfilled at the oommenci ment of 152 apoc. xx. 1 — xxi. 1. [part vr. But surely the reivard set before Christ's people in Scrip- ture, in order to animate them amidst their many labours and trials, is something very different from this.1 " Blessed are ye," said Christ, " when men shall reproach you, &c, for my sake : rejoice and be exceeding- glad ; for great is your reward (fua-Bog) in heaven." And again ; " He that reapeth receiveth wages (fuo-Qov) ; and gathcreth fruit unto life eternal." So again St. Paul to the Hebrew Christians ; u Knowing that ye have in heaven a better and an endur- ing substance, cast not away your confidence which hath great recompence of reward (ixKrSa.7ro6o(riav) : for ye have need of patience, that after ye have done the will of God ye may receive the promise : for yet a little while, and He that shall come will come." And yet once more in the Apocalypse itself ; " Behold I come quickly ; and my re- ward {(xia-Qos) is with me, to give every man as his work may be." Surely, it would be but poor comfort to the weary and tried and persecuted Christian, to be told that some day, at a longer or shorter interval after Jris death, and while he himself still rested in the world of separate spirits, the sacred cause in which he was interested would at length be successful upon earth, and all the chief enemies of it destroyed : and that, in effect, this their destruction, and this its triumph, was "the reward" destined for him.8 — Secondly, the Apocalyptic designation of the millennial resurrection as " the first resurrection " seems to me little consistent with the Whitbyite view of it. Tor, were it sim- ply the resurrection of the martyrs' cause, how, I ask, could it be called the first, and not rather the second, or, as I might indeed say, the third resurrection ; seeing that the Apocalypse, as these expositors in common with myself the millennium. . The time had not come that God should give reward to those who feared his name small and great: &c." p. 105. So, as before said, Clemens explains those words of the song on the 7th Trumpet's sounding, "The time is come of the dead to be judged, and that thou shouldest give reward, &c.," to mean the time of the general resurrection after the millennium. 1 My argument here is of course greatly strengthened by what is said in Daniel xii. 12 of his "standing in his lot (/cAj/poe) at the end of the days:" i.e. at the end of the 1335 days, just after Antichrist's final destruction. But of this more when I speak of the evidence of Old Testament Scripture. See p. 168 infra. 3 I have copied the above from a Letter written by me in reply to Mr. Brown, and printed in the Free Church Magazine for 1846, p. .341. In the same Magazine for 1847, p. 29, there was an answer by Mr. Brown, but no answer to this argu- ment. Nor do I see any in the 2nd Edition of his Book on the Second Advent. (II. ill. \ 2.] 4P00. I'lio-i.i n i; \i. Iff! U Bl BLR. BYID1 KCB. 1 53 expound it, had itself already prefigured two greal previous revivals of the Christian martyr or witness cause : the one in the Constantinian revolution; that same thai nras cele- brated in the eucharistic song, "They overcame the Dragon In the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their niur- tyr-testmumy (putprvpia) :'M the other in the Protestant Reformation of the Kith century: which latter was indeed expressly figured as " resurrection of the martyr-cause and line, in the vision of the two Witnesses' death and resur- rection.- prior to the seventh Trumpet's Bounding?8 — Thirdly, there occurs the important consider.it ion that, as to any notable revival of the distinctive spirit of the old martyrs in times of millennial blessedness, such as the Apocalypse implies, with the Devil bound and the saints tri- umphant, it is almost a contradiction in terms. The spirit of Elias might and did revive in John the Baptist ; because he, like his predecessor, had to witness in a corrupt genera- tion for the truth, even unto death. But here, where the similarity ? Mr. Gipps, one of the most decided as well as most able of all the modern opponents of the literal chili- adic theory, so strongly felt the force of this consideration, that it sufficed almost of itself to make him set aside \\ hit- by's theory as untenable :4 though only indeed for another on the same spiritualizing principle, which seems to me equally untenable, as 1 have shown elsewhere.5 And so 1 So Mr. Brown himself, p. 3, thus writes of the Constantinian revolution as a BCtion of the Christian martyr-cause : — "The martyred testimony of ■ lit,, I ': hut the martyr- tiiein.-ches lived not. The Gospel slew the great red Dragon: Paganism was defeated in the high places of the field: Christianity i the throne of t! - Mr. Brown agrees with me in referring the death and resurrection of the Wit- n to the epoch and events of the Reformation: (Free Church Mag. 267:) and so too Clemens, Mr. Paber would have the vision fulfilled in the banishment, and then ro onraMinhmmt in their valleys, of thi Waldenses. This makes no difference in my prosed argument. In explaining the vision ofApoc xi. 7 — 18, the Whitbyite interpreters all admit that it ignifl^ some notable death and resurrection of the Christian martyr-' cause before the 7th Trumpet's sounding. Mr. Brown replied to this argumenl when urged hy me in the Free Church sine for 1M7. ]>. 36, thai th>- objection might be equally made against the literal view of the pre-millennial resurrection; I" tain saints rose literally and bodily at the tame of Christ's resurrection, and therefore the pre-millennial motion, if literal, would be only a second, not tir-t resurrection. '• ' But no,' Mr. I'., will say: 'Only a handful rose then; whereas this isj& whole.' Jusl and that i- >,n/ answer to him." I>ut does it make no difference that the Apoca- lypse itself, which hen- oses the phrase M first resurrection," should have strongly and prominently figured a previous revival of the Christian witnesses' cause and i U3 a i- . * p. 109. < See p, i us supra* 154 apoc. xx. 1 — xxi. L [part vi. too the British Reviewer : at least to the extent, if I rightly understand him, of abandoning what Whitby says of the revival of the martyrs' spirit ; his own view being the same as Whitby's and Brown 8 of the revival and triumph of the martyrs' cause.1 Thus, on much various evidence inferable from the Apo- calypse itself, I come to the conclusion of the inadmissibility of Whitby's millennial theory, just as decidedly as of each of the other anti-literal theories : and at the same time, since all the counter-evidence has gone to confirm the literal theory, to a conviction of all this constituting a strong presumption in favour of that literal theory of Irenseus and the early Chiliasts. A presumption further confirmed by the simple but important fact, that the doctrine of a first literal resurrection of God's saints was no new doctrine in St. John's time ; but one that had past downward to it from early currency in the Jewish Church, as will appear in my next Section.2 It needs however, ere passing on from this part of my subject, that I make an explanatory observation or two, by way of answer to certain difficulties and objections that have been urged from the Apocalyptic passage against it. And, 1st, the application of the word -^o^ctg, souls, to the saints and martyrs raised to reign with Christ, (which some have objected,) forms no real objection to the literal view. For it is but a term designative generally of their state Just previous ; and specially marking the identity of some of 1 I say, if I rightly understand him : for I am not sure that I do. He says, p. 183 : " The principle that where a resurrection to life is spoken of, it must be a resurrec- tion of corresponding character with the death from out of which it is a revival, is a true principle; and, as such, is fatal we conceive to Whitby's interpretation." Yet from his remark p. 176, "When the fulness of the Gentiles is brought in, and all Israel saved, . . God's martyrs will triumph in the victory of the cause for which they had suffered during so many centuries," and again, p. 189, that " the rest of the dead, like the martyrs, are the representatives of a cause, and . . supposed in their turn to triumph when Satan their leader is unbound," it seems to me that it is only in re- spect of what Whitby says of a revival of the martyr spirit that he differs from him. Mr. Brown, p. 242, seems to think that the revival of the old martyrs' spirit of faithfulness to Christ will suffice to answer the conditions of the case on that head. And so Clemens, p. 89. But I cannot agree to this. It seems to me contrary not only to the simple requirements of the symbol, but also to the analogy of the pre- vious Apocalyptic case of figurative resurrection, — I mean that of the two witnesses, as explained alike by both of us. It was not the cause and. faithfulness of Huss and the Waldenses that alone revived in Luther and his associates ; but their martyr- spirit even unto suffering also. • See especially p. 168, infra. ('II. 111. § -•] Arm'. PRO-LITEB \l. 1 BT RJE81 ELE. i.\ LD1NCE. I 55 tlic enthroned individuals with those xl/v^ay that St. John had seen long previously, after their slaughter, under the N altar.1 And thus it no more indicates that they wen still mere il-ty/u, incorporeal souls, than the title wxpoi.jusl after in verse 12, (" 1 saw ///<• •/(6oc t\a\i)vi. So, again, Matt. xi. 5, xv. 31, Luke vii. 22, Ice: and, in the Old Tes- at, Exod. \ii. 10, 1 Sun. wvii. 3, ie. — Thus it seems quite needless to urge •t* ^"x01 tbrpersoiUj by way of explanation. I p. 4 Mr. Brown (Free Church Mag. fur 1M7, pp. 31, 32) in reply to these my par- allel-,— 1st ezn ltvI having appeared enthroned in the vision. Hut what L in hia corresponding Tision | The Son of Man (Dan. vii 13, I • bold) r of the kingdom. 2. He thinks that the word vtvpoj. >f Apoe. \i. 18 with Apoc. xx. 1—4 makes me wonder that he should take BO much 156 APOC. XX. 1 — XXI. 1. [part VI. reason of the martyrs being so prominently specified here seems to me easy of apprehension.1 It was, I conceive, to remind the reader of the vision of the souls under the altar slain by Pagan Rome, to whom an avenging was promised : and likewise of that of the confessors under Papal Rome ; on whom a similar trial of faith and patience had been en- joined, with a simple similar resting on the promise.2 In the specification before ns it was strikingly set forth that, though delayed, the promise had not been forgotten ; and was now at length to have fulfilment.3 — As to the objec- tion from what is said of the rest of the dead not living again " till the thousand years were finished," as if indi- cating that they lived again immediately after the ending of that millennium, (in which case all explanation of their living again by reference to the general resurrection of the dead to judgment mentioned in verse 11 afterwards, be- fore the great white throne, then first set, as our theorists suppose, would be precluded, because of " the little space " of the Devil's loosing, and Gog's invasion, intervening between the millennium's ending and that general judg- ment,) the objection is founded on a quite mistaken as- sumption of the requirements of the preposition till. The tempest-angels of Apoc. vh. were charged not to blow till the servants of God were sealed :4 but it was not until after the further interval of a little space, subsequent to the com- pains to make it appear that there were none but martyrs seen in the latter vision- For he admits that in the former all the saints are noted as participators in the mar- tyrs' triumph. 1 " Why, if this is to he, [viz. a resurrection of all the saints,] was the specifica- tion so limited as it here is ? We must leave the difficulty ; . . for we see no solution of it." So the Brit. Qu. Reviewer, p. 184. 3 See Apoc. xiii. 10. — Iti the vision too of the souls under the altar, slain by Pagan Rome, it had been said that their vindication would not be till after the slaying of other martyrs their brethren, i. e. those slaiu under Papal Rome ; and consequently the vindication of the latter synchronous with theirs. 3 It will already have been observed that the ancient Fathers supposed, as I do, that the pre-millenuial resurrection would be one of all God's saints, of both Old and New Testament dispensations. See p. 134 supra. In further illustration of this being the view held by the early Fathers, let me add to my previous citations from Justin Martyr and Tertullian the following from Cyprian. " Vivere omnes dicit et reguare cum Christo : non tantum qui occisi fuerint, sed et quique in fidei su.e firmitate et Dei timore perstantes imaginera besti;e non adoraverint, neque ad funesta ejus et sacrilega edicta consenserint." And again ; " Nee solos animadversos et interfectos divime pollicitationis manent praemia ; sed etiam si ipsa passio fidelibus desit, fides tamen integra atque invicta per- stiterit, . . ipse quoque a Christo inter martyres honoratur." Ad Fortunat. De Ex- hort. Mart. c. 12. i uxP'£ °'u of^ayiautyav tovq dovXovg rov Qiov yfiuv. Apoc. vii. 3. OH. HI. $ 2.] Ai'oc. PRO-LITERAL 1 BT RE8URR. EVIDENCE. 1 ~u pletion of the Bealing, that the firel Trumpet sounded, and the tempests began. In Luke jcxiv, I'.) the Saviour's charge, " Remain in Jerusalem ////ye shall have been endued with power from on high," did not imply that they were then instantly after to end their sojourn there. And so too in other passages.1 Which being the case, the objection appears to DC groundless: and we may without hesitation explain what is said about the resurrection, or living again, of " ///'■ rest of tin' dead" after the millennium as fulfilled in the uprising of the dead generally to judgment before tin' great white throne, supposing OUT theorists' view cor- rect of this vision ; contradistinetively to the martyrs and saints spoken of just before, as raised preinillennially to live and reign with Christ. Such, and so strong, is the various proof deducible from the Apocalyptic passage itself, with its context and parallels, against Whitby's futuro-figurative view, and in favour of the literal view, of the first resurrection in Apoc. xx. ; and consequently of the resurrection of the just (as it is else- where called'-) being premiUennial. As the point, how- ever, is one so controverted, as well as so surpassingly in- teresting and important, it is clearly incumbent on every earnest inquirer after truth to consider the Scripture evi- dence that may bear upon it on a larger scale. This con- stitutes the second branch of my argument. Xor, 1 think, will its examination fail to issue in a deeper, fuller persua- sion of the truth of the premiUennial theory of Christ's second advent, and premiUennial resurrection coincidently of his Sdi/lis. § 3. General Scripture evidence against Whitby's putubo-p1gubattve theobt, and in favour of the lit- bbal thxobi of the millennial first besttbbection. Under this head 1 shall hope to prove the synchronism of the departed saints* resurrection, and of Christ's second • E. •>•;: eren supposing thai the "1<1 Catholic view respecting the • 'ill after Christ's Birth an wapSevog, i> not to !"■ insisted on. 1 les from the till in 1 Cor. xt. 25, u He must reign till he hath put all things under lii- 1 - Luke \i\. 1 1. 158 APOC. XX. 1 — XXI. 1. [part IV. and glorious advent, alike with the epoch of Israel's pro- wised conversion and restoration, with that of the contem- porarily opening blessedness of the world, and with that of the fall of Antichrist : — some other and different points of evidence being added afterwards. And, in preparation for this important branch of my argument, it may be well first to trace the subject of Scripture promise somewhat fully, and from the fountain- head. Every after-promise then made to man was wrapt up (if I may so say) and contained in that original and pri- mary promise made to our first parents after their fall, " The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head." Now on this promise we have what I may call an inspired comment, in the apostle's saying, " For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil." x And, as Satan's work was the in- troduction of both natural and moral evil, — including alike a curse on man, with death as its special sign and accom- paniment, and a curse too on the creation made for man, (" for the creation was subjected to vanity, not through any voluntary act, but by reason of him who subjected it," i. e. if we construe the word of the instrumental cause, the Devil,2) therefore the undoing of his work involved a twofold restoration and removal of the curse ; the moral restoration of man, with abolition of death, and the physi- cal restoration of this created earth of his habitation. Nor, I think, is it mere unfounded conjecture to suppose that Adam, Abel, Enoch, so understood, and hoped themselves to profit by it.3 — The promise was not jeoparded by the judgment of a flood of waters which God would bring on the earth to destroy all flesh : for, together with his de- claration of the coming judgment, God made the saving declaration to Noah, " But with thee will I establish my i 1 John iii. 8. 2 Horn. viii. 20. Some commentators prefer to explain this of God, as the judicial subjector of the outward creation to vanity. But if the instrumental cause be meant, it must be either the Devil or Adam, — the tempter to original sin, or the sinner; seeing that the curse on the creation followed the sin. Which of these, is immaterial to my argument. 3 By the use of propitiatory sacrifices these early patriarchs expressed their hope in the promise. ill. ill. $ 3.] «KX. 88. PRO-LIT. 1 sr 1:1 m i;i:. i \ mi \ci:. 159 want:"1 thai is, my original covenanted promise made to Adam. — Yet again, in the tenth generation alter Noah, when the world was at'resh beginning to he tilled with ;in apostate population, and so the covenant to lie afresh en- dangered. He virtually repeated it to Abraham ; "Get thee out of thy country to a land which I will show thee ; . . and M thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed:"* — there being added soon after, very remarkably, a grant of the land itself to which he was called, as if in some way particularly connected with the accomplishment of the previous compre- hensive promise: not only "Unto thy seed will I give this land : " 3 but " To litre will I give it, and to thy xerv, icaicwQ %u>vrtg' Kai ovv T(f) A/Spart/i Ti]v ayiav KXripovofinryofi.il' yifv, ng tov airipavTov aiwva rifv KXifpovofiiav Xntyofiivoi. Dial, emu Tryph. p. 347- '•' Heb. xi. 10. — Macknight on Heb. vi. says that " the covenant with Abraham might with great propriety be termed the gospel of the patriarchs and of the Jews." c. in. \ 8.] GIN. 88. PRO-LITWLAX lSTRESUR, iaipi \< k. 10] Meanwhile there had been revealed to him (it was in the vision that had the honor of great darkness aeeoni- panying it) a now and most important appendix ill God's purpose to tlic old covenant of grace. The question was permitted to be asked by Abraham, (by Abraham not in his individual character, I conceive, but as the representa- tive and federal head, like Adam before him, of his seed in- terested in the promised inheritance,) "Lord God, whereby thaU I know that I shall inherit it (the land)?"1 And, as in answer, God told him that his seed (his natural seed evidently) should, after sojourning and suffering in a land not theirs for above t()0 years, come out in the fourth gen- eration; and. as a nation, occupy that same land of Canaan. - This therefore was to be after Abraham himself, and Isaac too, had died. So that there now opened before him the vista of a new line of covenant-promise, not annulling or superseding,3 but only co-ordinate with, and corroborative of, the older covenant-promise : 4 — the new- promise being that of his natural seed as a living nation occupying the earthly Canaan ; as if for an actual guarantee, ami sign to perpetual generations, of his spiritual seed (the holy elec- tion of grace out of the natural seed5) at length after death, and through the medium of a resurrection, inheriting the same Canaan, in some way at length made heavenly, and with God himself revealed therein as their God.6 Besides which important object, this new national dispensation was 1 Gen. xt. 8. 2 Ibid, verse 16. See on this Brooks' Elements, ch. ii. 5 So St. Paul, GaL iii. 17; "This, I say, that the covenant that was confirmed be- ta of God in Christ, the lone which was \:w yean after cannot disannul, that it slmuM make the promise of none effect. For if the inheritance be of the law, it was irn more of promise : but the Galatians, Introduction, and $ 3. Compare the ngn given to ICosea in Ezod. iii. 12: a sign of something smaller and yet future, to assure him and hia people of the fulfilment of something greater, and which in its full comprehensiveness embraced a yet more distant futurity. So too the ngn given by Samuel to Saul, in proof of the latter possessing the kingdom, l Sam. v. -• ftc. ; thai to Hesekiah, ~l Kings \i\. 29, and that t" Abas, I a vri. 14, in proof of God's perpetual purposes nt merev to Judah. • The admi"il)ility of Gentiles wai scarcely revealed. * This is alw I-. - .. or implied, as the grand glory > Levit. xxvi. 12, " J will be y>ur <"'d, and ye shall be my people." WL. IV. 11 162 APOC. XX. 1 — XXI. 1. [part VI. made subservient in a thousand ways both to illustrate, and as a schoolmaster to train up the people for participation in, the earlier covenant of heavenly promise : setting forth, as appeared afterwards in its wonderful ritual and code of law, so strikingly as probably nothing else could have done, the vastness of the alienation caused by Adam's sin be- tween a holy God and sinful man, and consequent vastness of the difficulty of effecting what the original covenant im- plied, in respect of man's (and inclusively the creation's) restoration and reconciliation : and the need consequently of an all-perfect atoner, mediator, and purifier, such as might indeed do the work, and realize the wonderful ideas, now first fully set forth, of redemption and a redeemer. — No wonder that the faithful servants of God in every age should have found in the varying history of the Jewish nation, — of its rebellions and its punishments, — its stub- bornness, and his treatment of its stubbornness, — its re- pentances and its partial restorations, — types of their own spiritual history, and of God's unwearied faithfulness in his covenant to save.1 That nation, and its natural history, seem to have been almost set forth to Abraham, in God's first announcement concerning it, as a sign and type of the spiritual history, and ultimate spiritual blessedness, of the spiritual seed. I say a sign of its ultimate spiritual blessed- ness. For the final and ultimate view of the natural Israel, (as well as of the spiritual,) as predicated in all prophecy concerning it, — from the prophecies by Moses 2 to those by Christ 3 and St. Paul,4 — was that of its ultimate blessed union with God ; though not till after a long and fearful aera of alienation and judgment, and the temporary pass- ing away in consequence of the supremacy and glory from Israel. And here then there might naturally arise a question with the believer of old, as he looked forward into the distant future, Would there be any coincidence in respect of time, as well as of earthly scene, between the fulfilments of the ultimate blessings predicted in respect of either covenant ? — in other words, a synchronization of the spiritual Israel's 1 Compare 1 Cor. x. 6. 2 Deut. xxx. 1 — 9. 3 Luke xxi. 24, Matt, xxiii. 39. 4 Rom. xi. lb, 26. 0. ill. $ 3.] c.r.s. ss. Pito-i.rrr.R.M, Istki.si k. BVIDSNCB. L69 resurrection from the de,rd. in order to its inheritance both o( ■ renovated earth and of God himself its Redeemer, with the natural Israels restoration to their renovated land and to the favour of their Redeemer-God ? A question this, bearing directly, the reader will see, on the point of oiir present investigation: and to which the scriptural answer, 1 believe, is this, that the chronological connexion of the two consummations was a thing intended; and neither un- foreshown to, nor unforeseen by, the saints of God, alike before, and at, and after, the time of Christ. — I proceed to give proof of this ; and shall endeavour in doing so to keep the national IsraeVa promised ultimate happiness in view, as distinguished from the renovated world's ultimate happiness, which is to be the subject of my next head : though indeed the one is so mixed up with the other, that it is hard to keep the view of the two altogether distinct and separate. 1. The intimated synchronism of the spiritual Israel's resurrection from the an. xii. 1, Mtnplv th$ book ; ("Thy people shall be dell- thai ihall be found written in the hook ; ") in f'hil iv. :s, and iii. ■"), \x. 1"). \\i. ■>'. the ),<„,}; >n earth as the ultimate objeci of his prayers;' and in yet another place, connectedly with a de- scription of the same earthly reign of King Messiah, (jlod's having made an everlasting covenant with himself, ordered in all things and sure, the which was all his salvation and all his desire.4 In the Prophets after David the same coincidence of time het ween Israel's restoration and the saints' resurrection is also expressed, only much more clearly. Take, for ex- ample, Isaiah's prophecy (already elsewhere cited by me,8 in illustration of the circumstantials attendant on Israel's restoration) in his chapters xxiv. — xxvii. He there speaks of some terrible shaking of the earth under God's judg- ment, and the host of the high ones, and kings of the earth, being then as prisoners gathered into the pit of their pri- son ; of the contemporaneous reigning of the Lord of hosts M Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, before his ancients, with a glory that should make the sun itself ashamed: of the Lord's then opening to all people a feast of fat things, and destroying the veil of the covering cast over them, and swallowing up death in victor//, and wiping away tears from off all faces, and taking away the rebuke of his people from off all the earth, and punishing with his great and strong BWord the crooked serpent, and purging away the iniquity of Jacob, and causing them that come of Jacob to take root, and Israel to blossom and bud, and fill the earth with fruit. When partially citing this prophecy before, the reference of which to the final restoration of the national ' knight in hi* BmkJ V., prefixed to his Comment on the Galatians, to the same In xlvi. 5 (Mar?.), " God ■haS help her when the Burning tmpeortth." mare Psalm ex. 3 ; inure also, perhaps, the r$»urrtetion mtr%ning may be referred t". Bo Bnneock, Feast of Tab. p. L98. n zvu. i">. :n lwii. V.K -'<) ; M And Matted l» hil glorious name for ever, ami lei the whole earth be filled with his glon ! Ann n and Amen ! Tin' prayen "l David, the son of JessL, are ended." ' - Sain, ixiii. 1 — 5. 6 p. 113 supra. ICG APOC. XX. 1 — XXI. 1. [part VI. Israel seems hardly to be mistaken, I left the question as to what .wallowing up of death in victory might be intended, and whether in a literal or a figurative resurrection, an open question. It is now my place to answer it. And the answer is already at hand, as given by the Apostle St. Paul ; who as expressly identifies the fulfilment of those words, " He shall swallow up death in victory," with the time of the saints' resurrection,1 as the prophet identifies it with that of the natural Israel's restoration : at the same time that the other details of the prophecy are, I may say, almost the same, point by point, as those in the Apocalyp- tic prefiguration of the events introducing the Millennium.* To the same effect are the prophecies in Isaiah's two last chapters, also cited in my last preceding Chapter : where the restoration of Israel is connected with the creation of " new heavens and a new earth'* like those in the Apoca- lypse ; and moreover with that punishment of transgress- ors, of which Christ also speaks as of a punishment to be adjudged at his coming? viz. " the worm that never dieth, and the fire that is never quenched." 4 Further evidence might be easily added from the same evangelic prophet, did my limits permit. But it may be better to pass on now to two or three of the other prophets. — And first to Isaiah's contemporary, Hosea. " The iniquity of Ephraim" says he, with reference to the time of Israel's ultimate re- pentance and restoration, "is bound up; his sin is hid: the sorrows of a travailing woman shall come upon him : he is an unwise son : for he should not stay long in the place of the breaking-forth of children. / will ransom them from the power of the grave ; I will redeem them from death ; 0 death, I tvill be thy plagues ; 0 grave, I will be thy destruction! '5 And what this redemption from death? That of the nation in figurative sense of the phrase? Not so. Again St. Paul may be cited,6 in proof of the literal « 1 Cor. iv. 54. 2 Especially the statement of the Lord's reigning in Mount Zion before his ancients, or Sanhedrim council, such as appeared seated on the thrones in Apoc. xx. 4, will not be overlooked by the reader. And with it will be compared Zechariah's parallel prophecy of " the Lord my God coming (at the time of Israel's restoration), and all his saints with him." 3 Compare Mark ix. 44, Matt. xiii. 42, xxv. 41. 4 Isa. lxvi. 24. 5 Hosea xiii. 12 — 14. 6 1 Cor. xv. 55. C. III. § 3.] GEN. SS. PRO-I.ITFK \l, 1 ST UKSFR. EYID1N01. 1 07 rrsiirrrcflon of the s, tilth being the thing meant ill the latter verses ; and consequently of the chronological coin- cidence of this their resurrection from the grave with Is- rael's restoration.1 — Next turn we to EkekieVs celebrated vision of tin* dry hones.- And here, if the case be more equivocal, yet 1 may observe thai according to the exposi- tion of the earlier Christian Fathers;' derived in part per- haps from the earlier Jewish Rabbins, those bones and that resurrection are to be construed, not simply of the living Jewish people, and their fall and resuscitation, but of the Jewish saints departed also, and their literal bodily resur- rection, in common with Christ inn saints, at the time of Israel's restoration.4 — Yet once more, (to close my Old Pestament citations,) I must refer to two of the famous pro- phecies of Daniel. The first is that in Dan. vii. ; which prefigured the four great persecuting empires that, com- mencing from the time of Israel's unfaithfulness, and con- sequenl temporary rejection by God, would in succession hold the world's supremacy ; until at length, after the des- tined 1200 days (or years) of the last of the four, in its last or antichristian form, judgment should be given to the saints of the. Most High, Ehd the time come for the saints possessing the kingdom : — possessing it, mark well,5 " for 1 To much the same effect is the prophecy hy another contemporary of Isaiah's, M ■•'. eh. v. 3. Bee my Vol. iii. p. 284, Note3. - F/.k. wwii. ' For example, • 16, alter citing the whole vision in proof of the doc- trine of a resurrection^ Minis op thus : " Ueiniurgo et hie vivificante corpora \< stra ■Oftaa, et resurr.etioiiem eis repromittente, et de sepulchris et monumentia -u-eitati- : et ineorruntelam donante."* And so again v. 34. — Similar to \\\\- is Tirtul- litin's explanation of the resurrection in K/.ekiel's vision ; though he allows that it may alio rigaiff the Jews' restoration ; (De Rcsurr. Cam. eh. 30 ;) and also ('//pri- on'* Testim. iii. os ; ami that of Cy,// Wierotol. Cat. is. — The Author of tht Quart. Sppended to Justin Martyr's Works, QusMt. !•">, unites either view, p. 418. ( Ed. Colon.) Ilr i« t7Ti rov It£tic(ijX tci iravra OTTTama, Kai onria, Kai ») VOVTWV avanrnrriq- Sukvvui ?l T(p npof fx(v fitjyfioy rY niT>;c HTo/Jt i'r; »' iia XptorOv ttclvtuiv KoapiKi)v avanraaiv rr\v ik I'Kowi'. iTtura ct Kai -qv \i/ v \a y ii> y i a v t w i> I a p a n\ i rw v riov ano- yvovrwv iavrovc, rift ik'iiv\u>v»iii, uti t\ii>(hpoi inovrai rip- twv liafiu\w>'iiuv vtioc. — And so too Anguttmu in his De Q< nasi ad Fit. x. 8. For, on iir«t re- ferring to it, he says; "Apod Bzechielem prophetam demonstrator reaurrectio mor- tu»>u»i ." hut then adds presently after; " Bttamsiillo loco non resuxrectioni m car- nis. .ju.ilis proprie fat inopinatam desperatJ populi reparationem per Bpi- ritum Domini nguratft rerelatione pnevidit." refer on this to Davison on Prophecy, pp. VfP, 611. 4 The rather as the argument henoe arising has been too generally orerlooked. • I- 1. xivi. 19, "Thy dead shaO dye; [together u-ith] my dead body shall they arise; " is another Old 'testament prophecy fa d hy him. 168 APOC. XX. 1 — XXI. 1. [part VI. ever and for ever : " their everlasting kingdom thus dating from the fall of Antichrist. The second that of Dan. xii., which depicted the two events of the resurrection of the just, so as to shine as the sun in the firmament, and Israel's last trouble and deliverance, as occurring each and either near about the end of the same 12G0 days, or years, of Antichrist's abomination of desolation : the declaration being made in chronological terms yet more exact, that at the end of the 1335 days, or years, 75 days or years be- yond the former, the time of blessedness would begin ; and Daniel himself stand in his lot (i. e. his inheritance l) at the end of those days.2 I have hinted that it was thus that the Jewish expositors that lived between the return from Babylon and destruc- tion of Jerusalem understood the passages cited : in proof of which statement I subjoin a few extracts.3 And though 1 KXrjpovo/xia. See ray Note 4, p. 159. And compare Col. i. 12 ; rt)v fiipida rov KktjpoV TWV CiyiiOV IV Tip (plliTl. 2 n^-n. The article must be observed. It fixes the meaning to the days just before mentioned, viz. the 1335 days. See my remarks pp. 109 — 112 supra. 3 1. On Hosea vi. 2, " After two days will he revive us; in the third day He will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight," the Chaldee Targum (a comment probably of the century before Christ) thus expounds tfe passage. " Vivificabit nos diebus consolationis qui venturi sunt : — die resurrectionis mortuorum suscitabit nos ; et vi- vemus cum ipso." (Schoettgen, vi. 6.) 2. On Hosea xiv. 8, the Rabbi Eliezer the Great, who is supposed to have lived just after the second temple was built, thus applies it to the pious Jews who seemed likely to die without seeing the glory of Israel ; " As I live, saith Jehovah, I will raise you up in the time to come, in the resurrection of the dead ; and I will gather you with all Israel." (Brooks' Elements, p. 36 ; referring to his Capit. 34.) 3. The Author of the Book of Wisdom, an Alexandrian Jew of one or two centuries probably before the Christian tera, (see Gray's Key,) says in chap. ii. verses 7, 8, of the dead ; " In the time of their visitation they shall shine, and run to and fro like sparks among the stubble ; they shall judge the nations, and have dominion over the peoples ; and their Lord shall reign for ever." 4. In 2 Maccab. vii. 9, the second of the seven brethren put to death by Antiochus is represented to have said, " Thou takest us out of this present life, but the king of the world shall raise us up, who have died for his laws, to everlasting life." The fourth brother (verse 14) said; " It is good, being put to death by man, to look for hope from God, to be raised up again by him." " As for thee thou shalt have no resurrection to life." And the youngest, showed that they expected this resurrection to life by virtue of the covenant with Abraham : saying, verse 36,'," For our brethren, who now have suffered a short pain, are dead under God's covenant of everlasting life." For, says Macknight, Essay v. § 3, prefixed to his Comment on Epistle to the Galatians, " What covenant of everlasting life did God ever make with the Jews, under which they could die ; unless it be the covenant with Abraham, in which He promised with an oath to give him and his seed the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession ? " So, after citation of the passage from the Maccabees. The author of this Second Book of Maccabees is judged to have lived a century, or thereabouts, before Christ at Alexandria. 5. When the Rabbi Gamaliel (St. Paul's Master) was asked by the Sadducees to C. III. § 3.] GEN. SS. PRO-LITE! UL 1st KF.sru. IYIDBNC1. 1G9 a different construction has been put upon them bv ancient as well as modern anti-premiUennarians, as if tney were simply prophecies of the revival and resuscitation of Israel, well as of the World With it,) from a state of national and religious depression,1 still, while allowing thai this is in part their subject, (and its being bo is of course an essen- tial point in my argument,) yet 1 cannot but think that the .lews rightly viewed them as including also predictions of the literal resurrection of the saints literally dead, con- temporaneously with Israel's figurative resuscitation. For, in some eases at least, the Language9 seems all but uii- prove out of the Scripture the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, he is said to nave cited among other passages, Dcut. ii. 21, "That thy days may be multiplied, . . in the land irhieh the Lord swore to thy fathers to give them ; " and xxxi. 16, " But thai (Moses) shalt sleep with thy fathers :" also Isa. XXVi 19, " Thy (lead men shall rise," Sec. : which hist seemed to give explanation how the fathers, though asleep, were vet to inherit." Germara Sanhedrim, ap. Mode, Hook iv. Kp. 48; and \\- tringa on [sa. xxvi. 19, Note a. — The Sadducees, says Vitringa, argued for a figur- There are a few extracts from the Gemara Sanhedrim given by Ileinrichs on Apoc. x\. I. ■"). to much the same purport. 1 So Vitrinya in his Apocalypse, p. 1159, and in his Commentary on Isaiah xxvi. 19: referring to the prophecies, not only of Ezek. xxxvii. and Hosea vi. 2, hut even .: \> .::. v: J. as to he taken in the same sense. — So too Rosenmuller on Ezek. x\wii.; who cites these -aim passages from the other prophets. He also quotes ./ Comment on Ezek. xxxrii. to the same effect. 2 I may especially rest on the prophecy in Dan. xii. 2, compared with xii. 13 of the same' chapter. — C/arias,'- (an anti-premillennarian commentator in the Critici - ' constrained by the clearness of the language, writes thus on Dan. xii. 2, 13, and notices the genera] concurrence both of Jewish and Christian expositors in so explaining it: " Hie arjertissime locus est de rmvrreetione, ctiam Jndans sapientiori- boa oonsentientibus ;* tametsi (inn ChWtutit videantur sentire. — Omnium Catho- hoorum at peritorum Hebneorum consensu in hoc ultimo reran resurrectio pro- mittitur." And so too Calmet. ■a Gndius himself, one of the most bold of anti-premillennarian-. aft r a pri- marv exposition of Dan. xii. 2 as figuring Ifaccabean triumphs, and Dan. xii. 13, asif "Thou sh alt stand in thy lot " meant Prtefeeturam qtum lm>„s retmebis, and " at, <>r to, the end of the days," ad plmistimam aemeetutm, ret is forced to add, " Vidintur taiin ii studio ita concepts verha ut illud WWMN (ie morte suiui possit, et Habit lignificare avaaTi}oy. (quomodo vertit Theodotion,) et Jim's durum tiiicm nnirersL" (He take, no notice of the article, " the days.")— So too Porphyry, eited by him, and hy Wintle in loc. Also Vitrinya on Isa. xxvi. 19 ; and Ytmma, p. 498; all of whom give ■ Ifaccabean primary solution to Dan. xii. 2. M . (p. 200) thus write-. " Conceiving that the time more immediately in view in this passage (Dan. xii. 2) was that of the deliverance of Daniel's people, and taking this to mean their future conversion, I applied the whole in my former edition priwuarQy to that blessed period whan (in bright anticipation of the times of the restitution of all things) judgment .-hall lie given to the saints of tin Most High. . . lint. wh< tie r right in supposing any -inh primary reference in the words, or • Bo, for example, the middle-age Babbi Saadias Gam, thus interpreting Pan. \ii. 2: — ''This is the resurrection of the .had of Israel, whose lot i- to eternal life: hut who do not awake are the destroyed of tin Lord, who go down to the habita- tion beneath, that i-. Gehenna ; and they shall be an abhorrence to ull llcsh." (Bicker* Steth uu 1'rophecy, 303 : 7th Ed.) 170 APOC. XX. 1 XXI. 1. [part VI. equivocal; and the apostolic comment fixes the sense in others.1 And so the promise came down to New Testament times, — the promise of the world's renovation, Abrahamic inherit- ance, and establishment of Messiah's kingdom, all in sup- posed connexion with the promise to the national Israel. And both in the gospel -narratives of Christ's own life and ministry, and in the apostolic records afterwards, we shall I think find recognition of the current supposition, as really true. At the very outset, on the infant Jesus' presentation in the temple, the priestly seer who recognized in him the promised seed of the woman, and seed of Abraham, and Son of David, in whom all the families of the earth were to be blessed, was inspired thus to declare the literal Is- rael's foreseen share in the blessing • (I say literal Israel, because expressly distinguished from the Gentiles ;) viz. that " he was to be the light of the Gentiles, and the glory of God's people Israel : " the latter however not till after he had been first the occasion of fall, and then afterwards of rising again (in the figurative sense evidently), " to many in Israel." 2 And, as to the time of that rising again and glorification of the long-fallen Israel, Christ's own words of promise to his disciples, " Ye which have followed me shall in the regeneration, when the Son of Man shall sit in the throne of his glory? sit also upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel," 4 seemed surely to fix not, I never for a moment doubted that the only adequate fulfilment of the predic- tion will be at the literal resurrection of both classes of men " (i. e. good and evil). 1 Hence Lowth, on Isa. xxv. 8, allows that that prophecy of the swallowing up death in victory can only be fulfilled at the general resurrection. 2 Luke ii. 32, 34. — The reader will see that in interpreting the nature of the rising again of Israel from the nature of the fall risen from, I have followed the principle laid down pp. 146, 147 supra. 3 1 1 will be well to mark, in passing, the clear distinction here set before us of the epoch of Christ's glorious enthronization in hie kingdom, from that of his taking seat on the Father's throne (so Apoc. iii. 21) after his ascension. There has been often a confusion of times and things on this matter. I shall have to recur to the point in my notice of the Messiah's kingdom under my 4th head of argument. 4 Matt. xix. 28. — We may compare the parallel passage in Luke xxii. 28 — 30 ; " Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations : and I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father hath appointed unto me : that ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." Also Matt. viii. 11 ; " Many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob {avaKkidtiaovrai, sit down to supper) 0. III. $ 3.] GEN. SS. PRO-LITERAL 1st UKSl'R. EVIDENCE. 171 it as that of the saints' resurrection. For how, a1 an epoch df time distant Bges afterwards, could the twelve disciples D6 present, and have rule over the tribes of Israel, except Only by a resurrection from the dead; that same which Christ elsewhere ' in remarkable manner designated dis- tinctively as "the resurrection of the just?" To the same effect was Christ's statement, just before his passion, that "Jerusalem should be trodden by the Gentiles till the times of the Gentiles were fulfilled:" (i. e. probably the times of the four Gentile dominant empires of Daniel's prophecy :) especially as compared with another cognate prediction of his, "Your house is left unto you desolate; for ye shall not see me henceforth till ye shall say, Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord."2 For, whereas in the former of these two prophecies alike its con- nexion with the disciples' previous question, "What shall be the sign of th// coming, and of the end of the world" and also the almost immediately consequent context describing variously Christ's acts of judgment on his second coming,3 might seem to mark the ending epoch of Jerusalem's tread- ing down by the Gentiles as the epoch also of Christ's second and glorious advent, — in the other prophecy the ending of Jerusalem's desolation was pretty plainly hinted at as the foreseen epoch of the repentant Jews visibly recog- nizing the true Messiah in Jesus whom they had pierced : which recognition St. John expressly associates with his glorious second coming in the clouds, and every eye seeing him.4 Nor should we omit to observe that after Christ's resurrection, and when lie had been speaking to the dis- ciples on "the things pertaining to the kingdom of God" upon their asking him, " Wilt thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel" as if there were truth in the then com- monly received Jewish view of the synchronism of Israel's national restoration, and the establishment of God's or Christ's kingdom on earth, Christ did not correct them in in the kingdom of heaven :" anil Matt. xxvi. 29; "I will nut drink henceforth of this fruit Of th>' vine, till I drink it DOW with vmi in my Father's kingdom."— Of utkt regeneration" mentioned in Matt. xix. 28 I -hall -pink under niv next head. 1 Luke xiv. 1 1, Compare Lake wi. 22 ; peaking of the expectanta of tin- rests* notion . into Abrahamii bonom. - Luke \\i. 24, \iii. 86, Matt, nriii 88, 39. 1 Luke x\i. J7, 86, Matt. \\i\. :j, 37, fee. * Apoc. i. 7. Comp. Zech. xii. 10. 172 APOC. XX. 1 — XXI. 1. [part VI. the idea, but only told them that it was not for them to know the times and seasons.1 — And as the Master, so too the Apostles afterwards. First and foremost St. Peter in that most remarkable address to the Jews, within but few days after the descent of the Holy Spirit, " Repent ye, and be converted, that times of refreshing may come, and he may sendJesus, &c. ;" as if the epoch of the Jews repent- ance and conversion was to be the epoch of Christ's return from heaven : a passage however which I prefer to consider in detail under my next head, as having prominent refer- ence to the times of the ivorld's universal restoration and happiness, as well as to the Jews' restoration in particular. And so again in various places the Apostle St. Paul. Such, e. g. was the purport of his declaration before Agrippa, that he was judged for " the hope of the promise made of God to the fathers ; to the which promise the twelve tribes, instantly serving God day and night, hoped to co7ne;"i compared with his previous saying, " Of the hope and re- surrection of the dead I am called in question." 3 For there can be no doubt that the promise to which the hopes of the twelve tribes were instantly directed, was that of the restoration of the kingdom to Israel: which event conse- quently was thus distinctly associated by the Apostle with the resurrection of the just. Besides which we have, as be- fore said, his comment in 1 Cor. xv. 54, 55 on certain prophecies already cited from Isaiah xxv. and Hosea xiii., which seem plainly to refer to the time, circumstances, and blessedness of the literal Israel's restoration:* a comment expounding them, as what would be fulfilled at the time, and in the fact, of the departed saints' glorious resurrection, and living saints' glorious change and rapture, to meet the Lord Jesus in the air at his second coming. 1 Acts i. 3, 6, 7. 2 Acts xxvi. 6, 7. 3 Acts xxiii. 6, xxiv. 21. 4 1 Cor. xv. 54 ; " So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. 55 ; 0 death, where is thy sting ? 0 grave, where is thy victory ? " In the former of these verses St. Paul's reference is to Isa. xxv. 8 ; "In this mountain he will destroy the vail that is spread over all nations ; he will swallow up death in victory." In the latter he refers to Hosea xiii. 14 ; "I will ransom them from the power of the grave ; I will redeem them from death : 0 death, I will be thy plagues ; 0 grave, I will be thy destruction." I might perhaps add Christ's own reference to Isaiah lxvi. 24, in Mark ix. 44, &c. But it is there the dark accompaniments of the aera that he speaks of. C. III. § 3.] GEN. SS. PB0-LITE1 iX 1 8T EtBBUB. BVIDBNOB. 1 7'S Such is my first head of argument. — The anti-premillen* nariaos of course ])resent a very different view of the whole subject. Thus, as regards the Abrahamic covenant, there was no heal interest in Canaan, they contend, given to Abraham himself, or to his spiritual seed. " Abraham ex- pected Canaan for his posterity, and a mansion in heaven for himself." l But, except as contained in the promise of Canaan* where, let me ask, was local promise given him of heaven ?* And how wras he to be " heir of the tvorld?" The renovated earth (inclusive of its atmospheric heaven) seemed ever hinted at as the local scene of the saints' inheritance.4 Which being so, why should not that one part of the new earth be peculiarly the scene of Christ's manifestation ; i. e. peculiarly heavenly ? — Again, as re- gards those passages cited from the prophets, in which predictions that the New Testament explains of the resur- rection time and state are connected with predictions of the earthly happiness of the restored Jews and Jerusalem, this connexion of the two, it is said, does not imply their syn- chronism : but arises only out of the comprehensive glanc- ing of prophecy, embracing and interlacing together in its view the whole history and results of Christ's redemption, in its various chief stages of development; from that of its first promulgation by Christ to that of its universal recep- tion in the world on the Jews' conversion, and then yet fur- ther that of the post-millennial stage of the redeemed saints' heavenly and everlasting blessedness following their resur- rection.5 And, no doubt, sometimes there are comprehen- 1 Bo the venerable T. Scott on Ilebr. xi. 12. * That of God ms his great reward might be on earth as well as heaven. 3 Bee i>- 160, Note b supra. 4 Else what the meaning of the new heaven and new earth in Isaiah. I'i tar, and file Apocalypse '. So too in l Thess. iv. 17 the raised saints are taid to meet the Lord '• in tli- tnr ; " not in another planet ; or in some imagined world above the stars. 5 Bo Mr. Brown, pp. 17'.) — 189: — a disquisition written with his usual force and ability; but which ha- left a strong impression on my own mind of the inability alike "t' himself and the • niitM lit expositors cited by him, (Calvin, Lowth, Scott,) true the passages fairly cm their anti-pramfllennarian hypothesis. It i- 1'> be remembered that thi alien i> generally admitted by them. — M If the perpetuity of the Abruhamio oorenant, a- respects the natural Beed, be admitted on the authority of the apostle (Bom. xi. 2<; — 29), it will be difficult I think t<> avoid admitting their Umtorial reiteration: the twopft and the la Israel being so connected in numerous prophecies of the old Testament, that what- ty and Mrpsfwtty are ascribed to tin- our must, one would think, mi all strict principles of interpretation, be attributed to the other also." So Brou «. p. 18 1. 174 Aroc. xx. 1 — xxi. 1. [part vi. sive glancings at, and intermingling* of, different future aeras in prophecy. But in various chief passages urged by me, it is not a mere intermingling of subject that we find, but a direct chronological synchronization of the saints' re- surrection and resurrection state with the earthly blessed- ness of the restored Jews and Jerusalem. So e. g. in Hosea xiii. 12 — 14 ; " The iniquity of Ephraim is bound up : his sin is hid : the sorrows of a travailing woman shall come upon him : he should not stay long in the place of the breaking forth of children. I will ransom them from the power of the grave ; I will redeem them from death . O death, I will be thy plagues : O grave, I will be thy de- struction. Repentance shall be hid from my eyes." So again in Isaiah lxv., lxvi. : " Behold I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind. But be glad and rejoice for ever in that which I create : for I create Jerusalem a rejoicing and her people a joy." . . . " And I will take of your brethren for priests and Levites, saith the Lord. For, as the new heavens and new earth which I will make shall remain before me, so shall your seed and name remain : &c." So, yet again, in Dan. xii. 13 ; " And thou Daniel shall stand in thy lot at the end of the days : " i. e. of the 1335 days, or years, measur- ed from the beginning of Antichrist, when Israel's final trial was to end in its final deliverance. Surely nothing but violence can set aside the synchronism of the resurrec- tion state of the saints, and restoration state of the convert- ed Israel, as exprest in such passages. — Once more, in re- gard to New Testament passages like that in Matt. xix. 28, which associate the apostles and the twelve tribes of Israel together, as the rulers and ruled in Christ's glorious king- dom, the following counter-view is given ; — " The world and the Church shall (at the last day) be judged according — " I dare not absolutely deny what they (the early Fathers) all positively affirm, that the city of Jerusalem shall be then rebuilt and the converted Jews return to it, because this probably may be gathered from the words of Christ, ' Jerusalem shall be trodden down till the time of the Gentiles is come in.' " So Whitby. — In Mr. Faber's exposition the restoration of Israel is a point not only admitted but promi- nent.— The British Rcvieicer indeed (p. 175) expresses himself as "strongly of opinion that the Jews' return is nowhere promised." Yet he too "will not affirm** that they are not to be restored. — I shall have to recur to this in my next Chapter. C.1II. $3.]GEN.SS. FRO-UTI.KAl. Isi'Kl.sl K. EVIDENCE. 17") to their doctrines."1 Put can the Bitting 88 assessors in tlic judicial condemnation of unbelieving Jews be really the, reward to his apostles here intended by Christ? 2, Next mark the predicted synchronism of Christ* $ adroit and the .saints resurrection with the time of the pro* mised blessedness of the. world: — a subject, as before ob- served,-' Intermingled in sacred prophecy with the promises just considered to Israel;6 but which for distinctness' sake, in regard of a few chief New Test anient prophecies, I think it well here to consider separately. As Skfirst example, then, take that passage from Matt. xix. 28, already cited by me to illustrate the Jewish bearing of the question under niv preceding head, which makes men- tion of the great future expected irakiyyev stria, or regener- ation. For what the 7ra.\iyysvs Jiw- snpposed angola to be appointed over this earth and its several kingdoms, as I have observed 2s'otc 7, p. 08 mpxm. 176 APOC. XX. 1 XXI. 1. [part VI. of what there is of Jewish allusion in it : — " Repent ye, therefore, and be converted, to the end that your sins may be blotted out ; that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and he may send Jesus Christ which before was ordained (7rpoxs^sipKr[xsvov) for you : whom the heavens must receive until the times of the restitution of all things, of which God hath spoken by the mouth of his holy prophets since the world began." A passage this of such decisive bearing on the point in hand, that it is impossible to give it too careful a consideration. I subjoin therefore the best critical text in the original ; x and in order to its ,• correct understanding premise the three critical remarks fol- lowing : — 1st, that in the second clause my rendering "that the times of refreshing may come," instead of the authorized version's "when the times," is just the most natural, if not necessary, rendering of the original Greek : 2 — 2ndly, that the word restoration or restitution, in our received English version, is also the most accurate expression of the sense of the Greek a7roxtxraa-Tacrig in verse 21, accordantly alike with its etymological intent, and frequent use both in Scrip- ture and elsewhere : 3 — 3rdly, that the antecedent of the 1 MtTcti'oqaaTt ovv, Kai eiriaTpttpare, tig ro t^,aXiiv air' aiiovog. 2 oirwg av tXGuyui icaipoi avail>v$i(aQ. In proof that mine is the most natural ren- dering of the conjunction, let me refer to a parallel or two : — e. g. Luke ii. 35, birwg av a7TOKaXv\l/0ti)(Tiv ik ttoXXwv icapSioiv SiaXoyia/xor " that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed;" and Psalm li. 4, (Sept.) birwg av Sucauodrig tv Xoyoig aov " that thou mightest be justified in thy sayings : " &c. My rendering is in fact almost universally allowed by expositors, — anti-premillennarians, as well as others : e. g. by "Whitby, Vitringa, Lightfoot, Doddridge. So too the critic Rosenmuller : — " 'Oirwg av, eum in finem, ut : nam particula hiring cum conjunctivo juncta notat ut, ita ut, Matt. vi. 5, xxiii. 35, Acts xv. 17, Rom. iii. 4." And so, as Whitby observes, Iremeus and Tertullian expounded the phrase of old.f Our English version's render- ing of it as a particle of time, " When the times," &c, is much less simple and natural. 3 JCararrraoig means the actual state, condition, or constitution ; and consequently aTTOKaraaraaig must most naturally mean a new and different constitution of things, generally by restoration to what it was originally. For Scripture examples I may refer to Matt. xii. 13 ; AiroKartoraQn vying ug t) aXXn- " His hand was restored whole as the other :" Matt. xvii. 11 ; " Elias airo- * The received text, followed by our English translation, reads here TrpoKtKijpvy- fievov, before preached. But all the best critical Editions read 7rpo/c6^fipicr^«vo»/. t Irenaits thus ; " Poenitentiam igitur agite, et convertiniini, uti deleantur pec- cata vestra, et veniant vobis tempora refrigerii." iii. 12. Tertullian thus : " Resi- piscite ad abolenda delicta vestra, ut tempora vobis superveniaut refrigerii," &c. De Resur. 23. c. ill. § 3. I SEN. ss. PRO-LITBH \l, 1 sr i;r>i i;. EVIDENCE. 1 77 relative mv in the sumo verso, which, in so far as the irnim- matical structure of the sentence is concerned, mighl he either the warranto! the ^ovcov} seems clearly determined by the sense of the sentence to be the word ypovmy, times: Kara(TTt) ; E« . . aironaOtrrravnc BacnXluat rift lepasjX, " Will thou restore the kingdom to Israel :" Jet, xvi. 16* ; Awocaraornow ovrovc fn; rwy ftjv avruv Sec. So the verb. The substantive itself ooonn here alone in tti<' New Testament, -] observe that the only three meanings which Schleusner gives to ii\ < - ; Avrov aTTOKartarnai ry ikkX})v dyiuii' wpofumv. — Mr. Paber indeed declares the reference of i»v to ypowav as its antecedent an impossible construction ; "Such a syntax, forced and unnatural in itself, though grammatically possible, is constructively impossible. We may properly say. Until the times concerning which God hath spoken; but we cannot properly say, Until the times which God hath spoken." (S. C. iii. 825.) But what can be his meaning in w writing .: Ee cannot surely intend to say that the relative in may not he explained either by understanding irepi before it, or as placed in the genitive from the Attic attraction : seeing that it is on one or other of these principles that this il- lative in the genitive must be explained, even though construed with iravrwv. The only possible Bense which I can attach to his objection is, that out of two preceding antecedents, each alike agreeing otherwise with a relative, the one nearest must ne- rfly be the one connected with it. A rule notoriously far from aniversal. however in his •• Eight Dissertations," recently published (i. S), he cit Gaisford, adjudging that iravru/v must be the antecedent, not x90VMV< I will fortify my assertion by an example or two. So then Jude 16, Ylipi iravrwv rutv tpyu>v oi'tuic isv r\m&r\o-av where tie- antecedent of in* is ipyuiv, not avrwr : also 2 Pet. ii. 1 ■"). • following in the way rov KaXaap rov Boaop 6g pia9ov aCiKtag nyairnatV in which passagi the xw is usc'd by the Septuagint in Judges xv. 19 1 Sam. xvi. 23, and 2 Sam. xvi. 14, of Samson's revival from extreme thirst, — Saul's from the evil spirit, on David's playing the harp, — and David's from the •weariness and sadness of his retreat from Jerusalem, on Absalom's rebellion. 3 Rosenmuller' s view on all these four points, and the general purport, is similar to my own. " Winzerus recte monet pronomen u>v non ad iravruiv sed ad xpo%>wv respicere : quod ex versu 24 intelligitur ; ubi, post Mosem antea memoratum, omnes etiam reliquos vates rag »/ftepa£ ravraq annuntiasse declarat Petrus. Porro Win- zerus observat ad Jud&'os oratiouem habere Petrum. Scilicet, tanquam pra?mium fidei in Christum, sperareeos jubet Katpovc, avaipvZiwc, et xpovovg airoKaraoTdaiwc nai'Tuv, qua? phrases inter se non ditferunt. Jam vero cnroKaTaaTamc, de rcstitutione in pristinum stafum in integrum, ut Gneci, ita Judsei scriptores dicere consucverunt. Polyb. iv. 23. 1, Diod. Sic. xx. 34 ; Septuag. Gen. xli. 13, Job viii. 6, Jer. xxiii. 8. Coll. Matt. xii. 13, Marc. iii. 5, viii. 25, Luc. vi. 10, Act. i. 6." — So, he adds, the Jews expected Messiah to restore Paradise, making a "renovationemmundiphysici :" and that St. Peter expected the same appears from 2 Pet. iii. 7, &c. He compares too Apoc. xxi. 1. c in. § :>.] cr.N. 88. pao-LITEUAL 1st ELE81 a. i.\ [DBNCB. 1 7'.) aToxaTa(TTaa-i< is quite Untenable:1 and WOllld indeed if admitted, with its connected -avrmv, involve (unless doubly restricted) * the postponement of Christ's second coming, not onlv till after the millennium, bu1 till after the general judgment and everlasting happiness of God's people j see- ing that that general judgment and final blessedness is one of the things that the prophets have spoken of. — Mr. Brown, with better tact, admits the usual rendering of cnroxuTatr- tourts • and contends not for the conjunction of flfr with 7rav- r(ov. rather than %povcov.A But he argues from the i in perfec- tion which he supposes to attend the niiilcnnari/ state itself that if cannot he regarded as the restitution of all things ; and that for snch a restitution we must look to the creation of the new heavens and earth beyond the millennium : there being however previously " times of refreshing? answering to the jubilean times of Old Testament prophecy, and the millennial of the Apocalypse ; which times St. Peter ex- pected would begin with the Jews' conversion-, and that .lesus Christ would descend from heaven at their termination: and then, and so, the restitution of all things take place. 1 They ground this on Ilesychius' and Phavorinus' explanation, riXtiuotQ, — on the Byriac and Arabia v. miens which render the clause, the one, " Till the fulnees of the of all thi>ii/.i," the other, " Till tlw timet in which nil thi>/r/s tkail /»■ perfected er Jinithed," — and on Irena/us' version as represented by the Latin Hspositionis, and :>itionis ; — without one really parallel passage to support them, from Scripture the Classics, or the Father-. Now, i-t. as to Ttrtiillinn'.t version exhibition's, whatever it mean, it does not nun —2. as to Tremens, lie wrote in Greek, so that the dispBsitio is only hit translator's; while his own idea of airoKaTanratnc appears from the extracts given from him in my Note p. 177 to be the common one of restoration : — 3. that the Arabic yeraiOB is doubtful, and the Si/riac tantamount to "the dispensation of the fulness of time-." spoken of in Eph. i. 10.* — 4. As to Hesyohiut' explanation, it means only, I conceive, that completion or consummation which is by restoration: Mich as of the year, by the -mi'.- n iteration to bis previous place in the heavens ; or of nature, in the expected anonaraaratJiz koo/jov. So Julius Maternus in his Thema Mundi (EngL TranaL), pp. 56, 64. This idea was held forth prominently in the mic philosophy: it being one of its most prominent doctrines that by the action - animating principle, or soul, the world would accomplish certain periods ; on which everything would return to it- ancient place and state. This periodic revolu- tion of nature was called the Platonic or Gn at Fear.t The same idea appeared in the philosophy of Zoroaster; on whose a7roKara t"" [rename, in one of my citation- from him, p. 177. 1 I B . i- bt in.' restricted alike in regard of the past and of the future. See Note l p. 178 Bee hi- pp. 147 — J • - • Mr. Cunin^'hame. I am myself ignorant of th se version-), t So Virgil in his l*h Eclogue; Ultima Cum B& rentt jam carniinis xtas : ,us ab lut' gro sseclorum nascitur ordo. 1J» 180 APOC. XX. 1 XXI. 1. [part VI. But, -passing over just now, and till my 4th main Head, (though not without protest,) Mr. B.'s unscriptural view, as I cannot but regard it, of the imperfection of the millen- nary state, let me here observe, 1 . that the times of refresh- ing seem to be as much connected by Peter with Christ's re- turn to earth as the times of restitution:1 2. that prophecy connected the restitution of all things with Elias' coming ; 2 and that his coming and ministry was assuredly understood to be introductory to the Jews' restoration and conversion, not 1000 years after it: 3rdly, that, as before shown by me, Isaiah's new heavens and earth, and attendant restora- tion of all things, were prophesied of as synchronic with the earthly Jerusalem's restoration and blessedness. — Thus, if I mistake not, Mr. Brown's post-millennarian construc- tion, distinguishing the times of refreshing horn those of the restitution [or regeneration] of all things, and making the one to precede Christ's coming, the other to follow it, breaks down as entirely as Whitby's and Paber's.3 And the very striking evidence of St. Peter's statement, taken in its most natural sense, remains unshaken ; to the effect that Israel's conversion is to synchronize with, or imme- diately precede, Christ's return from heaven, his risen saints of course accompanying him ; and the restoration of this fallen world, with the blessed times of refreshing told of by all the prophets, to follow as its immediate consequence. My third passage is that notable one in Rom. viii. 18, &c, which defines the destined epoch of the creation's deliver- ance from corruption, as coincident with the manifestation of the sons of God.' — St. Paul had been speaking of Christ's true disciples, alike Gentiles and Jews, (for the mystery had now broken on the apostles of the equal admission of be- 1 So Rosenmiiller, as cited Note 3 p. 178 ; and again ; " Kaipoi ava\pv£tu>c sunt tempora quietis ; id est summ;e felicitatis, in regno Messia3 expcctandre, quod Ckristus e ado rediturus olim inaugurabit." So too Whitby ad loc. "These times of re- freshing were to come by the sending of that Jesus who was ascended into heaven, and was not to come thence till the day of judgment. . . I therefore incline to the opinion of the ancients, which refers this to the time of Christ's second coming, to wive his servants . .rest with him, as 2 Thess. i. 6—8." On the absence of the article before Kaipoi, we may compare the Kaipoi t9vwv in Luke xxi. 24. 3 Matt xvii. 11 ; where the same verb is used, aTroKarao-rnati iravra. 3 Vitringa, on Isa. xxv. 3 — 5, supposes the expression times of refreshing, KatpovQ avatyvZiioQ, to have arisen out of figurative passages predicting the future blessed- ness, like those in Isa. xxv. 4, xlix. 10 ; "Neither shall the heat nor the sun smite them : &c. ; " the former in connexion with the swallowing up of death in victory. e. ill. § 8.] GEN, ss. PRO-LITSB M. LST&EBI EL. B\ tDBNCE. 181 lieving Gentiles to the spiritual blessings of the AJbirahamic covenant,) as those with whose spirits the Holj spirit it- self witnessed that they were children of Godj and how, it' children, they would be then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ ; it' so be that they suffered with him that they might be also glorified together. Then he thus ^oes on : ' — " For I reckon that the sufferings of this pre- sent time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall he revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creature* waiteth tor the manifestation of the sons of God, For the creature was made subject to vanity, (not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same, in hope ; — because the creature itself shall be de- livered from the bondage of corruption, into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together, until now. And not only they, but ourselves also which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the re- demption of our body." — Now, on one point that has been controverted in this passage, viz. the meaning of the word xTKrig, rendered creature and creation, I am not careful. Unquestionably it may mean the whole risible earthly crea- tion, animate and inanimate. And if it be so understood here, as the early Christian Fathers did in fact understand it,4 and 1 think not without reason, then the premillennial 1 The Greek of this important passage is as follows in Scholz's text. Aoyilopai yap on ovk alia ra TcaQt]para rov vvi> Kaipov itpog Tt]v ptWovirav coin v aTcoKa\v) (C7i. my yap on icana r'/ KTiaig avariva'^n kcu ovvuicivu a\pi rov vvv ov povov It, a \\a Kai avroi ttjv aTrap\ >/r roB 1 1 W vparog t\ovrig, kui i)png avroi ir iavroig art- vaZopiv, vioQteriav airiKCixopti'Oi, tt)v anoXvTpwaiv rov awparog f l'lpioi'. 8 KTtaiiitg. I '» ■ • 1 1 1 Giietbaob and Sohols murk the parenthesis. 4 Ireaanu says, v. 32, -'i»j ; "Oportel ergo >t ipmm oonditionem ; redintegratain ad pri-tiiitiui sine prohibitione Mrnre instis: el 1 « « >• • Apostolus feat manifestum in e& qua? est ad Etomanos; ric dioens, Nam expectatio ertatura revelation em lilinrum I'm Bzpeetat." And Tertullian, Contra* 1 1 • r s. 11; that then will be an end to evil, •• earn rerelatio Bliornm Dei redemerit eontmtumam a nwlo, otiqne vanitati snb- • Literally, a turning • >r stretching of the head in intenl expectation. t St Pan! ii"t infrequently conjoins this word awpn in the singular with pi in th<- plural, thongfa meaning the ir bodits, in the literal sense, plurallv. So Rom. vi. 12, tv np Qvi)Tip i'puti' viDparr and sin 1 Cor. vi. 19, Jit, 1 <'<>r. iv. in. Compare Ian, \wi. 19, M My dead bod y they shall arise." * Le. the pretmt $tat» of thmgi. ]S2 APOC. XX. 1 — xxi. 1. [part VI. conclusion I contend for follows immediately : the restora- tion of this loiver world to its original paradisiacal state, and freedom from the curse consequent on man's sin, (if only we are to believe the prophetic accounts of the earth's blessedness on Israel's conversion,) being in that case made to succeed alter the redemption of the body,1 and visible glorification of the predestinated children of God ;8 in other words, upon and after their resurrection? — But the word may mean also, as Whitby would have it, and as I am content for present argument's sake to admit, the rational creation of God in this world, that is mankind, simply and alone.4 In regard of whom the earnest expect- ation attributed to them by the apostle is well explained by Whitby : " desire and expectation being," as he says, " ascribed in the sacred dialect to creatures in reference to things they want, and which tend to their advantage, though they explicitly knoiv nothing of them" 5 Now, this being premised, we have only to mark carefully two particulars in the passage, in order to see that still the same conclusion as before follows from it. The one point is the distinction in it between the creature (i. e. mankind gener- ally) spoken of, and the saints, or predestinated children of God, in particular : — a distinction expressed by the apostle,6 as well as implied through the whole context. The other point is the object of the creature's expectation ; jectara." — Our English translation renders it here creation, as well as creature. And Schleusner on the word Ktktiq, gives, as one meaning, " Omnes res a Deo create, omnis rerum natwra, unieertum ; " referring to this passage in exemplifi- cation, as also to Horn. i. 25, &c. Mr. Scott too, though an anti-premillennarian, so takes it. 1 Compare Isa. xxvi. 19. 2 Compare verse 29. 3 Irenaeus, v. 31, notes certain heretics, who expected the saints' glorification to follow immediately after death, and before their resurrection ; " non suscipientes salutcm carnis sua?, contemnentes autem rcpromissionem Dei, . . simul atque mortui fiterint dicuntse supergrcdi ccelos et Demiurgum." And so Justin Martyr, Dial, emu Tryph. Oi roToicoc. iruaijc, kticewq- and in verse 23, " to every creature," iv iraay ry ktigu. 5 Hence, he says, the Messiah is called in Gen. xlix. 10, UpoaSoKia rwv tQvwv, the expectation of the Ginfilts, and in Haggai ii. 7, the desire of all nations. 6 "Not only they," he says in veree 23, (that is the ktktiq, or creature, generally,) "but even ourselves, which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, do groan, &c." 0. in. $ 3.] <;r\. B8. PEO-LITBB \i. 1ST BB8UR. rvnu NCE. 1 s^* — I meaa of the creature afl distinguished from Christ's elect saints. I IV, Bays the apostle, wait for ///<• aJn^timi, the red&npHon of our /»>' so, is of God. Manifestation o/whom ? I prav the reader to mark this point. Clearly of the glori- fied >aints. the predestinated sons of God. And fowhom? Not surely a manifestation of them to themselves, (for who ever heard of a revelation or manifestation of oneself in this manner to oneself?) but to angels, to men, to the uni- verse : mitre especially to that same creature, or creation, whose longing expectation is directed thereto, and which i< thereupon to receive its blessing and deliverance. — Anti-premillennial expositors have too generally overlooked this in their comments ; and confounded the saints hope with that of the creation1 Taking it in its proper con- struction, the premilleunial cogency of the apostle's state- ment is evident. Nor do I see how there can be escape from it. except in a depreciation of the world's millennary jubilean state such as Mr. Brown contends for; but against which I must again protest as unscriptural, till noticing it more directly. In sooth is it credible, that in the times of millennial bliss and holiness the saints will go on groaning and travailing in pain together, even as now ? 2 Let me just add, fourthly, ere I pass on from the present head, that this result to the creation in general from the manifestation of the glorified saints, (the children of God, and so children of the resurrection,)3 seems to be the same that our Lord intended in a most observable, but, as I con- cave, too often misapprehended and misapplied passage, 1 Thai Origm : uThey expeot the time when those things shall be revealed which are prepared for them that are sons of God." Whitby; "That which it (the rriTi,; groans tor. i- it ■< redemption from corruption." Macknight; "Though the ■■-in particular knew nothing of the revelation of the sons of God, the apostle their looking for a rmwrtotim from the i$ad a looking for thai revelation: ■ 1 ere to be revealed by their being raiaed with incorruptible bodies: "—and again, w their earnest desire oi (tow." — Swtt i- more faithful iptnrein his comment: hut ueith ts, nor obviates, the difficulty henoe ■rising in the way of hi- own snti-premillennia] sysl will. y. t -hall Christ destroy him with t)i'- -;>irit oi hi- moiltli : ami t/t>>i .-.hull th>- r,.,itnr, //- ,/, 'h; r<typa\pav ovd' toriv v n t p otov nXtivog- having just C. til. § 8.] GEN. ss. PRO-LITERAL 1st BLE81 i;. l.\ IIU.Nt B. 1 s~> Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together unto Him,1 thai ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither 1>\ spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, ;is that, the dav of Christ is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means. For that day shall not come except there come first the apostasy ;' and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called Grod, &C. . ■ And now ye know what withholdeth, that lie might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work : only he that now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that Wicked One be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming." A — What, we a was indieputailp his personal coming to Judge the quick a/,'/ dead, there niii-t naturally he attached the same meaning to the irapovoia /,./•. noted in 2 Thess. ii. 1, and consequently to the napovata of Christ in TO But, says be, the expression "byletterm shows that it was a forged Kpistle that St." Paul referred to. And so Mr. Brown, p. 48. \ w it ->■• m- to me that the explanation generally L'iven is the most natural one. I inly the utc 4V iifiwv does not nooossaruy imply a forged letter. But the point is not worth disputing. It is the fad of the waoovaia in 'J The", ii. l, tin mtroduo- to the propheev about tht , beiogclearly Chrief e pereot that constitutes the grand difficulty against any different riew of the wapovoxa in 4 On the propriety of this version of ivtTrjKt see my Vol. iii. p. 'J'l, Note ■'■. 186 APOC. XX. 1— XXI. 1. [part VI. St. Paul meet and correct it ? By telling them that some great and famous apostasy must first intervene : — an apostasy of which the seeds were even then sown and germinating ; and which would at length have the Man of Sin as its child and head : not till the end of whose reign ' would Christ's expected advent occur ; the glory of that advent being in fact the Man of Sin's extinguisher and destruction. — And what then the nature of this his 7rapou- r\i r. 1 87 and othere. On what principle, then, con they have justi- fied to themselves the giving it in verse s a quite different meaning : whether, as Whitby, that of Christ's coming pro- videntially to destroy Jerusalem;1 or, as Scott, Faber, and Brown, that of his coming, still providentially, not person- ally, to inflict judgment on the apostate Roman Empire? On ^ none most assuredly, but that of escaping from the pre- millennia] inference necessarily consequent on their giving the word the same meaning. — I say necessarily consequent. For, admitting the -riprnma to be Christ's second personal coming, it follows instantly and necessarily that there can> intervene no millennium of universal holiness and gos-J pel-triumph before it. The whole interval between St. Paul's time and Christ's second coming is represented in this comprehensive sketch as occupied and spanned, from beginning to end, by the great apostasy: — an apostasy which, as I before said, was even then, in St. Paul's time, sown and secretly germinating; — then destined soon to break out into fuller development ; — then to reach its cul- minating point in the headship and domination of the Man of Sin, the Papal Antichrist ;2 — and, under that domina- tion, to continue and prevail, even until his and its destruc- tion by the brightness of Christ's own personal second coming.3 So St. Paul ; very like Daniel before him. And let me BUggest, ere passing forward, how their respective prophe- cies ,,t' Antichrist's overthrow by Christ's coming do, on this point, mutually support and illustrate each other. In St. Paul it must needs be Christ's personal coming, because it is that on which the gathering of the saints takes place round him. In Daniel's it must needs be the same ; as that which begins the saints' eternal reign in Christ's kingdom.1 1 In rapport <>f his exposition Whitby refers to Christ's prophecy in Matt, trir. ' » ■ >:n{> ire my sketches of the prophetic portraiture and the historical realisation, Vol. iii. pp. 91, 17_. See. -Alike vitringa (p. 780), Faber, and Brown agree with me in the propriety of this historical application of the predicted Kan of Sin : andso Mr. Oipps. AiSO Whitby admits ii dilution of the prophecy. mpare "hit St. Paul writes in the immediately no •■ \t, 2 These, i. 7 — 10, of Jesus Christ'- "revelation from heaven with his mighty angels, '" fla jir- taking < >h.m //ft know not Oob\ and obey not tkt gotpd of our Lord Chritt ; when he shall come to ho glorified in hit sm'tits, &c." How and when glorified in his saints • Sorely when hlS saint- are gathered to him, to admire and his glory, at the tii-' ,ii. And who the parties destroyed bj but Antichrist and his apostate adh- * See pp. 107, 188 supra. 1S8 APOC. XX. 1 — XXI. 1. [part VI. 4. With all which perfectly agrees what Christ tells us in his Parable of the Tares and Wheat of the two destined states and stages of his kingdom : the one, while preached preparatorily on earth, ever mixt, imperfect, defiled : — the other pure and glorious, after purification by fire, and the manifestation in it of the King and his saints in glory. The kingdom of heaven, lie said, would in its earthly history resemble a field first sown with wheat, then, by an enemy, with tares. These both were to grow together in- termixed,— the tares with the wheat, the wheat with the tares, — until the harvest ; that was, until the end of the world, or rather of the world's present aicov. Then at length (not before) the tares should be eradicated. " As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so shall it be at the end of the age. (sv ry (txjvts'Kskx. tou aitovog.) The Son of Man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity ; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire : there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous * shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father." — What is here said re- specting the righteous as then shining forth like the sun in God's kingdom,2 fixes the epoch as that of the resurrec- tion of such as shall have been previously numbered with the righteous dead. For the glory of the saints living at the time of Christ's coming, and end of the present auov, is not to anticipate that of them that sleep ;3 nor the glory of the latter to begin till their resurrection? And that there can have been no millennium previously, such as Whitby's hypothesis supposes, follows surely from Christ's statement of the mixture of tares and wheat continuing in the gospel-field uninterruptedly up to it. — Mr. Brown indeed argues strongly that the millennial state is one of imperfection ; and so, still, of tares and wheat. But does 1 o\ locator — a phrase distinctive, it is to be observed, as of a particular class. 2 Compare Dan. xii. 2, 3 ; " And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, &c. : and they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firma- ment ; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever : " — Daniel himself (verse 12) among them. And this " at the end of the days: " i.e. of the 1335 days. See p. 168 supra. 3 1 Thess. iv. 15. * So Phil. iii. 21 ; " Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body ; " and 1 Cor. xv. 43 ; " sowu in dishonour, raised in glory." 0. III. § 8.1 GEN. SS. PRO-LITERAL 1st lu.sru. BV1DKN0R. 189 prophecy BO depid it ? We read that then the people shall lie iill righteous j '/// individually knowing the Lord, from the Leasl to the greatesl ; as well as with the knowledge of him outwardl] covering the earth as the waters cover the sea; just in fulfilment of the Church's prayer for ages, " May thy kingdom come, may thy will be done on earth even as it is done in heaven:" — also that there will be then no avoa/a ; the avo/xos and the mystery of avoftta having been destroyed with Antichrist: nor any scandals; for "they shall not hurt in all my holy mountain." Can this suit the state of the intermix] tares and wheat ; with avoixia and trxavoaAa ever continued onward, (Matt. xiii. 41,) till the tire purges them out? — Admit that with earth's inhabitants, in consequence of the continued Adamic taint, holiness will in one sense not be absolutely perfect. That will not constitute them tares.1 Christ's true servants now, though imperfect, and with the taint of natural corruption remaining in them, are yet wheat, not tares. And so, I conceive, only with much less of imperfection, there will be only wheat then, according to the prophetic word, and no tares. How indeed could there well grow th.it which is the produce of the Wicked One's sowing, at a time when the Wicked One is shut up and staled, as in Apoc. xx. 3, from deceiving and tempting men any more? ."». A fifth argument against Whitby's theory of the post-millennial resurrection of the saints, and in favour of that of their premiUennial rising at Christ's coming, to take part in his millennary reign, (for his appearing and kingdom synchronize,2) is soon stated, but I think of great weight ; viz. that this resurrection, glorification, and parti- cipation in his kingdom are uniformly noted, I believe, as the reward of hard service, suffering, conflict. " Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations, and 1 appoint unto you a kingdom," &c. :3 — "The kingdom of heaven Buffereth violence:'4 — "If wesuffer with Him that 1 Mr. Brown seems to m>-- mistaken in rapposms the wheat and tares of the p>r-* aM<- to signify the good and evil that there may be in the same person ; us will as the godlj as a claas, and th< ungodly. Bee Brown, p. 325 — 884 9 -' 1 i:a. Lt. 1, "Who shall jodge the quick and duud at h\< appearing and kingi 3 Lai -30. ' Matt. \i. u. 190 APOC. XX. 1 — XXI. 1. [part VI. we may be also glorified together : " 1 " Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more ex- ceeding and eternal weight of glory: " 2 " He that overcom- eth shall inherit all things : " 3 &c. &c. So the faithful companions of the typical David's time of hardship, exile, and suffering, had the fit rewards of office and pro- motion on his establishment in the kingdom. But can the righteous in the millennial dispensation come under the same category of hard service and suffering for Christ ? 4 To whom, however, Whitby's theory would equally assign a part in the first resurrection, and Messiah's kingdom of glory. 6. I might add perhaps yet another argument, of a quite different and chronological character, from the term sab- batism applied by St. Paul to the departed saints expected rest? For if the word indicate, so as it might seem to do, (at least to the Hebrew Christians to whom St. Paul's Epistle was addrest,) some septenary of time, — the which could scarce be any other than the seventh millennium of the tvorld,6 — then, without entering at all minutely into chronological details, it is evident from our present actual position near the end, on the lowest computation, of the world's sixth millennary,1 that were we to postpone its commence- ment yet a thousand years, — in other words, were we to admit of a millennium of earthly bliss still intervening be- fore the departed saints' entrance on their promised bless- edness, then their rest, even though this Millennium were to begin instantly, would be postponed long after the opening of the seventh millcnnary ; and consequently be, in the then generally understood sense of the term, no sab- batism.8 — But the more exact consideration of this last ar- 1 Rom. viii. 17 ; Apoc. i. 9; 2 Tim. ii. 12. 2 2 Cor. iv. 17. 3 Apoc. xxi. 7. 4 Mr. Brown indeed (pp. 389 — 397) contends that the way of life will he strait even in the millennium ; and the lust of the flesh and eye, and the pride of life, to be resisted then as now. And so too Mr. Conder ; saying that the temptations to sloth, &c, during the millennium, will be sufficient to keep up the warfare between flesh and spirit, p. 498. But I cannot but repeat that this seems to me a very un- sariptural depreciation of the millennary dispensation. 5 Heb. iv. 9. 6 This will appear in my last chapter. 7 See ibid. 8 Mr. Brown, p 484, objects that " God's holy day is called the sabbath, not from its being a septenary of time, but from the rest enjoined and enjoyed on it ; from raij, to rest.'' But was not the Jewish holy day of rest, or sabbath, so fixed to c. ill. § :\.] (; F.N. ss. PEO-LITEH \i. 1 si RBSUR. I \ im.mt.. I '.'1 gument, as Well as of tbe ancient Jewish and Christian Fathers' opinion concerning it, will find perhaps us fitter place in my concluding Chapter. 1 therefore till then re- serve it. So my premillennial argument ends. I conclude on the evidence of General Scripture Testimony, just as 1 did be- fore on that of the Apocalyptic passage itself, that Whitby's theory is as untenable as those of Augustine and Grotius, and that the only true one is the literal: — which theory, held by the earliest Fathers, has been lately revived among us,1 and been embraced by most modern prophetic expo- sitors of note:2 as well as by many others also whose studies, though not directly prophetic, have yet bordered on the subject ; such as Mr. Greswell3 and the late learned Bishop Van Mildert.4 — For my own part I cannot but feel much struck at the consistency, as wrell as variet//, of the evidence in its favour. If evidence has been brought from Scripture to show the synchronization of the saints' resur- rection alike with Israel's conversion and restoration, — with the world's restoration to paradisiacal blessedness, — and with Antichrist's destruction also, — it seems to appear from quite other Scriptures that these various events, which thus synchronize with it, are likewise to synchronize with each other: viz. Israels restoration with the earth' s restoration, and each and either with Antichrist's destruction:' — Nor can I help observing also on the consistency of the Apo- the sevfuth day as t<> convey the idea of a septenary almost necessarily to a Jewish mind: See on this point my fuller consideration of the subject of the world's Bab- hat i>m. in my last Chapter. 1 Made and Newton, unlike the early Fathers, and without Scripture warrant, as I V have endeavoured t.> -how, would confine the first resurrection to the martyrs, - Mr. Fabex and Mr. lirown are perhaps the mosl eminent living exceptions. The Briti-h Quarterly Reviewer also and Clemens are united with them in the view. 3 Sec the Introduction to his work on tin- Parabli .-. * T opinion is a.s follows: '* Bespecting the Millennium, or reign of iN on earth for 1000 years after these events shall have taken place, there is room : rariety of conjei tare. Whether . . we are to expert thai a resurrec- tion and triumph of the saints shall precede the general and final resurrection, or whether we hold that it is not to he a reign of persons raised from the dead, hut a tted -tate of the Church, flourishing gloriously tor [000 rears after the con- :i of the Jews, and the flowing in of all nations to the Christian faith, it is not necessary to determine. The formi c interpretation seems to offer the I violence to the langua ire, and i- supported b'v great authority." I ex- tract this from Bickersteth on Prophecy, p. 801. Bee pp. 46, 54, 108—110, 175, 176 supra, i:c. 192 APOC. XX. 1 XXI. 1. [part VI. calyptic statement, thus explained, respecting the first and second resurrection, with St. Paul's famous declaration on a similar subject in 1 Cor. xv. 23, 24, &c. : — " But every man in his own order : Christ the first-fruits : afterward l they that are Christ's at his coming : then coineth the end,2 when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power : for he must reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." In this passage three several distinct epochs, as if with intervals of time between them,3 appear to be marked ; that of Christ's own resurrection, — that of the saints' resurrection at his coming, — and that finally of his destroying the last enemy, death. All which seems exactly to correspond with our Apocalyptic theory of the saints' resurrection taking place premillennially on Christ's second coming, long after his own resurrection ; and then, at the interval of yet a thousand years, on the completion of the resurrection, Christ's finally casting Death and Hades into the lake of fire. — On Whitby 's theory the duration of the sira. of St. Paul would be reduced to a nothing. Yet a word or two ere I conclude this Chapter, on cer- tain chief difficulties, not yet touched on, urged against it. 1. And, 1st, as to the difficulty which has been supposed to arise out of St. Peter's description 4 of the earth's being burnt up at Christ's second coming, before the promised new heavens and new earth : and consequent impossibility of that new earth's having living inhabitants in the flesh re- maining on it. Now on this I must beg to remark, first and foremost, that by St. Peter's words, " We, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, &c," the new hea- 1 iirura. 2 *ca to t(\oq. 3 That the cira generally implies some interval of time will appear from the fol- lowing examples: — Mark iv. 17, lira 6\i\peu>g ytvofitvrjg, " afterward tribulation arising," &c. ; ib. 28, "Jirst the blade, ura araxvg, then the ear;" 1 Cor. xv. 5, " He was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve ; " and 1 Tim. ii. 13, " Adam was first formed, then Eve." i 2 Peter iii. 10. C. 111. § 3.] GIN. ss. PR0-L1TKBAI 1st aiSUR. EVIDENCE. L9S vcus and earth that he alluded to were identified with the new heaven and earth promised in Isa. Ixv., Iwi. ;' in Isai- ah > description of which alike Jews and Gentiles, distinct the one tVom the other, figure as the still remaining inha- bitants; and Judah's city too, the earthly Jerusalem. So that, supposing their identity irrefragable, as I believe it to be,8 inhabitants in the flesh arc declared by Scripture itself to exist upon St. Peter's new earth, however preserved to it. — Secondly, let me BUggesI that the earth of St. Peter's conflagration, at its primary outbreak at least,3 seems by no means certainly the whole habitable world; any more than the earth covered by the Noachie deluge must be certainly re- garded as the whole terraqueous globe ; (St. Peter's own case of parallelism ;) or, in fact, any other than the Roman earth, which we have seen on Apocalyptic evidence is to be destroy- ed premillennially by lire at the time of Antichrist's destruc- tion:— and, in any case, that lie who saved a remnant out of the watery deluge, may well be supposed to have his own ways of saving alive a remnant now again out of the deluge of fire. Indeed He intimates as much.4 — Thirdly, I am quite unable to understand, were the conflagration postmillennial, how the scoffers just before it, and with the millennium in imme- diate recollection, could exclaim "that all things had con- tinued as they were from the beginning of the creation." — Thus, on this head, the anti-prcinillennarian difficulties seem much the greatest. 2. There is urged the objection that alike Dan. xii. 2 and John v. 28 5 indicate that the resurrection and judg- 1 Al also with the iraXiyyiviaia, or new creation, spoken of by Christ, Matt. x\x. 28. 1 I have already alluded, p. 1 7-i, tu Mr. Brown's attempted hut vain solution of this difficulty, s7. And so. I bettere, Mr. Paber; though he has strangely omitted, and apparently shunned, all allusion to [saiah, when insisting on 2 Pet, lli. 10. Hut how could Peter refer to [saiah'a prophecy as a promise of a real DewheaTen and earth, if it meant merely a jtfMraftw one, ami oonseqnently something quite different il 3 See my next Chapter, p. -'17. 4 So [saiah li. 16, 17; " And I have covered ihee in the shadow of mine hand, thai I may plant [Heb. stretch out] the heavi as, and lay the foundations of the earth, and into Zion, Thou art my people." a passage thus followed; "Awake, awake, ! op, i > Jerusalem, which has drunk at the hand of the Lord the oup of his fury, • .•- time as that of Judah's restoration, 1 " And many of thi in that skip in the du.st of the earth shall awake ; some : > TOL. iv. ' 13 y 194 APOC. XX. 1 XXI. 1. [part VI. mcnt of the just and of the unjust are to take place at one and the same time. — But, as regards Daniel, I must suggest that it is more than doubtful whether the Hebrew original of the passage makes any assertion at all about the resur- rection of the unjust : l and, as regards St. John, that no inference as to the simultaneousness of the bodily resurrec- tion of the two classes can be justly drawn from the cir- cumstance of their being those conjointly mentioned ; any everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And they that he wise shall shine," &c. Dan. xii. 2. " The hour cometh when all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth ; they that have done good to the resurrection of life ; and they that have done evil to the resurrectiou of condemnation." John v. 28. 1 So certainly say many of the most learned expositors, both Jewish and Christian. E. g. of the Jewish, the Rabbi Saadias Gaon, already cited p. 169 supra : who thus interprets Dan. xii. 2, by reference to Isaiah lxvi. 24 ; "This is the resurrection of. the dead in Israel, whose lot is to eternal life : but those who do not awake are the destroyed of the Lord, who go down to the habitation beneath, i. e. Gehenna : and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh." — So too Aben Ezra ; as referred to by Tre- gelles. So again, of Christian expositors, Venema, p. 501, on Dan. xii. 2 : " Prius (mem- brum) mortuos distribuit in eos qui evigilarent, et eos qui in statu mortis mam rent : posterius cum resuscitatorum, turn reliquorum in pulvere terra? perseverantium, diversam conditionem ; illorum gloriosam et beatam, horum contemptibilem et ex- ecrabilem, ob oculos ponit. Quo sensu voculae n5s et n5x, Mi et Mi, non dividunt, ut putatur, resuscitatos, scd resuscitates et residuos in pulvere. . . . Priores nis Mi sunt resuscitati ; posteriores n'ss Mi sunt relicti in morte." At p. 503 he refers, like Saadias Gaon, to Isa. lxvi. 24, in support of this interpretation. — He also, p. 502, notes the interpretation as one propounded by Cocceius. To the same effect is the explanation given by the American Hebrew Professor Bush, in his Valley of Vision, p. 50. " The awaking is evidently predicted of the many, and not of the whole. Consequently the ' these,' in the one case, must be un- derstood of the class that awakes ; the ' those,' in the other, of that which remains asleep. There is no ground whatever for the idea that the latter awake to shame and contempt. It is simply because they do not awake, that this character pertains to them. The error in our translation has arisen from rendering the pronouns nV», nVsv ' some,' ' and some,' instead of ' these,' ' and those,' referring respectively to subjects previously indicated. By the former method a distinction is constituted between those who are awakened; by the latter between those who are, and those who are not awakened." — He illustrates his argument by the three following examples ; the full force of which, however, he says, none but the Hebraist can understand : — Josh. viii. 22 ; " So they were in the midst of Israel ; these on this side, and those on that side : " 2 Sam. ii. 13 ; " And they sate down ; these on the one side of the pool, and those on the other side of the pool : " 1 Kings xx. 29 ; " And they pitched, these over against those, seven days." So too Tregelles, on Dan. xii. p. 136 : who states that the translation to this effect is given, as undoubtedly correct, in Gerard Kerkherder's Prodromus Danielicus. In Kitto's Cyclopaedia, Art. Pharisees, Josephus is cited saying of them ; " They be- lieve that souls have an immortal vigour in them, and that under the earth there will be rewards or punishments, according as men have lived virtuously or viciously in this life. The latter are to be detained in an everlasting prison, but the former shall have power to revive and live again." Again, " they say the souls of good men only n~e removed into other bodies ; but the souls of bad men are subjected to eternal punishment." p. 514. So again p. 515, 1st Col. Compare, on the general subject of this Chapter, Macknight's original and curious Note on 1 Thess. iv. 16. C III. § 3.] GEH . BS. PRO-LITM \i, 1 st RE8TJR. EVIDBNCB. I '.'."> more than the Bimultaneousness of tin' spiritual resurrec- tion of all of thr spiritually dead who might hear Christ's voice, mentioned in the verse preceding.1 It is t<> he reJ membered that if tin- resurrections of the just and unjust arc here mentioned together, there arc many other passages in which the resurrection of the just is spoken of separate- ly; indeed as if constituting the resurrection distinctively.1 So that even if from the two passages in John and Daniel, considered by themselves, we might not unreasonably have expected that the resurrections of the just and unjust would synchronize, we might just as reasonably perhaps have anticipated from the others, considered alone, that the re- surrection of the just was one peculiar, and would take place separately. Which being the case, and the connex- ion of distant times, as I have said, not unusual in pro- phecy, it would, 1 think, be very unsound reasoning to infer a refutation of the literal theory of the first resurrection, (especially evidenced as that theory is,) from this inconclu- sive passage in St. John, and the yet more inconclusive pas- sage in Daniel.3 3. There is yet a third objection to the premillennial view, which has been urged with much force of late, above all by .Mr. Brown. It is to the effect that at Christ's second coming (whenever that may take place) Christ's Church will be complete, the effective interposition of Christ's in- tercession and the Holy Spirit's sanctifying influences ter- minated; and so the day of salvation past, and the millennial 1 " Thr hour i; ironing when the dead [i. e. tpirituaUy dead] shall hear the voice of tin- Son "t' God." II' ire by the hour is meant thr whole long period of tin- Chris- tian dispensation, though beginning from ('hri>t's first advent and ministry. _- I. ukr xiv. it, "Thou ■halt be recompensed at tht rtturrtction ofthejuit:" I \. -'5''); "They are tin- children of God, being the children of the < Hon ." Aets xxiii. G ; " Of the hope and rt /the dead I am called in ques- tion." 0 on 1 Cor. xv. 51, Whitby observes justly that throughout the chapter, as all expositors, ancient and modern, have remarked, the apostle by ike returreetion, which i- hi- subject, mean- simply d' " of tin mat. Neither in this chapter a moment the dead -hall he raised incorruptible," &c) dot in iv. n;. (•• Por the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, and : in Christ ■'hall rise tir>t ; then we which are alive," &<•.) is a word .-aid to ■ that there would be accomplished at the same time the resurrection of the wicked. And tie- .lly l Cor. xv.) are the fullest prophecies : the resuiT cticiii. ■ me just add that were the two resurrections mentioned in Daniel synchron- ■tatomenl in Dan. zxi. 13 a'»>nt Darnel himself rising to hu inherits 1 of the 1335 davs, would fix at that epoch the resurrections ut both. 13 • 19G APOC. XX. 1 — XXI. 1. [part VI. inhabitants of earth lost. — Rut it seems to me that in the two last inferences Mr. Brown is not warranted by Scripture testimony. The Church of the firstborn,1 the bride, may be complete ; but it does not follow that none afterwards can be saved. What is said of the kings of the earth walking in the light of the heavenly Jerusalem, seems to me to imply an enjoyment of the blessing by other parties, beside those that constitute Christ's bride, the New Jeru- salem. The very statement of Christ's being a priest upon his throne (if applicable as I think it is, in part at least, to the millennial aera) implies Christ's still exercising his in- tercessory and other priestly functions. And, if I am correct in my view of John xvii. 21, 23, 2 it was a marked point in his earliest intercessory prayer that the world's believing on him, generally, might be the result of the distinctive mani- festation in glory of the Church of his disciples of the pre- sent dispensation ; — that manifestation which, as all agree, will be only at his second coming.3 CHAPTER IV. SUGGESTIONS AS TO THE PROBABLE ORDER OF EVENTS INTRODUCTORY TO, AND STATE OF THINGS DURING, AND CONSEQUENT ON, THE MILLENNIUM. In the Apocalyptic prophecy of chap, xix., the scene de- picted as immediately preceding Christ's destruction of Antichrist, and the introduction of the Millennium, was that of a battle-field, to which both Antichrist and his con- federate powers had been gathered, under the invisible guidance of three associated spirits of evil ; there specially to conflict (though but as part of a universal war) against Christ's cause and people.4 It also appeared from other prophetic notices, that the voice of gospel-preaching won- derfully revived on the sounding of the 7th Trumpet, and voice of protest against Antichrist's deadly errors, and the 1 Compare Heb. xii. 23 with Apoc. xiv. 4 and James i. 18. " See pp. 183, 184, supra. 3 In my next Chapter I shall have to recur briefly to the millennial aera and state. 4 See pp. 21, 52, 53, supra. CHAP. IV.] INTRODUCTION TO THE MILLENNIUM. 197 warning-voice finally of a tremendous destruction by fire impending on Babylon and Antichrist, would be going forth previously far and wide; and make itself heard not in professing Christendom only, but throughout the whole habitable world.1 — And this seemed also to be foreshown, that the destruction of Babylon by fire would precede (by however short an interval) that of Antichrist. — There was intimation given further, in the prefiguration of Babylon's overthrow, of the state of mind that would just at that time characterize its inhabitants, as if one of complete car- nal security : '—an intimation well agreeing with Ezekiel's notice of the state of those in the isles of Chittim on whom destruction by tire would fall, nearly contemporarily with that of his antichristian Gog and Magog, — viz. as " dwell- ing carelessly in the isles:"3 and agreeing also exactly with Christ's description of the state of those on whom judgment will fall at his coming; "As it was in the days before the flood, — they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until the floods came, and took them all away, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be."4 To which St. Peter adds the further prophecy of open scepticism prevailing to a vast extent on the subject of the nearness of Christ's advent : " There shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts and saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for, since the lathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation." 5 — It would seem therefore that in this state of things and of feeling in professing Chris- tendom, all suddenly and unexpectedly, and conspicuous over the world as the lightning that shineth from the East even to the West,6 the second advent and appearing of 1 See pp. 3—5, &c, supra. : Apoe. iviii. 7 ; "She taith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall - >w : therefore shall her plagues comu in one day : " See. I tek. ixxix. 6; cited at p. 122 supra. ' Mat. xxiv. 88, •'('.). i 1 Peter iii. 3. 4 : a ■ nly alluded to, and argued from, iu reference to the pp-millcnnial question, at p. ! ' Matt. xxiv. 27, Luke x v i i . j t . — In the context of this latter passage, verses 20, 21, there is an expiOMJOn of OUT Lord which has, I believe, heeri universally miscon- strued -, and used, in consequence, to in.uhate quite incorrect ideas of Chrisfi com- ing ami kingdom. —I therefore think it may he well to subjoin a criticism on the fa Jlj published hy me in the Investigator. 198 APOC. XX. 1 — XXI. 1. [part VI. Christ will take place : that, at the accompanying voice of " Being demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, lie answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation. Neither shall they say, Lo here ! or Lo there ! for behold the kingdom of God is within you." Owe tpxirai »/ (3aoiXaa rov Oiov ^tra irapaTtjprjmwt;. OvZt ipovaiv, iSov 6iSf n, iSov (kw tSov yap »/ fiaaiXiia roi< Oiov ivtoc, iipuiv tariv. 1. According to the usual interpretation of this passage, it was our Lord's meaning, that the kingdom of God was simply a spiritual kingdom: — its seat the heart; its rise and progress therein indiscernible. So Campbell, Scott, &c. To this there occurs the decisive objection, that the observation was addressed, not to Christ's disciples, but to the rharisees ; — i. e. to his enemies. Moreover, it is obvious, from our Lord's connecting the subject in the verses follow- ing with his own second advent, that he was answering the Pharisees according to the real intent of their question ; and speaking not of any preparatory spiritual reign of Messiah over men's hearts, but of the glorious establishment of his reign on earth, such as will be seen at his appearing and kingdom. 2. Sensible of the force of the first objection noted, Beza, Grotius, Raphelius, Dod- dridge, Whitby, and others, have adopted the marginal rendering. Instead of within you, they translate the ivroi; vfiuv among you ; and explain the passage of the Mes- siah's kingdom already beginning to be preached among the Jews. But to this the objection remains in full force, that the subject-matter of discourse was the kingdom as it is to be manifested at Christ's second advent. Besides which it has been reasonably objected, "that the ivtoc, never has the meaning they give it in Scripture, and scarce ever in the Greek writers." So Scott, after Campbell. Nor, again, can we well say of our Lord's ministry, by which He was then laying the foundations of his kingdom, that it " came not with observation." Was it not by observation, and very careful observation too, of the evidences which Jesus offered, that men were then to be convinced that he was the Christ ? Were they not to search the old prophecies with this view, and compare them with his life, character, doctrine, miracles ? Were they not to look into, and so discern the signs of the times ? Com- pare Matt. xi. 3 — 5, xvi. 3, John v. 39. It was unquestionably with observation that its foundations were then laid. 3. My persuasion is that the clause we speak of has been hitherto totally misap- prehended. It has been taken and commented on, as a part of Christ's address to the bystanders. I conceive that it should be connected with the " Lo here ! or, Lo ihere!" as a part of the exclamation of those men ivhom Christ speaks of, thus reporting to one another respecting the conjectured fact of Messiah's advent. Then the sense will be : — " Neither shall there be anything so partially revealed, or secret, in the ultimate establishment and revelation of God's kingdom, as that there shall be occasion for any doubtful rumours on the point: such as, "Look here! for the King is to be found within our city ! or, Look there ; for the King is within your city!"* — "For, as the lightning that shineth out of the one part under heaven shineth even unto the other, so shall also the Son of Man be in his day ! " It must be remembered that the Jews had their minds full of prophecies that spoke of the Messiah fixing his kingdom within their borders : though in what part of Judca He might first manifest himself, whether in Bethlehem, Jerusalem, or Galilee, they might doubt; each of those districts being mentioned in connexion with it in prophecy. Hence the current but mistaken notion, that when He came to take the Kingdom, ne might possibly be concealed for a while, and have to be inquired after and sought out.f And as the king so the kingdom : the one including and being put for the other, as often elsewhere in Hebrew; the abstract for the concrete. X This interpretation seems to me simple, agreeable to the tenor of prophecy, and * Compare John i. 26 ; /itrng St v/xwv irnKiv bv hk oiSarf avroc, ts-iv said by John Baptist of Jesus Christ. f As king Josiah was hidden six years in the temple by Jehoiada. 2 Chr. xxii. 12. J So Schleusncr. " BaaiXaa ponitur pro l3n(Ti\ivg, abstracto posito pro concreto. Mark xi. 10 ; tvXoyriufvn r; tpxoynvn fiaoiXtia rov izurpoQ iifiwv Aa/3ttf : coll. Luc. xix. 38, tvXoynptvoc, 6 tp\ofiti'oc, fiaoiXtvc,." CHAP, iv.] iNTRonrrnoN to tut. mii.u wii m. 109 the archangel and trump of God,1 the departed saints of either dispensation will rise from their graves to meet Him, — -alike patriarchs, and prophets, and apostles, and mar- tyrs, and confessors, — all at once and in the twinkling of an eve : and that then instantly the saints living at the time will he also eanght tip to meet Him in the air; these latter being separated from out of the ungodly nations, as • Qmt in accordance with Chriefs sabeequenl remain on this occasion ; also with the " conu'h not with observation," of the T8TM preceding. I cannot think with Alulicl,* tlmt Christ's glorious advent and kingdom inav be said to come with »bm»'9mtion, jus of its bring mar will be observable. The signs of proximity are one thing; the comimj or mtmifo*tation quite another. Ob- .•[oii is th.u fixed and attentive regard which we can direct to those objects and e\> on only, that remain a certain length of time before the eye- : and to moa objects and events it is then most specially ilireeted, when tliey have enough of obscurity about them to leave us in a decree of doubt respecting their true character, and enough of interest to excite an anxious eagerness for the development. But so it will not be with \\\joovv, by Thueydides i- -. of Athnis. — And so, after adcerbs, in the examples following, ll. U. 199; Ktic. 'ttMU nrt vnaq, io~u> aparov tvpvv Ayaiaiv" within the locality of their encampment. Xeii. Anab. vi. 6. 7 ; E\ap{5avov ra twirnium ivroc, rnc, tn." M ZeuntUS renders the word, behind it ( 'vrop. vi. S. 14 ; Evroc ruv aiconwv of one advancing from the enemies' side within the Cyrojp. viii. :i, [i ; ■Qy ivroc, ovlivi tariv itmivai tuiv pn titiui)^h>w\- within the ranks of guards & primarily a judgment on the living in Christendom; the same as that mentioned in Joel iii. 11, "Assemble yourselves, all ye heathen: .. thither cause thy mighty ones to come down, 0 Lord : let the heathen be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat : (Heb. God's judgment :) for there will I sit to judge all the heathen (tQvn) round about. Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe," &c* — For 1st, the term " all the nations," here used by our Lord, can scarce be construed naturally otherwise than as Christ used it before in the same discourse, Matt. xxiv. 14, ''This gospel shall be preached to all na- tions" or all the Gentiles ; (Tram roig tOvtcri ;) Luke xxi. 24, "Jerusalem shall be trodden down by the Gentiles, (vtto iOvwv,) till the times of the Gentiles (icaipoi tOvtov) be fulfilled," or ended: f i. e. I presume, either the times of the four great Gentile kingdoms; or the parenthetic times of the Jews' exclusion, and committal of the gospel to the Gentiles. —2. The nature of the judicial process implies the fact of the gospel having been made known to all the parties judged, and of Christ's dis- ciples having been among them, and opportunities existed of showing them kind- ness or unkindncss : the which could by no possibility be predicated of the great mass of the dead, or indeed of the living, — I mean of those living or dead in heathen lands ; but might fitly be predicated (compare Apoc. xviii. 24) of the people of Christendom. — 3. The judgment here past on the wicked appears, on comparison, to include at least that described Apoc. xix. 20 ; which says, " The Beast and False Prophet were both cast alive into a lake of fire burning ivith brimstone." For in Apoc. xx. 10 St. John declares, " And the devil was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the Beast and False Prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever ; " thereby identifying the lake of fire into which Antichrist and his adherents were cast alive, with that intended for the devil's place of punishment: just as the penal fire adjudged to the wicked of the nations is identified with the same in Matt. xxv. 41, " Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." J At the same time, though there may be a primary reference to the judgment on the living at Christ's coming, yet secondarily a more extensive judgment on the dead too, — on all the dead, — may also very possibly be included in the parable. How so will be seen in my next Chapter; pp. 215 — -218. § A direct individual judgment on the parties interested is described, I conceive, in the two preceding parables. * Matt. xxiv. 40, 41. * Cited p. 119 supra. f I take the 7r\»jpw0w(7i in its more usual sense when applied to nouns of time ; as in Acts vii. 23, 30 ; ix. 23. So Cyril, (Catech. xv.,) brav TrXnpioOwaiv ol icaipoi tt]q 'Poj/j.aiwv i3aai\tiag. J So too Isa. lxvi. 24. See p. 166. § Olshausen (on Gosp. Vol. iii. pp. 292 — 298) considers "the least of these my brethren," in Matt. xxv. 40, to indicate a third party present, viz. the saints ; who are (not among the judged, hut) assessors with Christ on the throne of judgment. So Travra ra t9vr] corresponds pei-fectly with the Hebrew v'-iyp ^s, in opposition to the people of Israel. " For the collective body of believers is now viewed as Israel. These do not come into judgment at all, but at the resurrection of the just, enter into the joy of the kingdom of God. . . . The navra t. t. means all men with the exception ot believers ; i. e. all unbelievers." In order better to understand Olshausen's views, compare his remarks on the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, Luke xvi. In the intermediate state of departed spirits, he says, " divine grace opens up to such of embryo Christians and unbelievers, as from no fault of their own may be destitute of faith, a possibility of attaining to it." chap. IV.] INTRODUCTION TO tiif. MILLENNIUM. 201 honour to glory, though with very different degrees of glory;1 ami all alike welcomed (the faithful receiver of a prophet, as well as the prophet himself'2) to enter on the inheritance and kingdom prepared for them from the found- ation of the world; and so, in a new angelic nature,3 to take part in the judging and ruling of the world.1 — Mean- while it would also appear that with a tremendous earth- quake accompanying, of violence unknown since the revo- lutions of primeval chaos,'' (an earthquake under which the Roman world9 at least is to reel to and fro like 8 drunken man,7) the solid crust of this earth shall be brok- en, and fountains burst forth from its inner deep, not as once of water, but of liquid fire ; of fire now pent up within it as in a treasure-house,8 and intended as the final 1 1 Cor. xv. 41, 42. ■ Matt. x. 41. 3 Luke xi. 3*5, " They are toayyiXoi, . . being children of the resurrection." * Compare lleb. ii. o, '• He hath not subjected to angels the world to come where- of we speak:" (rjji> oiKov^itvnp tt)v ftiWovaav) also Matt. xix. 28, Luke xix. 17, Apoc. iii. 21, xx. 4. * The structure of the earth's crust seems clearly to indicate violent previous revo- lutions : nor, 1 conceive, is there anything whatsoever in the Mosaic history "f crea- tion opposed to this view ; as it <>nly takes up our earth's history from its preparation for rm'i habitation. As regards the word N_a, cmited. in Gen. i. 1, it will suffice to compare it- DM in Isa. lxv. 17, to remove difficulties thence arising. 6 It i> will known that the words yij and oiKovfitri) are often need in a limited sense of Judtea, or the Roman torih, (compare Matt. \x\ ii. 46, Mark xv. :j.'i, Luke iv. \poe. xi. 10, Luke ii. 1, &c) ju-t u the Romans themselves called their world the orbis tfrrnrum. Anil, after careful consideration of the various prophetic de- scriptions of the consummation, I incline to think that the meaning of the term, wheTi used in these prophecies of the earth's primary convulsions on Christ's second advent, is thus limited, and that it refers to the Roman world alone : — with this modification, moreover, thai the circumstance of the separation of the Eastern and w. stern Empire, and political destruction of the former by the Turkish invasion, having nausea the phrase to be used in the later Apocalyptic prophecies of Western or I'apal Christendom only, it may perhaps be so in those of the consummation also. — The idea of some other and more universal conflagration at the post-millennial judg- ment is not herein excluded: this latter being the consummation, as it were, 01 the earli. r. On which point I must again refer to my next Chapter. Bon the thrill in such case, even were there do supernatural interposition, would be fell through the wholt habitable tarth, might be partially imagined from the i s> tensivc vibration of great earthquakes. E. g. the noise and shock of the great earth- quake connected with the eruption of the volcano at Sumbawa, in 1816, is said to have been felt and heard 970 miles off Of course however the supernatural charac- ter of the earthquake at Christ's second advent precludes all comparison with mere natural convulsions. 1 Isa. xxiv. 20 In verse 22 of that chapter we read, "They shall be gathered to- gether, as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in the prison; and a;t> r many days shall they be visited." With which compare Apoc. \\. 5, 8 2 Peter iii. 7 ; " The heavens and the earth which now are [i. e. COntradis- tinctiveiy to those t'lat ware overwhelmed by the hood] are by the same word i vith fin [riOtjrravptofiivoi rvpt, so I understand the phrase] being kept unto the day of judgment," «kc. It is only by this rendering of the riOtiaavottrfuvoi wiipi that the apostle's evidently intended antithesis can be expressed, between the 202 apoc. xx. 1 — xxi. 1. [part vi. habitation of devils : l that this, I say, shall then burst forth and ingulf the vast territory of the Papal Babylon, and the godless of its inhabitants ; 2 thence spreading even to old world stored with water, by which as the instrumentality it at its appointed time perished ; and the present world stored with fire, by which it, in its time, is also to perish. 13esides that, in the received sense, TiQnaavpin-fitvoi is a word not merely superfluous but inappropriate ; " stored up " being a phrase used of things laid aside from present use, which certainly our present earth and atmosphere are not.* — Com- pare, as to the water, Psal. xxxiii. 7 ; (Sept.) tiOhq ti> Oncraupoic, afivaaovg- and, as to the fire, Job xxviii. 5 ; rendered by the Ghaldee, " Beneath the earth is Gehenna.'1 f Also Isaiah xxx. 33; "Tophet is ordained of old: for the king it is prepared: he hath made it deep and large : the pile thereof is tire and much wood : the breath of the Lord, as a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it." Similarly Tertulliau, Apol. 47 ; " Gehennam, qute est ignis arcani subterranei ad poenain thesaurus." In which view of the fiery interior of the earth, other Fathers agreed : as Jerome on Jonah ii. ; " Infernus in medio terras esse perhibetur." As to the suggestion of our earth being stored with fire, it seems a fact indubitable. — For, while the earth's form of an oblate spheroid, the crystalline character of its primitive rocks, the evident action of heat on its earliest strata, and absence of or- ganic remains from them, as if at that time from heat uninhabitable, and the proofs, alike in the animal and vegetable fossils of other subsequently formed strata, of a temperature once greatly higher than that of the earth's present surface, but gradu- ally diminishing and approximating to it, — while, I say, geology presents to us in these phenomena a body of evidence irresistible, (if only we suppose the laws of matter the same formerly as now,) for the fact of our earth having been originally fluid from intense heat, and having gradually, in the course of ages, cooled down so as to constitute the outer crust solid and mild in temperature, such as we now expe- rience it, — geology also calls attention to another fact, viz. that this cooling down is only superficial. Of this the gradual increase of heat observed on descending to any depth below the surface, % and the ejection from time to time in all quarters of the globe of boiling streams of lava, and other minerals from below the primitive granite, furnish sufficient indication. And the irresistible violence of these eruptions of the more central earth's boiling and inflammable materials, shows that there is as it were a train laid, that waits but the bidding of the Almighty to break up the earth's solid crust, and wrap this our world, or any fated part thereof, in a universal confla- gration.— -I may refer to the first Plate in Dr. Buckland's Bridgewater Treatise, as very illustrative of this point. He who has familiarized himself with it can scarcely, I think, help realizing the fact, that the ground he treads on is underwrought with volcanic agencies ; ready, the instant the Almighty may please to employ them, to execute the predicted judgment. ' See the end of Note1 p. 200. 3 Apoc. xviii. — To this same catastrophe Walter Brute, A.D. 1391, applied Eze- kiel's denunciation, xxviii. 18, against the Prince of Tyrus ; "I will bring forth a fire from the midst of the whole earth, and will make thee as ashes upon the earth, in the sight of all that behold thee." Foxe iii. 138. The time noted (verses 25, 26,) seems very remarkably to be that of the final restoration of Israel. — Compare what was said of Antichrist' s, or the King of the North's, ultimate perishing at that same time, according to Dan. xi. 45, p. 107 supra ; and also the dwellers in the isles, as foretold by Ezekiel, p. 122. Compare too Dan. vii. 11, and the passages referred to at pp. 47, 48. * As Oncravpio-fia means a treasure-house, as well as treasure, Qnoavpinua Tf9n- navptafitvov 7rt>pi is in construction like ru^iafia riTti\i(Tfitvov ruxti, or, Tt6o)pctKia- tuviav Dwpaia, 1 Mace. vi. 43. f So A. Clarke in loc. and Gaussen's Theopneustie. J " In round numbers we obtain an increase of more than 1° of Fahrenheit's thermometer for every 100 feet of sinking." Edinb. Rev. No. 165, p. 27. — Schlegel, speaking of " the earth's layer of subterraneous fire, with all its volcanic arteries and veins of earthquakes," observes, that from the various phenomena of earthquakes and volcanoes, " naturalists have concluded with reason that the volcanic basin of the earth's surface must be somewhat deeper (perhaps 1| geographical miles deeper) than the bottom of the sea." Phil, of Hist. i. 22, 23. CHAP. IV.] INTRODUCTION TO THE MILLENNIUM. ~<>:i Palestine,1 and everywhere, as in the case of Sodom, mak- ing the very elements to melt with fervent heal : '-' and that there perhaps the flame shall consume Antichrist at the head of Ins confederacy,1 while the sword also dors iis work of slaughter;4 the risen saints being perhaps [as would seem not improbable from Enoch's,0 St. Paul's,8 and the Apoca- lyptic prophecies)1 the attendants of the Lord's glory in this destruction of Antichrist, and assessors in his judgment on a guilty world. — And then, immediately, it would seem also that the renovation of this OUT earth is to take place: its soil being purified by the very action of the fire,* in all 1 Zfldh. xiv. 4. S. * 2 Pet iii. 12. » Apoc. xix. 20. * Apoc xix. 21 ; also Is.i. lxvi. 10, Joel iii. 10—13, &c. 5 Jade 14, " The Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints." • 1 Then. iii. 13. 7 It is Mid, just before the description of the Beast's destruction, Apoc. iii. 11, 14, " And I saw heaven opened; and behold a white horse, and one that sate on it. .and the armies in heaven followed him OH white horses, clothed in fine linen (ftvvaov) lean and white." On this the questions arise, What coming of Christ was this, and what hosts these that accompanied him ; — amatUt hosts, or hosts of the risen saints ? On the first question, Mr. l'.ickersteth exclaims, •' Here can be no mistake : " as if the symbolised coming must be personal. And though we cannot surely, on the mere evidence of a symbolic picture, conclude on the irapovma being Christ's personal ad- vent, yet it seems not improbable : the heaven now /or the first time being said to be opened, as if to permit the passage to earth of some one seated beyond the visible heaven ; according to Acts iii. 21, " Whom the heaven must receive until the times of the restitution of all things." Connected with this is an argument of Daubuz, drawn from the dress of the hosts that followed Christ. He says that the fivrrooc or byssint linen dress, now ascribed to them, is here mentioned for the first time ; white robes, eroXat Xivxai, being the dress specified as given to the souls under the altar previously : — also that this bysa, ■woven from a plant in Palestine, (so Paosaniaa tells us,) made the verv finest whitest linen in ue most probable from Scripture; hut which, 1 fully allow, must, in respect of details, be in no inconsiderable measure conjectural and uncertain. It has long been a disputed question among prophetic expositors, (as my sketch of the chief millennial theories given in the preceding Chapter will have shown already,) where precisely the New Jerusalem of the 01st and 22nd chapters of the Apocalypse1 is to have its position; whether 1 Apofr \\\. 1. " Anil I saw a new heaven and a new earth : for the first heaven ami the tir-t earth were passed away ; and there was no more sea. 2. And I John WW the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned fur her bosband 3. And I heard a great voice out of heaven savin/. Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them ; and they shall he his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. 4. Anil G.mI shall wipe away all tears from their eyes ; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain : for the former things are pawed away. 6. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said [unto me], Write: for these words are true and faithful. 6. And he said unto me, It is done. • I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of Hie freely. 7. He that overeorueth shall inherit all things : and I will be his God, and he shall be my son. 8. But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominabli , and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burnetii with fire and brimstone: which is the second death. 9. And there came [unto me] one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, full of the seven last plagues, and talked with me, saying, Come hither, I will show thee the bride, the Lamb's wife. 10. And lie carried me away in the spirit, to a (jr. at and high mountain, and showed me that [great] city, the holy Jerusalem, de- scending out of heaven from God ; 11. Having the glory of God: and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal ; 12. And it had a wall great and high, and had twi he gates, a'"' ;lt ''"• gates twelve angels, and naun - written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of brad: IS. On the east three gates ; on the north three gates; on the south three md on the west three gates. 14. And the wall of the city had twelve foiinda- indin them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. 16. And he that talk- ed with me had a golden reed, to measure the city, and the gates thereof, and the wall then if. 16. And the city lieth foursquare, and the length i> as large as the breadth; and he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand furlongs. The length and idth and the height of it are equal. 17. And he measun a the wall then of, an hundred and forty and four cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is of the angel. 18. And the building of the wall of it was of jasper ; and the city was pure gold, like unto char glass, l'.t. And the foundations of the wall of the' eitv were garnished with all manner of precious stones. The first foundation was lasper; the second, sapphire; the third, a chalcedony ; the fourth, an emerald; 20. The tilth, sardonyx: the sixth, sordini j the seventh, ehrysolite : the eighth, beryl ; the ninth, • iv.i.k. Bo Schols and Heinrichs. Other critical Editions read Tsyowav. — The clauses within brackets arc rejected by the critical Kditious. 206 APOC. XXI. xxti. [part VI. during, or only after the Millennium : and, if synchronous with it, whether as identical, or not, with the glorified Je- rusalem prophesied of in the Old Testament. Of the older lathers alike the premillennarian Tertullian1 and the anti- premillennarian Augustine explained the glorified Jerusa- lem of Old Testament prophecy as identical with that of the Apocalypse ; the one however as symbolic of the risen saints' millennial glory, the other of their heavenly and ever- lasting blessedness? Again, of the moderns, we have seen that Whitby and Vitringa, while also identifying the two figurations, did yet explain them to signify the millennial earthly blessedness of the still living Christian Church : 3 and that Mr. Faber would separate the two ; and make Isaiah's Jerusalem of the latter day, with its new heaven and earth, alone millennial, that of the Apocalypse post-millen- nial.4 To which I may add, that some expositors, while explaining one or both to prefigure earthly glories des- tined for God's people, make the restored and converted Jews nationally, not the Church Catholic generally, the grand object and chief intended recipients of the coming glory.5 So does the great question about the Jews' re- storation intermix itself with that respecting the New Je- rusalem ; and force upon us at this point the more direct a topaz ; the tenth, a chrysoprasus ; the eleventh, a jacinth ; the twelfth, an amethyst. 21. And the twelve gates were twelve pearls ; every several gate was of one pearl; and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass. 22. And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. 23. And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it ; for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. 24. And the nations [of them which are saved] shall walk in the light of it : and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it. 25. And the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day : for there shall be no night there. 26. And they shall bring the glory and honour of the nations into it. 27. And there shall in no wise enter into it any- thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie : but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life. xxii. 1 . And he showed me the river of the water of life, clear as crystal, proceed- ing out of the throne of God and the Lamb. 2. In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded its fruit every month ; and the leaves of the tree were for the heal- ing of the nations. 3. And there shall be no more curse : but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it ; and his servants shall serve him ; 4. And they shall see his face ; and his name shall be on their foreheads. 5. And there shall be no night there ; and they need no candle, nor light of the sun ; for the Lord God shall give them light : and they shall reign for ever and ever." 1 Adv. Marc. iii. 25. 2 See p. 137. 3 See p. 141. So too Bryee Johnston. 4 S. C. iii. 340, 293. So too, nearly, Mr. Brown. On what is more peculiar in his view see p. 173 supra. 5 E. g. Mr. Kelly. CHAP. IV.] Till \i u J! ;;i a \i.i m. 207 ebnsideratioo of the Jewieh people's destiny in the coming future. Ami let me just repeat here, what was passingly observed before,1 with reference to the literal XeraeVe part in the matter, that there has been a very general abandonment l>v modern eommentators, of the decided anti-Jewith views of the predicted blessedness held by the ancient Fathers. It was laid down 1>\ Origen, Augustine, and others, that though the Jews would be converted to Christ before the final judgment, its resull would be only their becoming part and parcel of the Church Universal ; and being then so merged in it as to lose all national distinctness, and of course to have no national restoration to their own land and their ancient city.- Hut, after the Reformation, other views gradually obtained more and more on the subject : and Whitby,8 in common with others of the same as well as of different prophetic views,4 declared himself compelled by force of Scripture evidence to admit that, on the times ) of the Gentiles being fulfilled, the converted Jews will, as a distinct people, re-occupy the Holy Land and Jerusalem. And indeed, admitting their conversion, (which who can doubt'r) the strength of evidence on this point seems to 1 p. 172. 2 Whitby, in hi" Appendix to the xith Chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, thus Origmtt new. "In his (Origen's) Book against Celsus, he saith not, 'They shall never be converted to the Christian faith.' hut that they should never he re- stored to their own worship or country : . . 'We confidently affirm (in ovl' airoica- rauTaOrjaovrai) that they .-hall never uirain he restored to Jerusalem OT the land of promise, which before they vere.' " — So too A>i•i- how dissociate it bom, the predicted glories of the Millennium of the Apocalypse and its New Jerusalem. Now, thai we arc not to identify the restored Jewish peo- pfewith the constituency of the Apocalyptic New Jerusalem^ or their restored earthly and holy city with that Holy City, appears to me perfectly clear. For it would be contrary to the whole analogy of Apocalyptic interpretation to attach to these symbols such a meaning; seeing that from the very beginning of this prophecy, even throughout, Jewish em- blems have been proved to lie used of the Christian Church. *>/ — The fitness of this application of them seemed to us evident a priori. The natural Israel as a nation having rejected, and so been rejected by God, the Christian visible Church, primari- ly ,/, wish, and though made up chiefly of a Gentile consti- tuency, yet of Gentiles engrafted by the apostles on the Ahra- ha nt ic 8 tock .became ,as it were , God's subs I it a led visible Israel:1 and thus by St. Paul, we saw,-' as well as other apostles, had had Jewish titles and emblems, both civic and ecclesiastical, as well as the Abrahamic promises, applied to it,3 long be- fore St. John's exile to Patmos. Then, in the introductory Apocalyptic vision, the representation of Christ, the Chris- tian Church's head, under guise of the Jewish High Priest, and that of the seven Asiatic Christian Churches under the symbol of seven golden lamps, like those of the Jewish temple, was an express recognition of this principle of application; and prepared the Seer for a similar application of Jewish emblems to the Christian Church in the subsequent visions, •ion conditionally promised, and which, from the circumstance of the Jews not fulfilling the conditions, has not heen, and will not be, fulfilled. (Of projiln such as in Deut. \\\. and Zech. xii., where God promises his Spirit's effusion in order to enable them to fulfil the conditions, he says nothing.) In all other pro- phecies he appli* - what b >iid of the iatttr day glory of JmrvMaltm to the ''/,, Church.* It will, I think, suffice to sati-tv the reader on this theory*! unsoundness, if he try it simply by those chapters of Zechariah which the Bishop of London n t'er.s to. — The liriti-h Quarterly Eteriewer (p. 16s) only escapes from the cogency of these last-mentioned prophecies by the suggestion that they are not Zeohanah's, but the writing of an earlier prophet Bom. \i. i: 2 See my Vol. i. pp. 259, 260. 1 K. g. OaL iii. 20, vi. 16, Eph. ii. 12, 19, 1 Peter ii. 9, 10; fto. * Bifl admission IS ohserrahle, thai if the Jews' national restoration to their oun land be a fact predicted, Christ's personal reign must be a fact predicted also. VOL. iv. 14 • 210 APOC. XXL, XXII. [part VI. upon a larger scale.1 And so the temple-court and service marked in those visions its ecclesiastical state and service : 8 the twelve tribes of Israel the constituency of its visible professing body, i. e. so soon as it should have attained dominancy and a political form in the Roman world : 3 an election out of these tribes (" 144,000 out of all the tribes of Israel' ), Christ's true Church, on the mass becoming corrupt, and at length heathen-like and apostate ; 4 and the Holy City, the polity of the same holy seed, the association of the faithful and elect, the true Israel.5 Which being so, how could the symbol of " the Holy City, the New Jerusa- lem, coming down from God out of heaven," be interpreted with any consistency to signify the converted Jews, and earthly rebuilt Jerusalem ? How to signify anything else Jhan the same body of the 144,000, Christ's spiritual Israel, ^ " the called and chosen and faithful," — inclusive of course of all their successive generations, agreeably with its mystic form of a cube made up of many squares:6 — of these genera- tions, I say, caught up to Christ at his coming, and now in the resurrection-state glorified as " the sons of God :"7 per- fect, according to the Redeemer's intercessory prayer,8 in number and unity, as well as glory ; the City of God (to use Augustine's phrase) now at length made complete ; the Jerusalem above, (to use St. Paul's,) long time prepar- ing for the saints its citizens, which is the mother of us all?9 Indeed Christ's promise in Apoc. iii. 12 fixes this meaning on it. As to the very interesting but difficult question of the chronological place of the Apocalyptic vision of this New Jerusalem, whether inclusively millennial or ivholly post-mil- lennial, a cursory reader might deem it at once settled by the introductory statement in Apoc. xxi. 1, "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth ; (for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away ;) and I saw the holy city, 1 See my Introduction, Vol. i. pp. 71 — 74. 2 See Vol. i. pp. 101, 102, Vol. ii. pp. 183—185. 3 See ray Vol. i. pp. 259—266. 4 Apoc. vii. 4, xi. 2. 5 Ibid, and xiv. 1. G Viz. 144 or 12 X 12 thousand; one thousand being the unit. — The cubic form of the New Jerusalem seems to me in this sense beautifully apt and significant. ' Horn. viii. 19. 8 John xvii. 21—24. 9 Gal.'iv. 26. til \v. iv.] tiik m w .11 ui - \i.; if, 2U New .Jerusalem, coming down from God ou1 of heaven: " compared with that in Apoo. \\. LI, just belbre, thai it was "from the face of him that took seal on the great white throne "that "the [former] earth and heaven fled away, and there was do place found for them." Surely, it might be thought, this is a post-millmmal definition of time and order not to be mistaken. — And then too the fact of death and the ourse having no existence in the New Jerusalem state will seem to him strong confirmation of that view ; compared with the previously stated fact of its being not till after the judgment of the great white throne, that death and hades were east into the lake of fire. On a more enlarged consideration of the question, how- ever, the following strong presumptive evidence will be found to favour the view which supposes the New Jerusa- lem to have had existence from the commencement, and throughout the progress, of the millennial period. 1. Whereas two things had been mentioned previously, as its subjects of congratulation, in the Church's joyous song of triumph on Antichrist's overthrow, Apoc. xix. 0, 7, viz. the one. the fact of Christ's mundane reign beginning:, the other, that of the Lamb's marriage having come, and his wife having made herself ready, — and whereas, of these two things, the establishment of the kingdom was immedi- ately afterwards figured to St. John in the emblem of thrones being; set, and the risen martyrs and saints taking- seat thereon, and judgment being given them,1 — whereas, I say, the first of these two thing> was thus duly symbol- ized, there would on the other hand be no corresponding >\ mboli/ation whatsoever in the Apocalyptic visions of the Lamb's synchronics! bridal, and bride,- unless litis emblem- atic vision were supposed to represent it ; and consequently to synchronize in its introduction with the setting of the thrones of judgment, and opening of the Millennium." — '2. The account St. John gives of the manner of his Beeing 1 Apo<\ xv 4. 5 In • ' propheciea of Chrwfa bridal, as in Pealm \lv., I 4. •''. a: . the / -"1 to hi- in a living itati nil the earth. ll^*. Even Mr. Brown, though viewing the New Jerusa- lem sent] i ireh w ite poet-millennia] bleesedu more than millennial interval between the luide's ]>. the bride*! presentation. See his remarks at p, 63. 11 • 212 APOC. XXI., XXII. [part VI. the New Jerusalem confirms this view of the matter. For while, on the one hand, the fact of his having been a sym- bolic man, or representative of Christ's earthly Church} thus far in the prefigurative visions, would lead us in consistency so to regard him still, and consequently in the circumstance of his being carried away in the spirit, through angelic ministration, to a sight of its interior state and glory, to recognize the indication of an earthly Church * distinct from, though synchronous with, this New Jerusa- lem of the resurrection-saints,2 such as we know will con- tinue through the Millennium, — on the other, what could be the reason of one of the Angels that had the seven last Vial-plagues showing it him, unless to mark that the thing he exhibited was to be the speedy consequence or sequel of those Vial-outpourings ? Besides which, there is the very singular coincidence of St. John's being said (I presume as a symbolic man) to have fallen down at the feet of the revealing Angel to worship him, on this exhibition of the Lamb's bride, the New Jerusalem, just as he was before said to have done on the Angel's primary intimation to him after Antichrist's destruction, concerning the bride and bridal, and to have received in either case precisely the same answer and rebuke : — a coincidence scarce expli- cable, as it seems to me, except on the hypothesis of the v fallings down being one and the same act, though twice noted in the Apocalyptic description ; 3 indeed as noted . 1 See my Vol. i. pp. 300 — 302, and Vol. ii. pp. 114, 115. ■ In the description of the angel the words are observable, " the measure of a man, i. e. of an angel." Apoc. xxi. 17. 2 On comparing Apoc. xxi. 2 with Apoc. xxi. 9, and the sequel, it seems the most natural conclusion that what the second passage reports followed immediately after what is reported in the first : St. John first catching sight of the New Jerusalem as it descended ; then hearing the voice from heaven about it ; then being caught up by the Angel, ere the descent was completed, to have a fuller sight of its celestial glory. 3 The coincidency of the two passages is very singular ; and noted by Vitringa, p. 1226; who inclines to draw much the same conclusion from it as myself. Apoc. xix. 7 — 10. " The marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready (Jiroifiacftv iavrr)v). And to her was f ranted that she should be arrayed in ne linen, clean and white .... And he saith unto me, Write ; Blessed are they which are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he saith unto me, Apoc. xxii. 8, 9. " And I John saw these things and heard them : [including the descent of the New Jerusalem prepared, riToifiaa- fitvTfv, as a bride for her husband.] And when I had heard and seen, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel which showed me these things. Then saith he unto me, See thou do it not : for ciiM1. i\.; I'm: \i\v JBBUSALBM. 213 probably for the very purpose of marking more significantly the chronological parallelism or identity of the two visions. — ',). To the same effect, thirdly, is what is said of " the no- tion* of them that are Baved] walking in the light of it, and the kings of the Garth bringing their glory and honour into it;1 and again, of "the Leaves of the tree being for Hie healing of the nations" ' For how can we explain this, except oil the supposition of men existing on earth, and in the earthly state, such as needed healing,9 contemporarily with the higher and heavenly glory of the New Jerusalem : the idea of these men, nations, and kings of the earth signifying scants in the resurrection-state, being an altern- ative which few probably will be inclined to embrace? \n doubt we may suppose men living on the earth, to whom this healing might apply, after the Millennium. But would not the healing virtue be needed by men, in order to its bring a millennium of happiness, just as much during it? And, if so, whence to be derived but from the New Jeru- salem ? — 4. Then conies the important consideration, (one already briefly alluded to in my preceding Chapter,)4 that in Dan. vii. is the Baints' everlasting reign being made to date from Antichrist's fall seems to require that the ever- lasting reign predicated in Apoc. xxii. 5 of the saints of the New Jerusalem should date similarly from Antichrist's de- struction, and so include the Millennium as its commencing I ;mi the fellow-servant of thyself and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them which keep the sayings of this hook. Worship God." These are the tni' f God. And I fell at hi- feet t < > worship him. And he said unto me, See thou d<> it Dot. I am How-servant of thyself and of thy brethren, that hare the testimony of Je- sus. Worship God." 1 Apoc \\i. 24. 1 Ki<; Ontcnraav tujv idvwv. Apoc. xxii. 2. Mr. Barker has suggested the different translation, M for the .«/•<■«•<■ of the nations ; " so doing away with the idea of any healing agency being applied or Deeded But i>t. though Utncnrua mean a - well a- hooting, yet I know not any case where it is used, so as Mr. B. would have it here, mtheaenseof AntyU, donebyafAwt^notjMrjon: and with a genitive of the persona towards whom the service is performed i-Hftairua avrov may mean either the mm- [the abstract for the concrete/ a- in Gen. \lv. 18, w.\ 16, Lake xii. 4'- :— «>r attention and awrtei rendered him by peraont; as Qtpairua Btou, the Worship of God, ChryBOSt Homil. H ; Htpairfui Ttov fiiAui', att< n- tion to friends, Xen. Cyrcp. \iii 2. 18 :— or, hinting of )iim, as Luke ix. 11.— Fur- ther, 2ndly, in the parallel ; I k ilvii. L2, we read, " the fruit (ofthi - shall he for meat, and the leaf for mtdiotM ,'" BO living the sense. 8 Mr. 4 Lose, I -■•. anguardedly argues, though a strong anti-premfllennariaa. Sketches of Sermons, | ■» See p, 1 « . 7 supra. 214 APOC. XXI., XXII. [part VI. sera. For when the Apocalypse says of the saints, with re- ference, incipiently, as would seem, to the state and a)ra of the New Jerusalem, " they shall reign for ever and ever," can we well suppose that its "for ever and ever" means Daniel's "for ever and ever" minus the first 1000 years ? — Yet once more, 5thly and lastly, comes up for consider- ation the all-important parallelism of Isaiah's new heaven and earth with the Apocalyptic new heaven and earth of St. John. For surely all fair presumption is in favour of their identity ; Isaiah's main object of description only being the nciv earth, St. John's the new heaven. And if so, then, since Isaiah's commence from the restoration of the Jews and of their earthly Jerusalem, at the opening of the Millennium, we seem all but forced to suppose the same of the Apocalyptic new heaven and earth ; and, by conse- quence, of their heavenly Jerusalem also. It may indeed be suggested that the epoch of the New Jerusalem's descent from heaven, and manifestation to men, noted in Apoc. xxi. 2, may be an epoch in the history of the Holy City later than that of its first constitution at the saints' rising ; the one marking the commencing aera of the Millennium, the other its conclusion. But this seems in- consistent with St. Paul's explicit declaration that it is the manifestation of the sons of God, or glorified body of the risen saints, (that is, of the New Jerusalem,) that is to be the occasion of the creation's deliverance from the bondage of corruption, in other words of the first commencement of its millennial blessedness. Besides, if Isaiah's new heaven and earth fix on the Apocalyptic new heaven and earth a millennial commencement, this involves the same commencing date also to the Apocalyptic New Jerusalem, as first seen by St. John coming down from heaven to earth ; seeing that it was then that Christ said " I make all things new." And indeed the phrase "prepared as a bride " could scarce be said of it, except at the epoch of the bridal. It is not to be wondered at, where such strong argu- ments press antagonistically on either side, that expositors should have been greatly perplexed and divided as to the exact location of the Apocalyptic New Jerusalem vision. After much consideration and re-consideration of the sub- CHAP. IV.] Till. MU .1! Kl S.M.I M. -1 ") ject, 1 have come in fine to a conclusion respecting it partly different from, partly the lame with, what was given in the three first Editions. As before, 1 cannot resist the arguments just stated for the vision being regarded as millennia] in its incipient chronology. On the other hand 1 feel even yet more strongly than before, (though certainly never insensi- ble to it,) the difficulty arising out of the apparently un equivocal sequence of the Apocalyptic new heaven and earth upon the fleeing away of the old heaven and earth from tin- face of lliin who took seat on the great white throne. — Hut is it then impossible to reconcile the incon- sistency r v It has occurred to me that it may he reconciled, and the chief difficulty of the subject overcome, by a dif* ■. from that which has hitherto obtained, of the chronological place >niaints: — M I beheld till the thrones wi re placed ;3 and the Ancient 1 E. ::. T.rtnllian. E M..re. iii. 2o. 1 Ifeaa, p. 773 80 1 I ' 1 - out of Daniel, p. •'•72 : to whose beautiful chap- t> r- 011 tlii- ■abject I li.ivi- pi. a-utv ill rafl 1 riiiLT B] .plained v. 22 J " AndyWy>/i of Moff IliJi." 216 APOC. XXI., XXII. [part VI. of days did sit," i. e. on his throne of judgment. Can we then reasonably suppose that in the Apocalyptic visions this, the most angust feature in the whole scene of judg- ment, was wanting ? Or, if figured, that it would be alto- gether past over in silence by the recording Evangelist? Supposing which two suppositions to be negatived, we are almost forced on the idea of the great white throne of Apoc. xx. 1 1 being the very throne in question, seeing that none other is mentioned: and so that it was occupied by the Divine Judge at the opening, as well as close, of the millen- nial judgment-day.1 — The specified fact of "the books being opened," before Him who sate on it, just as " the books were opened " before the Ancient of days in Daniel,2 is a point of agreement so striking as to go far to identify them. — Nor do I see anything in St. John's description to negative the idea. The circumstance of the great white throne being mentioned after the notice of Gog and Magog's post-millennial outrage, is no valid objection at all against it ; because retrogression, for the purpose of supplying what needed to be supplied, by way of addition or explanation, is not uncommon in the Apocalyptic prophecy. Nor can it be objected that there would be wanting on this hypo- thesis a judgment for those who lived not again till after the expiring of the Millennium ; seeing that it supposes the judgment of the great white throne, and sitting of the Judge thereon, to be even then unfinished : there being two great acts of judgment by Him who sate thereon ; the one great act at the Millennium's commencement, the other at its conclusion. — In further corroboration of the view, I may observe that the correspondence of the vision with the announcement in Apoc. xi. 18 of what was to take place under the 7th Trumpet would be more evident and complete according to it, than on the usual view which postpones the judgment of the great white throne, and con- nected fact of the dead rising before it to judgment, alto- gether to a post-millennial epoch. For what was then the announcement? " The time is come of the dead that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest give reward unto 1 Jerome on Dan. vii., identifies the Ancient of days' throne in Dan. vii. with the great white throne in the Apocalypse. • Dan. vii. 10, Apoc. xx. 12. CHAP. IV.] THI \iw ISRU8ALXM. 217 thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and to them that tear thv name, small and great." And whereas, on the. old hypothesis, Done of the dead were expresslj specified a- raised or rewarded but the anti-Pagan and anti-Papal maityrs, 00 Represent the resurrect ion of the dead "small and great/' mentioned in Apoe. w. 10, would he construed as having beginning at the beginning of the Millennium, as well as completion at its conclusion: with reward to the righteous given in the first instance; and retribution too to the wicked first privativety, afterwards positively} — Lb to the parallel prophecies in Isaiah. St. Peter, and Daniel, the harmony of the Apocalvptic with them too would be also then complete and evident. The passing away of the old heaven and earth, and substitution of the new, together with the commencement of the saints' everlasting reign, would in every case begin with the fall of Antichrist, and the .lews' restoration : — there being moreover coincidently, what St. Paul declares coincident, the " manifestation of the >ons of God;" that is, of the New Jerusalem. Yet once more, there may be light thrown on certain other prophetic difficulties by this view of the millennial judgment-day; considered with double reference distinct- ively to its two great epochs of the commencement and the close. E. g. a more partial conflagration might be sup- posed to mark the commencement of the Millennium, one more complete its close : each included, as if one, in St. Peter's prophecy, though separated in the Apocalypse; as binarv stars are resolved into two only on nearer view. Again, as to what is said of the sea being no more, -(if literally meant,) while what was known as "the sea" of the ancient world, viz. the Mediterranean;1 might by the convulsions at the opening of the Millennium have its bed elevated, and made dry land, the whole ocean might at the second and final convulsion become physically no more. So too the triumph over decrfh, begun strikingly with the saints' firsl resurrection at its commencement,1 would be completed 9< •• p. 151 su: - Apoe. xxL i. 1 Bi Vol. i. ji. 866. Sume sea there must be in tin .Millennium, as tht often mentioned in Old Testament millennia] prophecies. 4 Kvin in regard i<< the earth's inhabitants during the millennia] period, though death be not as yet extinguished, yet may the dying very poanblj be QOl until the 218 APOC. XX., XXI. [part VI. strikingly by the casting of death and hades into the lake of tire at its close : and much the same of the judgment in Matt. xxv. on the righteous and wicked. In fine, as re- gards the New Jerusalem, it is quite consistent with our hypothesis to suppose the manifestation of its glory, and its union with the new earth and its inhabitants, though begun at the commencement of the Millennium, to be yet at its close still more complete and perfect. Such then is the view that I conclude on, as the one most consistent alike with the Apocalypse itself, and with other parallel Scripture prophecies on this great subject. As regards the earlier and millennial period of the New Jerusalem, it is of course among the Apocalyptic "nations" [of them that are saved], which are said to walk in its light, and "the kings of the earth," which are said to bring their glory and honour into it, that we are to place the restored Jews and Gentile remnant, saved from the primary conflagration, of whom the Old Testament prophecy speaks so much : — the Jews having now a certain pre-eminence and peculiar glory, such as seem constantly predicted of Israel and the earthly Jerusalem, in the earlier prophecies of the latter day. With which view the statement that " in Christ Jesus there is neither Jew nor Greek, circum- cision nor uncircumcision," is not, I think, inconsistent : — seeing that that statement had reference to the premillennial ^ times of the gathering out of all nations of the Church of the redeemed, the New Jerusalem; wherein equal honours, and an equal reward, were intended for the engrafted as for the natural members of the true Israel : but not to the very different times, and different dispensation, of the Millennium. — It seems to me probable that by " the beloved city " of Apoc. xx. 9 we are to understand this earthly Jerusalem ; though it may also perhaps be understood of the heavenly or new Jerusalem. But in any case there must be sup- / posed, I conceive, a most intimate connexion of the one Je- "* rusalem with the other : the earthly Jerusalem being that upon, or over which, the glory of the New Jerusalem is to rest ; end of the Millennium : as it is said, " As the days of a tree are the days of my people;" "the leaves of the tree being for the healing of the nations:" besides that death may be then without pain, and a mere easy translation to a heavenly state. OHAP. iv.] Tin: MILLENNIAL STATE. £10 like as . K'l). >\ all's pillar of fire OD the tabernacle in the wilderness, or the more awful glory on the top of Sinai.1 Here, I say. it would seem that then- is to lie the meeting- point of earth and heaven; and that same conjunction to be visibly manifested, of which I spoke before in niv preceding chapter,8 of the ultimate blessedness of the Spiritual and of the natural seed of Abraham: — a conjunction and blending together of the two so intimate, that it is often difficult, if not impossible, to discern in prophecy where the one ends and the other begins. And thus, when we turn to consider the state of thing* during the Millennium, our minds seem irresistibly directed to Jerusalem, as the Mother-Church of a Christianized uni- verse : (for even though we admitted the literal Judaic character of the Jerusalem in Ezekiel's last obscure pro- phecy, it would by no means involve the literal Judaic con- struction of its temple and its sacrifices:)* I say as the Mother-' Church of a Christian world, and focus and centre of the glories of that latter day. There the shechinah of Messiah's presence is, as it would seem, to shine refulgent; 4 there the King to be seen in his beauty ; 5 there too probably the manifestation to be made, more fully than elsewhere, of the perfected company of the redeemed, the; general assembly and Church of the firstborn, now entered on their inherit- ance.'' the glorified sons of God:7 — who, intrusted with the new earth's government, Bubordinately to Christ himself, in gracious reward of past service,8 (perhaps after the example 1 C .mpare Isa. iv. 2—5 : " In that day shall the hranch of the Lord be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the earth shall be exeellentand comely fur {hem that are escaped 1. 1' I-rad. And it BhaQ Some to p;i^ that hi' that is left ill Zion, and lie that remaineth in Jerusalem, .-hall be called holy, even every one that is written among the living in Jerusalem; when tin Lord shal] hare Washed away tin- tilth of the daughters of Zion, anil -hall have pureed the blood of Jerusalem from the midst if, by the spirit of judgment and by the spirit of burning. And the Lord will create upon every dwelling-place of Mount /ion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day. and the shining of a flaming |i,-L. ))V ught ; for upon all the glory there -hall be a defeu 2 See p. 168. - So the amiint father Ju-tin Martyr in explaining his millennial view. Ov, IS* rij TrttXiv iTHpoirtin. fit) <"< i'»/7t XtytlV Wnaiav, r] roue; aWuVQ 7r(joial. cum Trvph. Cited by Mode, p. :i proof of no such un-eriptiiral idea being held by the early pn niilhii- nanan fathers. In fact they were as opposed to it us Whitbv himself; quoted 207. 1 1'-. 'ii. e 8 Isaiah xxxiii. 17. . \ii. 28. Compare Dent. \\i. 17. ' Bom. viii. 19. 3 Luke six. 17, Heb. ii. ■'>, Arc. 220 apoc. xx., xxi. [part vi. of those angels that, having kept their first estate, have had this present earth intrusted to their charge and ministry,) l shall be recognized as the constituency of the New Jerusa- lem, in all their resurrection glories,2 during the ouatv, or age, of the millennial dispensation.3 — Meanwhile thither, concomitantly, are to converge the desires and the gather- ings of the whole family of man. " The mountain of the Lord's house having been established on the top of the mountains, all nations shall flow unto it ; " 4 and the Lord's prophecy be fulfilled, " I, if I be lifted up, shall draw all men to me." 5 The blessedness thence resulting is to be universal. The creature, delivered from the bondage of corruption, is to experience the glorious liberty of the children of God : the river of life from God's throne diffus- ing its blessings over the world, and the leaves of the trees beside it being for the healing of the nations. And as " the knowledge of t'he Lord now covers the earth, like as the waters the sea,"6 and holiness and peace and joy every- where blend together, the Lord shall again rejoice in his works ; 7 yea shall joy over them with singing, and rest in his love.8 It shall be the resumption of his sabbatism ; a sabbatism begun at the jubilee of mans creation, but im- mediately after all suddenly and rudely interrupted by man's apostacy : — his resumption of it after the accomplish- 1 Jude's expression, " The angels that kept not their first estate," implies their having been once in a state of probation. And where then ? The researches of the geologists leave no reasonable doubt of our earth's having been inhabited by animals, at least, in a pre-Adamitic age: and why not then by intelligent creatures also ? Which supposition being admitted as at least possible, does it seem likely that some other distinct planet was the scene of the inhabitation and trial of these earlier pro- bationists, and not our own ? — especially considering that the organic pre-Adamitic remains that abound indicate violent death to have prevailed then as now; and by probable consequence sin, the cause of violence and death : — considering also that the internal fires of this earthly planet (see pp. 47, 48, and 201, 202 supra.) seem not obscurely marked out in prophecy as the scene of the rebel angels' future pun- ishment ; of their punishment, as if previously of their crime ? 8 The Author of the Book of Wisdom compares their bright and fitful appear- ance with the flashing of Jire-sparks, (see the Note, p. 168,) or perhaps of the firefly. We may rather compare them with Christ's appearances after his resurrec- tion.— This rule of the glorified saints is not however to the exclusion of angels. See John i. 51. 3 Such in Scripture is often the meaning of anov; e.g. Luke xx. 35. Irenaeus, v. 46, thus reports " the ancients' " idea as to the different degrees of blessedness in this age and state of the new heavens and earth. Oi (itv KaraliiwOtvTtQ rng tv ovoavy diotrpi/3/je ««•« \wpt]jra tijq 7to\£u>c KaQt^ovaiv. Havraxov yap 6 2u)7-?jp bpa9t]aerai. 4 lsa. ii. 2. * John xii. 32. 6 lsa. xi. 9. 7 Psalm civ. 31. " Zeph. iii. 17. CHAP. IV.] Till. MII.I.I.WI \l, BTATB. 221 incut of thai work that he has ever since then, conjointly with the Bather, been engaged in;1— his work, his might- irst work, of redemption. dm stiTpansinn; fa Wo. and yet true I s. i m - of ai < omphahed bliss ! w biob who can see Though bat in caitenl prospoot, ud not feel 11;- -"ill refreshed with foretaste of the jo I quote from one who is a meet minstrel on such a topic; and subjoin yet another extract from him, depicting the scene and it> blessedness. •' The subject is one too high and holy for my own rode touch. I pass from it. Meanwhile so the Apocalypse, as well as other Scripture prophecy, informs us) an awful monument will remain, and be visible, of a once different state of things ; — a monument of the guilt and punishment of the age preceding. It has always been God's plan that such memorials should exist, 1 Jobs v. 17 ; " My Father worketh hitherto, and I work :" — viz. I conceive, in the work of rmbmpfiom ; carried on alike on sabbaths and all other da vs. For with reference to God's retting, which is sometimes spoken of in Scripture, -us to me that not the mere e$uatitm from any particular work of his handfl i- implied, hut also his oomplaamcy in its beauty and perfection. Thus when God told in Gen. ii. 2, from his work of creation, it was after "he had surveyed everything that he had made, and behold it teas very good." But the in- stant that Mil entered, and with sin the curse, this work was marred; and conse- quently, H I . bhl net in regard of it at once broken up. So that then, and thereupon, the new and mightier wmk of rkbtminf this marred world from the was to be entered on: that to which Christ, in the above-cited passage in s-. John, Menu tome to allude; and of the joyous resting from which, uiiin per- . both Zephaniah and St. Paul, (Hcb. iii., iv.,) and others too of the prophets delight to speak. 2 Cowper's Task, 6th Book. * " One song employs all nations, and all cry Worthy the Lamb, for He was slain for us! The dwellers in the vale-, and on the rocks Shout to each Other, and the mountain-tops From distant mountains catch the flying joy; Till, nation after nation taughl the strain, •h roDa the rapturous Ilosanna round. Behold the measure of the promise filled: See Salem built, the labour of a God I Bright as a sun the saered city ^liim ^. All kingdoms and all princes of the earth Flock to that light ; the glory of all lands • Flows into her : unbounded is her joy. .. . Praise i> in all hi r gab - upon her walls, And in her streets, and in her -pacious courts, I- heard miration. Baati rn Java there Kneels with the native of the farthest W And Ethiopia spreads abroad the hand. And worships, II> pass. 7. Behohi, I oome quickly : bless d is he thai k> epeth the say- i the projiheey of this hook. 8. And I John saw those things, and heard them. rhen I had heard and seen, I fell down to worship before the feel of the angel which showed me these things. 9. Then saith he to me, See then do it not: for I am the fellow-servant of thee, and of thy brethren the prophets, ami of tin in which ingl of this bonk : worship God. 10. And he Kith unt«> ma, Seal not the savings of the prophecy of this book: for the time is at hand. 11. He that is unjiM, let him he unju-t Mill : and lie that is filthy, let him be filthy still : and he that is righteous, lei him do righteousness f still: and he that is holy, let him be holy .still. 12. Behold,1! OOmequickly; and mv reward is with me, to give evi ry man toeording as his work shall be. 18. I am Alpha sod Omega, the beginning and the end, the firsl and the last 14. Rlooacid are they that wa-li their robes,] that they may have right to the tree of lit' . • o iUog Tutv icvtufiarwv ran' irnoprjrojv. So the critical editions n Ql rally. t faratocvvi* sreufean* 8o thi critical editions. - <\-ovtiq Tag X«c avrwv. Bo Ii _ jelli -. Wordsworth, &c., instead of the -.(«, wth; rag ivroXag avrov, //hi/ that . So the critical editions. f The icat of the textus rcceptus, after r?jc noXtuig rye ayiag, is wanting in the critical editions. OH. V. §1.1 PRESENT PLACE IE PROPHETIC CALENDAR. 225 of the Son of Man, thai the generation now alive shall very possibrj not have passed away before its fulfilment; yea that perhaps even our own eves may witness, without tlif intervention of death, that astonishing event of the con- summation ? 'The idea tails on my mind as almost incre- dible.— 'I'h'' circumstance of anticipations having been so often formed quite erroneously heretofore of the proximitj of the consummation,— for example, in the apostolic age, before the destruction of Jerusalem,1 — then during the per- secutions of Pagan Etome,1 then upon the breaking up of the old Roman Empire,3 — then at the close of the tenth century,4 — then at and after the Reformation,8 — and, still later, even by writers of our own day, — I say the circum- stance of all these numerous anticipations having been formed, and zealously promulgated, of the imminence of the Becond advent, which, notwithstanding, have by the event itself been shown to be unfounded, strongly tends to con- firm us in our doubts and incredulity. — Yet to rest in scepticism simply and altogether upon such grounds would be evidently bad philosophy. For these are causes that would operate always: and that would make us be saying, up tn the very eve and moment of the advent, " Where is the promise of his coming?" Besides that, if we throw ourselves back into the times immediately preceding Christ's first advent, it will be easy to see that there would then have been fully as much ground for scepticism with regard to the imminence of that equally momentous event, just be- fore its occurrence.6 Our true wisdom is to test each link of the chain of evidence by which we have been led to our conclusion, and see whether it will bear the testing; — to examine into the causes of previous demonstrated errors on the subject, and see whether we avoid them ; — finally, to consider whether the signs of the times now present be in all the sundry points that prophec) points out so peculiar, as altogether to warrant a measure of confidence in our in- ference such BS Was never warranted before. And certainly, on doing this, it does seem to me that tnv Vol i. ]>. 64. k V.,1. i. pp. 224, 228—231. VoLLpp, » 8w ib. 470— 472 3a \ t. ii. pp. 136" 145. " r by me >m thi-* mbjeet of comparison in the App mJix. YuL. IV. 1J 226 conclusion. [part VI. the grounds of our conclusion are stable. For let us look backward over the path we have travelled; and, in rapid retrospective review, call to mind the evidence, step by step, on which our argument has proceeded. A review which now, on revising this Work for its 5th Edition, we can make with all the advantage of those who have had the evidence investigated again and again by antagonistic ex- positors; its links tested; and every possible flaw sought out. Can we then well have erred in our explanation of the primary part of the Apocalyptic Prophecy, i. e. its six first Seals ? — Let it be remembered, to begin, how, as we first took the Book in hand, the evidence of its apostolic, and so divine authorship, alike internal and external, imprest itself on our minds as clear and irrefragable : and conse- quently the inference that it ought to be judged of and explained as a divine Book, and after the analogy of other similarly divine and similarly constructed prophecies. Which being the case, and the analogy of Daniel's sym- bolic and orderly constructed prophecies (by far the nearest parallels in Scripture) enforcing an explanation with refer- ence to the future fortunes of the great worldly empires connected with God's Church, commencing from the date of St. John's receiving the prophetic revelation, — i. e. we saw clearly, from near the end of Domitian's reign, A.D. 95 or 96, — could we well be wrong in supposing pre- sumptively that the fortunes and grand mutations of the Roman empire, then standing in its glory, (the 4th of Daniel's four great prophetic empires,) were likely to be the subjects of the primary Apocalyptic figurations ? I say the mutations thenceforward commencing, accordantly with the Danielic precedent : especially as the revealing angel's own words, " I will now show thee what is to happen after these things," (the things then present,) taken in their most natural sense, seemed expressly to indicate such a speedily following commencement. — And, if such were the reasonable presumption apriori, was the evidence slight, or insufficient, on which we concluded that the figurations of the first six Apocalyptic Seals did answer very exactly to the Roman empire's chief seras of change and progress from Domitum to Constantine ? cil. V. $ l.j PRESENT PLACI in PB IPHRTIG CALENDAR. 0^7 Let me stop here and particularise a little; as these Seals were the introduction and key to the whole Commentary. In regard then of the jour first Seals it will not be fop- gotten how the horse (the prominent emblem in each) ap- peared to he a most lit symbol of the martial Koman em- pire, jusl analogically with the ram in Han. viii. lor Persia, ami he-goat tor Maeedon ; especially as, besides being the war-horse, it was an animal sacred to the Romans' reputed father Mars: and how its successive colours of white, red, black, and Uvid pale, considered conjunctively with the a sociated riders of the respective horses, and with the ex- planatory remarks in each case accompanying, seemed to !>;■ just the fittest hues also to depict the chief subsequent successive phases of the empire, such as they might well strike a philosophic eve, marking cause as well as effect, as new principles appeared developed in it, for good or for evil. Thus, 1st, came the white prosperous aera under the how-hearing Cretic dynasty of Nerva, Trajan, and the Antoninea ; with triumphs the most signal marking its commencement, and triumphs hard-bought but as signal marking its close : (alike the " went forth conquering," and the added "to conquer:") an eera begun on Domitiaifs death, within a year from the time of St. John's seeing the visions in Patmos; and continued for some eighty years and more, till a little after the succession of the second Antoninc's son Commodus : — then, 2ndly, an BBra red with the blood of civil strife, under a sword-hearing succession oi military usurpers ; begun with the murder of Commodus, or a little before it, and continued far onward, with other superadded principles of evil soon commingling, the sub- jects of the two next Seals: — Srdly, the black phase of im- poverishment by fiscal oppression, under the balance -hear ■- ing administrators of the civil government, the necessary result of prolonged military usurpation and civil wars; be- gun from the marked epoch of Caraealla's Edict; and continued onwards, with ever-increased internal wasting, together with the evil that preceded and caused it :-— 1-thlv, the sera of mortality under GaHienus, when all the four ncies of destruction •particularized in the Apocalypse, nee, ami wild beasts, in meet Bequel to 228 conclusion. [part VI. the evils of the two preceding Seals, appeared let loose upon the empire, not to be withdrawn till the completed restoration by Diocletian : an aera compared by Niebnhr with that of the black death in the European middle age ; and when, as Gibbon says, " the ruined empire seemed to approach the last and fatal moment of its dissolution." — It will be remembered, as suggested by this citation and re- ference, that the seras were marked out, and their pictur- ings ready drawn to our hands, in such singular agreement with the successive Apocalyptic figurations, by the best and most philosophic historians of the Roman empire, Gibbon, Montesquieu, Sismondi, Niebuhr. Nor will my readers forget how many curious antiquarian as well as historical points came into question, in the Roman explanation of the symbols of these four Seals ; — the horse, crown, dia- dem, bow, sword, balance, notices of corn, wine, and oil from the throne, and various colours of the horse, all in a fixed chronological succession and order. Altogether above twenty points for testing : and not one, on testing it, has failed. Could this be mere chance ? And this strikes me much in my present review of the evidence, after all its siftings, that I only did not do justice to my subject originally ; and that the evidence for the four Seals, as here expounded, was stronger and more complete than I had primarily represented it. In the 1st Seal the measure of the second Antonine's success was at first not adequately stated : resulting as his wars did in the restor- ation of the empire to the full measure of its eastward limits as extended by Trajan ; but which Hadrian, from motives of policy, had voluntarily for a while contracted. In the 2nd Seal the sword-bearing rider had been explained too exclusively of the Praetorian Prefects : whereas as much the prophetic symbol, as the facts of history, required a reference to the military body and its commanders gener- ally, as the cause of the evils figured under that Seal. In the 3rd it was fairly argued by an opponent that the larger chcenix first taken by me was not the common chcenix, and therefore objectionable. But, on further inquiry, it appeared that the idea which drove me to the larger chce- nix of the Apocalyptic price of wheat not suiting the sera cil.v.^l.j PRESENT PLACE in PEOPHETIC CALENDAR. 229 of Alexander Severus, to which my theory referred it. it' construed of the smaller and more common ohcenix, was a mere mistake on m\ own part : the value of the denarius having at that ssra been bo reduced by deterioration of the Buver, that the price specified did then suit the lesser and common chosnix, cot the uncommon and larger.1 Once more, in the ktfa Sea] there was the difficulty arising out of the limitation of the evils of war, famine, pestilence, and wild beasts to the fourth part of the earth, according to the received reading of the Greek text : whereas in the historic rera supposed to correspond with the Seal those evils were extended over the whole [Ionian earth or empire. But, while the fact of the whole horse appearing under the livid hue of dissolution, and not its fourth part only, seem- ed on the very face of the symbol inconsistent with any such limitation as the explanatory words in question at- tached to it, the reading in Jerome's Vulgate of "four parts" instead of "fourth part " (a reading verified by my- self in the best MS. extant of Jerome, and which in Greek differs from the received by but one letter, and is support- ed too by other early Versions) was found not only to rectify the internal inconsistency, but to offer a new and striking similarity between the prophecy and the historic era to which I referred it : seeing that in the Senate's very address to Claudius, the first of the restoring emperors alter ( rallienus, the empire was spoken of as then separated by military usurpers into three grand divisions of the West, East, and North, besides the central division of 1 taly and Africa:1 a memorable division into four which was per- petuated soon after, authoritatively and constitutionally, by Diocletian. So as to the four first Smls. And then, as the next or .">/// Seal figured a most striking scene of Christian martyrs, under persecution BS was Stated, of the then existing powers of the Roman world, so the next page of history exhi- bited the martyr-scenes of the Diocletianic persecution, an BSra called emphatically the .}■],-, i of Martyrs. And. as the ('>/// Seal, in its priman figuration, exhibited in ditler- 1 On the spveral points horc mentioned I most beg the reader t>> n I r to troTt well ;i- to the bodj "i the Work, in my Let Vol . 2 Tollio's Claudius, Cli. 4.— Sue my VoL i. pp. 201. 230 conclusion. [part VI. cut but equally striking symbols the passing away of the whole previously established political heaven, and its chief luminaries or powers, not without the accompaniment of rout and terror on their part before the anger of the Lamb, the crucified One, — so the next page of history recorded the extraordinary fact of the dissolution, very soon after, of the whole political system of Roman Paganism, not without defeat after defeat of the imperial champions of Paganism before the standard of the cross ; a revolution begun after Diocletian's abdication under Constantine, and completed, some 70. years after, under Theodosius. — To the objection of the Seal's speaking of the great day of Christ's wrath having come, as if fixing the scene to a prefigu ration of the final judgment-day, a sufficient answer seemed given in the examples of other and earlier prophecies, descriptive notoriously of temporal revolutions, yet couched in similar phrase and figure: while to any counter-scheme, explaining it of the judgment-day, there stood opposed the impossibil- ity of any literal construction of the Seal's symbols, so as of the judgment-day's physical convulsions, the absence from them of both conflagration and resurrection, and the na- ture too of the next following figuration in the self-same 6th Seal : one which, though expressly defined as succeed- ing to the figuration previous, did yet exhibit the sky and the earth and earth's inhabitants as all again visible ; and tempests of judgment as preparing against them. — Nor, again, can I help viewing it as a most strong and re- markable confirmation to my theory of the Seals, that that which I may venture to say no other explanation has solved, — I mean the fact of those tempests appearing in vision prepared and suspended, connectedly and synchroni- cally with figurations not only of the sealing of the elect ones out of the tribes of Israel, but of the palm-bearers to entering on the beatific vision, though without any change to blessedness correspondent^ on the earth, — I say that this otherwise inexplicable particular, should have proved on our theory to have the most simple and most complete solu- tion in the doctrinal revelation made to Augustine, (John's genuine descendant in the true Apostolic succession,) re- specting both the election of grace out of the professing ell. v § I.] PRESENT 1M,\< I IN PROPHETIC CALENDAR. ~^1 Church oi Israel,1 and their final perseverance through grace, even until brought to the beatific vision : — a doctrinal reve- lation made to him at the very epoch of Theodoeius' death, just before the bursting of the tempests of Gothic desola- tion <>n the Roman empire; and of which the religious influence was such for ages afterwards, thai the highest kind of philosophy of history would have been positively wanting, had this revelation nof been then some way de- picted. Of which moral philosophy of the Apocalypse, however, 1 shall here say nothing, as it will come up for consideration in a later part of this Chapter. Only, while glancing retrospectively at the historic evidence of our ex- position of the past, let this concomitant moral evidence never be forgotten. Having dwelt thus at large on the evidence of the six first Seals. as being tin' introduction and key to the whole Apocalyptic prophecy, it is not my purpose, nor does there seem to me need, to dwell with at all the same particularity on that of my subsequent expositions of the Apocalyptic Hook. If we be deemed to have advanced thus far in our exposition satisfactorily, we shall scarcely he judged by any one to have cried ill explaining the six first of that Trum- pet-septenary of visions which evolves the /th Seal, as ful- filled in the successive irruptions and woes of the Goths, Saracen-, and Turks. — In respect however of the four first i, Ihic flrumpets, let it not be forgotten how notable was the tripartite division of the empire, that we thought alluded to in the there figured third of the earth, sea, rivers, and heavenly luminaries, — the Western empire's ww-third : and how. as the last of the four exhibited the eclipse of the u;o- verning lights over one-third of the Roman world, so the re- sult of the Gothic and Vandal desolations, by land and sea, was the extinction of the Western Empire. — Then, as regards the scorpion-locusts of the 5 th Trumpet, interpreted of the Sar we may remember how Btriking seemed the evi- dence in proof of our correctness, alike in the Arabian cha- racter <>f all the various animal symbols, and figured origin- ation of those symbols out of the smoke of the bottomless pit, as if with the accompaniment of some falsi and cruel 1 I --.icl Icing so construed ace »rd oalogy of the Ap 232 CONCLUSION. [part VI. religion emanating from the pit of hell, just such as Mahom- medism : — also, in regard of the (jth Trumpet plague of lion-like horses from the Euphrates, how we saw proof of its fulfilment in the Turk*, alike from its apparently implied connexion with the plague of the previous Trumpet, from the symbols of both fire, smoke, and sulphur from the horses' mouths, and heads with injuring power attaching to their tails; also from their declared destiny, after a certain singu- larly defined period, (a mode of definition which was shown to be used by Turks, but of which I have seen no exemplifi- cation in the history of any other people,) of slaying the third of men, or Eastern division of Roman Christendom. — After which, and that plain literal statement as to the continued persistence in idolatries, fornications, thefts, murders, sor- ceries, of those who had not been politically slain by these plagues, viz. the countries as it seemed of Western Chris- tendom,— a characteristic of them to the truth of which the Turkish Sultan's own edict after the capture of Constanti- nople lent, we saw, its most striking testimony, — there came that graphic prefigu ration of the Reformation, with a syn- chronic sketch of the two sackcloth-robed witnesses' history down to their death and resurrection, given retrospectively by the Angel of the Reformation, which must be fresh in the minds of my readers : and of which the evidence, as I myself look back at it, does appear to me to be the most- complete and satisfactory. Truly may I say, after most carefully reviewing it, that I do not think any history of the Reformation can be shown which traces more exactly according to truth the main steps and epochs, external and internal, in the history of that great revolution : from its commencement in Luther's first discovery of Christ as the justification and righteousness of his people, to its establish- ment, with its now purified Churches, (the pafirios of earthly princes, as well as voice from God authorizing them,) in many countries of Christendom: more especially in the tenth kingdom of Papal Christendom, thenceforward Protestant England; and the "seven chiliads," thenceforth the Dutch Protestant United Provinces. — All this under the second half of the 6th Trumpet, or Turkish woe ; just accord- ing to the Apocalyptic figuration. And then next according (II. V. § 1.] PRESENT PLACE l\ PROPHETIC CALENDAR. 233 to prophecy, and next according to the history, the second or Turkish woe, we saw. past away: ami. as in fulfilment of the /Mi Trumpet's Bounding, and its earthquake, there occurred thai grand event of modern times, the French Re- volution.0 So as to the primary Beries of visions, depicted, I eon- reive, on the inner side of the Apocalyptic scroll. And as an intended parallelism with them was evident (even as it* depicted correspondent ly on the Scroll's outside) of the sup- plemental and retrogressive series in Apoc. \ii., xiii., con- cerning the sackcloth-robed Witnesses' slaver, the BEAST prom the A.BT88, and his reign lor tin1 same L260 days' period as their prophesying in sackcloth, — so too we saw the parallelism of the events of this new series with those of the former, when explained, on the year-day system, of the Popes and Popedom, down to th" primary end of those L260 days at the same great epoch of the French Revolu- tion. At the same time that in the particular symboliza- tions contained in this subsidiary Part of the Prophecy, viz. those of the ten-horned Beast itself, its chief minister the two-horned Beast, and the lmacjc of the Beast, — explain- ed respectively of the Papal Ehnpire, Papal Priesthood, and Papal Councils, together with the symbolized name ami number of the Beast, construed accordantly with Iren- aMis' early teaching as Latemos, then1 were found tens and twenties of particulars wherein to compare the symbols and the supposed things symbolized ; and, I think, a fitting proved between them, one after another, unequivocally. The extraordinary medallic evidence respecting the diadem as adopted by Roman Emperors just at the time that it was bo applied in the prefigurative vision Apoc. xii. 8, and adopted also by the ten Gothic kings just at the time that they are in the next following vision of Apoc. xiii. 1, de- picted :is on the Beast's ten horns, cannot but have greatly Btruck each candid and intelligent reader. Thus it was by a continuous double chain of evidence, from St. John's time downward, each with multitudinous links, that we were brought to identify the epoch of the 7th Trumpet's sounding with that of the great French Revolu- tion in 1790. And still the same continued double line "I 234 conclusion. [part VI. proof led us onward, yet further, to fix our present position as but just a little before the consummation : 1— it being in the one series, after the outpouring of the previous Vials in the wars of the French Revolution, near upon the close of the 6th Vial, with its drying up of the Turkman Euphra- tean flood, and the going forth coincidently of three spirits of delusion over the earth, such as are even now recognizable, to gather men to the battle of the great God, or perhaps indeed at the opening of the 7th Vial ; — in the other series under the second or third of the three flying Angels, with their voices of gospel-preaching and anti-papal warning, sueh as the world is even now hearing, (the temple or gos- pel-Church being meanwhile all opened to the world, so as never before,)2 just before the last judgments of the harvest and the vintage. — Which being so, and when we find the long double line of such various evidence thus combining to fix our position at the advanced point where I have placed it, — and, on considering the evidence retrospectively, not as advocates or partizans, but as simple searchers for truth on the great matter in question, can discern no flaw or chasm therein, to vitiate or render it imperfect, — it seems to me reason's dictate that we should bow to its strength and con- sistency, and acknowledge that such our advanced position in the prophetic calendar seems indeed, in all probability, to be the very fact. With regard to the mistaken views as to the nearness of the consummation entertained in other times, and by other expositors of prophecy, the several causes of mistake are for the most part obvious ; and also that they are such as cannot, or do not, affect the grounds of our present con- clusion. The patristic expositors, living early as they did in the Christian sera, had no long continuous chain of his- toric events before them ; such as was essentially needed, in order to the right interpretation of the Apocalypse as a continuous prophecy. If they interpreted it at all, they 1 Or, rather, as close upon the secondary and complete ending of the 12G0 days' prophecy; but with the reserve, as will be presently shown, of the additional 75 days of Dan. xii., following very possibly still after that epoch, and constituting in fact the "time of the end." 2 Just as prefigured Apoc. xi. 19, xv. 5. CH.V.^l.l PBE8BNT PLA.C1 IN PROPHETIC CALENDAR. 235 could only generalise, agreeably with their general and vague anticipations of the future: chiefly with reference to the predicted Antichrist ; who. they knew, \\;is to come on the dissolution of the Roman Empire, but whose dura- tion (on their day-day system) they mistakingly limited to 1260 days.1 So thai thej altogether lacked t lie Apoca- lyptic land-marks, which would have shown them how much yet remained of the voyage before the harbour could be gained ; and made an error of reckoning, which we can he in no danger of repeating. — The same causes would have operated, in a measure, to prevent a perception of the truth, through the earlier half of the dark middle ages, had there been then enough of intellectual energy and research (which there was not) really to investigate Scripture pro- phecy : besides which Augustine's error respecting the Millennium. — an error detailed in my 3rd preceding Chap- ter.-' and which descended to them from him with almost the authority of inspiration, — engendered that erroneous expectation of the immediate imminence of the judgment- day at the close of the tenth century, to which 1 have more than once made allusion/'' — After the glorious Reformation, though alike by the application of the Apocalyptic emblems of the Beast and Babylon to the Papacy and Papal Rome, by the adoption of the year-day Bystem, and by discoveries in clearer and clearer light of the part thai the Gothic Saracenic and Turkish woes had in the prophecy, a vast advance was made in prophetic intelligence, and elements brought into existence for sounder views as to the future, — yet stdl from the times of Luther, the Magdeburgh Centu- riators, and Poxe, down to those successively of Brightman and Mede, Vitringa and Daubuz, and Sir Isaac and Bishop Newton, many chasms remained unsupplied, and important date- uncertified, in Apocalyptic interpretation: more espe- cially because, as Sir I. Newton observed with character- istic sagacity/ there remained unfulfilled in history the lasl predicted revolution, answering to the seventh Trumpet ; an event essentia] to the confirmation of some most import- VoL iii [> " pp. 130, 113 supra. ■ Vol. i. p. 17" 1 "The time i me f"r understanding tin-'- propheciee perfectly, i- :i ruMjlution predicted in then ii not \> t come to pats." Pit i p. lo. 23 G conclusion. [part VI. ant points of interpretation, and determination of others. So that what wonder if many mistaken anticipations were still formed and published, antedating the time of the end? — Nor, even after that Trumpet had had (as it is conceived) its marked fulfilment in the French Revolution, were those causes of error by any means all removed. It necessarily took some time ere the mind of the investigator could calmly survey and judge of that great event. There was in England, (the only country in which religious truth and inquiry then had favour,) both at the outburst of the French Revolution, and for many years after it, a lament- able deficiency of learning and research ; such as was needed to draw out the evidence, and argue accurately from it, on the probabilities of the future. On many important points in the Apocalyptic prophecy there still rested great obscurity : especially, I may say, on the Seals, the Sealing Vision, the whole Vision of the rainbow -circled Angel of the tenth Chapter, the death and resurrection of the Wit- nesses, the seventh and eighth Heads of the Beast, and the very form and structure of the prophecy itself Hence, by necessary consequence, even among them that held to the Protestant and year-day principle of explanation, there was such variety and contrarieties of opinion respecting them, that much, very much, remained evidently wanting, ere a complete and satisfactory explanation of that which related to the past could be given: and consequently ere we could be prepared to form a fit judgment from it, with any great confidence, as to our own actual place in the prophecy, and the nearness of the great future consummation. — It is the author's hope and belief that, in some considerable mea- sure, this has now been done : and, as before said, a con- tinuous historical exposition given of the Apocalypse, on evidence irrefragable, and without a chasm or lacuna of importance unexplained, up to the present time. Whether this be so, or not, the reader will judge for himself. But, •if it be, then it is evident that the most influential cause of former mistakes concerning the coming future must be considered as now done away with ; and a vantage ground established for judging correctly respecting it, such as did not exist before. CH.V. § 1 .] PRE8ENT IM.\< I in PROPHETIC CALENDAR. 287 In the arrangement of the great calendar of prophecy, and the adjustment of our own position on it, whether nearer to the final end or less near, it is evident that the chronological predictions (I mean those which involve chro- nological periods) must needs demand our most particular attention. — First and foremost in importance is the memor- able prophecy of the 1260 years of the Beast or Anti- christ, six times repeated in the Apocalyptic vision, under one or other variety of formula, and three in Daniel. This measures the Beast's reign, in recognized supremacy over the Roman Empire, during its last divided and apostatized state ; or rather the reign of the Beast's last Head, Anti- christ. And we have seen that, with the reflected light of that grand illustrative event of our latter day thfi French Revolution, the primary and imperfect commencement, and primary and imperfect end, of the period may be deemed to have been fixed, on strong probable evidence, to about the years A.D. 531 and 1791 respectively, at just 1260 years' interval : the one the epoch of Justinian's decree and code, which was a virtual imperial recognition of the Pope's supremacy, in his then assumed character of Christ's Vicar, or Antichrist ; l the other that of the French revolutionary outbreak, and new legal code, which gave to the Pope's an- tichristian supremacy and power a deadly blow throughout Western Christendom.2 At the same time that the fall and complete commencement of the period appeared on strong and peculiar historic evidence (specially that of the then risen ten diademed Romano-Gothic Papal horns) to have about synchronized with the epoch of Phocas' decree A.D. 006; and the corresponding epoch of end with the year I860.3 — We also saw more lately that in the last of his pro- phecies Daniel appended to what seemed to be the same period of the 1260 years yet a further addition of 30 and 45, or conjointly of 75 years, as if still to intervene before the times of blessedness.4 And hence the very important 1 Si e Vol. iii. pp. 208—301, with the references. 2 See Vol. iii. 395—408. 1 - Vol. iii. pp. 302—304. 3 an. 112 Bupra. — I say siemed, because of the peculiar ambiguities and diffi- culties of thai last prophecy. Alike, however, a priori probabilities, and the analogy of the 70 year-' predicted rabylonian captivity, (see Vol iii. 299,) sofaTonr the idea of there being some such di finitely extended time vf the end, that 1 can myself f< 1 1 any doubt on the matter. 238 conclusion. [part VI. question whether these additional years are to be measured from the epoch of primary imperfect ending about A.D. 1791; or from that of full and perfect ending in 18G6.1 Now in favour of the first hypothesis there is, 1st, the ob- vious and striking fact of 75 years being just the very in- terval between 1791 and 18GG, the epoch of the primary ending and epoch of complete ending of the 12G0 years. Again, 2ndly, just as at 30 years there is a break in Daniel's 75 years' period, as if marking an epoch of importance in it, so at 30 years from 1790 there has been found to occur an epoch both prophetically and historically of importance: — the end of the long line of 2300 years in Dan. viii., cal- culated from B.C. 480, as the epoch of the emblematic Persian ram's highest acme of conquering power, there pre- cisely falling in, at the year 1820 ; the which was to mark apparently the destined commencement of the fall of the Perso-succeeding oppressors of Greece and Palestine ; and the prophecy's fulfilment being markedly realized, we saw, in the rapid fearful decay of Turkman power from the year 1820. 2 — 3. Yet again, on the 75 years' period (so calculated) advancing still 45 years further onward, to its ending in 18GG, it about falls in with the termination of G000 years from the Creation, as calculated by a late eminent chronologer, Mr. Fynes Clinton, {one statement excepted^ from the mundane chronology of the Hebrew SS. : in other words, synchronizes at that chronological point, accord- ing to the Hebrew chronology, with the opening epoch of the world's seventh millenary ; and therefore, according to the primitive Church's expectation, not perhaps, as we saw, without apostolic sanction for it,4 with that of the com- mencement of the sabbatism of rest promised to the saints of God.5 — On the other hand there is this obvious and strong primary presumption in favour of the measurement of the 75 years of the time of the end from the epoch of complete 1 See Vol. iii. pp. 302—304. 2 See Vol. iii. pp. 445—447. s " And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month Zif, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the Lord." This will of course be commented on in the Paper on the subject in my Appendix. * See p. 190 supra. 5 This will be unfolded in a Taper in the Appendix. I'll. V. f I.] PRESENT PLACE IN PROPHETIC CALENDAR. 289 ending, in ls(»r>, thai it is the most natural There is do reason why 30 yean onward there should nol be some im- portant epoch of break in the /"> years' time of the end, thence measured. Ami again, as regards the Hebrew Mundane Chronology though decided to prefer its authority to that of the Septuagini Greek SS., we must still remember thai there are certain breaks and dubious points in it on which an approximation Only Can be offered: besides q de- parture from the Hebrew in that famous passage of I Kings vi. 1, to which allusion was just made,1 and by departure from which .Mr. F. C. brings the end of the 6000th millennarv to an earlier close by near 100 years than it would be otherwise. A very similar measure of dubiousness, let me add ere passing ,ni. attends the question of the terminating epoch of Nebuchadnezzar 8 seven years of bestial degradation} sup- posing that transaction (as I cannot but do3) to have been symbolic of the heathenish degradation, and aberration from God, of the four great mundane empires of which he was thou the representative; the seven //car* having in such case to be construed, on the year-day principle, as a period of 2520 years, lor, according as it is measured from the cognate Assyrian king's first invasion of the sacred land of Judea, or from the rise of the independent Babylonian empire LOO years later, the tei'iniimting epoch will either fall about the tune of the French Revolution A.D. 1791, or somewhat later than the close of the present cen- Note»». 238. • Dan. it. If not symbolic, wherefore tho so expressly noted bandot iron and - stamp : metals these symbolic of Greece and Rome, aa we know, in the prengsxation <>t' Dan, ii. ?— The figure is somewhat otherwise applied by Oowper to the wretchedness and ruined hopes of a prisoner ; like the visionary emblem seen By him of Babylon, lift standi a -tump ; And BUetted about with hoops of l>ni-s Still lives, though all his pleasant boughs are gone. The close relationship between the Assyrian and Babylonian Empires ia Dotorious. So e. g. I . lli-t. v. s; ■* 1 01 1 penes, afedoaqm et Perns, orient kgain,the Christian expositor TJnodoret on Dan, ii. says; "The head is not Nebochadnestaz himself; but the entire kingdom of the A • And -. too holy ss. Itself. Jer.1.17; "Israel is a a irtered sheep; the lions hare driven him away : tir-t the King of Assyria liath deToured him; last this . King of Babylon, hath broken his born 240 CONCLUSION. [part VI. tury. And I must say that the fact of these various pro- phetic periods thus travelling, as they are alike found to do, to a close within, or nearly within, the century now current, from their several sources more or less remote in the depth of antecedent ages, much impresses my own mind, as confirmatory of the conclusion of our being near the time of the end, which was primarily deduced by me from the evidence simply of the Apocalyptic prophecy. Like as the convergency of many lines of road to a geo- graphical centre indicates that centre to be the place of some important and mighty city, so the convergency of these several chronological lines to an ending within, or nearly within, the present century, now above one- half run out, seems to mark this century as the aera of closing crisis, big with momentous issues as to the des- tinies of the world. From which chronological evidence, if we turn to that of the signs of the times, we shall find in them the strongest corroborative evidence of our being near the time of the end; yet not so as to decide the comparatively minute point respecting the 75 years of Daniel. Let us dwell a little fully on them. They are signs which have drawn atten- tion, not from prophetic students only, but from the man of the world, the philosopher, the statesman ; and made not a few even of the irreligious and unthinking to pause and reflect. — Thus there is, 1st, the drying up, still ever going forward, of the Turkman Mahommedan power, or mystic flood from the Euphrates : — 2. the interest felt by Protestant Christians for the conversion and restoration of Israel ; an interest unknown for eighteen centuries, but now strong, fervent, prayerful, extending even to royalty itself, and answering precisely to that memorable prediction of the Psalmist, " Thou shalt arise and have mercy upon Zion, for the time to favour her, yea the set time, is come ; for thy servants think upon her stones, and it pitieth them to see her in the dust : " ' — 3. the universal preaching of 1 Psalm cii. 13, 14. — The general political emancipation of the Jews is a sign too very observable. As the Jews in Pagan times had to pay tribute to Rome's Pa- gan worship, so too, subsequently, to Rome's Papal idolatrous worship. (See my H I AC K A M SI,, .with; ili. . ..i■-: ..I Hi. , I,..- 1 IVophetic fario'di CH. V. | 1.] PE181NT PLACB in PROPHBTIG c\i,immk. 241 Mr Gospel over the urorld, agreeably with Christ's own command;1 that Bign of which Augustine said, that could we hut Bee //, we might indeed think the time of the (•onsuniinatioii at hand:' and of which the result has been such that already, one might almost Bay, tro- phies of the enlightening and converting power of t he gospel have been gathered OUt of every nation and kindred and people and tongue, agreeably with the Bong of the blessed at the consummation, heard anticipatively by St. John in the Apocalyptic vision of the palm-bearers : — 1. the marked political ascendancy before the whole world, alike Heathen, Mahommedan, and Jewish, of the chief na- tions of the old Roman earth, i. e. professing Christendom, and ever-increasing political, scientific, and commercial in- tercourse, "many running to and fro, and knowledge being increased ;"! such as to force the eyes of all nations on this same Roman earth, as (conjointly at least with the mighty oilshoot from England of the American United States) the central focus alike of commerce, science, and political power : — 5thly, and connectedly, the outgoing thence almost as universally among them of religious Christian and Antichristian missions, under the protection and auspices respectively of the chief Roman Catholic and Protestant European powers; the Romish and Antichristian full of zeal and bitterness ; and with conflict already so begun against Protestant evangelic missions and Bible-circulation, as to have forced the attention of Jews, Heathens, and Mahom- medans to the grand subject of the Lord's controversy with Roman Anti-Christendom, and to be preparing them (almost VoL i. p. ~>7, Note'.) In IS 4S the Marquis Azeglio published an interesting Me- moir OH the Oppression of the Jews at Bome and in Italy. And in that same year i was abolished; and the Pope hunsi It' attended to tee the gate of the Ghetto, or quarter of Jewish insolation, broken down wen in Borne. Only however for the brief period till the Pop< '- restoration by French bayonets! ' Murk xvi. 15. - Bpisl to II' -y. inn-, numbered L97,in the late Paris Benedictine Edition, Tom. ii. col. 11<>7; " Oppnrtunitas vero illius temporis (so. tinis hujus SSCUli et adven- tii- Domini) non aril antequam prmdioetur Brangelium inunvrerso orbe in testi- monium omnibus gentibns. Anertuarima enim de hac re Legitur sententia Salvato- ris, Matt wiv. 14. . . . Undo -i jam nobis oertissime nuntiatum fuisset in omnibus jrentibus Brangelium prsdicari, nee tic possemus dicere quantum ttmporit remanen t usque ad tin' ni ; sed M '- mtrito dieeremui" J I)an. xii. 4. Bow i itraordinary in this respect are the effects, even already, of the late golden dii ma. Australia, and elsewhere ] How extraordinary the late opening of both China and Japan alike to Christian and antichristian pri aching] vul. IT. 10 242 CONCLUSION. [part VI. as by providential voice1) for being intelligent spectators of its tremendous issue : — and this the more, Gtlily, because of yet other two spirits of religious delusion having also gone forth of late to deceive men, in power and influence quite extraordinary ; which, conjunctively with the one before mentioned, answer well, in respect both of character and of time, to the three spirits like frogs from out of the mouths of Dragon Beast and False Prophet, (or spirits of infidelity, popery, and priestcraft,) that, after the drying up had begun of the Euphratean waters, were to gather the powers of the earth together to the war of the great day of God Al- mighty ; - all the great hostile dramatis personce of the history of Christendom thus coming on the stage before the drama's consummation : — 7. the revolutionary internal heavings of the European nations, alike with infidel and democratic agitation, accordantly with Christ's and the apostles' descriptions of the latter days ; and their prepar- ation for deadly conflict, with new and increased powers of destruction, of which the extraordinary outbreaks of 1848 in half the countries of Western Europe may have been but the prelibation. — Such, I say, is the combination of signs of the times even now visible ; signs predicted more or less clearly in Scripture prophecy, as signs wrhich were to pre- cede the end. At the same time some signs are still wanting, even as I revise this a 5th time in 1861 : — especially the non-ga- thering as yet of the Jews to Palestine; and predicted troubles consequent : — whence a further presumption in favour of the later allocation of Daniel's concluding 75 years. Supposing them at length added, and that the other signs already begun continue manifest as before, and perhaps even yet more strikingly, so as to arrest the attention of the whole world, (including a completed exposure of the seven-hilled Harlot, so as in Apoc. xvii.,) they will altogether surely well answer to the symbol of the Angel standing in the sun, announcing the great day of Christ's judgment against his enemies as imminent, even at the doors. 1 " He shall call to the heavens from above, and to the earth, that he may judge his people. . . . He hath called the earth from the rising of the sun unto the going down thereof." Psalm 1. 1, 4. 2 bee my Part v. Ch. 9. CH. ▼.$£.] B0MI8B PHILOSOPHY. 01 BISTORT. 249 It is to be understood, in adjusting this alternative allo- cation of the ?•*> years to the Apocalyptic prophecy, that if it prove that thf\ are to !><• measured irom the primary and imperfect ending of the 1260 years in 1791 they will answer to the whole period of the ripooalytic seven vials : if from the second ana complete end of the L 260 years in L866, then they will answer simply and alone to the 83ra of the 7th Vial. § '1. The Application. But if it be so, then the solemn question suggests itself, In what spirit and manner may we best prepare to meet this coming future? The thought of the nearness of the consummation is of itself unspeakably awakening and solemn ; and the rather when we consider further that there is to be expected antecedently a time of sifting and trial, such as perhaps has never yet been experienced. For our Christian Poet's exquisite language1 does by no means adequately express the probable severity of the coming crisis. Ere the sabbatism of the saints begins, Bomethine much more is to be looked for than the mere gusty closing blasts of a long tempest, or billowy heavings of the Bea before a calm, as "it works itself to rest." The final conflict between Christ's true Church and Antichrist, and their respective chiefs and supporters, both visible and in- visible, seems set forth in prophecy as most severe. As a nation, as a church, as individuals, how may we best prepare to meet it? And here it is that the moral of the Apocalyptic pro- phecy, its moral philosophy of the history of Ckristendom, if I may so call it, becomes unspeakably valuable. We have elsewhere had the philosophy of the same history i " Tl|. ROam of Nature ill this nether world, Which heaven has heard tor a he convinced how eminently, on such an idea of it, there attaches the highest kind of philosophic character to the historic prefigurationa of the Apocalypse.6 It is in the application of the principle that the marked contrast appears between these and Schlegel's sketches. Nor, I think, can I better place the moral lessons of this holy book in relief and distinctness before the reader, than by setting forth its 1 Schlc'fl is very strong in his statements on this point. So Lect. xv. p. 199; '•That man oni ■. • the whole magnitude of the power permitted t<> tli*- wicked principle, according to the inscrutable decrees of Goo, from the out Cain, and the sign of that curse in its unimpeded transmission through all the . . (Use religions of heathenism, — all the ages of extreme moral corruption, and eternally repeated and ever increasing prime,.. is alone capable id' understanding the great phenomena of universal history, in their often strange and dark complexity." 2 This is Bchlegel'a third principle, (the other two being God's all-ruling and re- ,■;,/< nee, and the Evil Spirit' i power of tempting to evil,) of which the --eiiii.il to Ihe philosophy of history, ii. 300. He says, p. 197 ; to Without this freedom of choice in man, . . this faculty of determining between t ho divine impulse and the suggestions of the Spirit of Kvii. there would lie n<, history ; and without a faith in such principle there could lie no philosophy of history." At p. 247, Vol. i„ after noticing CondoTcefs theory of tin- endless perfectibility of man, as the UberaKem of historic philosophy, he well adds, " Hut man't bi/it y ''/." ■ ;i\im justiee, and of God's judgments on the world, exemplified in history, h< longs undoubtedly to the province of historical philosophy." Lett. x. Vol. ii. p'. 7- 4 IMA p. ■'>■ . tin :rnind point of failure. 6 In order to a rL'ht view on these points, there is needed of OOUTSe, and quentlv required by the philosophy of history, a distmcl setting forth of what Bohli p l calls (ii. 194) uths critical points in tin- progress of human Verj much one with whit I hue stated in my Introduction, Vol. i. p, 112, as what might 1 in a divine prophecy "I the future, and what would he found in the Apo- calypse. Compare my I ridenee, pp. 226— 234 supra* 246 CONCLUSION. [rART VI. moral philosophy of history, somewhat fully, in direct con- trast with the other. The German 'philosopher then, agreeably with his reli- gious creed,1 directs himself by the Romish standard in his judgment of things that concern religion and the Church. After the first four centuries, notable for the diffusion and final triumph of Christianity over Paganism in the Roman Empire, he traces the Church visible and established (already in the West, in respect of its acknowledged head, a Romish Church) through the four centuries next following, of " a chaotic intermediate state " .between ancient and modern history,2 as if still Christ's true Church, the upholder and preserver of the Christian religion, as well as civilizer of the barbarous invading Germanic nations : — then the next three centuries, after that the tempests had subsided, the wild waters of barbarian inundation begun to flow off", and " the pure firmament of Christian faith " shone forth unclouded,3 from Charlemagne to Gregory VII and the first half of the 12th century inclusive, (a period constituting the ear- lier half of the middle age,) as " the happiest era and golden age of Christendom:"4 when "the influence of religion on public life was paramount ; " when " in Charles's project of a universal empire to embrace all civilized nations, the foundation-stone of the noble fabric of modern Christendom was laid, and all the elements of a truly Christian govern- ment and policy offered to mankind; "5 when "the princi- ples which animated society were the best and noblest and soundest;"6 when the Church, "like the all-embracing 1 Schlegel was by birth a Protestant. But in his thirty-third year, A.D. 1805, he renounced Protestantism, and embraced the Romish faith. " It was in the venerable minster at Cologne," says his translator, " that there was solemnized in the person of this illustrious man the alliance between the ancient faith and modern science of Germany." Memoir, p. xvi. — It is to be remembered that German Protestantism was then scarce anything but German Neology. 2 ii. 117. 3 Ibid. — So does Schlcgel in one sentence adopt the three Apocalyptic images of a tempest and an inundation, whereby to symbolize the great Germanic irruption, and a new Christian firmament, in place of the old Pagan political firmament. See Apoc. vi. 14, vii. 1, 2, xii. 15 : also my Vol. i. p. 253, and Vol. iii. Note ', p. 62. 4 Lect. xiii. p. 127 — 129. lie particularizes the reigns of Charlemagne, Alfred, and the first Saxon kings and emperors of Germany, "as exhibiting the paramount influ- ence of religion on public life, and constituting the happiest era, the truly golden period of our annals: " and he exemplifies, among other things, in the earlier "spi- ritual chivalry of the Templars and Knights of St. John, consecrated to warfare in the cause of God," and the chivalry of the first crusades. At p. 176, he calls the early middle age "thoroughly Christian." Gregory the Seventh too (p. 146) is the special subject of his eulogy. 5 Ibid. 124, 125. 6 Ibid. 153. OH. V. $2.1 ROMISH PHIL080PRT 01 history. ~17 vault of heaven,"1 with Its pure faith sheltered and shed kindU influence on all ; and the Papal power, Founded on and adapted lor unity, after having gTOWE up towards the end of this a-ra to unprecedented greatness, used this great power onlj so as to preserve Christianity from being lost in a multitude of sects :'•' in all which he thinks to mark tin- presence and operation of Gotfi animating Spirit, u well as k'nuUji provtdenceJ — On the other hand he traces the contemporary operation of the Evil Spirit, (the "Spirit of tint>\" as he calls it.) from after the a'ia of the over- throw of the Pagan Empire that it had previously ruled in and animated,4—] say. he traces the Kvil Spirit's operation through the B&me period in a beguiling sectarian spirit, and the religious schisms of Christendom \ including not alone the Arian schism, and the Mahomniedan schism, (for he places Mahommedanism in the same category,5) but also the iconoclastic proceedings of certain of the Greek eni- perora, (proceedings which he lauds Gregory the Second for resisting,)6 and the consequent schism between the Eastern and Western Churches. — In his sketch of the later half of the middle age, reaching from the 10th cen- tury to the Reformation, he admits the general religious deterioration of Western Christendom; particularizing the essentially false scholastic philosophy then in vogue, and the internal feuds, and contests between Church and State •? and traces the kindly operation of the Divine Spirit, ("the Paraclete promised to the Church by its divine Founder,")8 whereby Christianity was preserved, in the rise and insti- 1 Ibid. 11-5. 116. - Loot xiv. p. 183. 3 Ibid. 184. 4 •• Christianity is the cmaneipatinn of the human race from the bondage of that inimhal Spirit, who tl« • ni- -- God J ami, a- far M i* him lies, leads ill Created intelli- iy, Benee the Soriptore styles bin 'the Prinoeof this world;' and so l u in fact, but in mhM history only; when among all the nati.ni> of the earth, amid the p-'Tup of martial glory, and spleadoar of Pagan life, he had established the throat "t JUS domination. Since this divine :it;i in the history of man, . . he can no longer be called the Prinee of this world; bat the Spirit of time:" i. e. as regarding -ts," above "the thoughts and faith of eternity." Lcct. x\iii. ad tin. 1 J hid. p. 333. * "The ri?id prohibition of the retigioiis use of images was proper in those cases onlywhsrs the u-e of them was not confined to a mere derotiona] respeet, but was likely to degenerate into a rati adoration and idolatry ; and where a strict separation from Pagan nation-, and Ihsii rites, was a matter of primary importance. . . Bat now that the Hahommedan proseription of all holy emblems ami images id devotion from a d> eidedly antiehri-tian spirit, ..this I!y/anti:ie farioos war agaiosl i' and all symbols of piety, can he regarded only a- a mad contagion of the moral disease of the age." Ibid. loo. i Ibid. 173, 176,333. - Ibid, 184. 24S conclusion. [part VI. tution of the ecclesiastical mendicant orders, as men of the most perfect evangelical humility, poverty, and self-denial:1 at the same time reprobating the doctrines of the then popular opposers of the Church, viz. the Waldenses, Albi- genses, and also Wickliffe and IIuss after them, as fraught with the germs of heresy.2 — So arrived at the Reformation, he speaks of it as manifested to be a human, not divine re- formation,— by its claim of full freedom of faith,3 its rejec- tion of the traditions of the past,4 its destruction of the dignity of the priesthood, and endangering of the very found- ations of religion, through a denial of the holy sacramental mysteries,5 its adoption finally of a faith of mere negation, (so he designates it,) and severing of its Prostestant consti- tuents from the sacred centre of faith and religion, i. e. from Rome.6 Such is Schlegel's philosophic view of the history of Christendom down to the Reformation. After which he notices the religious indifferentism of spirit, and false illu- minism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, — as- cribing them very much to the influence of the Protestant principle,7 — until the tremendous political outbreak of this 1 Lect. xiv. pp. 184, 186. 2 Ibid. 187. 3 Lect. xviii. p. 334. 4 " The total rejection of the traditions of the past (here was the capital vice and error of this revolution) rendered this evil [the unhappy existing confusion of doc- trines] incurable ; and even for biblical learning, the true key of interpretation, which sacred tradition alone can furnish, was irretrievably lost." Lect. xv. p. 215. — So also at p. 228, in & passage quoted Note 6 below. 5 " The hostility of the German Reformers to the Church was of a spiritual na- ture. It was the religious dignity of the priesthood which was more particularly the object of their destructive efforts. The priesthood stands or falls with faith in the sacred mysteries : " and (these having been by the Protestant body generally re- jected) "it was not difficult to foresee that, together with faith in them, respect for the clergy must sooner or later be destroyed." Moreover " that great mystery of religion on which the whole dignity of the Christian priesthood depends, forms the simple but very deep internal key-stone of all Christian doctrine : and thus the rejec- tion or even infringement of this do^ma shakes the foundations of religion, and leads to its total overthrow." Ibid. p. 218. 6 " Had it been," he says, p. 228, a " divine reformation, it would at no time, and under no condition, have severed itself from the sacred centre and venerable basis of Christian tradition ; in order, reckless of all legitimate decisions, preceding as well as actual, to perpetuate discord, and seek in negation itself a new and pecu- liar basis for the edifice of schismatic opinion." He speaks with high approval, p. 222, of the institution of the Jesuits; as a religious order wholly dependent on the Church ; and so, and from their opposition to Protestantism, as answering to the great want of the age. 7 " Those negative and destructive principles, — those maxims of liberalism and irrcligion, which were almost exclusively prevalent in European literature daring the eighteenth century ; — in a word, Protestantism, in the comprehensive signification of that term." Lect. xviii. p. 284, 285. — So too p. 295 ; though he there allows that en. v. §0.1 ROMISH PHILOSOPH1 01 history. 249 infidel illuminisin in tln> French Revolution. Then, after a notice of the Revolution audits twenty-five yean' war "of irreligion," — " a convulsive crisis of the world which has created a might) chasm, and tin-own up B wall of separ- ation between the present age and the eighteenth cen- turv,"1 — he speaks of the late progressing revival of Roman Catholicism, as a revival of religion, more especially in the countries of France and Germany. And he finally expresses his hope of a true and complete regeneration of the age, at no great distance] of time, (though not till after a total temporary triumph of some antichristian spirit of evil,2) as the lit conclusion to the philosophy of history:3 — its essence to consist in a thorough Christianization alike of the state and of science;4 — its form to be somewhat like the per- fecting of the noble but imperfect Christian Empire of Charlemagne j 5 — its introduction to be preceded by a dis- play of tearful divine judgments,6 and indeed attended by Christ's own coming and intervention : 7 — and, with this divine reformation, and its accompanying complete victory of truth, "that human reformation, which till now hath existed, to sink to the ground, and disappear from the world."8 the English Protestantism of philosophy is to be distinguished from the French revnlutinii;iry atheism. For that "though, bv its opposition to all spiritual ideas, it is of a negative character, yet most of Its partisan! contrive to make some s..rt of capitulation with divine faith, and to preserve a kind of belief in moral feeling." B too p. 3.34. » ii. 271. - 1 eet xv. Vol. ii. p. 199. » Lect. xviii. p. 323. 4 Ibid. 320, 322, 336. 5 This is spoken of at p. 320 as a magnificent ground-work for a truly Christian ■trni ture of government, which then indeed remained unfinished, but is to be the • if our hope for the future. See the next Note. 0 • 'This exalted religions hope, — this high historical expectation, — must be coupl.-d with great apprehension, as to the full display of ikrim jtutia in the world. For how is such a religious regeneration possible, until every Bpi form, and cli nomination of political idolatry be. . entirely extirpated from the earth." pp. 318, 819. : •• As every human soul is conducted to the realms above by the gentle hand of its divine guardian, so the Saviour hiin-t -if has announced to all mankind, in many prophetic passages, that when the period of the dissolution of the world shall ap- proach, he himself will return to the earth, will renovate the face of all things, and bring them to a close." So ii. 20. — Prophecy shows, he adds, that mankind had "to traverse many centuries, before the promise was to be fulfilled, the final and uni- triumph of Christianity throughout the earth to he accomplished, and all mankind gather) d into one fold and under one shepherd : " so showing that it is the eortli'i/ r> novation of all thin.'-, ami triumph of Christianity on this earthly si ted Christ's second advent to introduce. To th ■ i- th>- heading of his last Lecture (p. 300, on the "Universal 1; eg aeration >>t Society,") with the sceosrmodated text, "I come soon, and will r> MW all things." Schlegel was, in his way, a J'itnii/lt>i>ia>i(i>i. b Ibid. p. 318. 250 conclusion. [part VI. Now turn we to the philosophy of the same history of Christendom, as traced out to the evangelist St. John in the divinely pictured visions of the Apocalypse ; and oh ! how different is its purport ! — a difference based in fact on a fundamentally different view from Schlegel's, alike as to Christ's true religion, and as to Christ's true Church! After a rapid prefiguration in its six first picturings of the chief aeras and vicissitudes of the Roman Pagan empire, thence- forward successively to occur, (not without distinct notice of its persecuting cruelty, and the Christian martyrs' faith and constancy,) even until its total overthrow and dissolu- tion before the power of Christianity, — there was then next presented in the sealing vision a primary graphic sketch of the Christian body, such as it would present itself to the all-seeing eye of God's Spirit, and to the eye too of him who was taught of the Spirit, after the great revolution should have been completed, and a new and favouring political heaven overshadow it. And what the nature and purport of the sketch ? That of tempests of judgment impending : as if the Christian body so delivered, so exalted, and so ex- tended, was verging to apostasy, such as to call doAvn those judgments : and, connectedly, that of an election and seal- ing by Christ of so small a number out of the professing Church, or mystic Israel, as to confirm the impression that apostasy was seen to be beginning in Christendom: — at the same time that the very significant figurations of the pro- phetic sketch with reference to the sealed Israel, distinct- ively, compared with the parallel facts of after history corresponding, seemed in no obscure manner to hint at that self-same Judaic and unscriptural view of the Church sacra- ments and Church ministry, which Schlegel would identify with the essence of religion, as characteristic of the then un- sealed Israel, and in no little measure the originating cause of the apostasy. And so thenceforward the prophecy traced onward the fortunes and histories of Christendom and the Church distinctly in two different lines of succession : — the one the visible professing and more and more antichristian Church: — the other no visible corporate Christian body, (the once visible faithful Catholic Church being now hid from men ( li. v. § 2.~\ APOCALYPTIC PHILOSOBH1 01 history. 251 BS in a wilderness,) DUl the xitpiaxr, sxxX^rria,1 Christ's own r,-ii Church, the outgathering ami elect* f grace, indivi- dually chosen, enlightened, quickened, and sealed l>\ Him wit 1 1 the Holy Spirit of adoption; a body notable as "God's servants " for hoty obedience; and though few in number, compared with the apostate professors of Christianity, yet in ( tads eye numerally perfect and complete.-' Thenceforward, I say, the prophecy traced them in their two distinct lines of succession, through their respective fortunes and histories, not without figuration of the respective invisible heads and inspirers of their respective polities and actions, whether the Evil Spirit or the Good Spirit, down even to the con- summation. On the one hand there was depicted the body oi false professors, multiplied so as to form the main and dominant constituency of apostate Christendom, as develop- ing more and more a religion not Christian but antichris- tian, it being based on human traditions, (the same that figure so high in SchlegeTs estimate,) not on God's word :3 and. after falling away to the worship of departed saints and martyrs as mediators, in place of Christ,4 as alike in its western and its eastern division judicially visited and desolated by the divine avenging judgments of emblematic tempests, scorpion-locusts, and horsemen from the Eu- 1 These two words hare both somewhat remarkably been preserved, in the signi- fication of church, in our modern European - 1 — the one, ikk\i)oio., in the egli* . of the French, Italian, Spanish, &c. ; the other, KvptaKi), in the kircht\ kirk, church, of the German, Scotch, English, Dutch, Swedish, and other northern tongu V :■ Whately has indeed in his work on the Kingdom of Christ, p. 76, suggested a very different origin to the latter appellative. "The word church, or | , ihalent kirk, \< probably no other than circle, i. e. an assembl] But what his authoritv for the Statement I know not ; and its truth seems more than pro- blematical In Snioer's Thssanrns it will be found that both crpia/a/, and much more generally KvoiaKov, had conn- in the 1th century to be words QSed in thl of church in Greek Christendom. •• K"ptaKov nsitatiasiine aotat temphmt." Sic Can. 6. N Kanj^ovfit vog, lav UTipxopivoQ nq to Kvpiatov, iv ry rwv tfrtrr/- XOVfiivwv rain artjgy Can. 2 s. Laod. On oe t'u iv roic KvpiaKOte., rj iv rate, iKcXijffiacc, rac >*yo/i«vac aymraQ WOIUV I. - i 1 . E. ix. 10 ; Km ra KvpiaKa OTwc *ar\ Beemed vonchsafed, the result of a direct primary inter- vention from heaven at this crisis of time, with a view to their spiritual preservation and lite: which revelation, sin- gular!} acted out before St. John in the light-bearing visions of the sealing and the palm-hearers, just before the hurst of the emblematic tempests, was in Augustine's history and teaching, teaching never altogether forgotten afterwards, perfectly realized and illustrated.1 It then depicted the actual witnesses for Christ's cause and truth, from out of this little body, and protestors against the reigning apo- stasy. (witnesses verified historically afterwards in the history of those whom Schlegel would make heretics, the "Wahlen- more especially, and Wickliffe, and IIuss, and their fol- lowers, as made war on by Rome's revived empire, soon after the completion of their testimony against the several chief doctrines of its apostasy, and the Pope's full establish- ment of his power, like as by a Beast from the abyss of hell ; and so being at length conquered and apparently extermin- ated : — with the added figuration however of their sudden and most extraordinary revival and exaltation almost in- stantly after, in the presence of their enemies;3 a revelation from heaven introducing and accompanying it yet more" glorious than the former one, even of Christ as the Sun of Righteousness:4 and a great political revolution attending, or following, under which the tenth part of the ten-king- domed ecclesiastical empire would fall. All this the prophecy figured as the result of God's second great inter- vention for his Church; and all this we saw, on irrefragable evidence, to have been fulfilled in the great Reformation of the with century : the discovery introducing it of the doc- trine of justification simply by faith in Christ Jesus ; and the downfal following it of the tenth part of the Popedom in Papal England. Thus was this Protestant Reformation distinctly figured in the Apocalypse as a glorious divine act, not human, so as Schlegel would have it: — its excommuni- cation of the Roman Papal Church, with all its false rites and traditions, by Schlegel so fondly cherished,) and its national establishment too in Northern Germany, England, ^ of my Chapter on tin- Scaling Virion; Vol. i. pp. 296 — 818. mv Part iii. Chap. vii. 7 — 11. Part iii. Chap. viii. 4 Apocx. I, VoL ii. pp. 40—45, and 91— 'J7. 254 conclusion. [part VI. and elsewhere, being further depicted as acts directed from heaven ; l and its faith, instead of being (so as he would call it) a mere negation, represented to have its very origin in the positive recognition of Christ as the Sun of Righteous- ness, and only source of man's justification, light, and life. — As to the subsequent " indifferentism in religion," as Schlegel truly designates it, which followed afterwards in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, even in the states and churches of Protestantism, it was not unforeshown in the further developments of the Apocalypse. But what the cause assigned? Because, amidst all the rejoicings of states and churches on the establishment of a purer reli- gion, it would still be but the 144,000, the election of grace, a church within a church, that would really under- stand and appreciate the essential principle of that " new song " of the Reformation : still that alone which would be really the xvpiaxri exxTajena, the Lord's Church.2 Yet it seemed also preintimated how (as if from some gracious re- vival of religion in God's still favoured Protestantism) there would afterwards speed forth in the latter times three mis- sionary Angels, flying through mid-heaven, with voices of faithful gospel-preaching throughout the length and breadth of the world, of warning against Papal Rome, and denun- ciation of its quickly-coming judgment : 3 (a contemporary energetic revival and going forth of the spirit of Popery* conjunctively with other kindred and allied spirits of Pagan- like infidelity and pseudo- Christian priestcraft, being but the last putting forth of its bravery, to hasten the final crisis, and constitute the precursive and justification of its fall :) acts these that would be nearly the last public ones pro- moted, or mingled in, by the little body of Christ's faithful ones on earth. Por it was foreshown how that Christ's advent would speedily follow ; and contemporarily there- with, and with the mystic Babylon's destruction by fire, his witnessing saints and all that fear him, small and great,5 have the reward given them of an entrance into the ever- 1 Apoc. xi. 2. See Vol. ii. pp. 183—199. 2 Apoc. xiv. 1. See Part iv. Chap, x.; Vol. iii. p. 316, &c. 3 Apoc. xiv. 6, &c. See Vol. iii. pp. 460—463, &c. 4 The same that Schlegel boasts of as the glorious characteristic of these our own days. 5 Apoc. xi. 18. CHAP. v. § 2. | APPLICATION. 2 zoo asting kingdom of their Lord; and that bo, and then, (not before, or otherwise,) the promised regeneration of all things (the Christian's great object of hope1 ) should have its accomplishment, in Christ's own reign with Ins saints; and therewith, at length, the true and only complete evan- gelization of the world. Such is the Apocalyptic moral philosophy of t lie history of Christendom ; such its contrast with Schlegers : ' — its rule of frith not tradition, but fhr Bible; its Church of tin- promises that alone of true leftovers m Jesus ; and God's glory in Chris! the grand and final object ever set forth in it. — The review will well prepare us for applying to our- selves, in conclusion, the moral lessons of the whole; as we look to the probabilities — the awful and the hopeful probabilities — of the fast-coming future. As a nation then does it not, while pointing out howr and wherefore England has been raised to its present great- iir<\ — viz. in order to its being the great bulwark and pro- mulgator throughout the world of a Protestant evangelic faith,3 — solemnly warn us also against being seduced by any spirit of mistaken expediency, false liberalism, religi- ous indifferentism,4 or, I may add, party faction, to seek nationally to identify ourselves with the Papa] antiehristian religion, or any further to foster its power, either at home or in the colonics? Surely of toleration and civil privilege the utmost has been granted to our Roman Catholic fellow- subjects, consistent (to say the least) with our character as 1 On this point Sehlegel, in his 5th Lecture, beautifully contrasts the religion of the ani aenl Jews (to which Christianity has Buoceeded) with that of all tin other A itic nations. In tile traditions of these latter, he observes, regret was the pro- rain' i '1 for what man had lost ; in the Hebrew religion hop* for the future. "Tfi irholi existence of this people turned on the pivot of hope; and the keystone of its moral life projected its shadows far into futurity." i. 183. - I i its philosophy in the titrations ,.f historic foot the reader's atti ntion was directed in the introductory chapter of my Work, Vol. i. pp. 1 12 — 114, as also in the •i"n of my present chapter. Vol. ii.'pp. 472—17 1. md Vol iii. Part v. Ch. viii. * \ yi ar or two before the Act ef Roman Catholic Emancipation, Mr. Gaily Knight, in an influential and able Pamphlet, pointed to the case of the then Dutoo and Belgian kingdom, in proof of the possible thorough union of rVotestanta and Ca- tholics under a Protestant Qoverament The very next year the Protestant Goran- ment then- was overthrown by a united Romish and democratic insurrection, the Iri-h Roman Catholic Emancipation Act, who, area of its most sanguine ..as not confessed to disappointment in the results? 256 conclusion. [part VI. a Protestant state. Let us beware lest, in the vain hope of thoroughly conciliating the Romish priesthood in our land, — a thing which history and reason, as well as prophecy, have shown to be impossible, — we abandon our distinctive Protestant character ; ' and therewith, in the great coming crisis, forfeit the high protectorate, hitherto granted us, of heaven.2 — Nor, let me add, if in that crisis (as prophecy seems to intimate) the evangelization of the heathen, or evangelization and restoration of the Jews, prove in the issue to be the occasion of the great Romish (and perhaps too Mahommedan) powers uniting together in some hostile and opposing confederacy, let it be forgotten which is the Lord's side : 3 lest here too we act as an ally, if not consti- tuent, of Babylon; and become nationally a partaker of her sins, and nationally, in God's coming judgment on the na- tions, a partaker also of her tremendous punishment. Further, has it not a voice to us as a Church ? I speak of the Church established by God's gracious Providence in this kingdom. May we not, from that holy prophecy that we have been considering, infer it to be its paramount duty, wisdom, and even safety, to hold fast the pure and scrip- tural doctrine on which it was founded at the Reformation : and to eschew and repudiate, not the principles of direct Popery only, or even of the modern Tractarian-semi-Popery; which is but in truth that earlier form of the great apo- tasy revivified, to which in due time, as we have seen, and through Satanic arifice, Rome did but furnish the fitting headship ;4) but also of every modification of the same, which may seek to make religion a thing ecclesiastical, rather than a thing personal and spiritual; and to interpose the Church, with its priesthood and services and sacraments, between the soul and Christ, instead of asserting it as their one grand prerogative and office to direct the soul to Christ ? — Surely it is a strange misnomer to call this system, as with lauda- tory title, High Church, and decry the opposite system by 1 For example by " the great measure," as some have called it, of paying the Irish Roman Catholic Priesthood from the national funds. Since the publication of my First Edition, we have to regret that our national Pro- testant character should have been further compromised by the Maynooth endow- ment ; — however patriotic the motives of the ministry that originated it. 2 Let me refer on this head to the illustrative historic sketch prefixed by Dr. Croly to his Treatise on the Apocalypse. 3 See pp. 128, 129. 4 Apoc. xiii. 2. ('HAP. v. ^ &.] APPLICATION. 257 the rituperativery-intended title of £010 Church, The true km churchmen seem to me they who fashion their beau ideal of an ecclesiastical system, simply or chiefly, with reference to an earthly church, and its human administration and administrators. The true high churchmen Beem to he they the Church of whose chief affections and thoughts is the Jerusalem above: — that which has for its head, Christ ; its home, heaven ; ami this our earth as hut the scene of its preparatory formation and trial : a scene whereon its mem- bers, scattered everywhere through the visible Church, and known to God, though often unknown to men, are by the common principle of union with Christ their invisible head, united verily and in truth with each other, and united with those too of the same body that may have already passed into Paradise.1 It is this Church which St. Paul's glowing eloquence set forth to the ESphesian Christians as the Church the Bride, which Christ loved, and purchased, and purposes " to present to himself glorious, without spot or wrinkle •"-' to the Galatians as " the Jerusalem that is above, which is the mother of us all;"1 and to the Hebrews, as "the church of tlte first-born4 whose names are written in heaven:" this that of which, in the Apocalyptic visions, St. .John beheld the fortune-, figured, throughout all its successive genera- tions militant on earth ; even until the time of their per- fected union, number, and blessedness, as the Lamb's bride, New Jerusalem.9 And so, accordingly, the earlier confess- ors, that witnessed for Christ under Pagan Rome, recog- nized her as the Church, the Mother Church, and rejoiced in her as children.' And when stealthily afterwards the 1 Compare Eph. iii. 1-5, — "our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family ind mi earth is named." : Bnh. v. 26—27. 3 Gal. iv. 26. * IK.VXlJlTia ITpUlTOTOKulV Hfb. XU. 23. * Apoe. vii ;i. i. fee. or. l. fix. irii it, xx. 4, xxi. 2, 10—12, xxii. 3, 4, fin. 6 Let me exemplify, a- I have not directly done so bi fore. 1. fynttiui, in the heading of his Letter to the Church at Ephesus (a verv strikinir and 01 chronology immediately following the Apo- stolic turn i it as prtintmutud iff God before tie world to glory: thi distinctly defining the trm ijirihml church at Epheena as the object of his ad- _-h in tim-ity mpponng all to belong to it of the mejnben of th< 7 church I -'. 'ited : prof. --ni_r ;i- they did under eireum-tam • trial and peneention, so celcnleted to prevent the sdhecion of any bal true diffiplf ■ lyianoc. o eai Olopopoc,, ry ivKoyTjfitvy tv fiiyiQu&tov IJarpor kui Tr\ipHopari. ry •trpoopiapivy npo aiwiwv mut na — airee, nc, Cu£«v Tiupauoi'uv, arptirrov, \uL. IT. 17 258 conclusion. [part VI. earthly mixed corporate bod//, so called, came to be more and more substituted for it in fact, when more and more alienated from it in spirit, and to usurp to itself the other's dignity, titles, privileges, and claims, — man's earthly church those of God's heavenly Church, the thing ecclesiastical those of the thing spiritual,1— then, we saw, (let me be ex- cused if I repeat on a point so momentous,) Augustine seemed raised up for the special purpose of setting it forth »/i'w/i£i'jjv, Kai iic\i\iyniVT)v, tv iraBu aXrjQivy, tv BtXrjfiari rov Tlarpog kui Djffot; Xpiarnv rov Qtov iifiiuv, ry iKKXijma, ry a^iofiiiKapiariii ry ovay tv V.' y Kai aciarrrui- twq tptjptiarai Kai SiaTmrqytv i) tKKXr]; Kar' avrov woXirtia' tv tKaor yap th)i> rtXtton1, o-v^wXTjpovi'rwv tfjv jiuKapioTtjTa Xoyaiv Kai ipyiov Kai vnijuarioi', tnriv t) biro rov Qtov oiKodofiov/itvr) tKKXijata. In Matt. xvi. 18. (Ed. Huet, i. 7-5). — So too Auyusline. 01 M*. V. $ 2.] UM'l.ICATloN. ;_\V.) ■gain before men as the only true Church of heavenly pro- mise.1 Taught by whom, oral leas! accordant!* with whom, w lun agei Buoceeded afterwards of darkness deeper and deeper/ (very much through this self-same error,) the <-on- fesson of the middle age, living onder that perfected form dt' the apostatised eocleeiastica] and earthly thing, Unnir Pupal, "Mother and Mistress" wen mainly saved from her sorceries by recognizilg the distinction, and ohoosiog ami appropriating the heavenly Church as their own:1 And so too, still later, the Churches of the Reformation, our own especially inclusive : which, while in charity, like the Apostles and early Christians, regarding and speaking of all members of the Church Visible, not openly inconsistent, as belonging to it,4 did still prominently set forth, distinct- 1 Mora often Augustine speaks of Christ's true Church under its character of a polity, the Cicita.i J hi. Bat at times lie conjoins the two phrases. So C. D. xvii. 4. ;j ; "Eoclesia Christi, civitas Regis B£agm;" also xvii. LB, 2, . " Ye are built up a spiritual house." This building is the //■/,.//< wt- '" Qod, and each good man i- ;t -t 06 of this building. —For this pur- biefly did God make the world, the heaven and earth, that in it lie might raise • 'iritual building to him-clf. to dwell in for ever The continuance of this ■it world, as it now is, i- but tor the service of this work, like the scaffolding about it ; and therefore, when this spiritual building shall be fully completed, all the it frame of things in the world, and in the < hwrch ittelf, shall be taken away, and appear no more." I Of course in their individual character the members of Chri-t's true Church will 1m- risible ;o, "lights in the world," in proportion as their walk and conversation are consistent. Moreover it is posatM tor a oommmtity oi true-hearted Christiana, un- mixl with false, to be visibly associated together in social fellowship and religions in. Such, for example, was the earliest primitive Church constituted on the • day of Pentecost at .Jerusalem : Mich die primitive Churches, a- first constituted at 1'hilippi and Thcssalonica : which beautiful models the Catechist of King Edward - to have had in his eye in the extract just given from the Catechism. Hut, •hit morning-day of the Christian Church they have been but the unrealized model of a church risible. For in every case tares began almost immediately to mix with the wheat in the early Churches, as the Apostolic Epistlea themselves ►how. agreeably with our Lord's prophetic parable. Ami BO a risible Church of the true-hearted, distinctively and alone, was no more to be found. Nor this alone. Hut as corruption became more ami more prevalent, and tainted not only the individual character of the professing Church'- member-, hut slso it- doctrinal teaching, profest faith, and public worship, then even what might be called a true risible profi Church rrrirtftd not : and the Apocalyptic symbol at length had fulfilment of the true . once visible, being driven into a -tat'- of invisibility and barrenni as, is of a wuderneaa. Nor even in that comparatively small portion of ancient .-i Christendom, in which orthodox doctrine ami pun- forma of worship were ■ the Reformation, has the mass of any risible Church community ani i in -jiirit ami character to it- profession. Compare Apoc xiv. 3; a passage already before referred to. 2C2 conclusion. [part VI. and the Church proj "essing and visible,1 together with amis- taken Judaic view of the Christian ministry or priesthood,2 1 I cannot better illustrate this than from Mr. Gresley's " True Churchman." He observes (p. 3.5, 6th Ed'.) ; " It is the right or the wrong belief in the doctrine <>t the one Catholic and Apostolic Church, which makes all the difference, rendering men sound orthodox Churchmen, or watering Schismatics. Some not very spiritual persons have adopted a mode of speaking of the Church as the body of true believers in ull the world. It is manifestly a mere political matm-uvre.* Let lis turn to the Bible. Ihe word Church Occurs in a good many places in Scripture; in the large majority of which it is applied to a religious community existing visibly upon earth, which was liable to persecution, vexation, extension, could receive complaints, admit or reject members, deliberate, decide controversies, send messengers, be edified, take care of, salute, and be saluted, in short could exercise all the functions of a visible human society." Then he adds : " There are a few, very few, excep- tions; as in the Epistle to the Ephesians, where it is said that Christ gave himself for it, that he might present it to himself a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing. Here evidently the Apostle alludes to some prospective condition of the Church; because not even one individual member of the Church on earth is on this side of the grave perfectly sinless. This perfect holiness there- fore can be ascribed only to the Church triumphant : as in the Hebrews, where the heavenly Jerusalem is spoken of as the general assembly and Church of the first- born which are written in heaven, the spirits of just men made perfect." Let me ask, is there not some confusion of ideas, or of language, in this passage ? In the first part Mr. G. speaks of the Church (the one Catholic and Apostolic Church) as a religious community existing visibly on earth, including (as appears from the context) all its professing members, and governed by bishops of the official apostolic succession : then he quotes a certain few passages from Scripture, which allude, he says, to & prospective and triumphant condition of the Church. Now, in thus speak- ing, either Mr. G. means by the Church the same community that he before desig- nated under that name, though in a different stage and state of existence ; which is the natural and only proper meaning of his words ; in which case he makes all professing uncxeommunicated members of the earthly episcopal Churches to be mem- bers at last of the Church triumphant in heaven ; an error surely as fearful as palpable!— Or else he means by the Church in one sentence one thing; in the next quite another : viz. in the first, the Christian visible community, including both true and false, the tares and the wheat ; in the other the wheat, or true Church only. On which latter hypothesis he virtually admits the distinction that he is so bent oa denying, between the Church visible and Church invisible ; while violating at the same time that distinctness which is a primary rule of good writing. What if, in Algebra, the equation A =*= a + a being proposed, (as the Church visible includes both the true and the false members of it,) some one in working out the problem were without notice to use a, after a step or t.wo, as by itself alone the equivalent of A ? As to the difference between Mr. G. and his own Church on the general view, the Notes preceding will, I think, show it clearly. I am not unaware that certain eminent opponents of the ecclesiastical system ad- vocated by Mr. Gresley, do yet agree with him in speaking of the appellative sons of God as one applied by St. Paul to all the members of the Church visible, " whether they walk worthy of their high calling or not." So Archbishop Whately in his Kingdom of God, p. 8: who also, at p. 52, notes all these as constituting the communion of saints. But would 8t. Paul have counted in that communion such false professors as he alludes to Acts xx. 30; Phil. iii. 19; 2 Cor. xi. 13, 15; Jude 12 ; &c. ? i See mv general argument on this subject on the Sealing Vision, Part i. eh. vii. § 3, concluded Vol. i. pp. 292—296. It was through this erroneous view, primarily, that Mr. Sibthorp was led to join Rome. So be himself tells us, in his very illustrative Letter of justification. — And, I fear it still partially afreets some, who would yet shrink back from Oxford Tractari- * Was it so with Archbishop Leighton? or with the founders of the Church to which Mr. G. belongs, whose views to this effect I have noted above ? en vr. v. | 2 APPLICATION, 263 that most of those Oxford nuti-An^liean errors liave sprung, whose legitimate end and perfecting is in the Rem* isli doctrine and Church?1 -especially as conjoined with misunderstanding or fbrgetfurness as to the great predicted ecclesiastical apostasy, winch, according to prophecy, \\;i^ to run on even from St. Paul's time within the professing Church, in chronological parallelism with tl|(> constituency and doctrine of Christ's true Church, and at length all hut to stifle the latter?' — -So, as to the Apocalypt ic Hook's view of Christ's Ckmroh ef the promises. Add to which the leS80n from its definition of Christ's witnesses as those who " keep the commandments of God and the testimony of .lcvii>,'' — God's commandments, evidently, in contradistinc- tion to man's: a definition whieh impHes the duty of making God's own hook the one only rule of faith and practice, con- tradistinctively to all mere human tradition. — Whether at home or ahroad, let hut this its own originally9 scriptural and evangelic spirit still characterize our Anglican mother Church ; and we may surely the rather hope for the divine blessing upon her. By the joint application of her Apoca- lyptic Augustinian doctrine respecting the /rue ('///>/■<■//, as one made up of Christ's individual election of grace, chosen from out of visible professing Churches through grace unto sahation. and her Apocalyptic Lutheran doctrine of Justi- fication dimply h?i jail It in Christ mir Righteousness^ (doc- trines alike prominently set forth in the Apocalypse, as re- imprest on men bv express revelation,4) together with implicit and constani reference to the written Scripture as the rule of faith, we may expect that she will detect and expel from within her pale, as with touch of the spear of aiii-ui. I iui_rut exemplify in a fete Ordination Sermon by one much to lie esteemed - d very much mi this, official, ecclesiastical, Levitical new of the Episcopacy, Church, ami Priesthood :— a.s if from his mere office a bishop or [uresbyter can i><- the glory of Ckriit. unless he hold, preach, and live Ihe doctrj i 'hri-i ; «r a> if nun baptized can lie really brethren t<> Chrisfi saints, unless they be rss//j> and m heart members incorporate with Christ the head. 1 What an illustration oi this Ic- h. i D giv< n. since my tir.-t Edition JUS published, in the apostasy to Home of the chiet Oxford Tractarians, fiiesars, Newman, Ward Oakley, raber, MaskeUi fcc! See in Vol, iii. pp. 94, 95, im to Archdeacon Manning's argument on thi-. point J 1 say $riam*i, with pafstocs tothi Ridley*, Towel*. \c.. 'he actual English Chnreh; ool t.. the Lands oj Bulls, vbpjB tome wuuhl refei ad m iy diffi tion. \ ol. i. l'art i. ( h. vii. { 4, and \ ol. ii. jm. 40 — 45. 204 ' CONCLUSION. [part VI. Ithuriel, every the most specious heresy : and that so, at the last great day of Christ's collecting together his jewels, the eulogy of God's own Zion may prove to have continued hers to the end, that " many were born in her, and that the Most High did establish her." 1 And might not a word be fitly added also of solemn practical application of the lessons of this prophecy to other churches, orthodox and unorthodox, among us ? — In the anticipation of some fearful approaching conflict, (if such anticipation seem warranted by the prophecy,) and yet more in the view of this war of principle, and of the na- tions, as but a prelude to the fiery judgments that are to accompany the Lord's own coining, do we not see motives pre-eminently cogent for union among all that love the Lord Jesus in sincerity ? And does it not appear lament- able that, whether from political or ecclesiastical differences of opinion, there should be cherished by any such in the Protestant dissenting bodies a feeling of bitterness against our Anglican Church ; a Church which they yet allow to be in its doctrines and profession of faith eminently scrip- tural and evangelic : especially considering that their sup- position of Christ's declaration, " My kingdom is not of this world," militating against a national established Church, depends on an inference from that text very questionable ; 2 1 Psalm lxxxvii. 5. 2 What has past in our own Church since the publication of my first Edition, ren- ders the right view of this famous text, John xviii. 36, " My kingdom is not of this world," (»; fiaoikua r) tfit) ovk tariv «k tov xoo-fiov tovtov,) more important than ever. Hence a brief discussion of it may he not inappropriate ; especially as one con- nected with, and supplemental to, my notice of Christ's kingdom, p. 188, in the Chapter on the Millennium. And, with a view to this, it seems essential that we consider it in the light not only of its immediate context, but also of that larger context of Scripture, (alike of the Old and New Testament,) in which Messiah's kingdom, called also the kingdom of God, or kingdom of heaven,* is a perpetually recurring topic. Now the Old Testament prophecies, alike those of David, t Isaiah, J Daniel, and others, foreshadowed this kingdom as one that would appear under two distinct phases ; a primary one of imperfection and opposition ; a final one of triumphant and universal establishment over all error and all opposition. More especially, for example, in Daniel's famous first prophecy there were figured distinctively the regnum lapi- dis and the regnum mantis :\ — the primary humbler state of Messiah's kingdom, as a stone cut out without hands; (the divine temple's destined corner-stone ;||) and its * In St. Matthew we find it generally called the kingdom of heaven, in St. Mark and St. Luke the kingdom of God. f E. g. Ps. ii., xxii. J E. g. Isa. liii. § Dan. ii. 34, 35. I use Mede's well-known Latin desisrnatives. II Matt. xxi. 42; Luke xx. 17. In what our Lord adds, as recorded both by St. (HAP. V. $ 2.] APPLICATION. 265 and indeed, unless my solution of the vision of Apoc. \. \i. can In" refuted, that the establishment of the Anglican, triumphant state, after shivering the world'i great image to pieces, and n* a mountain (the iiKuiiitaiu of the Lord'i boose,* 1 rappose,) filling with its glory the whole earth. — So too this twofold state an. I phase of Jesus Chrisf ■ kingdom wu j>i .-miiuiitlv set forth by Christ himself and his apostles in the New Testament The ras est forth as having commencement from after the bung's presentation of himself in human form on earth, rejection by the master-hnilders in Israel, and oon- soqnent judicial suffering, though only as man's redemption-price from out of the kingdom of darkness, with tree ami open entranoe thenceforth into bis own kingdom of light ami holiness ;f then absenting himself from earth for a while, with a new to receive from his Father investiture of the kingdom; + ami to prepare bis po for it. as well as it for hi- people.{ Which preparatory state of the kingdom is de- scribed as including it.- proclamation oxer the world; appointed heralds || being charged with imitation from the King to all to enter it : (with the foreseen result however of a promiscuous gathering OI had and good, false as well as true, as in the ring and net-throwing of the Parable ill and as including also among its characteristics a provision lor the meet spiritual education, support, and nourishment of all its true members; while -till sojourners, far away from the King and kingdom of their hearts, in a world under the dominion of their King's and their own great enemy, the Bvu one.** — The aeeond state and phase described is that of it- manifest- ation in heavenly power and majesty, so as prefigured at the transfiguration ;+■, and ilishment on the ruin- of Antichrist's kingdom, XX end of each other dominion allied With the I'rinee of darkness. It is this latter for which Christ bids US prav -iiitly. •• Thy kingdom oome!" Ami it is to he ushered in by the King's own visible return in glory ; tlie retinue of all his faithful saints and subjects of BVi rv age rising to attend him, in reflected lustre like a- of the sun, andtothe exclusion of each and ( \ery one of the insincere and false. §j Not however in their prior mortal state ; the kingdom being that which even the saints themselves in thsh and blood cannot inherit : || hut, with a view to their entrance on which, the new robing of incorrup- tioii is provided for them, and the world itself to be made a new World win rein dwelleth righteousness.*!? Conformably with all this the text under discussion, " My kingdom is not of this world." is, I conceive, to he explained as spoken by Christ to Pilate, — 1st. with re- ference to the principle of its constitution ; as neither having for its object the Lrran- deurs, dignities, or secular supremacy of tin- kingdoms of this world, nor involving Matthew and St. Luke, "On whomsoever it shall fall XtKfinuti avrov," we have, I think, a wry interesting Connecting link between David's prophecy about the corner- stone ( Pa cxviii. J2, " The -tone which the builders rejected, 6cc") here quoted by Christ, and Daniil'n about the image-smiting -tone. For XiKunrm i- not exactly ren- dered in our translation " it shall grind him t" powder." It should rather he, " it shall reduce Tim to du-t, like as winnowed chaff from the thre-hing-Hoor." The similarity of which to Dan. ii. 3o is BO evident ami striking that I cannot think it un- ded: — M The atone smote the image upon his feet id' iron and clay; and then the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold broken to pieces together, and Sworn* Uhe the chaff of the summer threshing-floor ; ami the wind carried them away." The Greek word is the self-same that is used in Dan. ii. in the Septuagint : XiK/jtqTH Kai \tir-vfii iraaaq, rac, (iaoiXtiac,. • l-i. ii. J ; Mic iv. 1. Compare Apoc. \\i. 10. f Col. i. 13, 14. ; Luke xii. 12. $ 1 John xiv. 2. Matt. iv. 23 ; Acts xxviii. 31, &c. I need hardly observe that tcn^vaam; usually i is literally toproelaim } t) fitWovaa, Heb. ii. 5. § Matt. xiii. 39. || Matt. xix. 28. % See my notices of the new heaven and earth in the two preceding Chapters, Compare Justin Martyr, Apol. ii.; 'Y/.ittg aKovaavrtg fiaoiKttav 7rpoTrn\i) regarda the /armor, ia ad the doubt both permissible ami raaaonahle whether popular eail may not be to the full aa liahle to abase m liy Aa regarda the fetter, baa not the supremacy of the orrfl court in Eag> land In en on more than onu important oooaaion within the laal centaury a defence, not i.nly of the beneficed clergy personally, but even of the truth itself, against the of the episcopal authority ? 1 Enu Qenaan divine of the xvith century. Ncal, in his History of the Puritans, Vol. ii. l'rcf. p. i.w, — after ohuoiviog that the Members of Parliament, during the eivil war, were almost all of the principles of firoefMf, who maintained that Christ ami his apostles had prescribed no particular form of discipline for his Chorea, but had left it in the band* of the eivil magistrate to appoint aacn particular forms of church government as might moat subserve the welfare of the Common- wealth, — adds, " rheae were the Baatimenjto of tin Mtfbrmsn, from Craamer down aoroft." This last statement, however, aeeda the important modiiBoaBOB of the magiatrate being Buppoaed to do nothing contrary to the liible. With regard to Kra.-t U .it mi\ 1» useful further to give -Archbishop Whately's explaaation of Eraetianiim, " Braetianiam baa alwaya bees conai agisting in making tin State at MM*, — the civil magistrate by vn-lm of hu ojli,,, — preacribe to the people what thty tkmtt tat'sea, and how worship QodV (King- dom of Chriat, p. 366.] Bupjposing which to be correct, then all ehaige oi /•/■«■ Beotcfa Batahfiahed Church will lie evidently ini'oii. that the State has not attempted to impose new Artidti of belief QM\ the Church. No* -. in nonooqnnnrjc of such Eraatian pn U oaiona, leave tin Estab- lishment.* Dr. Candliah, however, asserts, (Letter-, on Bona, p. 120,) that " mi- ther article* of btlitf, nor wumnm <>/' worship, came into qnoation at all in the Eraa- tian Controversy, properly ao called: and "thai it was on the Lawfulness, according riptmre ami right reason, of the civil magistrate's jurisdiction in the exercise "i ' • ■ pinu, particularly iu the acts of woafHiMBieafiipw, and of admitting to rata and ojh,, i), tin (Jutrc/i, that the dispute about which Krastus was con- . really turm d." At any rati' it moat be allowed that Erattiamum is a just eanM "I ri proach, in so t,r oili aa it can be proved to bt anti-eeripturai. And in inch a case aa the mmons Marnoch and Strathbogie one, where the two jurisdictions met and conflicted, revealed will so clear aa that a ( lni>tian man, wishing to jndge by that rule, aught not honestly dilfer from the opinion ol the majorit] m the Qeneral Aj- , who subsequentl] iblished Church J ; - 2 8 -upi.'i.— I have aaid above, "insofar aa the objeoted Eraatian- • I. • i the Miniatrea demiannnairea, now nf iniatars of the 1 Chorch in the Canton de Vend. Hire the fast grand step oi the Secnlai • lit toward-, the oppression "1 the Vandoia < lunch was tin abolition by it iu p, and altogether by ita own authority, ol tin u,; . Faith. 208 conclusion. [part VI. kingship over his Church, the doctrine, in the highest and most scriptural sense of those phrases,1 nay and even in a ism attached also to the primary constitutions of the German or other Churches of the Reformation," because it is to these that the Apocalyptic symbol (if I am correct) relates ; not to such changes in their ecclesiastical constitutions as may have been made at any later epoch. — Of course too my argument from the Apoca- lyptic symbol has reference only to main points in the constitution of the Reformed Churches, not to details. 1 As the point is of importance, it may be well to subjoin, with a view te a right judgment on the scriptural sense of this phrase, all the passages in the New Testa- ment which speak of Christ's headship over the Church : — and all, I believe, in regard to the Church in its most spiritual sense. First then we have Christ figured to us as the head corner-stone of his temple, the Church. So in Matt. xxi. 42, and the parallel passages in Mark and Luke. But of what temple or Church ? The visible earthly Society so called, including both false and true members ; or that constituted of the true only ? St. Peter (1 Pet. ii. 4 — 6) defines it distinctly as the latter. " To whom coming, as unto a living stone, dis- allowed of men, but chosen of God and precious, ye also as living stones are built up a spiritual house," &c. : as it is said in the Scripture, " I lay in Zion a chief corner- stone . . . and, The stone which the builders disallowed, the same is made the head of the corner." Then, passing over 1 Cor. xi. 3, where it is said of individual Christians that " the head of the woman is the man, and the head of the man is Christ," a passage there- fore not directly bearing on the point now in question, we come to the following five apposite and famous passages in St. Paul's Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians. 1. Eph. i. 22; "And God gave him to be the head over all things to the Church; which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all." 2. Eph. iv. 11 — 15 ; "And he gave some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ ; till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ ; that, . . speaking the truth in love, we may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ : from whom the whole body fitly joined together . . . maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love." 3. Eph. v. 23, &c. ; "The husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the Church. . . And he loved the Church, and gave himself for it, that he might present it to himself a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing ; but that it should be holy and without blemish." 4. Col. i. 18 ; " And he is the head of his body the Church." 5. Col. ii. 18, 19; " Let no man beguile you of your reward, by a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those tilings which he hath not seen, . . and not holding the head ; from which all the body, by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God." In all which passages, especially as compared together and mutually illustrated by each other, it seems to me clear that the true Church is meant always and distinct- ively, as that of which Christ is head. I am surprised that Dr. Candlish, (Letters, pp. 26, 27, 123), while fully admitting, nay contending, that "holding the head " is said in Col. ii. 19 distinctively of true believers, should yet contend also that most of the passages quoted belong both to the true Church, and also to visible Churches, " outstanding societies," (including of course both good and bad,) formed in Christ's name, and especially that Eph. iv. 11, &c, has reference to these latter ; " If there be meaning in words, it must apply to a visible organized society." But why ? Be- cause, says he, the provision specified of outward means and ministers of grace (apostles, prophets, evangelists, &cc.) necessarily belongs to a visible organized Society. But whose edifying is accomplished by them ? Surely not that of mere professors in the Church Society, but of the true members only. Which last therefore can alone in the scriptural sense be deemed Christ's body; * (just as in Col. ii. 19, where Dr. * So Augustine, De Doctr. Christ, iii. 45 : where, speaking of Tichonius' second CHAP. V. $ 2.1 kPFLICATION. 269 lower and less purely scriptural sense of them, ma^ be con- sidered, 1 presume, to l>c bold by the members of the Scotch Established Church as truly a-; of the Free ;' —in fine, that, . allow- it ;) and win. h la-t alone consequently haveClu id a- a In id . ami grow ii|i into him in all thing! . fcc' \- •■■ tin Scriptural view of Cmrisfe kingship in t ho Church, ami of those to whom tin- privilege attaches of having him tor their king, the most illustrative passage that I know is .lohn wiii. :\~ . •• Kverv one that M of' the truth heaivth mv voice " fol- lowil "ii ("uri»t'- SATing that be WU horn to lira k 1 1 1 ur . though over a kingdom not of this world ;+ ami being in Cut hi- explanation of the subjects that would belong to it. Does not St. John tench na ,i John iii. io, Ac.) that none hut real heart-believers arc of (A< truth * Does not Christ state it (John i. 27) as the distinctive otitis own true sheep, that they bar hit potest ! The Free Chhrob holds Christ's headship over tin' visible church ; and this as an important principle in the righl ecclesiastical constitution of Christian communities. So the adan — by the Convocation to the People of Scotland, as also Dr. Candliah'a, Mr. (irev's, and Mr. Hamilton's Pamphlets, Are. " Christ is not only inwardly a spiritual head to his mystical Church, hut rxtt rtiallv a spiritual head to the politic body of the visible Church of professors, and their only laa-i/iver ;" — a principle which the Rrply by tht v'.v Special Commission to Sir J. Graham applies, by declaring that an acknowledgment of the right of a Secular Court to act as it has, is idiation of the doctrine contained in the Scotch Confession of Faith, that the Lord Jesus in the only head of' the Church. Hut since the Church visible in any professedly Christian country must be held to emhrace the whole community and 7ro\ir*ia. people as well as pastors, prince as well as people, all in allegiance to Him whom they in common profess to regard as their r, otiL'ht not the Prince's subordinate officers, the Judgssofthe laic inclusive, to be is acting under the heavenly King, while conscientiously fulfilling tin ir J appointed function- ; as truly as Church officers so called, (in a narrow er sense of the word Church,) while fulfilling theirs ? Was Sir Matthew Hale in his secular OOUrl nt and minister of the Church's Head and King Christ Jesus, than Archbishop Laud in his spiritual or rather tecleriastioal court! So that the differ- ence on this point between the Free Church and both the English and Scotch E-tah- -eems to be still more narrowed. — It strikes me that this large view of the visible Church's constituent body, and its various functionaries, has been practically too much overlooked, on one side at least, in the controversy , tin Church interpretative principle. ]>• Domini corport bipartite, as including both the true mem- • of Christ's body and the !'al-e. Augustine says that the phrase is wrongly exp ise hypocrites and false professors do not really belong to Christ's body at all. " Non revera Domini corpus eat ijuod cum illo non erit in sternum." • Bow strongly Christ is set forth as the Church's head, in this Scriptural si use of the phrase, by the founders of the Anglican Church, (which yet has been spoken -t a- Croatian,] will have been seen in the extract from King Edward's Cate- chism Lriveii a little earlier. • - -i in on the text, " My kingdom is not of this world," in the .Vote - p. 264, just In tore. Anhbishop Whately, iii his well-known Work on the Kkunhm <>/' Christ already than once referred to. appears to mi to have greatly impoverished mid under- stated Christ's meaning in this declaration; by explaining it (p. 2!»), wholly or chiefly, as ••th- ■ ■ ■■ m behalf »f his religion." This of the word- in the t> \t'- latter clause arises from his viewing Christ's kingdom in the former clause as meaning only ti • .. called tht Church in rthly present mi\i state !•■ iroeaword in hi- I rrthly itutr being one in which many would profi -- to attach to Christ's kingdom that really do not, tie ■ ■ 11 a- tin- wheat ; or of the / is that in which alone tin- ', ,. . /.•'(■ kingdom will be separated from tin- antra., ami in p< r- inion and glory shine forth for ever. —The different views from tin- of Wicliff aud of the Anglican Church have been shown I 270 CONCLUSION. [part VI. instead of thai established Church being an "Egypt" that Gods Israel had to come out of,1 it Mas and is by that evangelic Confession of Faith which it holds for its standard, as well as the Free Church, a joint witness and bulwark with it against the only figurative Egypt of New Testa- ment prophecy, I mean Papal Rome.2 To the noble de- votedness of the Pree Church, since the disruption, and its zeal, energy, and self-denial in carrying out its many high objects, the world itself bears testimony. But has not one thing been wanting ? And would her labours be less holy or less blest, if acrimony towards the Church she has seceded from were altogether banished ; and if, in- stead of it, there was exhibited by her in clearer daylight the holding of the fellowship of the Spirit in the bond of peace ? 3 and the State, Church Courts and Secular Courts, being spoken and written about as if antagonistic, and the former only as under Christ, the Church's Head and King.* And let me suggest whether another misapplication of language (such it seems to me) may not have further confused the question, needlessly widened the difference, and even opened what might be a door to serious error; I mean the use of spiritual for ecclesiastical, in speaking of the members of Chinch Courts in contra-distinction to those of Secular Courts. Says Mr. Hamilton, in his " Harp on the Willows," p. 20 ; (and he is only one among many that have used the same language ;) — " They hold that the Lord Jesus is the only Head of the Church. In their ecclesiastical pro- cedure they desire to follow his will, as that will is revealed in his word. They be- lieve that the Spirit of God, speaking through spiritual men, is the sole interpreter of that word. And they cannot allow the commandments of men, the verdicts of secular courts, to interpose between them and their heavenly King." It seems to me that the spiritual men, here meant, must be the members of the Scotch ecclesiastical Courts, as opposed on the questions that finally caused the disruption to the Judges of the secu- lar Courts : and that it is the decisions of the former which are characterized as llui voice of the Spirit, in opposition to the verdicts of the 1 itter, which are styled the commandments of men. Now is not the similarity of this to Papal language about Councils, held under Papal presidency, ominous and a warning ? " Spuitue Sancti testatur pnesentiam congregatio sacerdotum," said Pope Celestine of the Ephesian Council heid A.D. 468 : and it was deemed fitting that the Seal of the Council of Trent should have a dove engraved on it, in token of the same presence of, and inspiration of the Council by, the Divine Spirit. (See my Vol. iii. p. 234.) Ecclesiastical men, congregated on ecclesiastical matters, were deemed by Rome spiritual mot, inspired in their decisions by God's Spirit. On the other hand I believe that in the New Tes- tament the word ttvivhutikoq, spiritual, when said of persons, is only used of true Christians. So 1 Cor. ii. 14, 1-5; iii. 1; xiv. 37; Gal. vi. 1 ; 1 Pet. ii. 5. See especially the first passage on the list, 1 Cor. ii. Ifi ; " The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him : . . but the spiritual man iudgeth (or disceruetli) all things." 1 So the title of Mr. Hamilton's Sermon, "Farewell to Egypt; or the departure of the Free Church out of the Erastian Establishment." And other writers of the Free Church have used the same figure. 2 See my Vol. ii. pp. 437 — 444. a I rejoice to think that since this was written there has been much less of acri- * On this point let me beg the reader's special attention to the case of Constan- tine judging in the Donatistic controversy, alluded to p. 266 supra. And sec on it Mosheim iv. 2. 5. 4, with Notes. ('II LP. v. § 2.] Arrur \i [ON. tl 1 Ami can I omit altogether a word of affectionate Address and warning to members of the Romish Ckurth ; should there in Gfoa's providence be any Buch among the readers of this Commentary ? [f what has been bere written ap- pear indeed to hear the stamp of (iod's own truth, (and I am well persuaded that not all the Learning or ingenuity of Rome can in its main points confute it J then may the Di- vine Spirit carry borne conviction to them; and make the View of (iod's own judgment, here fully drawn out on the great questions at issue between Romanism and Protestant- ism, and the view too. which the prophecy gives us, of the probable nearness of the great day of his publicly pro- nouncing and acting out that judgment, to he like the warning-cry in their ears, " If any man worship the Beast ami his image, and receive his mark in his forehead or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, and shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and of the Lamb, and the smoke of their torment aSCeudeth up forever : "'-' or. rather, like that other kindlier voice from heaven, "Come out of her. my people," (for many, I doubt not, of this character through some delusion or ignorance are still, in respect of outward communion, m the Romish Church, although in spirit not "/'it,) " Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues : for her sins have reached unto heaven."3 • mere, let not the last Apocalyptically predicted danger to the professing Church be forgotten, ol some strong assault by the spirit of heathen-like infidelity. Ala- ! how strikingly has the fulfilment of the prediction been mony, ami rnu'li mofi in kindness, between tin-.' two branches "1' Chtvfa Church!* Moreover, in proof of larger and I think more correct news having bees embraced at length by many talned members oY tin Scotch Frei Church, 1 have _• ' 1 '• , II inna'i ft : D ■:;. Dot 01 i in in y Vol. ii. p. 196. - Apoe. xiv. 0 — 11. Anoc. wiii. I, ■'>. • In regard to the passage on the Free Choroh here concluded, and what may a and elaborated Notes, let me be permitted to observe tty been occasioned by a not unfriendly controversy with Dr. Cand- tioni i a the Free Church, less carefully made in my 1st and '.'ml Editions, and expressed with leu of landlinesa towards. dM Pree Church been. A- bearing directly moreover on tin- great i 1 l it, they may in- i For a i . rtoDr. Candlish'a Pamphlet and nrj l 272 conclusion. [part VI. manifested, as I revise this book for the 5th time, even in our own Church of England ! But it is individually that the application of the subject is most important. And when thus personally applied, need I say how unspeakably deep and solemn its interest ! It is not enough that we belong to the most orthodox Church, profess the most Scriptural faith, and be even zeal- ous for it against the many errors and heresies of the day. The question is, Are we of Christ's true disciples, his " lit- tle flock, " to which alone the Father has given promise of the kingdom?1 Have we then the evidence of belonging to it? Have we received the Apocalyptically-noted mark and seal of God's Holy Spirit ; and the inward light, life, and spirit of holiness and adoption, which He alone can give ? 2 Is our faith fixed on Christ as the Sun of right- eousness ? 3 Do we hold to the written word in life, as well as in doctrine ? 4 Do we witness for Christ in an apostate world : as in the world, but not of the world ? Do we seek to follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth,6 in holiness, spiritual-mindedness, benevolence, self-denial, and patient perseverance in well-doing, through evil report, as well as good report ? Do we seek to improve our several talents for him, as those that must soon give account ? 6 Does our charity abound to Christ's flock and people ? 7 Is the lamp of faith trimmed, and its light kept burning within us, as by men that watch for their Lord ? 8 Is the thought of his coming precious to us? Do we look for and love the thought of his appearing ? 9 — Doubtless there are many who can answer these questions in the affirmative. And happy are they. But there are many more, it is to be feared, with whom misgivings will arise in the conscience, as they reflect upon them. Alas ! who can doubt the pre- valence, in what has been not inaptly called " the religious world," of much of false profession ; much of the Laodi- cean spirit of lukewarmness, self-conceit, religious pride, earthly-niindedness ; much of the characteristic deadness of 1 Luke xii. 32. 2 Apoc. vii. See my. Chapter on this Sealing Visior. 3 Apoc. x. 1. 4 Apoc. xii. 17, &c. 5 Apoc. xiv. 4. 6 Matt. xxv. 14, &c. 1 Cor. iv. 2. 7 Matt. xxv. 35, &c. » Matt. xxv. 7. Luke xii. 35. 9 2 Peter iii. 12 ; 2 Tim. iv. 8. ( 'U \\\ V. I 2.] APPLICATION. 273 the Church of Bardis, "having a Dame to live, but being dead?"1 With all such what cause is there, in contem- plation of the coming future, for humiliation, holy tear, re- pentance] Blessed be God, though the acceptable time remaining be Bhort, it is not ended. Though the Master seems to be on the point of rising, he lias not as yet actu- ally risen, and shut to the door.'-' Not only is the proba- tionary period of permitted evil as well as good prolonged, as it is written, " He that is unjust let him be unjust still, and he that is holy let him be holy still,"3 but the voice of mercy and love is also yet to be heard, inviting sinners to salvation : — " The Spirit and the Bride say, Come ; and let him that is athirst come; and whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely." 4 For himself (if such personal allusion be permitted him) the Author cannot but recollect that awful declaration by Christ, " Many shall say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name, and I will say unto them, I never knew you," 5 as one that ought to suggest to him very solemn matter for self-examination and fear. It is one thing intellectually and historically to search out Scripture truth; another, and very different, experiment- ally to know and feel it. The former he has done, accord- ing to his ability, without grudging of time or trouble : but to himself of what avail, if the latter be wanting? Under this feeling he will venture to address to every Christian reader this one parting request; — that if, from the explan- ation of the Apocalyptic Book in the present Comment- ary, they may have received any spiritual light, comfort, or edification, then they will not refuse to make requital by jnayer earnest and personal for him, that he may not fall under the condemnation just spoken of ; nor, having preach- ed to others, be found in that day of trial himself a cast- away.— At this present closing crisis of the world, alike in the evidence of prophecy, in the signs of the times, in the 1 I know i: ■ Marching pusaget in Holy Soriptore, for self-application on thi- p aon, than thoM suggested by Christ's Epistles to toe Seven Churrln- of Am i. 1 I. like xiii. 25. 3 Apoc wii. 11. Bach I conceive with Vitringa to be the meaning of tin- con- troverted text * Apoc. wii. 17. i Matt \.i. 22. VOL. IV. 18 274 CONCLUSION. [part VI. general agitation of Christendom, and in the increased and increasing expectancy of Him by his people, the Saviour's voice seems to be heard, distinct and clear as perhaps never before," Surely, I come quickly." God grant that it may be the privilege of both reader and writer, whether summoned to meet Him by death, or by the brightness of his own personal advent, to be enabled each one to answer the summons with the inmost soul's welcome, " Amen ! even so ! come, Lord Jesus ! " APPENDIX TO VOL. IV. PART I. A SKETCH OF Till: HISTORY OF ATOCALYPTIC IN IKKPKKTATION. 1 r will, I think, conduce to clearness, if we classify the Apocalyptic taitora whom we shall have to notice under the chronological divi- sions following: — 1. those between St. John's publication of the Apoca- lypse,"and Constantine's establishment of Christianity in the Roman Empire ; — 2. those from Coustantine to Imperial Rome's completed fall, and the rise of the Romano-Gothic kingdoms in Western Europe, ere the close of the oth century ; — 3. those between the epoch last- mentioned and the end of the 11th century ; — 4. those from the 11th or 12th century to the Reformation; — 5. those of the a?ra and cen- tury of the Reformation ; — 6. those from A.D. 1G00 to the French ilution ; — 7. those from the outbreak of the French Revolution, A.D. 1790, to the present time.' PERIOD 1. FROM ST. JOHN TO CO'STANTINE. The earliest profest Apocalyptic Commentary extant is that by Jlctorinus, Bishop of Pettau in Pannonia ; who was martyred in the Diocletianic persecution, just at the very ending of the period now 1 Some time after the publication of the 3rd Edition of the Hone, with its Historic Sketch of Apocalyptic Interpretation, Mr. ('. Ifaitland published hii Book entitled " The Apostolic School of Prophetic Interpretation," which consists Tory mainly of ric sketch on the same subject. Mr. C. M. had my Sketch before him while ■writing thia ; aa .ipj>'-ar- from hi- reference to my Ith Volume containing it, at hi* p. 63, and various notices apparently borrowed from it throughout. —In revising this Part of my Work I have, in my turn, had the advantage of keeping his Treatise before me ; and found it useful both otherwise, and especially as a obi ok to my own • f the same expositors the more so became his views of the Apocalyptic • essentially different from my own, 1» big mainly those of the futurist school. Hi- | I almost proi ssedly drawn np with the object of incul- cating tint particular new of prophetic int. rpretation. Which eireumstanee imposes on me the duty of checking, and when incorrect (which he too frequently is) correcting ecially with reference to the 1st and 2nd Periods ol my Sketch. 18 • 276 HISTORY OP APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. under review. Before that time, however, various brief hermeneutic notices of certain parts of the Apocalypse had been given to the Christian world by some of the earlier fathers, Justin Martyr, lren- (Bus, TertulUan, Hippolytus, and also by the Christian Pseudo-Sibyl : notices ranging in date from about the middle of the 2nd to the middle of the 3rd century ; and which are too interesting to be past over in an inquiry into the history of Apocalyptic interpretation. I have indeed already partially noticed them, in my sketches of the aeras or of the topics that they relate to, in the foregoing Commentary. But I think it will be well here to present them again connectedly in one point of view, and somewhat more in full, as the fittest intro- duction to our whole subject.1 1. As regards the Pseudo-Sibylline oracles, — poems which were written and circulated under that title, through the pious fraud of certain Christians, about the middle of the 2nd century, — my readers will already have learnt from previous citations given from them in 1 I do not specify the pseudo- Barnabas, who wrote probably early in the 2nd cen- tury, because we find nothing distinctively Apocalyptic in his Epistle : — except indeed in regard of that passage about the six days of creation and following sabbath, viewed as types of the world's six millennaries of duration, and seventh millennium of rest consequent on them, which will be found cited in the Chapter in my Appendix on the present sera in the world's chronology. I call this writer the pseudo- Barnabas, because of having no doubt in my own mind as to his not being the apostle Barnabas. The Jewish temple had evidently been destroyed when the Epistle was written ; and Barnabas probably died before that event. The author writes as if a Gentile, whereas Barnabas was a Jew : and moreover with such strange mistakes of fact about certain of the Levitical rites and ceremonies as, it seems to me, impossible a Jewish Levite like Barnabas could have made : and fancies too as to typical meanings in them, such as ill consist with the idea of that apostolic companion of the apostles having been their inditer. For the same reason in part I omit noticing the so-called Hernias' writings, not doubting that the writer's assumption of that apostolic name is a fraud ; as nearly all critics, following Tertullian's indignant rejection of its apostolicity, (De Pudicit. 10, 20,) admit : also because of there appearing nothing in them of distinct and particular Apocalyptic interpretation. As a general witness to the genuineness of the Apocalypse he is cited by me in the Preliminary Essay to my Book, Vol. i. pp. 9—11. Further I omit all notice of the 2nd Book of Esdras ; as I incline with Dr. Lawrence to deem it the work of a Jew, written just before Jesus Christ's birth. The famous passage, Ch. vii. 28, which speaks of Jesus by name, is wanting in the Ethiopic version; where we read simply, " My Messiah shall be revealed," not " My son Jesus." Hence Dr. Lawrence deems the passage in the Latin Arabic to be an interpolation, or marginal gloss, by some Christian hand. Further the two first Chapters, in which there might seem to be allusions to certain New Testament Scriptures, (especially Ch. ii. 42 — 46,) are wanting in both the Arabic L'and Ethiopic versions. Mr C. Maitland, on the contrary, pp. Ill — 119, opens his Sketch of Christian Pro- phetic Interpretation by notices of the soi-disant Barnabas, as really the apostle of PER. I.] FROM ST. JOHN TO CONMVNIIM ( f'seu,io-Sil>l/l .) '2 7 7 this Honk,' th:it the ilrst ruction of Rome, the Apocalyptic Babylon* was one prominent subject in them; ami with ideas abont it evidently borrowed from the A pocalypse. In Book viii., more especially, it is the burden of the song. And this will be found to be the idea of the writer, or writers, as to events connected with it: — that the destroyer Antichrist, himself oi' Latin extraetion,3 would be the first author o( its ruin; this Antichrist equalling himself with God, and being (as is hinted 4) the Emperor Xero restored to life again, and now coining back from Asia in alliance with the Jews ; but that the grand and final destruction would be by direct judgment from heaven. '•Descending from on high thou ahalt dwell underneath the earth ; with napths and asphalt, and sulphur and much fire, thou shalt dis- appear, and become as burning ashes for ever.5 And every one who looks on thee shall hear the deep sound of thy wailing from hell, and thy gnashing' of teeth." — Then, on Rome's end, there would follow speedily, according to our Sibyl, the world's end :G and then, on the opening of the first octad,7 another and better world. that name ; Hernias, with "his gushes of penitence, &c.," as the Hermas of Rom. xvi. 14 ; and of the 2nd Book of Esdras, as really the writing of a Christian. 1 See my Vol. i. pp. 230," 231. * The name given by the Poet in various places to Rome ; e. g. Book v. p. 312 ; (Kd. Paris 1599.) Km rp\t]~ii ttovtov (iadvv, auTtjv ti Ba/JuXuii/a, Itu\ii|s yatav t)' . 1 So p. 368 ; il (3aai\tv p.tya\av\t, Aaxiiueos iKyovi 'Pui^utjv. This Latin appellative of Rome appears often elsewhere in the Book : so that I can- not but incline to think that it had reference to Abthi/os, as the name and number of the Beast ; the same that was soon afterwards specified by Ircnceus. 4 Sometimes designated as the mother-murderer ; sometimes by the number 50, as the numeral value of u , the first letter of his name. The former designative occurs, for example, in Book viii. oTav y' iiravtXOr) E»: iripa.Twv'yai>\<: 6 (puyat p.i}TpoKTOvos tXduyv, .... Kp.i\•' -The teeond lamb-like Beast [renmas calls the Brsl Beast's armour-bearer j and also " the False Prophet," as in Apoe. xix.9 ruler a notion of the Antichrist being a false Christ of Jewish origin, he fancifully snggeets thai the omission of Don from those tribes of Israel out of whom an election was sealed, in Apoc vii., might he an intimation of that being Antichrist's tribe.3 His idea of Antichrist sitting in the rebuilt temple of Jerusalem, and there showing himself as God, "setting aside all idols," in order to con- centrate men's worship on himself, belongs to St. Paul's prophecy of Antichrist, not St. John's ; and his idea of Antichrist's '.\\ years being the half of the last of Daniel's 70 hebdomads, not to St. John, but Daniel.4 Again that of "Antichrist's fulfilling the part of the unjust judge in St. Luke, by avenging the Jews of their adversaries the Romans, and transferring the empire to Jerusalem," is altogether extra- Apocalyptic; and I must add very fanciful. Yet on this he mainly grounds his as yet peculiar opinion that Antichrist wonld transfer the seat of empire to Jerusalem, and there sit in the temple of (lod as if he were the Christ and God.5 There is yet another direct point of Apocalyptic explanation to be 1 On the whole however, we saw, he preferred the name Tcitan. i v. 28. ' In support of this. idea Irenaeus (v. 30) strangely refers to Jer viii. 16, "The snort- ing of his horses was heard from Dan," as if said of Antichrist's emerging from out of that tribe. And Mr. ('. M. as strangely, pp. 157 — 169, Menu to approve and endorse the interpretation. The reader need only refer to Jeremiah in order to see that it is said as Lowth explains it, " of the Chaldeean'armi/ marching into Judaea through the tribe of Dan : " that being the northernmost district of the territory of Israel. * It may be well to observe here that Irenaeus says nothing of any of Daniel's heb- domads except the hist. Whether with his contemporary Judas (see Euseb. H. E. vi. 6) he supposed the 70 hebdomads to reach continuously to the consummation, through some different view from that which is commonly received of their commencing date — or whether with Hippolytushc supposed the last hebdomad to be separated from the a the prophet's intention by a chronological break, — does not appear. — See my notice of this subject at the end of the Section. ' I -ay very mainly ; became h<- also refers to one and another passage in Daniel about the sanctuary being desolate, and the abomin'ation of desolation retting in it, as if meaning the Jerusalem (rebuilt) temple ; viz. Dan. viii. 13, and Dan. ix. 27. But it is in nearest connexion with the parable in St. Luk' . " [pee Bflt iniquus judex • • ad quem fagit vidua oblita Dii. id eat tern n a liicru»alcm ad ulciscendum de inimico. Quod at faciit in tempore regni sui. Traitsferet regiutm in cam ; at in tcmplo Dei ■edebit tedoOt Hi eos qui adorant cum qua-i [pee -it Chrittm," v. 20. So Innau* would make Antichrist!! empire % fifth mundane great empire, with new and different capital from Rome, in direct contradiction to Dan. ii., vii., which alike state that there would be but four previous to the reign of Messiah. 280 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. noted in Irenaeus. We find in his 4th Book a passing notice of the white horse and rider of the first Apocalyptic Seal ; and explanation of it as signifying Christ born to victory, and going forth conquering and to conquer.1 This is quite a detached comment; without any reference to the contrasted symbols of the Seals following. — I may add too that he makes the Apocalyptic altar to be that on which Christians' prayers and praises are offered in heaven, not that of the earthly Jerusalem.2 And so again of the Apocalyptic temple. 4. Next turn we to Tertullian. And on the subject of Antichrist, while agreeing with Irenseus in expecting his development chronologically after the breaking up of the Roman State into ten kings, or kingdoms, all in strict accordance with the Apocalypse, I see in Tertullian no intimation of his enter- taining any such idea as Irena?us' as to this Antichrist being a Jew of the tribe of Dan ; or of his fixing an abomination of desolation, in the sense of his own worship, in any rebuilt temple at Jerusalem.3 Nor again does he, like Irena?us, refer to the last of Daniel's 70 pro- phetic weeks, as furnishing out the time of 3| years to the two wit- nesses, and 3£ to Antichrist. On the contrary he in one place ela- borately draws out a sketch of the chronology, from the first year of Darius to that of Jerusalem's destruction by the Eomans under Titus, to show that the whole 70 weeks were then fully completed, and the whole prophecy then accomplished.4 And indeed it is evi- dent that he regarded the 3| years of the witnesses and 3| years of Antichrist as one and the same ; for in his view the death of the former was to be the death of the latter? Moreover again and again 1 " Ad hoc enim nascebatur Dominus; " (viz. to overthrow his adversary, like his anti- type Jacob;) " de quo et Joannes in Apocalypsi ait, Exivit vincens ut vinceret." iv. 38. 2 " Est ergo altare in ccelis. Illuc enim preces nostra? et oblationes diriguntur ; et ad templum ; quemadmodum Joannes in Apocalypsi ait, Et apertum est templum Dei." iv. 34, ad fin. Irenaeus' reference here is to Apoc. xi. 19, or xv. 5. But it is quite evident from the passage that he would have expounded the temple scene in Apoc. viii. 3, where incense was given to the Angel, of Christian worship also. 3 More than once he expounds what St. Paul says about Antichrist' s sitting in the temple of God, &c, of pseudo-Christian heretics like the Marcionites sitting in the professing Christian Church. 4 " Ita in diem expugnationis suae Judaei impleverunt hebdomadas LXX praedictas a Daniele. Igitur, expletis his quoque temporibus, et debellatis Judasis, postea cessa- verunt illic libamina et sacrificia, &c." Adv. Jud. 8. See my notice on Daniel's hebdomads at the end of this Section. s See p. 282 Note * infra. I'KK. I.] FROM ST. JOHN TO CONSTANTI N I. (Tert ttllian.) 281 he speaks of Christians, or the Christian Church, as God's temple ; ' aiul in various places otheretiee, awhile within the professing Church, as Antichrists and ant i -Christiana.1 -Vet again he distinctly notes the 1 1 1,000 on Mount Bion with Christ in Apoc. xiv. (the same of course with the 144,000 of ApOO. vii.) as the virgins of the Christian Church ;3 ami consequently the sealed ones out of the twelse tribes as not Jews, but Christians. With the same anti-Judaic view he markedly speaks of the Apocalyptic New Jerusalem (though with the twelve tribes of Israel written on its gates) as Christian, not Jewish; the Jerusalem spoken of by St. Paul to the Galatians as the mother of all Christians.4 Turning to the Seals the first point that meets us is a passing no- tice of the rider in the first Seal ; which symbol Tertullian seems to have explained like Irenaeus.5 — But by far the most interesting to my mind of his passing comments here are those on the 5th Seal's vision of the souls under the altar, and that of the palm-bearing com- pany, figured before the opening of the seventh Seal.6 The martyrs of the former vision, he explains as martyrs then in course of being slain under Pagan Eome for the testimony of Christ : thereby dis- tinctly assigning to the then passing aera that particular place in the 1 E. g. De Res. Cam. 26, where he says that Christ, and the faithful Christians who have put on Christ, are Owl's temple, Jerusalem, and the Holy Land. Also Adv. Jud. 14 ; " sacerdote tempi] ■piritaelia, id est, ecclesuB." 2 E. g. " Quxnatn istae sunt pel les avium nisi nomin is Christiani extrinsecus super- ficies ? " "Qui Antit hristi nisi C'hristi rebellee?" De Prajscr. 4. So also Adv. Marc. iii. 8, v. 16, &c. s Bee. Cam. 27- < Adv. Marc. iii. 26. i •• Accipit ct Angelus victoriae coronam, proccdens in candido equo ut vinceret." De Cor. Mil. ch. 15. By the Angel I think Tertullian meant Christ the Covenant- Angel . * The passages are given in my Vol. i. p. 232 ; but they are so illustrative that I must beg to bring them here again distinctly under the reader's eye. 1. De Res. Cam. ch. 25. " Etiam in Apooalypri Johannis ordo temporum stemitur, quern martyrum quoque animae sub altari, ultionem et judicium Bagittmtea, sustinrre didicerunt : ut prius et orbis de patcris angclorum plagassuas ebibat, et prostituta ilia civit;is a decern regibus dignos exitus referat, et bestia Antichristus cum suo Pseudo- prophita iwtaimm eeeleaiai I>' i infant : atque ita, Diabolo in abyssum interim rele- gato, primae t'eauiroctionii pranogativa de soliis ordinetor; dehinc, et ignidato, uni- versalis resurrection U eeaeara da libru judin tur." 2. Scorp. adv. Gnost. ch. 12. " Quinam i-.ti tarn bcati victores (Apoc. ii. 7) nisi pro- pria m.irtvres ? Illorum etenim victorix* quorum et pugnae ; eorum vero pugnaa quorum et sanguis. Bed at interim sub altari martyrum animx- placid''- qnieaOTUlt ; et fiducia ultioni> candidam claritatis uiurpant, donee et [alii] consortium illarum gloria? imple.mt. Nam et rursus innumcra multitudo albati, at pelmil victorix- butane, re- velantur; (Apoc. vii. 'J, &c. ;) scilicet de Autichristo triumphales." 282 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. Apocalyptic pre figurative drama.1 The palm-bearers of the latter vision, that had to come out of the great tribulation, he identifies as that same second set of martyrs that had been predicted to the souls under the altar; — those .that were to make up the martyr-comple- ment by suffering under Antichrist, and so suffering to become triumphant, and attain Paradise. And hence chiefly he formed to himself an Apocalyptic plan, and " ordo temporum " in the prophecy : — how that before the judgment and vindication promised to the souls under the altar, the imperial harlot-city Rome was to be de- stroyed by the ten kings, (mark, not the ten kings and Antichrist,) after the vial-plagues had first been poured out on its empire: then the Beast Antichrist to rise, make war conjunctively with his False Prophet on the Church, and add an innumerable multitude of sufferers, during the tribulation of his tyranny, to the martyrs pre- viously slain under Pagan Rome, Christ's two "Witnesses, Enoch and Elijah, specially inclusive : 2 then, Antichrist having been thereupon destroyed from heaven, and the Devil shut up in the abyss, the privi- lege of the first resurrection, and millennial reign with Christ, to be allotted to its chosen participants ; and afterwards the conflagration to follow, in which fire the seven-hilled Babylon, with its persecuting princes and provincial governors, would meet their ultimate destruc- tion and torment ; 3 and the general resurrection and judgment. As to the Apocalyptic millennium, Tertullian's view will have been seen by the citations in my Millennial Chapter to be precisely simi- lar to that of the two preceding Fathers.4 1 Mr. C. Maitland says, p. 164 ; " This passage contains the earliest identification of the 5th Seal martyrs with those who suffer under Antichrist." It will be seen I be- lieve that, instead of this, Tertullian expressly distinguishes the 5th Seal martyrs, as the first set of martyrs, from the second set that were to follow under Antichrist. — The white robes of the palm-bearers in Apoc. vii., robes washed white by them in the blood of the Lamb before death, are also unadvisedly identified by Mr. C. M. with the white robes of the martyrs in Apoc. vi. 11 ; — white robes given them in vision after death. * " Translatus est Enoch et Elias, nee mors eorum reperta est, dilata scilicet. Cae. terum morituri reservantur, ut Antichristum sanguine suo extinguant." De Anim. 50. In another place, Adv. Marc. iv. 22, he explains Zachariah' s two olive-trees as Moses and Elias. 5 " How shall I admire, how exult, when I behold so many proud monarchs, re- ported to have been received into heaven, groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness ; so many provincial governors who persecuted the name of the Lord liquifying in fiercer fire than they ever kindled against the Christians ! " De Spectac. c. 30. Cited already by me under my 5th Seal, Vol. i. p. 224. 4 See on his millennary view the abbreviated extract given in the Note p. 134 MB. [.] FKCM si'. John I" 0ON8TAMTZNB. { 1 1 ippoh/tus.) Altogether Tertullian'a is an eminently common-sense view of the prophecy; \i/. as a prefiguratrre drama, in orderly succession, of the chief anas end events in the bietory of the Church and of the world, from Christ's lirst coming, or new it, to his second.' Excepting Ids view iif Bnoch and Elijah as the witnesses, there seems to me little on whieh we might not even now join hands in eoneord with the venerable and sagacious expositor. 5. Next comes into review on this head ffippolyttu, Bishop of Portus Uomanus. now well ascertained to be the modern Ostia:2 — one who was an immediate sueeessor of Jrenatis and Tertullian, indeed it is said lrenaus' disciple;3 and who suffered martyrdom, probahly aboul A.l). 236, or 250, under the Emperor Maximin, or the Em- peror Deeins.4 Jerome reports that he wrote a Treatise specifically on the A pocalypse, as well as one on Antichrist.5 If so, the former has perished. But there is still extant a short Treatise purporting to be that by him on Christ and Asttiehriti, and with every mark of genu- ineness.'"' This includes in it sundry Apocalyptic notices of much in- terest ; and I therefore give the following brief abstract. supra. But it will be quite worth the reader's while to read the whole passage from which this extract is taken; which passage, I see, is given by Bishop Kaye in his Tertullian, p. 362. K. speeting the New Jerusalem, as will be there seen, his idea was that it was to be of heavenly fabric , and would descend from heaven to he the abode of the resurrec- tion saints daring the Millennium. That he did not expect the converted Jews. still in a mortal state, to be restored to, and to occupy their own land of Judah, appears from the general anti-Judaic tone of his remarks. (See for example my extract from him p. 280, in the Note *.) In one place however he tells of a glorious city which had been seen shortly before m Judwa tor forty successive days, suspended in the air at break of morning ; the image, it was supposed, and he believed it, of the New .leru- And perhaps he may hence be supposed to have had an idea of Judaea, as the chief local point of the manifestation of the glories of the heavenly Jerusalem, during the millennium. But nothing more. i So too as to Christ's prophecy of Jerusalem's destruction, Tertullian, with the same common-sense eye, regards it as an orderly prophecy, from a commencing date of the time when it was spoken : " Interrogatus a di-cipulis quando eventnra essent qua; interim de templi exitu eruperant, ordinem temporum primo Judaicorum, usque ad excidium Jerusalem, dehinc communium, usque ad conclusioncm seculi, dirigit." 1) Etas Can. 22. my notice on this point, Vol. i. p. 2G, Note*. S I Photius, apparently on the authority of Hippolvtus himself; MkcSiti;? Bipif vatov o IttttoXutos. . . Taurat ct tf)>)aiv i\iyxotv inro/JXrjthjj/ai ofiiXuvvTov Etpiivatou. . by Lardner, Vol ii. p. 124, ♦ Lardner. p. Uv » lb. 422. * I may tpeciry particularly the clause following ; which shows the Treatise to have bctn written in the times of Pagan pQFSeCUtiun, and so before C'oustantine's establisli- 28-i HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART 1. After observing on God's will that the mysteries of the future, foreshown by the ancient Prophets, or seers, should be concealed from none of his servants, he opens his subject by laying down strongly respecting the coming Antichrist, even as if his grand characteristic, (a view derived evidently in part at least from the Apocalypse,') that he would in everything affect resemblance to Christ. " The seducer will seek to appear in all things like the Son of God. As Christ a Lion, so he a lion; as Christ a King, so he a king; as Christ a Lamb, so he as a lamb, though inwardly a wolf; as Christ sent out apostles to all nations, so will he similarly send out false apostles : "2 it being added that he would have also a similar connexion with the Jewish people.3 Then, after extracts from other Scriptures, and especially from Daniel's two great symbolic prophecies of the quadripartite Image and the four wild Beasts, which he explains, just like the other Fathers, of the Babylonish, Persian, Macedonian, and Soman empires, and the little horn of the fourth Beast as Antichrist, he thus turns to the Apocalypse for information as to the fated end of both Antichrist himself, and his city Rome : — " Tell me, blessed John, thou apostle and disciple of the Lord, what hast thou heard and seen re- specting Babylon : wake up, and speak ; for it was she that exiled thee to Patmos." * And then he gives in full the two Chapters, Apoc. xvii. and xviii., containing the Angel's explanation of the beast- riding Harlot, and the consequent vision of her destruction. And, adding and interweaving other explanatory notices both from the Apocalypse and Daniel, he expounds the whole subject to the effect following: — that the last of Daniel's 70 weeks, (for he insulates this ment of Christianity. AW 77 /ueis oitives i\iri\owrt's tis -rov vlov tod Bsov c~iwk- fitda ii-ir avTwv twu airio-rwv. Ch. 59. Moreover every such notice of monasticism, and of the Virgo Deipara, as are found in the spurious Treatise De Consummations Mundi ac de Antichristo, bearing Hippolytus' name, and with much of his real Treatise in- corporated, are here wanting ; — notices which savour of the latter half of the 4th cen- tury, or a period yet later. 1 Antichrist's affected likeness to a lamb, which is one of the points here specified, is in a later part of the Treatise expressly inferred by Hippolytus from the Apocalyp- tic figuration of Antichrist and his False Prophet as a two-horned lamb-like Beast: to Se tnrtiv to Ktpwra av-rv bfxoia apviw, 6-ri i£o/j.oiaodai /ifWti tw uiu> T« 0£«. ch. 49. — Compare Tertullian's explanation of the symbol, p. 281 Note 3 supra. — In Mr. C. M.'s sketch of Hippolytus' prophetic views this important passage is not referred to. 2 Ch. 6 ; referred to already, Vol. ii. p. 85, Note *. 3 £1/ TTtptTO/irj 6 2u)Tfjp l)\Qi.l> its TOV KOOTflUV, Kd( auTOS (o AvTl)(J)L tov AvTi^pio-Tov iao- fllV1)V \tyil . . . TO It Kill TI|U f£oilipiOV ItTOlll, Kai TTOltl TT\V yi\v Kai tov: iv avTri KaToiKovvrwi iva TrpocrM/i/tjcraJo-t to t)i]piov to irputTov, ov cQtpa- ■wtvdi) >i TrXtp/l tou QavaTov uvtov, tovto oi)paivti on kotu tov Avyovo-Tov vouov, a(j>' ou KM 17 [iaaiXna Pwfiaiwv avvajT)], oi/Tw nai avTot KiXivou Kai oiaTa^it airavTa tirtKvuwv, Oia toutov Cufc'iv iuvTov irXnova ■trtpi-woiovfxivoi. Tovto yap ictti to Orjpiov to TiTapTov ov £Tr\»jyt| /; Kf(paXi), nut iraXiv itiipairivQii, oia to KUTaXoOijvai avTi\v, t) Kai aTiuao-0i]vai, KUt »is 6iKa OiaCrj/uara avaXvOijvat. 'Ot toti iravovpyo<; wv woirip Qtpairivan avT^v KOI avavnoan. Tovto yap ioti to itpiifiivov inro tov irpoiftr]- tov, on email irvivfia Ttj iiKovt, Ml AOAIflTtl i; iikiuv tov t)>ipiuv' UHpyifVtl yap kui ier\vin-, which Daniel expressly excludee. This most important passage in Hippolytus' prophetic views is silently past over by Mr. ('. Maitland. 286 HISTORY OP APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. the Latin Man, as his designative title, a name containing the fated number G6(J : ' (the whole passage is every way most observable :) that meanwhile the Church, figured in Apoc. xii. as a travailing woman, because of daily bringing forth Christ (or Christ's members) by her preaching in the world,2 and clothed with the Divine Word, as the sun, and the starry crown of the twelve apostles, would, while the Antichrist established his abomination in the holy place,3 flee to the mountains, pursued from city to city by him, and sustained only by faith in Christ crucified ; his arms, extended on the cross, being like the sustaining wings of the great eagle in the Apocalyptic vision : — and that then, and thereupon, Christ's coming would take place; An- tichrist be destroyed by its brightness ; the first resurrection of the saints follow ; the just, welcomed by Christ, take the kingdom pre- pared for them (Matt, xxv.) from the world's beginning, and, as Daniel says, shine forth in it as the sun and the stars ; the judgment of the conflagration being meanwhile executed on unbelievers ; and so Isaiah's word fulfilled, "They shall go forth and look on the carcases of the men that have sinned against me : for their worm dieth not, nor is their fire quenched ; and they shall be for a spectacle to all flesh." 4 6. Next the name occurs of the famous Origen, Hippolytus' con- 1 After mentioning 666 as the Beast's number, and Teitan and Euanthas as an- swering to the numeral, he goes on thus. AXX' e7teio?j irpotfpdiiptv XtyovTts in €0£pa7rsu6t) ?'; irXtj-y?) tov Qi]piuv tov irpvoTov, Kai iroivcrti XaXf.iv tijv tiKOva, tout' terTiv icr^DCTat, (pavtpov o' eti ttcktiv oti o'l KpaTOWTti tTi vvv fieri Aa-rivoi, eis ei/os ovv avOpwirov ovop.a pLf.Tayop.tvov yivnai Aa-rsii/os. c. 50. A passage already cited by me Vol. iii. p. 248. Mr. C. M. writes thus, p. 168 ; " Like Ircnaeus, our bishop knows many names that make the number of the Beast. He prefers the word {apvovpai) J deny, doubt- less from the predicted denial of Christ's being come in the flesh." I regret that Mr. C. Maitland should have so written. He had the two Treatises before him, the genuine and the spurious. He cites the above, which is only in the spurious one, as Hippoly- tus' solution ; and leaves the genuine Treatise, and its preferred solution of the name, AaTtivos, unnoticed ! 2 Kai tv ya^pi tyovaa Kpa^ti woivovra, /cat f3aop.tvt) TtKtiv, oti ou TravcrtTai fi tKKXtjrria ytvvwaa tK Kapoias tov Xoyov, tov tv Koapw otto airi^wv 6to)Ko/xtvov .... tov apptva Kai TtXtiov XpiTov, iraida Otov, Q tov Kai avQpwirov KUTayytXXoptvov atl TiKTovcra v ikkXi\o-iu SiSaaKti nravTa to. tdvij. Again, on the words " caught up to God ; " i)pTrayi) to TtKvov avTijs 7rpos tov Qtov Kai tov dpovov uvtov, oti nroupuvios eti ftao-iXtvs, kul ovk £7rsage is so remarkable that I mu-t transcribe it in part. vine (if Chriat in the language of Apoc. xix. as 'O Aoyos -r* <)>«, i ttitos KsXa/MHOV, mi aXijthi'os, nat. tv HiKaioavvr) Kptvn Kat iroXifiti, he thus turns to hi~ conflict with the great usurper Antichrist. Y.irav 6t uvtoi p.w irpnr(3turi irtpi oXrjOtia?, 6 6 viroKpivoiitio'i ttvai Aoyov, h Aoyov wv, KCU t) tauTtji/ ti\v uvayopiv- imtu akiitiiiav, hk a\rjt)iia TvyKuvwja, aWa y St. John in his : iption of the litter on the white hone in Apoc. \i\. in such a manner as to imply v plainly that he did not si, viiw tin rider on the white horse in Apoc. tL, n all tin m duu re "anting. 1 - .v \'ul. i. pp. ' " Kt I'.ipias Hiermpolitea Bpiaoop tin iEgypti partibua Bpiscopus, de mille annorum regno iu ut Victoria :.t." Cited li. 1'. M. iii. -ill. 288 niSTORY OF APOCALYPTIC interpretation, [app. PART I. Treatise on the Apocalypse ; containing as it does, at its conclusion, a distinct anti-millennarian declaration.1 But the objection vanishes on examination; for various indubitable millennarian intimations occur in the body of the Commentary : 2 and the anti-millennarian passage is an evident interpolation by another hand, probably Je- rome's own ; 3 as well as one or two shorter passages elsewhere-4 Moreover in Ambrose Ansbert I have observed a reference to the true Victorinus' statement on a rather singular point ; which precise statement we find in the extant Commentary.6 — In the edition given in the Bibliotheca Patrum Maxima, now before me, there is the far- ther disadvantage of transposition of various parts of the Comment from their right places. But the Apocalypse itself makes the recti- fication of this easy, as Victorinus' is evidently an orderly Comment on it. — I have only further to premise, that the work is very short, occupying but seven folio pages, or fourteen columns in the'Bibliotheca, Vol. iii. pp. 414 — 421. Of these fourteen columns, three and a half 1 "Audiendi non sunt qui mille annorum regnum terrenum esse confirmant ; qui cum Cherintho haeretico sentiunt." Ad fin. B. P. M. iii. 421. 2 1. On the Epistle to the Church of Thyatira, " I will give hiui the morning star," the explanation is given, " Primam resurrectionem scilicet promisit : " and again, on " I will give him power over nations," " id est, judicem ilium constituet inter caeteros sanctos." p. 416. 2. Speaking of the nations to he destroyed at Christ's coming, ("gentibus perituris in adventu Domini,") as signified by various figurations, such as the harvest and the vintage, the writer adds, " Sed semel in "adventu Domini, et consummationis, et regni Christi, et apertione regni sanctorum futurum est." p. 420. 3. " In Judaea ubi omnes sancti conventuri sunt, et Dominum suum adoraturi." — p. 415. Strange that Bellarmine should have overlooked all this ; and in his De Scriptor. Eccl. spoken of the extant Treatise as decidedly anti-millennarian ! 3 For Jerome, in returning the copy of Victorinus sent him, says that he had not only corrected the transcribers' errors, but himself made additions : — " Quia me literis obtestatus es . . . majorum statim libros revolvi ; et quod in eorum commentariis reperi Victoriai opusculis sociavi. Ab iota, hide quae ipse secundum literam senserit, a prin- cipio libri ad signum crucis quae ab imperitis erant vitiata scriptoribus, correximus ; exindc usque ad finem voluminis addita esse cognosce." (ibid. 414.) — The anti-millen- narian addition, of which I gave in Note ' the concluding sentence, occupies near a column at the end of the Treatise as now printed. It gives Jerome's view of the first resurrection, to much the same effect as Augustine's ; but only, in true Hieronymic style of sentiment, with special notice of the keeping of virginity, as characteriz- ing those millennarian priests and kings unto God, in regard of whom the Devil is bound. 4 Especially at p. 417 ; where, Victorinus having mentioned twenty-four Books of the Old Testament, the gloss occurs ; " Sunt autem libri veteris Testament! qui ac- cipiuntur viginti quatuor, quos in Epitomis Theodori invenies : " in which the refer- ence is to Theodorus, a writer of the sixth century. 5 See the Note at p. 294 infra. PER. I.] FBOM st. joiin TO COM8TAMTINS. (i'icforiiius.) 289 are devoted to the Apocalyptic introductory Virion and Epistles to the Seven Churches ; three more to the Apocalyptic scenery ; four to the Seals, Trumpets, and Witnesses; two to the Vision of the Dragon ainl t In* two Beasts; and one only to all the rest : herein well agreeing with what Cassiodorus says of it, that it only explained tlif more diltieidt passages.1 — 1 now proceed to give an abstract of it : and this somewhat at large, as due to its chronological interest. At its opening Victorinus dwells on the particulars of Christ's first appearance to St. John : — 4m head and l/air white marking the antiquity of the Ancient of Days, for the head of Christ is God ; and perhaps with reference, in the wool that it is compared with, to the sheep his members, in the snow to the multitude of baptismal can- didates, white as snow-ilakes from heaven : his face as the sun serving not only to express his glory, but the fact of his having risen, and set. and risen again in life on this world ; his long priestly robe mark- ing his priesthood ; his zone the golden choir of the saints ; his breasts the two Testaments, whence his people's nourishment ; and the sword from his mouth his preached word, by which men shall be judged and Antichrist slain : his voice being likened to many waters with reference not only to its power, as that of many people, but perhaps too to the baptismal waters of salvation issuing from him ; and his feet to brass glowing from the furnace, in reference to the apostles purified in the furnace of affliction, by 'whom he walks as it were in his preached gospel through the world. — Then, after a short notice of the Epistles to the Seven Churches, (which seven he ex- plains as representatives of the Church Universal,2) he proceeds to the second series of visions, on the door being opened in heaven, and .luhn called up thither: the heaven once shut having by Christ's satisfaction been opened ; and in St. John's person, originally of the circumcision, but now a preacher of the New Testament, it being apparent that alike the faithful of either dispensation were now in- \ited.3 In the heavenly scene presented to John's view, the throne was that of Divine royalty and judgment; its jasper colour, as of 1 So Professor If. Stuart, in hi-. Apocalyptic Comment, i. I'W. • Like l'.iul. he adda ; who Brit taught th.it terra Chnichei represented the ''lunch Catholic, bj ren Churches. Pox Vietorinua' appended not t" have included that to the Hebrew among St. Paul's Epistles, 1 Such Menu to mi hia meaning; but it ia obscure. — Thus early ia St. John's ractcr on the Apocalyptic so ne hinted. YUL. iv. 19 290 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. water, signifying God'a earlier judgment by the waters of the de- luge ; its fiery sardine colour that to come by fire; and the sea be- fore the throne the gift of baptism, and offer of salvation through it, previous to judgment. The twenty-four elders he explains as the twelve patriarchs and twelve apostles, seated on thrones of judgment : agreeably to the patriarchal privilege, " Dan shall judge his people," and the apostolic, " Ye shall sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel : " — while the four living creatures typified the four evangelists, and their preaching of the gospel : the eyes within sig- nifying the insight of that preaching into man's heart ; and the six wings of each (twenty-four in all) having reference to the twenty-four books of the Old Testament, because it is only by help of the pre- vious testimonies of those books that the Gospel can fly abroad. — The voices and thunderings from the throne meant God's preachings, and threats, and notices of Christ's coming to judgment ; the seven torches of fire the Spirit, granted to men in virtue of Christ's cruci- fixion.— As to the seven-sealed book, it was the book of the Old Test- ament ; a book, with its prophecies of things to occur in the last times,1 opened by none but Christ : who alone, as the lamb that was slain, could fulfil its types and prophecies ; alone as a lion, and through death, conquer death for man. Also the saints' new song of thanksgiving had reference to the new salvation and new blessings, now imparted to believers, especially of the glorious promised king- dom. Even if the opening of the Seals were simultaneous, (?) yet did the arrangement of them indicate order ; the first Seal indicating what took place first,2 the foreshowing of things that were to be in the last times. Arrived thus at the opening of the Seals, Victorinus explains the four horses and riders of the first four Seals as indicating respectively the triumphant progress of the Gospel, l?egun from after Christ's ascension,8 1 So I suppose we are to understand him. " Resignatio sigillorum, ut diximus, apcrtio est Veteris Testamenti, et prredicatorum prrenunciatio in novissimo tempore futurorum." p. 417. 2 " Qudd licet Scriptura prophetica per singula dicit, omnibus [tamen] simul apertis sigillis, ordinem tamen suum habet pranlicatio. Nam, aperto primo sigillo, dicit se Tidisse cquum album et cquitem coronatum, habentem arcum ; hoc enim primo factum est." ibid. 3 " Postquam enim ascendit in ccelos Dominus, et aperuit universa, misit Spiritum suum ; cujus verba prsedicationis, tanquam sagitta; ad corda hominum pergentcs, [ut J vincerentincredulitatem." ib. Thus, though he refers in the preceding context (cited IM'.u. I.] PEON M. John K) OOMITAMTIMS. {VtctortHUi.) -".» 1 and the tears, fimkia} and yrslileneesr which Christ said would precede bis icoond coming: also the fifth Seal's touU under the altar, M marking the continuous persecutions and mart vrdoins of Christ's saints; for whose consolation, till the last great day of retribution, white robe.<, or joys o{' the Holy Spirit, are given : the region under the brazen altar of \ision figuring the place under-ground where the separate spirits rest ;3 while the place of the golden altar (as being that to which our offerings of prayer and praise are brought)4 typi- fied heaven. Further, the earthquake of tbe sixth Seal he makes to be the last persecution:5 that wherein the darkening of the true doctrine to the unfaithful would answer to the eclipsed sun in the vision, and the bloodshed of martyr-saints to the moon like blood: the falling away of vain professors from the Church, under force of persecution, fulfilling the symbol of the falling stars from heaven ; and the removal of the Church itself from public sight that of the rolling away of the figured firmament.6 — In the sealing vision, Apoc. vii.. next following, the four angels of the winds (the same as the four vi/ids of Apoc. ii. li, bound in the Euphrates') signified four nations, (nations being ruled over by angels,) who were not to transgress their limits till they should come in the last aera with the Antichrist; the Angel from the East meaning Elias; who would anticipate the times of Antichrist, turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, (i. e. of the Jews to the Gentile believers,) and convert to the faith p. 288) to the last times, yet the vision is explained by Victorinus as having the begin- of its fulfilment from the time of Christ's ascension. 1 " Hurt not the wine and oil" he explains, " Spiritualem hominem ne plagis per- rii : " the balance ; " Statera in manu libra examinis, in qui singulorum mcrita ostenderet." p. 418. • Be makes no mention of the limiting "fourth part of the earth," handed down to us in the praeent Greek text. 3 " Sub aru, id est sub terra. . . . Ara area terra intelligitur ; sub qua est infemtis, remotapamis et ignibus regio, [an opinion like that of Tcrtullian and Jerome, cited p. . J rapra,] et requies sanctorum." — On the idea of the » p. irate spirits of the • nta in the Romish sense) not having the beatific vision of Qod, the Editor appendl .i N •• . Cauti lege! ibid. ' Matt. v. 23. ■ He does not say the persecution by Antichrist : and one might almost rappOM !.e meant one before his ootning; as Elias' coming is next notified, who (according to Victorinus) was to precede Antichrist. 6 Here, at p. 41S, occurs the first marked disorder in the printed copy in thl Bibliotheca : the comment there going on to Apoc. xi. 1; and the proper sequel, on riL, not occurring till p 119. yictorinm; agreeably with the «■' ibach, which on Apoc ix. '. i -racrkpas avifxoui, for Ttaaipat ayyt\ovs. 19 • 292 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. both many of Israel,1 and a great multitude of Gentiles : of all whom, now united in one as God's elect, the white robes signified their washing in the blood of the Lamb by baptism, and subsequent pre- servation of the grace then given.2 — In Apoc. viii. the half-hour's silence figured the beginning of eternal rest ; one half-hour only being mentioned, to signify the subject's then breaking off. For chrono- logical order is not followed in the Apocalypse :3 but the Holy Spirit, when he has come to the chronological end, returns often, and re- peats, by way of supplement. Next comes the vision of the incense-offering Angel. Victorinus supposes this incense-offering to depict the prayers of saints : (spe- cially, on Antichrist's reign approaching, the prayer that they may not enter into temptation :) the Angel being figured, because Angels offer the prayers of the Church, as well as pour out wrath on Anti- christ's kingdom ; which wrath was signified alike in the seven trum- pets and seven vials, the one set of symbolizations supplying what was omitted in the other.4 — As to the particular subjects of these Trumpets and Vials, he does not unfold it in detail. He only gener- ally says of them, that they depict " either the ravages of plagues sent on the world, or the madness of Antichrist, or a diminishing of the peoples, or the variety and difference of the plagues,5 or the hope of the saints' kingdom, or the ruin of states, or the destruction of the great city, Babylon,— i. e. the Roman.'''' And just expounding, as he passes, the warning cry of the eagle flying in mid-heaven, after the fourth trumpet-woe, to mean the Holy Spirit's warning voice to men by the mouth of the two prophets, against the wrath to come in the impending plagues, he so proceeds to the Angel vision of Apoc. x. 1 Elsewhere Victorinus explains the 144,000 as the elect out of the Catholic Church, converted in the last days by Elias. See p. 295 Note 4, infra. 2 " Electorum numerum, qui per sanguinem agni baptismo purgati, suas stolas fecerunt Candidas, servantcs gratiam quam accepcrunt," p. 419. — The white robes given in thejifth seal Victorinus had explained, we saw, as the gift of the Holy Spirit. s " Semihora initium est quictis eetenue. Sed partem intellexit quia intcrruptio. Eadem per ordinem repetit." p. 419. He here, and elsewhere, strongly insists on the retrogressi re character of certain of the visions. "... licet repetat per phialas ; non quasi bis factum dicit ; scd, quoniam semel futurum est quod est decretum a Deo ut fiat, ideo bis dicitnr. Quidquid igitur in tubis minus dixit hinc in phialis est. Nee aspiciendus est ordo dictorum : quoniam sa?pe Spiritus sanctus, ubi ad novissimi temporis fincm percurrcrit, rursus ad eadem tempora redit, et supplet ea qua; minus dixit. Nee rcquirendus est ordo in Apocalypsi, sed intellectus." ibid. ' Ibid. 5 " Differentia plagarum." Or perhaps, delaying ; with allusion to such passages as Apoc. ix. 12, x. 7, xi. 14. ibid. KB. ! PSOM n. John CO 0OM8TANTINB. \ I'le/nrinua.) 898 The first part ofwhiofa vision lie makes refer, as a parenthesi-. to Si. John permmaUjf, The Angel is explained to be Okritti the mmn /yooA- in his hand the Apocalypse revealed to John ; his lion-like voice, that declaring that now only is the time of repentance and hope; the strut thunders the mysteries of the future spoken through the pro- phets by the divine septifonn Spirit ; which voices John was not to write, because, as an apostle, of higher functions than that of inter- ig Scripture mysteries; an office this latter belonging rather to Church subordinate functionaries afterwards.1 Further, the charge to ,. rip turn, banc ease mnndatnm Dei, et Verbum Patria, at eonditorem orbta. Usee eat arundo et mensura fidci. Kt nemo adorat [ad] aram sanctam, nisi qui hanc fidem contitetur." — p. 41H. inns' application of this figure of the temple and the altar to the Christian Church, and church worthipptri, not any Jewish temple and altar, should be well m iTr. ' Without any expresi n G H ne. however to Daniel's hebdomad-. * For, layi V^iotorinna, Jeremiah had the original commission, " Before thai I formed thee in the womb I knew thee ; and sanctified thee to be ■ prophet among the nations." Now, argues Victorinus, during his recorded life Jeremiah was not ■ pi"- 29i HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. be killed in Jerusalem (called Sodom and Egypt) by the Beast from the abyss, Antichrist, at the commencement of his 3£ years' reign next succeeding, after many plagues inflicted on the world, answer- ing to the fire out of their mouths in the symbol : but to rise again on the fourth day after ; the fourth, not the third, so as not to equal Christ. So he comes to the vision of the Dragon and Woman, Apoc. xii. ; or rather to the concluding. verse of Apoc. xi., about the temple ap- pearing opened, and the ark appearing, which he connects with it : to the chronological retrogression in which, from the last times pre- viously depicted, he calls especial notice.1 For he construes the Woman to signify the Judseo-Christian Church of the Patriarchs, Pro- phets, and Apostles,2 (like the sun glorious in hope of the resurrection, like the moon bright even when to man's sight dark in death, and only waning to grow again,) travailing with desire of Christ's birth out of the Jews' nation, according to the promise. Then in Christ's birth, resurrection, and ascension, in spite of the Dragon or Devil, he sees fulfilled the mystic child's rapture to God's throne : the Dragon's colour red being explained as that of a murderer from the beginning ; phet among the nations ; and also that there is no record of Jeremiah's death. He adds that his opinion is that of " all the ancients." A mistake, doubtless; as Enoch and Elijah were more generally supposed the two prophets. The Apocalyptic Expositor Ambrose Ansbert, at B. P. M. xiii. 522, notices this opinion and reasoning as that of the Martyr Victorinus ; a fact furnishing conclusive evidence of the Treatise under consideration being indeed that of Victorinus, inas- much as the opinion appears to have been a singular one. As the point has not, I believe, been observed on before, and the question is so interesting a one, I subjoin the passage. " Victorinus hoc in loco duos testes Eliam vult intclligi et Jeremiam. . . Dicit enim praefatus vir, et (ut debitam ei venerationem exhibeamus) martyr Dei, . . . quia mors Jeremiae in Scripturi sacra non reperiatur, et quia Prophetam eum Dominus in gentibus posuerit, ille autem nondum ad gentes missus fuerit ; et idcirco ipsum cum Elia venturum credi debere, ut ecclesiam gentium contra Antichristi per- fidiam roboraret." 1 " Diligenter et cum summa solicitudine sequi oportet propheticam preodicationem ; et intelligere quoniam Spiritus ex parte praedicit, et praeposterat, et cum pnecurrerit usque ad novissimum rursus tempora superiora repetit." p. 418. — So again in the passage cited Note s p. 292. 1 the rather call attention to this, because Professor M. Stuart not only says (Vol. i. p. 455) of Victorinus, that " no plan of the whole work is sought after," but that Ambrose Ansbert " seems Jirst to have noted that the Apocalypse is occasionally re- trogressive." (lb. p. 458.) — Victorinus notes three retrogressions prominently : the first, after the sounding of the Beventh Trumpet and half-hour's silence in heaven ; the second, on the transition at the end of Apoc. xi. to the visions of the Dragon and Beast; the third, with reference to the Vial-outpourings, which he identifies with the Trumpets. 2 " So Augustine viewed the Old Testament Church as one with that of the New Testament." PIE. I.] PBOM BT. JOHB 10 OONSTANTIrfB. i J'ictoriniis.') 195 tin' third of star* swept l>v his t:iil, as the third part of men, or rather of angels, seduced hv him ; and his mom koadt and ten horns, as of the same ngnificanCJ with the /last's seven heails and ten horn-, of which more presently. Then the time changes.1 The Woman flee- ing into the desert is the Church, made up or inclusive of the 1 I l,<>00,2 now in simply Christian goise: being forced by the Dragon's flood- like armies of persecution into mountains and deserts; and upheld in her flight by the two wings of the two witnesses.3 The Dragon's fall from heaven, or interdiction from there appearing as before,4 is explained as following Ettas1 9\ years of witnessing,5 and being the beginning of Antichrist. — For he (the Dragon) then stood on the sand of the sea,6 as if to evoke him : the Antichrist, accordantly with s Paul's prophecy to the Thessalonians, having to rise from hell.7 As regarded the h'east. or Antichrist, his likeness to the leopard signi- fied the variety of nations that would be in the kingdom ; his seven b both Rome's seven hills, and also seven Roman Emperors;8 viz. Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian. Titus, (which five had fallen at the time of the Apocalypse,) the sixth, Domitian then reigning, the nth Ni /•(• iliiiilxwl in Job i. ibid. mi here some confusion in the chronology. For as the two Witnesses to in- the supporting wing* of tlie woman, her 3 J yoaxi in the wilderness would seem to be the '-',\ years of the Witnesses being alive. But Victorinos quotes in • i the time, " Then let them that are in Juihea Bee to the mountains ; " a prop , ble to the time of the abomination of desolation bring in the holy . which abomination he explains afterward of Antichriat'a eatsbliahment in Jerusalem : — an event tliis not of the cuiiirr, but the later .'jl years. Perhspt he ■ the woman's sate trsnamiaaion into the wildemeea to be the Witru pp 11 '. » " Stctit," not " iMt." : '• Antichristum de inferno suscitari Paulus ait." ib. VietorinOJ distinctly identitii ■* from tkt MS of Apoc. xiii , anil IU ust from t/tf abi/ss of Apoc. \i. and xvii. .: regei Romanes, an {aflnu >t Anttehriatoa eat." p. 419. " Capita septctn montcs sunt in quibus muliir scdet ; L e. emtai BomsnS." p. 120. 296 niSTORY OF apocalyptic interpretation, [app. PART I. with) the seven.1 Of this Nero St. Paul spoke, when he said, "The mystery of iniquity dotli already work," for Nero was then reigning : and, having had his throat cut, and so his head wounded to death, he was to revive and re-appear as Antichrist. — Victorinus notes his Jewish as well as Roman connexion. He would appear both under a different name, and in a different character from before. Profess- ing before the Jews to be the Christ, with a view to gain them, and, instead of patronizing idolatry, now inculcating the religion of the circumcision, he would by them be received as Christ : (a king and a Christ worthy of them !) moreover, whereas once most impure, now renouncing all desire of women, and so fulfilling Daniel's prophecy.2 — His number 666 is explained as some name of Greek numerals to that amount ; and two solutions offered, veiled in a corrupt text, yet not I think undecipherable :3 one, avrenoe, perhaps Victorinus' own ; the other, ytvoripiKoq, interpolated by some later copyist.4 — Of his ally the False Prophet the two horns like a lamb's signified his as- suming the form of a just man ; the fire from heaven that same which sorcerers seem to men's eyes even now to evoke : the Beast's image, a golden statue of Antichrist : which image the False Prophet would get placed in the temple of Jerusalem, and from which Satan will utter oracles. — So will there be the abomination of desolation in the Holy Place : called the abomination, because God abominates the worship of idols instead of himself, and the introduction of heresy into Churches ;5 the desolation, because many men, previously stable, , Such seems Victorinus' meaning : " Bestia de septem est, quoniam ante istos reges Nero regnavit." p. 420. 2 So Dan. xi. 37 is explained. An explanation noted by me p. 92 supra. 3 By previous writers who have noticed Victorinus' Apocalyptic commentary, the passage seems to have been abandoned as inexplicable. So e. g. by Malvenda, who, Vol. ii. 190, says of it, " Locus obscurus et depravatus, cui sanando non sum." Also by Br. Todd of Dublin ; who thus similarly abandons the enigma as insoluble ; " Vic- torinus' explanation of the number 666 is evidently corrupt and unintelligible." Apocal. Comm. p. 281. And so indeed it at first struck^myself ; though soon the true explanation suggested itself. 4 " Numerus ejus sexcenti sexaginta sex. Cum attulcrit ad literam Graecam hunc numerum explebit. Al. N. L. T. CCC. F. V. M. L. X. L. O. L. XX. CCC. I. III. EYN. LCC. N. V. III. P. CIX. K. XX 0 LXX. CC." ib.— Thetwo words meant are, as above stated, Avte/uos and Y tvanpiKos : of which the first is given by Prima- sius, in the sense (says he) of honori contrarius, as if for axijuos, or aivTifxos ; the other by Ambrosius Ansbcrtus, with reference to the Vandal persecutor of the fifth century, tienseric. The correspondence of those solutions with the text, slightly altered, will appear by separating the Greek letters and their numeral values in Latin, instead of intermixing them. Thus : — , I A N T E M O 2 „ f T E N 2 HPIK O 2 L I 1 L CCC V XL LXX CC L' \ III V L CC VIII C X XX LXX CC b Mark this point in Victorinus' view of the abomination in the temple. I'Klt. I.] rftOM sr. JOHN TO russi \\ i i\f:. (I'lr/oriiiiis ) 297 will by these false rigni md portents be tamed from the faith. — \- i«> the ten hinge, 7iotorinui says that they would have already re- ceived royal power, when Antichrist should either have Bel i\i Vespasiani it 8enat&*-ConeuIto Bantam eat," Barman De Vectig. pp. 110 — 113 thus comments. " Ita fere [mperatorum moa fait, poatqnam oninem potee- a qute olim penes populum erat in se reoeperant, ut si quid nori juris promnlgara valient, orationem in Benata haberent, quA Patriboi aperiebent quid itatnere reliant, ami quid ii statuerent eonsulebant. . .. Deinde (actum Benatdi Consultant sd Im- perat'iri in perferebatnr : qui, si illud approbabat, exire at legii rim habere jubebal ; ita ut omne robur nan a Bt natu sad a l'riiii i]>e aeeident." (How similar to thl of the Roman Popeaand EUmtan Councils afterwards!— Bee my VoL iii. pp. 282, i roiemont, ii. 160, on the reign of Anrelius Antoninus;— "C'etoit la style ordinaire des Bmpereuis de laire preeque tout par l'autorite du Benat." 298 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. the kingdom ; a kingdom extending from the river even to the world's end : the greater part of the earth being cleansed introduc- torily to it ; the millennium itself not ending it. All souls of the nations will next, and finally, be called to judgment.' 7. In the " Virginal Banquet " of Methodius, Bishop of Tyre, who like Victorious suffered martyrdom in the Diocletianic persecution, we find here and there an Apocalyptic expository notice that may be worth our observation: — more especially his application of the Judaic emblems of the Apocalypse to the Christian Church. Thus he ex- pounds the 141,000 sealed ones in Apoc. vii. and xiv., "out of all the tribes of Israel," not as an election out of the literal Israel, but as a certain select company of the Christian Church, viz. its company of virgins ; the palm-bearers in the same vision of Apoc. vii. being the general body of the faithful in Christ.2 On the same principle he explains also Mount Zion and the temple to mean the Christian Church : 3 and again in Apoc. xii. makes the sun-clothed woman that brought forth the man-child to be the faithful Christian Church, bringing forth sons by regeneration in baptism. For, argues Me- thodius, this symbol cannot mean Christ's own birth into the world ; seeing that John's commission in the Apocalypse was to see and record not things past, but things present and things to come.4 Connected with which last-mentioned vision Methodius broaches a very original idea as to the desert into which the woman fled for re- fuge from the dragon. It is the Church's appointed sojourning place or state in the world : a scene and state deserted of the evil, and in which many pleasant fruits and flowers grow for her use, as in a garden of spices : 5 the 12G0 days assigned for this meaning the whole time of her mundane sojourning, until the " beata secula," the blessed times to come.6 — With regard to which blessed times Methodius follows the generality of the Fathers before him in explaining them as the world's seventh sabbath millennary, begin- 1 Here comes the anti-premillennial addition. As ten is the number of the decalogue, says the interpolator, and 100 signifies the crown of virginity, therefore the millennary number (= 10 X 100) indicates a perfect man ; who may be said (i. e. while in his earthly state) to reign with Christ, and to have the Devil bound within him, &c. p. 421. 2 13. P. M. iii. 678, 689. 3 lb. 692. * lb. 692, 693. 5 Referring to Cant. iv. 16. " Vere desertuni a. malis," he calls it. p. 693. ' 6 lb. 694. li.] pbom sr. joiin to ciissi \\ mm.. ( Tad antiut ) 899 Ding with tin' 8000th year from Creation, after the type of the si* days of creation, and seventh dayof sabbath: "the first resarrection" being the literal resarrection of the saints to partake of it;1 but the body's change to an ttnatUe substance not occurring till the end of tlu> milk'iinary.2 lie also speaks of the conflagration as that bv which the world is not to be annihilated but purified.' 8. Last in this my first period let nie notice Lactanliits ; a writer who. in his famous work on the "Divine Institutions," formed a kind of connecting link between that period and the Constan* tinian ara. when the establishment of Christianity took place in the Roman empire: for his work was nearly all written before the end of the Diocletianic persecution; though dedicated to Conatantine in one of the closing Chapters.4 The time of his writing the Book deter- mines me to place him in the first period, rather than the second. His sketch, towards the conclusion of his Treatise, of the ending of the great mundane drama, involved necessarily certain Apocalyptic notices. Of these the following are I think the chief; being how- ever partly mixed up with ideas derived from the prophecies of Dan- iel, partly with others of mere imaginary origin. He states, then, that the first grand preliminary to the consumma- tion was the breaking up of the Koman empire;5 an event to be hastened by the multiplication of emperors ruling it, with civil ward sequent, till at length ten kings should arise: whereupon an enemy from the extreme Xorth should come against them,6 overthrow the three Asiatic dynasties of the ten, be received and submit ted toby the rest as their head, change the name and transfer the scat of the empire from West to East, and by his cruelties introduce a time of i lb. 697— 699, 70-5, 71 »• * B tuafiew. "Prim'i festi resarreetionu di<-, qua dies estjudidi, aimul eelebro cumChriato mfllenarimn annorum requiem. Indc rursua sequens penetran- ti m i i lot J< nun renin . . corpora m< o non r< manente t , 1 1 i quale priua era! ; ted, post milk- annorum ipatinm, inn- i c-t habitn humano ac eormptiooia in Angeli- cam magnitndinem at paleritodinem." Ih 3 p. 706. ' After Chapter 27 of die riitfa and last Book of the Institutes, he thus addi Conatantine: — "Bed omnia jam, aanetiaaime [mperator, fhjmenta aopita annt, ea quo Dena tummus ad reatituendnm juatitias domicilium, et ad tutelam generis hum cicitavit." * " Uomanum nomen, (juo nunc regitnr nrliis, (horret animui din re, ted dicam quia fu tu rum (it.) tolk-tiir de terra ; et unperium in A-iam rerertetur ; ac rur-u- Orient !." lb. %ii. li. * lb. 10, ud bait. 300 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. grievous calamity, especially to persecuted Christians ; l portents on earth and in the sky accompanying, and plagues such as once in Egypt : 2 — that then, the consummation drawing on, a great pro- phet (Elian)3 would be sent by God, with power of working miracles, shutting up heaven, turning water into blood, and by fire from his mouth killing such as would injure him ; by whose preaching and miracles many would be turned to God : — which done, that another king would rise from Syria, begotten of an evil spirit ; and, after de- stroying that former evil one, (the king of the jNorth ?) would con- quer and kill God's prophet afore-mentioned, his work having been completed;4 whose corpse, however, left unburied, would on the third 1 " Turn repente adversus eos hostis potentissimus ab extremis finibus plagse sep- tentrionalis orietur : qui, tribus ex eo numero deletis qui tunc Asiam obtinebunt, assume- tur in societatem a ceteris, ac princeps omnium eonstituetur. Hie insustentabili dominatione vexabit orbem ; divina et bumana miscebit ; . . . denique, immutato nomine, atque imperii sede translate, confusio ac perturbatio humani generis conse- quetur." vii. 16. — A view derived, I presume, from Dan. xi. 40—43 ; where however the three kings subjugated are not noted as Asiatics, but those of Egypt, Ethiopia, and Libya. I infer Lactantius' belief that the Northern king would transfer the seat of empire to the East, from comparison of the language used in the citation above.* Lactantius seems to suppose this King from the North an intermediate holder of the Roman empire, under a new name, between the then reigning imperial dynasty and Antichrist. A view distinctly exprest c. 17 ; (see Note * infra ;) and, in the Epi- tome, c. 11 : which latter thus affirms the local transference of the empire to him, not to Antichrist. " Existet longe potentior ac nequior, (i. e. than the ten kings,) qui tribus deletis [viz. of the ten] Asiam possidebit ; . . Remp. stiam faciei ; nomen im- perii sedemque mutabit." Amidst the evils of whose reign another king still worse would arise and destroy him, viz. Antichrist. " Inter haec mala surget rex impius, non modo generi hominum sed etiam Deo inimicus. Hie reliquias illins prioris tyranni conteret, vexabit, interimet." Yet in vii. 26 he writes as if he thought Antichrist would be the Roman empire's destroyer : — " Ne citius quam putemus tyrannus ille abominandus veniat, qui tantum facinus moliatur ; ac lumen illud effodiat, cujus interitu mundus ipse lapsurus est." - Ibid. The world (whether the Roman or the universal world) being then, says he, to the people of God, what Egypt was to God's ancient people Israel, vii. 15. — Compare Apoc. xi. 8, " the city which spiritually is called Egypt ; " — a passage which Lactan- tius probably had in his eye ; as also the Egyptian-\\ke plagues inflicted on the Apoc- alyptic world in the Trumpets an.l Vials. 3 So Lactantius' Fragment on the Last Judgment. * " Peractisque operibus ipsius," i. e. the works of God's prophet, (agreeably with the Apocalyptic declaration, ' When they shall have completed their testimony,') "alter rex orietur ex Syria, malo Spiritu genitus, qui reliquias illius prioris malt, cum ipso, siniul deleat." lb. 17. — Is there in this an allusion to Daniel's predictive * Very curious must have appeared to Lactantius, some ten or twenty years after his thus writing, a comparison with it of Constantine's course and history as during that ten or twenty years unfolded : — himself a king from the extreme North, who thence bore down upon and overcame the three Asiatic kings of the Roman world, and made preparation for transferring the seat of empire from Rome to the East ; but all as the friend and protector, not enemy, of Christianity and the Christians ! ri.u. I.] FBOM VS. tOWS i<> OONSTANTZMB. (Summary.) 80] day be reanimated, and rapt before tho enemies' eyes to heaven: — that the king hii murderer would be ■ prophet too, but a prophel of ties; ami with the miraculous power of evoking fire from beayen, arresting the sun in its course, and making an image ipeak: whereby he would make multitudes of adherents ; branding them like Cattle with his mark, and requiring worship from them as GWand the Son of Qoi: t'or that this would be in met the Atttichbibt ; falseh claiming to be Christ.1 but fighting against the real Christ, overthrow- ing his temple the Church,1 and persecuting unto the death his saints the true brae] : 3 — that the fated time of his domination woidd be forty-two. months; at the end of which time, the saints having Bed in a last extremity to the mountains, the heaven would be opened for their deliverance ; ■ and Christ himself intervene to save them, and destroy this Antichrist and his allied kings. After which the saints, raised from the grave, would reign with Christ through the world's seventh chiliad; a period to commence, Lactantius judged, in about 200 years at furthest:5 the Lord alone being thenceforth worshipped on a renovated world ; its still living inhabitants multiplying incal- culably in a state of terrestrial felicity ; and the resurrection-saints, during this commencement of an eternal kingdom, in a nature like the angelic, rei hence clear. I think, that Lirt.intiu* interpreted tlii tirr/rr Israeli/ ish tribes of the Apoca- h pai , :i- « c D i' tlii- Apocalyptic tempi*, in a Chrittitm m i 4 lb. vii. 17. — Li't.nuius bid here in hii eye, apparently, both Christ's precept to i the- mountains, on the abomination of desolation being set up, and the Apoca- lyptic notice of Armageddon, Apoc xix. 1 "Non amplius qu.'im duccntorum videtur annorum." Ib. \ii. 25. A passage noted by me, Vol. i. p. 396. 4 Mark Lactantius' distinction between the two classes. See my citations p. 185 iupra. 302 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. Period of Apocalyptic Interpretation, the following points may re- main in our minds as among its most marked and important cha- racteristics. 1st, that the Apocalyptic figurations were supposed to he such as began to have fulfilment yhm the time of St. John, or commencement of the Christian sera. I believe there is no one expositor of the period just past under review that entertained the idea of the Apo- calyptic prophecy overleaping the chronological interval, were it less or greater, antecedent to the consummation; and plunging at once into the times of the consummation, and of the then expected Antichrist. See e. g. Irenseus and Victorinus on the 1st Seal ; Ter- tullian on the 5th Seal ; and also Methodius, &cl 2. As regards the 1st Seal, and the interpretation of its white horse and horseman by Irenseus, and tben Tertulliau and Victorinus, as symbolizing Christ's victories by the gospel, we have to note that though it is Victorinus who first conjoins this its explanation with that of the contrasted horse and horseman of the three next Seals, as symbolizing the " bella fames and^es^'s" that were to follow after the first gospel preaching and triumphs, antecedently to Christ's second coming, so as predicted by Christ in Matt, xxiv., yet it seems probable that Victorinus' predecessors, as well as his successors, like him combined this view of the 1st Seal with that of the next 3 Seals, and with similar reference to Christ's prophecy respecting those an- tecedents to bis second coming. Which being so, and as this is a primary and cardinal point in Apocalyptic interpretation, it will be well here to bear in mind Irenseus' own caution, exprest with re- ference to another of the Apocalyptic mysteries ; (I mean the Beast's name ;) viz. that " if meant to be known at the time it would doubt- less have been declared by him who saw the Apocalypse." As part and parcel of an interpretation of all the four first Seals taken from Matt, xxiv., whereof the explanation of the next three Seals as sym- bolizing war, famine, and pestilence constitutes another essential part, it is disproved at once by the impossibility of the 3rd Seal's symbol, with its choenix or 51b. of barley for a denarius, together with plenty of wine and oil, ever meamng famine? 1 Against certain Prnsterists Methodius says ; " Johannes non de praeteritis, sed de iis quae veltuncjierent, vel qua; olim eventura essent, loquitur." B. P. M. iii. 693. 2 At p. 182 Mr. C. M., in explaining this Seal of "the severity of famine," notices the price of wheat only ; and passes over. what is said of the barley, wine, and oil in pi*, i.] nam n. johm ro oonbtaktinx. (Summary.) 308 8. A> bo the great inbjed of Antichrist, while there was ■ nni- il oonounenoe in the general idea of the prophecy, there was in reaped of the details of application a oonaiderable meaanre of differ- enoe ; theae differenoee arising mainly out of certain current notions of the OOming Antichrist as in iome way Jewtth as well as Roman, and the difficulty of combining and adjusting the two characteristics. The Roman view followed of course Apocalyptically from Antichrist's being figured as the Komau Beast's 8th head, after the healing of his deadly wound ; {for all identified the lieasts of Apoc. xiii. and xvii. ;') and joined too in closest union with the seven-hilled Harlot: as well as from Daniel's depicting him as a little horn of the 4th or Roman Beast. Of his supposed Jeicish connexion no Apocalyptic evidence occurred to the early patristic expositors : save only that Irenams thought Dan's omission in Apoc. vii. from the sealed tribes might arise from that being the Jewish tribe of Antichrist's origin; a no- tion in which none, I believe, followed him. The idea arose chiefly doubtless from a vague expectation of his being a Pseudo-Christ, such as Christ told of in Matt. xxiv. 5, whom the Jews might re- ceive : conjoined by some of the Fathers, as Irenauis and Hippolytus, with the idea that the abomination of desolation of which Christ then spoke as predicted by Daniel, and which would in fact have the Jew- ish sanctuary as its place of manifestation, was not only the one pro- phesied of in Dan. ix. 1*7, as what would synchronize with the end of the 70 hebdomads, but that associated with Antichrist in the prophecy of Dan. xii. 11 ; and the associated prediction which that verse refers to in Dan. xi. 36. Whence the conclusion that the ending epoch of each, and ending epoch also of the 70 hebdomads, would be at the end of Antichrist's %\ years, at the consummation. Now we have ourselves elsewhere asked, Was there not that in the designation of the desolating abomination in Dan. xii. 11 which might serve to distinguish it from the desolating abomination of Dan. xi. 31 and Dan. ix. 27; and the latter be meant distinctively by Christ, not the former S2 And I wish here to state it as not impro- bable that they were questions asked, and to the same effect, by some also of the patristic expositors of the aera I am referring to. For silence. 'Was lie not aware of the decisive argument thence urged hy me against all idea of f.nuii.' See Vol. L pp. 164— 166. 1 Irenreus, t. 30, speaks of the BeMt with the name and numher as the Beast which nd is not. r'or the rest see pp. 284, Js7, 285, UUO, 301, supra. ' Bee pp. 110, 111. 304 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. alike Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian, and I may add too Tatian, all before the end of the 2nd century, and also Julius Africa- nus, at the commencement of the 3rd century, explained Daniel's 70 hebdomads, and their abomination of desolation, as having had their full accomplishment on Christ's death, and the consequent desolation of Jerusalem by the Roman armies ; and so having no reference whatsoever to any desolation by the then future Antichrist.1 Nor of the few who with Irenseus and Hippolytus 1 I subjoin a sketch of the statements of these Fathers ; and, where given, of their chronological calculations of the hebdomads. 1. Tatian, a writer of the 2nd century, between Justin Martyr whose hearer he was, and Irenaeus who cites him, thus (though without specific mention of the heb- domads) speaks of Daniel's prophecy about the abomination of desolation (the one referred to Matt, xxiv.) as fulfilled in Jerusalem's then imminent destruction by the Romans. After mention of Christ's rebuking the disciples' vain pride in the beauty of the temple, by saying that in a little while not one stone would be left on another, he thus proceeds : " Mox abiens in monte Olivarum, urbem intuitus, paulisper con- sedit. Ubi secreto huic congressi discipuli initia future hujus cladis condiscunt ; viz. antichristos, bella, seditiones, terraemotus, pestilentiam, famem, terrifica de ccclo signa, idolum abominabile Danielis vaticiniis celebre, extremam denique calamitatem eorum qui docebunt evangelium. . . . Hierusalem vero, captis habitatoribus, et quaqui- versum abductis, a gentibus tautisper calcatum iri dum evangelium universos illarum fines occupaverit: turn enim finem instare mundi." B. P. M. ii. 209. Tatian, after Justin's martyrdom, became the author of the ascetic sect of the En- cratites, and is mentioned among the early heretics. (See Irenaeus i. 31, and Euseb. H. E. iv. 29.) But the passage I cite from him has nothing of course to do with his heresy. He is spoken of by Jerome as a learned and very voluminous writer. 2. Clemens Alexandrinus states the interval from the end of the 70 years' captivity to Jesus Christ as 69 hebdomads, in the first seven of which the temple was rebuilt ; and one hebdomad as that of Jesus Christ's ministry. Further in one \ hebdomad Nero set up an abomination in the holy city of Jerusalem ; and in one \ hebdomad was cut off, as well as Galba, Otho, and Vitellius : whereupon Vespasian, obtaining the empire, destroyed Jerusalem and desolated the sanctuary. Strom. B. i. Jerome (on Dan. ix.), in sketching this exposition of the hebdomads by Clemens, calculates from the 1st of Cyrus ; and observes that, instead of 490 years from that epoch to the destruction of Jerusalem by Vespasian and Titus, there elapsed on the most accurate computation 630 years. But Clement defines his commencing date as that of the 2nd of Darius Hystaspes : — " Mansit captivitas annis 70, ut quae cessa- vit anno secundo Darii Ilystaspis filii." This makes the difference somewhat less. 3. Tertullian thus computes the period. From Darius (apparently Darius II, called Nothus) to Alexander's overthrow of the Persian empire 106 years. Then Alexander and the Ptolemies, to Cleopatra's death and Augustus' incorporation of Egypt with the Roman empire, 290^ years. Add 28 years under Augustus to Jesus Christ's birth ; and the whole, says Tertullian, is437.J years = G2\ hebdomads. Then was all prophecy fulfilled ; and the vision and the prophecy ceased to the Jews. As regards the remaining 7j hebdomads, he reckons .525 years from Christ's birth to the 1st of Vespasian : (strangely omitting Claudius' reign of 13 years, and reckoning Nero's at 9£ years instead of 14 :) and then concludes ; " Atque ita in diem expugna- tionis suae Judiei implevcrunt hebdomadas 70 praedictas a Daniele." I am quite unable to follow either Clement's or Tertullian's calculations. m. i.1 fEOM bt. john ro 0OMBTA.NT1NB. {Summary.) SOS referred that lasl hebdomad end its abomination of desolation to the end of the world and Antichrist, do I find thai any but Kippoly- tm expounded the 70th and last hebdomad as broken off from the preoeding 89 by a great ohronologioa] gap. Certainly no such gap is Spoken of by I mi,riix.1 And as Apnllinarius of Laodieea\ who lived a century and a half later under Valens, made the 70 hebdo- mads to have had oommencemenl with Christ's first .advent, and bo to come down continuously to an epoch 490 years later, which he ex- 1. Julius Afiiranus, a writer placed by Jerome under Ilcliogahalus, <>r about A.D. iiul a bo wrote expressly on Chronology. " Nulli dabinm est," be begins. " qain de adventa t'hristi (i. e. Christ's lirst coming) pracdicatio sit; qui post 70 hebdomadas mundo apparuit." He makes the commencing date of these hebdomads to be the 20th Artaxcrxcs, ■when that prince issued bis Decree (Xchcm. ii. 1 — 8) for the rebuilding of Jerusalem; (the previous Deer, is of Cyrus and Darius having been in considerable measure in- tive:) this being the 1 loth year of the Persian empire) and the 185th year from the beginning of the 70 years' captivity. Now the Persian kingdom lasted in all (from Cyrus to Alexander) 230 years, i. e. llfi years from the 20th of Artaxcrxcs; and the Ionian empire MM years : (i. e. I suppose to the death of Cleopatra :) and thence SO the 16th 'year of Tiberius, when Christ was crucified, was 60 years : = in all to 475 ^ n ; i. e. 47"> solar years. But the 'Jews often computed by lunar years, each of which is 11] days shorter than a solar year : so as to make the difference of one year in every 'V>, and 15 in the aforesaid period of 175 solar years. So that 17) solar years would be 400 lunar years ; or precisely 70 hebdomads of years. Then, at Christ's i. " eonsummata sunt delicta, et finem accepit peccatum, et deleta est iniquitas, et annunciata justitia sempiterna, quae legis justitiam vinceret, et implcta est visio et pro- phi 'i a " — The desolation of Jerusalem followed as aconscquence of the Jews' rejection of Christ. I abstract this from Jerome's full citation, in his Comment, on Dan. ix. It is, as the v much the most elaborate and accurate of any of the calculations by the earlier patristic fathers.* 1 For Hippohjtus' view of the hebdomads see p. 285 ; for TreiUNU? p. 270, supra. As regards treiueus, a littlcfuller abstract of the only passage, v. 25, in which he men- tion! Daniel'* hebdomads, may be useful in showing how evidently his reference of the abomination of desolation spoken of by Christ to Antichrist as the author, and to ]) mi( l's last half hebdomad as the funs, arose out of his confusion of all the various predicted abominations of desolation, as if one and the same. 1 1 Paul, Antichrist is to sit in OocFi temple : i. e. the Jerusalem temple of the true is no hi athen temple is called in Scripture God's temple. And so too Christ ; ' When ye m e the abomination of desolation told of by Daniel standing in the holy place.' Which Antichrist is the little horn of Daniel's lth or Roman Beast, Dan. vii. And he is to come in, Paul tells us, with lies ; yet the 'Jews to receive him ; as 1 'If another come in his own name him ye will receive.' And then he the nnjust judge in the parable to the opprest widow, who, forgetful of God. [ on an earthly helper ; and avenge the earthly Jerusalem of its Roman oppn by transferring the kingdom to Jerusalem, and there sitting, as if Christ, in his tem- ple. The same is the little born from one of the feat's four horns, Dan. \ iii. ; which H IS the anther of the transgression of desolation, and to tread the host and sanctuary under foot. And Daniel notes too the duration of desolation ; \ i/. tlit for i • Mr. ('. If., to my surpi - no notice of Julius Africanus' calculation; though with Jerom . from that writer before him 8 W hi* | iv. 20 306 HISTORY OF APO \LYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [.\PP. PART I. pected might be the time of Antichrist's coming and the consumma- tion,1 so might some such view very possibly have been that by which Irenseus referred the last week to the consummation. (I refer not to Judas Sy?*us, another and earlier writer on the subject mentioned by Eusebius ; because how he managed to make the period of the 70 hebdomads end nearly at his own epoch of the 10th of Severus, or about A.D. 203, does not appear : though I infer from Eusebius' words that he too computed continuously.2) Hippolytus stands alone, as I said,3 in the exprest view of the hebdomad the sacrifice should be taken away (Dan. ix. 27), even till the consumma- tion ; i. e. for 3£ years. There is no chronological calculation whatsoever in Irenacus, I believe, of tbe 70 hebdomads ; or notice how he connected the last hebdomad with the hebdomads pre- ceding. 1 Apollinarius of Laodicea, taking the words of Daniel about the decree for the restor- ation of Jerusalem mystically, as it would seem, reckons the 70 hebdomads to begin from the going forth of the word on Christ's birth of the Virgin Mary, " ab exitu verbi, quando Christus de Maria generatusest virgine : " (I cite his words, says Jerome, that I may not misrepresent him :) hence for 7 hebdomads, or to the 8th of Claudius, ■when the Roman arms were taken up against the Jews, the repentance of that people was expected, Christ having meanwhile fulfilled his ministry, and preached his gospel. At the expiration of 62 additional hebdomads, or 434 years, Elias would come, turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and rebuild Jerusalem and the temple, in the course of ^ week or 3^ years ; then Antichrist come, and for 3| years sit in the temple of God, thus restored, himself the predicted abomination of desolation ; the last deso- lation and condemnation of the Jews following, because of their despising Christ's truth, and receiving Antichrist's lie. After which, and the consequent expiration of the 70 hebdomads, Christ would destroy Antichrist with the brightness of His coming. Jerome adds that Apollinarius framed this his chronological conjecture about the heb- domads (conjecturam temporum) with reference to Africamis' stated opinion that the last hebdomad (separated from the rest) would coincide with the end of the world. But I presume this is a misprint, or slip of the pen, for Hippolytus, of whom he had just before been speaking as so expounding the hebdomads : whereas Africanus' opinion had been stated quite contrariwise, as supposing that all the 70 hebdomads had been fulfilled at Christ's first coming. Apollinarius considered it preposterous to divide the hebdomads ; and that in any case they must be construed continitously and connect- edly ■ — " Nee posse fieri ut junctae dividantur aetates ; sed omnia sibi juxta prophe- tiam Danielis esse temporum copulanda." This Apollinarius of Laodicea flourished in the 4th century ; and was a contem- porary and friend of Jerome's early manhood: being quite a different person from, and above 150 years later than, the Apollinarius of Hieropolis, who wrote an Apolo- getic Oration to the Emperor Marcus Antoninus, and of whom Eusebius speaks in his H. E. iv. 27. 1 Ev tovtw kcli Iou^as . . . sis Tas iriipa. Tin AavnjX iftoo/xriKovTa ifioofiaoas tyypa- rf)tos oiaXf X^eis, £T' to SiKaTov tov Seftripov /8a| hebdomads reaching to Christ's Brat coming, and the 70th be- ginning separately, at some vast chronological gap, jusl before Ins nil coming.1 Reverting to thoee early expositors' notices about Antichrist] let me observe further thai in regard of hii religion* profession, though tin- expectation of its beiiuj Judaism wa* prevalent among them, \et tin- idea was also ever kept up (an idea derived from St. .John's epistles) that heretics professedly within the Church might be con- sidered also as Antichrists: moreover that when the great and chief Antichrist came, he would sedulously ailed external re- semblance to Jesus Christ ; agreeably with the Jamb-like Apo- calyptic symbol.2 Such a notion as that of a professedly atheistic or infidel Antichrist was as yet unknown. — Again, as to Anti- christ's Roman connexion, while all admitted this, and thus the Pseudo-Sibyl and Victorinus spoke of him as the resuscitated Iloman emperor Nero, and also Irenseus, and yet more strongly Hippo- lytus, suggested that he might very probably on this account have for his name and number Lateinos, yet then and thereupon their views differed. For the Pseudo-Sibyl and Irenams thought that he would be prominent in Rome's destruction, transferring its em- pire to Jerusalem: Hippolytus, on the contrary, that he would be the restorer of the lioman empire* in a new form, somewhat like a 1 Wh;it an utter contrast is this to Mr. C. Maitland's representation of " the primi- tive scheme " of the 70 hebdomads ; f>r generally received scheme of them in the 2nd and 3rd centuries that we have been reviewing ! '• According to the primitive tchemet" - 1\ I Mr. C If., " the sense of the whole passage amounts to this : — 70 sevens of yean are fixed in the history of the Jews and of Jerusalem. . . Between the edict to rebuild Jerusalem and the mission of Christ there will elapse two 'periods, 7 sevens and G2 sevens of years. In the course of the first the city will be rebuilt : [as recorded I pre- sume in Ezra and Nehcmi.ih :] and at the end of the seeond Messiah will be put to death. Afterwards the Romans under Vespasian will destroy both city and temple: . . and until the end of Cod's warfare with his people it is determined that the desola- tion of the city and temple shall continue. [Here comes the great gap, according to Mr. ('. M.in " the primitive scheme."] But God will renew his covenant with many of hi- iple during a certain seven years, the remaining week of the 70 : pro- bably by no Lias. . . But throughout the latter half of this week, i. e. for 3 J s, the daily sacrifice will be taken away, and on account of the abomination set up by Antichrist the temple will be made desolate. . . This is the plain working of the passage. Unlike its modern and fantastic rivals it has borne the burden and heat of the day! !" pp. 208, 204. So Mr. ('. M. makes twn Matty different abominatiotu nf deeolestion to have i>. . q included in " the primitive eeheme," separated from each other by the interval oi Two questions here ragged Ihemsel i re 1. when' the authority of a single primitiTe r for such a scheme : 2. what the ground for such a riew in the prophecy itself? * See pp. 284, A...-. 20 • 308 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. Becond Augustus. To which his opinion I must again beg my readers' special attention ; the rather because, while expressing it, as I find from the original Greek,1 lie had the more usual reading before him in Apoc. xvii. 1G of ra detect Ktpara k a i to Onpiov, not, as his Latin translation first seen by me represents it, ra SiKa k. tmi to 6t]pwv ; the reading adopted, as it seems, by Tertullian. But how so ? Be- cause it was the old imperial Borne that ITippolytus evidently looked on as that which both Beast and horns would unite to burn : this being a mere temporary burning from which the Beast would in a new form next resuscitate it ; and quite distinct from the everlasting fire from Grod described in Apoc. xviii., as its subsequent and final doom. On the Apocalyptic Babylon's meaning Rome all agreed. — Once more, as to the time of Antichrist's duration, though all reckoned it literally as 3^ years, (how but for this could they have looked for Christ's coming as near ? 2 ) yet, very remarkably, the testimony of Cyprian and of his Biographer was incidentally given even thus early to the year-day principle as a Scriptural one : all ready for its application to the prophetic chronological periods at God's own fit time after- wards.3 4. As to the Apocalyptic Judaic symbols there seems to have been a general reference of them in this sera to the Christian Church or worship. So Irenaeus, Tertullian, Victorinus, Lactantius expounded the Apocalyptic temple and altar : so Tertullian, Methodius, Lactan- tius the Apocalyptic 144,000 sealed ones out of the 12 tribes, and Apocalyptic New Jerusalem. A point important to be marked in the primitive exposition.4 On which point, and the general subject of the intent of Scripture symbols and figures, we have to remember that Oritjen, already briefly noticed by me, lived and taught about the middle of the third cen- tury.5 And, had he fulfilled his declared intention of giving the Christian world an Apocalyptic commentary,6 we can scarcely doubt 1 Viz. in Fabricius' Edition. Compare my Notes Vol. iii. 74, and p. 30 supra.. * See my Vol. iii. pp. '2(31, 2'>5. 3 See my Vol. iii. p. 281, where the citation from Pontius is given; together with a notice of Mr. C. M.'s strange objection to its parallelism or force on the year-day question. 4 For it is, of itself, fatal to each Judaic futurist or semi -futurist system of Apoca- lyptic interpretation. 5 He died at Tyre A. D 253, aged 70. 6 " Omnia hxc cxponere sigillatim de capitibus septem draconis (Apoc. xii. 3) non est temporis hujus : exponcntur autcm tempore suo in Revelatione Johannis." In Matth. Tr. 30. — Elsewhere Origen thus singularly notes this prophecy ; " John wrote mm. I.] PROM sr. John TO coNsrwii\: Summary.) 309 but that it would haw been of a character mmv mystical than those we haw yet ha. I to do with ; though Yictorinus' exposition of the I JUL. hols of the primary rlpocalyptic vision furnishes us indeed with ■ partial specimen. Origen'i principle oianagogical* or tpirituaMzing exposition, (a principle not altogether to be exploded, but needing in its application to Scripture a cautious attention to the requirement! of context, Scriptural analogy, and good sense, abundantly greater than Origan cared to use.)- could not but have been Largely applied the Apocalypse ; being commanded to keep silence, end not write what the $even thunders attend. " Comment on Joh. Tom. v. (Ed. Hurt. ii. KS.) A passage noted bj Busebius, II. K. ii. '_'■>. I mppoee he had some anagogic. solution of what he deemed en apparent contradiction. 1 avaytoyi), a passing to a higher sense than the literal ; i. e. to a more literal sense. Scripture, like man, said Origan, has a body, sou/, and sjiirit : — viz. the literal il to those who preceded the Christians, i. B. the ancient Israel ; the intt riml sintra literam), to Christians ; and the shadoiring forth of heavenly things, to saint* arrived in heaven. So he remarks on Lev. vi. 26, about the sin-offering.— Klse- where he ipeoka of the historic Knee, the moral, and the mystical.* lie earned his inclination to the anagoyical so far, as to depreciate, and sometimes wen nullify, the literal and historic sense. He often lays that the literal sense is " proculcandum et contemnendum." — So, 1. of things typical ; as the sin-offering, Li v. vi •_'"> j " Ihrc omnia, nisi alio sensu accipias quam linea texta ostendit, sicut H pe diximus, obstaculum majus Christianae religioni quam aulificatiuncni nunstubllllL" — J. Of historic statements. So in his Horn. vi. on Genesis : " What the edification ol reading th.it Abraham lied to Abimelech, and betrayed his wife's chastity? Let Jaws beuere it; and any others that, like them, prefer the letter to the spirit." So again on the Mosaic history of the creation ; the statement of there having been three ■rithout Min, moon, or stars, being pronounced by him impossible : and again on that of tin' devil leading Christ to a high mountain ; Arc. — 3. Of precepts : e. g. that which says, " If a man smite thee on the one cluck, turn to him the other." Now it is evident that St. Paul himself has authorized the ascription of an anagogi- cal or spiritual sense, as well as the literal, to the types of the law. They were shadows of things to come. And to certainy"ac7s of Old Testament history he has also ascribed an allegorical, as well as literal sense. So in the allegory of Sarah and BLagOI and Ishmael. But surely in historical narratives to allegorize beyond what Scripture itself teaches, is unsafe ; and to allegorize away a scripturally as- serted historic fact, whether from judging it to be uncdifyiug or impossible, most un- justifiable. As regards prophecy Origcn lays down the rule : — Whenever the prophets have pro- \ thing of Jerusalem or Judea, of Israel or Jacob, then this (agreeably with St. I'aul's own teaching) is to be referred anagogically to the heavenly Jerusalem, Judea, and Israel ; as also in what is said ot l.iypt, Babylon, Tyre: "cum sint in ccelo loci terrenii Estii eognomineo, ac locorum istorom ineola, snims scilicet." — I aie he would have thus spiritualized, not merely where there was other evidence of the terms being figuratively meant, but even where the local reference was most pointed and prei lit I have thought it well to abstract the above from a chapter in the Abbe II net's Ori- • Bishop Marsh thinks thai the three may be reduced to two; 1. the literal, gram- matical, or historical ; J. the spiritual or allegorical. He also, remarks on Origcn's admission (T.»i. p. ISO; that the grammatical or historical applies in many mon in the more spiritual interpretation. Lecture xi., on Scriptural Inter . 310 HISTORY OP APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. by him to the Apocalyptic prophecy : especially as one involving constantly symbolic language, besides those allusions to Babylon, Is- rael, Jerusalem, which, we saw, were always, according to him, to be construed anagogically in Scripture. But this commentary he in eft'ect did not write : and it remained for others fully to apply his principles to Apocalyptic exposition in a later a?ra. 5. On the millennary question, all primitive expositors except Ori- gen, and the few who rejected the Apocalypse as unapostolical, were premillennarians ; and construed the first resurrection of the saints literally. PERIOD 2. FROM CONSTANTINE TO THE COMPLETION OF THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, A.D. 47G. The great Constantinian revolution, accomplished (as I before ob- served) just after Lactantius' publication of his ' Institutions,' could hardly fail of exercising a considerable influence on Apocalyptic in- terpretation. A revolution by which Christianity should be estab- lished in the prophetically-denounced Roman Empire, was an event the contingency of which had never occurred apparently to the pre- vious exponents of Christian prophecy ; and suggested the idea of a mode, time, and scene of the fulfilment of the promises of the latter-day blessedness, that could scarcely have arisen before : — viz. that its scene might be the earth in its present state, not the reno- vated earth after Christ's coining and the conflagration ; its time that of the present dispensation ; its mode by the earthly establishment of the earthly Church visible. For it does not seem to have occurred at the time, that this might in fact be one of the prepara- tives, through Satan's craft, for the establishment after a while of the great predicted antichristian ecclesiastical empire, on the plat- form of the same Roman world, and in a professing but apostatized Church. 1. Eusebius (my first author of this sera)1 seems in earlier life to geniana; as there occurs so much of Origenic anagoge in subsequent Apocalyptic interpreters, such as Tichonius, Primasiu^, &c. 1 The dates of Eusebius' life are as follows. Born in Palestine in the reign of Gallienus, about A.D. 267 : after ordination to the Christian ministry ^tudied with and assisted Pamphilus in his school at Caesarea, whence his cognomen of Pamphili : in the Diocletianic persecution witnessed the martyrdoms in Palestine which he ITU. u. ' PROM 0ON8TAKTIM1 I" I ill. m u. UCPIR] /'- ft ; Ut.) 81 1 have received the A pm.-:il \ pee as inspired Scripture; and interpreted its Seals, somewhat like Victorious, of the dillieulties of Old Testa- ment propbeej opened by Christ.' When the extraordinary Con- tiniun revolution established itself, though doubta now commenced aeto its apostolus authorship, yet lie still continued to refer to its pro- pheciee; with an application changed however, accordantly with the change in the times. Thus he applied to this great event both Isaiah's promises of the latter day, and also (as his language indi- cates) the Jpooaigptie prophecy of the New Jenualetn;* at the same time thai the symbolic vision of the seven-headed dragon of Apoc. xii.. cast down from heaven, was with real exegetic correctness (as I conceive) applied to the dejection of Paganism, and the Pagan em- perors, from their former supremacy in the Roman world.' — As re- gards Daniel's hebdomads, let me add, Eusebius, like most of the ex- positors before him, explained them continuously ; and as long before altogether fulfilled.4 describes, and ministered to Pamphilus, who was for two years in prison : at the end of that persecution, about 314, was made Bishop of CtmoTOfl : soon after published his •• De Demonstrat. et de Prepare!. Brangelica : " in 325$aariated at, and was appointed to address Constantine in, the Niccne Council: in 32G published his Chronicon, and then hi* 1' History, both of which he brought down to that year. In the year '■'>■',') he assisted in the Council of Tyre, convened by Constantine to consider charges made by Arius against Athanasius ; and thence went to the consecration of ' uitine's new church at Jerusalem. Afterwards he visited Constantinople, to make report to Constantine about the Council ; and then pronounced before him the tricennalian oration ; about which time Constantine told him of his vision of the cross, and showed him the labarum made accordantly with it. After this he wrote his Book on the B astern Festival, 5 Books against Marcellus, and last of all his Life of Con- stantine : then about the end of 339 died. 1 DemoiMr. Evang. B. vii. * See my Vol. i. p. 256, Note4. » See Vol. hi. pp. 30, 31, 34, 3-5, with the Notes. This his view of the vision we may compare with that of the expositor Andreas afterwards. Eusebius intimates that Constantine may have alluded possibly to lsa, xxvii. 1, " The Lord shall punish Levia- than, that crooked serpent." But the casting down of the Dragon, which Constan- tine notes prominently, is not in Isaiah's prophecy, but that of the Apocalypse. In speaking of the dejection of Pagan emperors I mean of course that Eusebius, Like myself, intended the Devil acting in them-, 4 But this in a point of view somewhat strange and peculiar. By the holy one to be anointed Eusebius understood the anointed high priests and rul>rs of the Jews, after their return from the Babylonish captivity. This is the point on which his explanation turns And -'i lie makes his chronological calculations in the form of the scries of high priests and rulers afterwards succeeding : — first Joshua and Zerubhabel, thrn Ezra and Neh'-miah, Joachim, Kliasub, Jchoiada, John, .laddua; (the same that showed Daniel's prophecy to Alexander the Great ;) then Onias, Elea- lar, (in whose time the Scptuagint version was begun ;) a 2nd Onias, Simon, (con- temporary with the writing of the IJook of Bunch, a ord Onias, (the same that was high priest when Antiochns Bpiphanas desolated the temple,) Jndaa Maccabeus, and his two brothers successively Jouathau and .Mmou, with whose death ends the 1st 312 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. But .to carry out such views of the New Jerusalem must soon have been felt most difficult : the Ariau and other troubles, which (piickly supervened, powerfully contributing to that conviction. It resulted, perhaps not a little from this cause, that the Apo- calypse itself became for a while much neglected; especially in the Eastern empire, where the imperial seat was now chieily fixed- There occur however passing notices, directly or indirectly bearing on Apocalyptic interpretation, in the writings of the two chief champions of the orthodox Trinitarian faith in the East and the West, I mean of course Athanasius and Hilary, which must not be past over in silence. 2. In Athanasius the main point to be marked is his strongly pro- nounced opinion respecting the Antichrist of prophecy, that an here- tical anti-Trinitarian ruler of the Roman empire, like Constantius, would well answer to him ; albeit malting a Christian profession, and professedly in the Christian Church. Thus, in a general way, with reference to heretical leaders, he spoke of Antichrist coming with the profession, " I am Christ;" assuming Christ's place and character, Book of Maccabees ; then John, then Aristobulus, the first who assumed the royal together with the priestly diadem, and his successor Alexander. — Now from the 1st of Cyrus to the death of Alexander the Great is 236 years ; and of the Seleucidian king- dom down to Simon's death 277 [lege 177] years ; in all, from Cyrus to the epoch with -which the 1st of Maccabees ends, 425 years. Add 57 more for the high priests John, Aristobulus, and Alexander ; and we have in all for the reign of Jeivish anointed priests 483 years = 69 hebdomads. — Also in the first 49 years, or 7 hebdomads of this period, from the 1st of Cyrus to the 6th of Darius, the temple and the street was built in troublous times ; it being interrupted by the hostility of the Samaritans. So the Jews themselves said, " Forty-six years was this temple building ; " to which Josephus adds three for the temple enclosure ; making altogether 49 years.— After the high priest Alexander's death, when the Jews were distracted with dissensions, Pompey came in the 10th year of the 2nd Aristobulus, entered and defiled the temple, and sent Aristobulus bound to Rome. Then first the Jews became subject to Rome ; and, soon after, Herod was made King of the Jews by a Decree of the Roman Senate. As an alternative explanation Eusebius adds that the computation may be made to begin from the 6th of Darius, instead of the 1st of Cyrus. Thence to Herod and Cajsar Augustus is 483 years, or 69 hebdomads. Then Hyrcanus, the last pontiff of Macca- bean race, was killed. Then the legal succession of priests ceased ; the city and sanc- tuary was desolated by Herod; and also the covenant confirmed to many for a half hebdomad by Christ's preaching the gospel. After which 3£ years Christ was crucified ; and the sacrifice ceased to the Jews : their temple sacrifices being thenceforward nothing better than sacrifice to the devil. So Eusebius in his Demonstratio Evangelica, cited by Jerome. In his H. E. iii. 5, Eusebius speaks of the abomination of desolation " prophesied of by the prophets," (specially of course by Daniel,) as set up by the Romans on their taking of Jorusalein( and its consequent desolation. PI u II.] r&OM OONBTAMTIM tO PALI OP it. IMPIK1. {Ilihir;/.) \\\'t like Satan transformed into an an^tl of light : ' then elsewhere, in partieular. spoke of Constant ins as the preeursor of A nt iehrist .- t In* image >>t" Antichrist,' oaj as ererj way answering to Antichrist. For what mark, said lie, does Constant ins lack of the A nt iehrist of DPO- phecjP4 1 may add that be too seems to have construed the To hebdomads of Daniel, like the majority of his predeeessors in the ante- Constant inian age, as wholly fulfilled on tin' first coming of Jeans, the llol\ One of Holies. For then. sa\ s he. t he propheey ami the vision was sealed up, and the eity and the temple taken.1 3. In Ililarij, Bishop of Poicticrs in France, the contemporary and friend of Athanasius, the following particulars of Apocalyptic exposi- tion may be worth our notice.6 — 1. Somewhat like Victonnus and 1 Vol. i. p. 500. (Ed. Colon. 1G86.) Contra Arian. Orat. 4. ■ Bpiit ad Solitar. lb. i. 842, B62. 3 lb. 860. * lb. p. 800. Tts iti To\p.a \iytiv Kwvo-tuvtlov XpiiTTiavov, Kai ov fiaWov Avti- Xpiarno t>iv tiKova ; Tj yap tiov tovtov yvwpiirp.aTwv it apa\i\onr iv ; tj Trios on ttuv- ■ Tuj(ut)ii' oi'Tov iKt ivos tivitt vopitrtii)atTat ; Kit KtUHn toioutos av wirovoi|0f it), olo? ictiv outds ; uvTt iv xi) p.tya\ij ikkXiigui t;j iv tn« [iairtktii -raw uvuxru,* Kai \oyout irpoi Ton 'Y\f/itjTov rVaAl)« uvtov tov Ai/ti- *Xpiwer to Question ~(i of this Catechism, " Why do the Gentiles (t6vri) ra^e ? " the writer says that " by itivi) are meant the Romans, that is, the race of the Franks : " i6vi] \iyn tui/ ' Vwuuiiov, rjyouv twv typayywv to ytvot. This could not h i\- b' en till the time of Charlemagne. The date of the Catechism therefore, instead of the 4th, can scarcely have been earlier than the Hth or 9th century. " Post xvum Monotheletico.nl ,' . in his notice of Athanasius; i. e. after A. D. 700. 4 De [ncam. VeTO, \ OL i. p. 93 ! WnpovTos too ' Ayiov toiii dyiuiv tiKOTwv laippa- yiadt) Kat oytitTf: Kai TrpoiJxiTtm' Kat tj ttjs ' ltpovaa\>ip fiaaiXnu irtiruvTai, . . . Kai h tto\i« xai 6 vuos ia\w. * I have just mentioned Hilary's name, Vol. i. p. 30, in my preliminary chapter, as witnessing to the authenticity of the Apocalypse, He testitii^ to St. John the apoetle • With refei to Vetranio, Magnentiu>, and Galhu, orerthrown A.l>. 8fi0 Ltioa wai now sole emperor; and the wvcn-liilkd Rome one oi bil capitals. 311 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC I NTERPRETATION. [aPP. PART I. Eusebius he suggests the idea of the Apocalyptic seven-sealed Book, written within and without, signifying the various things predicted iu Moses, the Psalms, and the Prophets, concerning Christ, and which were opened and revealed by Jesus; some already fulfilled when St. John was in Patmos, others yet unfulfilled and future. More- over he thus somewhat originally divides and classifies them ; viz. as Christ's incarnation, passion, death, resurrection, glory on ascension to heaven, reign, and final judgment . of which septenary, he says, the first five had been opened to the world on Jesus Christ's first com- ing ; the rest would be opened on his second coming.1 — 2. To the Jewish symbols in Scripture prophecy he supposed generally that a Christian sense attached. So, more particularly, writh regard to the New Jerusalem of Apoc. xxi., xxii. ;2 as also to the Zion, Jerusalem, Israel, and temple of the prophecies of the Old Testament.3 — 3. On the subject of Antichrist he stated in a Treatise written before the year 356,4 and when the West had been comparatively undisturbed by the violent aggressions of Arianism, that the predicted abomina- tion of desolation was meant of a future Antichrist : the term abomin- ation having reference to Antichrist's appropriating to himself the honour due to God, as (after reception by the Jews) he sate in the Jewish holy place or temple ; 5 that of desolation to his foreseen de- solations of the once holy land and place by war and slaughter. Moreover he exprest his opinion that Moses and Elias, the same that appeared to Christ "ad sponsionem fidei" in the transfiguration, would be the two witnesses figured in the Apocalyptic prophecy as slain by Antichrist.6 — A little later, after the flood of Arianism had swept with violence into the Western part of the Roman empire, the idea of Antichrist within the professing Christian Church forced itself on his mind, just as on that of Athanasius. Writing in 364 as its author in various places : e. g. in his Comments on Ps. ii. and cxviii., Vol. i. pp. 20,292. At p. 292 he says; " Scriptura in Apocalypsi calumniatorem eum esse tes- tante : " and at p. 20 ; " Quod autcm folia ligni hujus . . salutaria sint gentibus sanc- tus Joannes in Apocalypsi testatur." So also ii. 132. (My Edition is the Benedictine, Venice 1750.) 1 Prologue on Ps. i. p. 4. 2 i. 21. s So of Zion, as the Church, on Ps. lxix. 35, " The Lord shall build up Zion ; " Vol. i. pp. 199, 200 ; also ibid. pp. 347, 358, 373, 392 :— of Israel as the Israel of God, or Gentile Church, (" plebs gentium, populus ecclesia?,") i- 329: and of the tribes of Israel spoken of in Ps. exxii., (" thither the tribes go up,") as not those of the literal Israel, but the spiritual, i. 334 : — of the temple, as meaning all the saints, i. 429, &c. * So the Editor in his Preface to the Treatise. * i. 617. 6 i. 600. PIE. ii ntOM 0OMSTANTIH1 CO PALI Of ft. BMPZftl. (CwT»7.) BIS :i_;aiu-e angernm transformantibus, . . is qui c*t Christus aboletur." Contra Aux- ent. 5. And so again, ib. 12, in a striking passage jast a little after: " Unum moneOj Antichristam! Hale enimTOt paxietam amor cepit: male Eodesiam Dei in iuque veneramiai ; male sab hia paeia nomen ingeritis. Anne ambiguum t-t in hi^ Antichristam esse sessarnm i Koatea mihi, et m1v;u, et Iscas, et oareeres, et -nit tutiorea : in his cnim propheta?, aut manentes, aut demersi, Dei Spiritu prophetabant. . . .Congreget Auxentius quas volet in me synods ; it hanticum me, ut -a -pi jam fecit, publico titulo psoaoribat, fte." A passage well ilwari liny attentioa from all who with Mr. C. M aitland (p. 63) are inclim il to dl BOnaoe anti-papal middle- ■-. hkr the "Waldcnses, as "an Antiehristian rabble." 4 On Mitt. wii. 1. I In Matt. &c. my.Vdl. i. pp. 39.5 — 397, and Vol. iv. p. 'I'M, et seq. • bte my Vol. i. p. 30. 316 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART 1. will falsely call himself the Christ."1 But in what temple would he sit; the Jewish rebuilt temple, or Christian professing Churches? " That of the Jews." But why ? " Because God forbid that the tem- ple meant should be that in which we now are." Such was Cyril's only reason against the latter view of the temple meant by St. Paul in his prophecy to the Thessalonians. This Antichrist, Cyril judged, was to be Daniel's abomination of desolation standing in the holy place. — With regard to his contemporary Ephrem Syrus we may remark that he, like Hilary, noted how the wicked one, Antichrist, when come, would not cease to make inquisition for the saints by land and by sea; they seeking safety meanwhile in monasteries and deserts; the two witnesses Elijah and Enoch preceding him ; and, on the Soman empire's fall, Antichrist, and the consummation.2 — As to Chrysostom, he judged that the temple of Antichrist's enthronement would be not that which is in Jerusalem, but the Christian Church. "He will not invite men to worship idols, but will be himself an anti-theos. He will put down all gods; and will command men to worship him, as the very God. And he will sit in the temple of God : not that which is in Jerusalem ; but in the Churches everywhere."3 But it is time to turn Westward to Jerome and Augustine, those eminent expositors of the Latin Church, who, unlike the Greek fathers of the age, not only recognized the Apocalypse as a divine book, but continually referred to it : and in their passing notices on Apocalyptic interpretation threw out hints of much importance ; and, on more than one point, with great and lasting influence. 5. Jerome.*' 1. According to this father of the Church the Apocalypse was 1 Catech. 15. — Cyril's exposition of the eighth head of the Apocalyptic Beast must not be overlooked ; — that Antichrist, after subduing three out of the ten kings of the Roman Empire in its later form, would, as the head and chief of the remaining seven, be the Beast's eighth head. 2 I abstract from Mr. C. Maitland's citations, p. 217 ; not having myself the oppor- tunity of referring to Ephrem Syrus. See too Malvenda, 424. * On 2 Thess. ii. 4 The chief epochs and events of Jerome's life are as follows. — Born at Strato on the Pannonian and Dalmatian confines, about A.D. 348 ; went to Rome while yet a youth to complete his education; was there baptized; and there exhibited his tastes, and prepared himself for his subsequent studies, in the collecting of a library, and vi- siting of the martyrs' crypts and catacombs : — thence toured into Northern and South- imi;. 11. ] n:o\i 0OM8TAMTIK1 to i'\n. oi u. mpiu. (Jerome.) :?17 i book that bad in it as many mytteriet at wordtt while lundri parti- cm Gaul ; ami OB ivtiirn ti) Koine determined to Income a monk : tin n. alter I w hue, removed to Jerusalem, taking his library with him, ;iinl MOOmpanied hy Knlinns, rius, Mini others, of whom we In MX ol'lm in ,lc ronn 's after lite, This w ft| w inn ahont 26. In Jcrus.ili in and the neighbouring desert he staid 1 \ i ars , suf- fering perpetually alike from illness, s snd temptations : a time this to w hieh the famous pafatingl Of Jerome under temptation in the desert refer. He was then too assailed hy Arian teachers; and, though professing the bfioovaiov, was accused by lOSM as an Arian heretic, and ejected from his Ball. Heme a visit to Antioch, w here he heard Apollinarius of I.aodieea, and was ordained hy Panlinns, being then 'M) years old ; nt which time ha began his BarUaat prophetic Comment, that on Obadiali. The Arian -inns continuing, he determined on going to Koine. This was hy way of Con- stantinople ; where he stopt a while, and received instructions from Gregory Nazian- mi, shortly In fore the Coiistantinnpolitan General Council, A.I). 881. — At Home Damaani was then Pope: and Jerome staid there till Damaana' death in 384; admired and courted both by him and all the Christian body, from the fame of his austerities and sanctity in the desert ; many noble ladies of whom we read afterwards, ulv Paula (mother to Bnatochinm), coming under his influence, and being in- duced by him to renounce the world. Hence an uprising of calumny against him, excited by both laics and clerics ; though the general voice had pronounced him a fit ■or to Damaana in the Pontificate: and he quitted Rome in disgust, to resume the monastic life near Jerusalem, followed by Paulla, Melania, and other Roman Udi< s ; the firmer of whom, after P> years, built a monastery at Bethlehem for the nnn, and four for female virgins; also an inn for pilgrims to the holy places. Here, night and day, belaboured in his cell. At Rome he had translated the New Testament into Latin, at Damasus' request; and also begun Comments on Eccleaiastea, Num- bers, &C Be now completed these: having got a Jew to come to him by night to him Hebrew; and in a tour through Palestine visited all the s,-.rp d places mentioned 'in the Old Testament, as he had before visited the scenes |o£ St.' Paul's travels in Aaia Minor. In the course of his first five years at Bethlehem he visited there receiving instruction from Didymus of Alexandria. On his re turn from Alexandria he wrote his Comments on Ephesians, Philemon, Galatiatis, TiCni ; all which he '!• dicated to Paula and Kustochium. Then next he composed Comments on the four minor Prophets, Micab, Nahum, Zephaniah, Haggai ; and then on Hah- akkuk : those on Hosea, Joel, Jonah, Amos, Zechariah, Malachi being not written till some 20 years later ; and those on the four greater prophets not till his old age. in a letter to Pammachius long afterwards. Meanwhile, his fame in- ng more and more, the multitude of pilgrims to the Holy Land, and of visitors to himself, incre ued so as to be a burden ; (among them Sulpicius Scverus and Orosins are to lie noted : ) and Jerome sent his younger brother l'aulinianus to sell the wreck of bis parental property, saved from the Gothic desolations of Pannonia, to help to- Miout this time occurred his accusation as a supposed favourer of Rutinus and Origenism ; and, in consequence, a sharp controversy ensued with Riifi- ntts .■ also a new and friendly eontrovi rsy, on a different subject, with August inr, now - as the Bishop of Hippo. Then followed the troubles of the Gothic invasion of Italy. In W7 Panlladiad: in 410 Alaric took Soma; and Marcalladied of fnju- 1 from the Goths. Jerome had then just finished Daniel, and was labour- lh and Jeremiah. He was stunned with the news; as he states alike in his • pfc on Marcclla. The crowding to his retreat of multi- red Etomana added fircah calamity ; and on this anpervened that of an inroad of Huns into Syria. Notwithstanding, and though now " a? tat is ultim i- ac pane decrepidos," as In- write, of himself to Augustine, he praserred all his ,'inued his labours. So l'./ekiel was finished. At length wearied and worn out in body, a slight fever carried him off; the brethren and sisters of the 318 niSTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. cular words had each in them a multifold meaning:1 and that the Apocalypse was to be all spiritually understood ; because otherwise Judaic fables must be acquiesced in, such as those about the rebuild- ing of Jerusalem, and revival in its temple of carnal rites and ordin- ances.2 In regard however of which his spiritual or figurative under- standing of the Apocalypse, we should remember the check urged by Jerome himself against any undue license of fancy, at least in ex- plaining the Old Testament ; so as by those who with " anagoge veritatem historiae auferant."3 — 2. The Apocalyptic 144,000 seen by St. John with Christ on Mount Zion, or sealed ones out of each and all of the tribes of the Apocalyptic Israel, are sometimes expounded by Jerome of the Christian apostles, martyrs, and saints generally, sometimes of Christian virgins or celibates more especially ; * never of an election distinctively out of the Jews, or natural Israel. — 3. As regards the two Apocalyptic witnesses, though he has not given us his own opinion as to who or what exactly were meant by them, and indeed seems by no means to have made up his opinion about them, yet negatively he has pretty clearly intimated that in his judgment they were not Enoch and Elias ; 5 cautioning his questionist on the point, neighbouring monasteries attending his last hours. This was about the year 420. He was first buried at Bethlehem. But afterwards his remains were translated to the Church now celebrated as that of S. Maria Maggiore at Rome. (My Edition is that of Antwerp, 1579.) 1 have given this biographical sketch more fully than I should otherwise have been warranted in doing ; partly because of the peculiar and almost romantic interest of the biography ; more because of there being so much of reference to the remarkable events and persons of the period in Jerome's writings. ' Letter 103 to Paulinus, 7- 2 So in the Letter 148 to Marcella ; " Omnis ille liber aut spiritualiter intelligendus sit, ut nos existimamus ; aut, si carnalem interpretationem sequimur, Judaicis fabulis acquiescendum sit : &c." And so in his almost latest Scriptural comment on Ezek. xxxviii. 3 Epist. 126, Ad Evagrium. * Of Christian apostles and saints, generally, in his Letter against Vigilantius : " Tu apostolis vincula injicies, ut usque ad diem judicii teneantur custodia, nee sint cum Domino suo : de quibus scriptum est, Sequuntur Agnum quocumque vadit ? " For, though apostles only are here specified, the argument is directed against Vigilantius' general affirmation about the souls of departed saints and martyrs being unconscious of the prayers of men. — Also on Is. lxv. ad fin. " Agni credendi sunt omnes qui in vestibus candidis sequuntur Agnum quocumqueVadit ; quos Dominus Petro tradidit ad pascendum, dicens, Pasce agnos mcos." Of Christian virgins, specially, in his Adv. Jovinian. i. 25 : — " Legamus Apoealyp- sin Joannis, et ibi repericmus Agnum super montem Sion, et cum eo 144,000. . . De singulis tribubus, excepta tribu Dan, pro qua reponitur tribus Levi, 12 millia virginum signatorum creditura dicuntur. . . Hi Virgines primitia? Dei sunt : ergo viduae, et in matrimonio continentes, erunt post primitias." So too in his Apology for the Ami- Jovinian Book, addrest to Pammachius, Ep. 50, ch. 3 ; and in the Treatise against Helvidius, ad fin. 5 " De Enoch et Elia, quos venturos Apocalypsis refert (i. e. as Marcella represented n K. 11 PROM 0ON8TANTIK1 K) PAIL OF it. r.Mi'iitr. (Jerome.) S19 the aoble Bomwi lady MTarcella, in ■ passage already referred to l>v nil- againsl expounding the A.pocalypee otherwise than as ■ book which is to be understood spiritually or figuratively.1 I. On (he ike two tritnrssrs' death, "the great city spiritually call- ed 3 ■ 1 »m and Egypt* and where also their Lord had been crucified," we and exprest in Jerome's works two different opinions. On the one hand, in the earliest written of his prophetic comments, <>n Zeph. ii. 9. " Surely Moab shall be as Sodom and the children of Amnion as Gomorrah," Jerome, in applying that designation and denunciation to heretical trachcr* within the Christian Chi/rrh, fortifies that view of the passage by reference both to Isaiah's designation of the false- teaching "viri ecclesiastici*1 of the Jews in his time as men of Sodom and Gomorrah, and also the Apocalyptic designation of the Christ- crucifying Jerusalem as Sodom and Egypt.2 Again, in a Letter to llebidia. written in his latter years, in explaining Matt, xxvii. 53, '• Many saints which slept arose, and went into the holy city, and ap- peared unto many," he says that it was not until its rejection of the gospel-message preached by the apostles, and consequent ending of its day of grace, and abandonment to " the two destroying bears from the wood," Vespasian and Titus, that the literal Jerusalem lost its title of the holy city : 3 it being the case thenceforward indeed, but the thintr in her question,) et esse morituros, non est istius temporis disputatio ; (viz. of the time of the saints' general resurrection ;) cum omnis liber aut spiritualiter in- teUigondus est, at, &c." See Note2 p. 3ls. 1 Elsewhere, viz. on Matt. xi. 14, he says ; " Sunt qui propterca Joannem Eliam Tocari putant quod, quomodo in secundo Salvatoris adventu juxta Malachiam pne- 18 est Eli;is, .. sic Joannes in primo adventu fecerit." In regard of which Mr. (' M. remarkl : " At some later time Jerome maintained the second coming of Elias ; a- when expounding Matt. xi. "Hut this is incorrect. Jerome there speaks of others, not of himself. Mr. C. M. also refers to Jerome's comment on Matt. xvii. 11 ; " Ipse qui venturus est in secundo Salvatoris adventu juxta corporis fidem, nunc per Joannem vrnit in rirtute et spiritu." This at first Bight is like the expression of his own opin- ion to that effect. But comparing it with our other citations, it too teemi to be the iii' re expression in that form of the opinion of others. On Mahichi iv. ~> itself Jerome thus strongly expresses himself against it. " Juda?i, et Judaizantes hamtici, ante tt\ut)utvov suum Eliam putant esse venturum, et restituruin omnia." To some tool) Christ himself, he adds, answered ; " Elias quidem vcuiet ; et, si crcditis, jam venit : in Eli.'i Joannem intelligens." * The reader has in this a characteristic specimen of Jerome's application of such passages and figures in Old Testament prophecy, to persons and matters connected, whether as true members or enemies, with the Christian Church. i Let the reader mark here Jerome's decidedly exprest opinion thai after the iction of Jerusalem by the Romans the appellative of the holy city attached no more to that literal Jerusalem. In order to the support ol the futurist or semi futuri.it Judaic theory of the Apocalypse two points are needed iu a patristic comment . 320 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. not till then, that, instead of designation as the holy city, it was spirit- ually called Sodom and Egypt. On the other hand, in an elaborate argument on the whole Apocalyptic passage written by Jerome's dis- ciples Paula and Eustochium from Bethlehem, shortly before Alaric's taking of Eome, and which we cannot but suppose had the master's revision and sanction before its despatch,1 a different view is argued for of the local scene of the Apocalyptic witnesses' death. With re- ference to their urgent invitation to Marcella that she should quit the Eomish Babylon and join them in their retreat at Jerusalem and Bethlehem, they anticipate her objecting that Jerusalem is branded in the Apocalypse as Sodom and Egypt ; and urge against this the necessity of explaining the passage quite otherwise than of the literal Jerusalem. And this on two different grounds : — 1st, because in the immediate Apocalyptic context, in contrast to, not identification with, the great city of the witnesses' death, the Apocalyptic Jerusalem is designated as the holy city ; (" the Gentiles shall tread down the holy city;") and that cannot consistently be called Sodom and Egypt, which is almost in the same breath called the holy city : 2ndly, be- cause in Scripture Egypt is never used figuratively for Jerusalem, but perpetually for the world. Hence, on the whole, they conclude that the great city of the witnesses' death means the world.2 Any one who consults Jerome's comments on the (Old Testament) prophets may see how exactly his view of the figurative sense of Egypt in them cor- responds with this exposition of the Apocalyptic phrase.3 1st, that the literal Jerusalem be construed as the place of the tico witnesses' death : 2ndly, that the same literal Jerusalem, and its supposed to be restored temple, be construed as the holy city and temple of Apoc. xi. 2, trodden and defiled by the Gentiles. Thus Mr. C. Maitland himself, in his abstract of Jerome, contends at p. 238 for the identity of the literal Jerusalem with the holy city of Apoc. xi. 2 ; quite forgetful of Jerome's chronological limitation of the application to it of that latter appellative. Jerome's idea was that the local Jerusalem would never be rebuilt, though the Jews would be converted ; but remain in ruins to the end of the world. " Obsessi sunt a Vespasiano et Tito ; et civitas eorum, Hadriani temporibus, in ceternos cineres collapsa est." So on Jer. xix. 7. 1 "In this little world [viz. that of which Jerome was the centre, including specially the ladies at Bethlehem, Paula and Eustochium, &c] whatever subject was discussed, . . . every difficulty, was alike referred to this great man of his age." So Mr. C. M. most correctly, at p. 236. Yet at p. 238 he supposes that Paula's elaborate letter to her and Jerome's common friend Marcella, written with the view of inducing her to join Paula herself and Jerome, was written and despatched without his seeing it ! 2 I beg to refer to my notice in Vol. ii. p. 435 of Mr. C. Maitland's attempted an- swer to this argument of Paula and Eustochium, and justification of the application of all the terms of the prophetic verse to the literal restored Jerusalem. 3 So e. g. of Egypt iu his comment on Ps. lxxviii. 12 ; " Nos omnes eramus in PER. II.] nOM 0ONSTANTXN1 I 0 I U X 01 B . BM PI U ( Ji Tome) 88] On the great lubjeol of Antichrist, 5thly, we inert in Jerome the same inconsistency, puzzling, and confusion, from bis conjunction of tome supposed Jewish m well as />xci(-('J/ris/i on Matt. xxiv. ~>, " Many shall come in my. n imi . saying, I am Christ, &c." Jerome comments as follows ; " (Quorum nun- eat Simon Namaritauus . . Ego reor omm - ...t> antichrist '. tub nomine Chritti, ea dooere qnaieontraria suut f'hristo." " lb. Ml. iv. 21 322 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. as that the Jews will believe on him as Christ : ' consequently as in profession a Jew.2 — The same partially confused view as that of sun- dry earlier expositors about Daniel's abomination of desolation had no doubt its influence to this effect. Tet Jerome distinctly recognizes the alternative interpretations of this abomination of desolation. It may mean, says he, on Matt. xxiv. 15, either Ca?sar's image placed by Pilate in the Jewish temple, or Hadrian's in the ruined temple's holy place, " which has stood there to the present day : " 3 or it may mean simply Antichrist ; or " every perverse dogma which may stand in the holy place, that is in the Church, and show itself as God."4 As to the prophecy of the 70 weeks, connected in the one passage of Dan. ix. 27 with the abomination of desolation, Jerome only gives the opinion of others, (the same that I have a little previously ab- stracted principally from him,) B but shuns giving any of his own.0 — Antichrist's time of duration he of course expected to be 3| years, literally. But I must beg attention to the manner in which, in his exposition of Ezekiel's symbolic bearing of the iniquity of Israel 390 days, and that of Judah 40 days, " a day for a year," Jerome inci- dentally supports the old Protestant view of its furnishing a Scrip- tural precedent for the year-day theory. For, like Venema, he sup- poses Ezekiel's lying prostrate for so many days to be typical of the 1 " Quando pro Christo Judaei recipient Antichristum, impleta prophetia Domini Salvatoris, . . . ' Si alius venerit in nomine suo ilium recipietis.' " On Obad. 17. 2 So on Dan, xi. 21 ; '' Nostri melius interpretantur et rectius, quod in fine mundi ha?c sit facturus Antichristus ; qui consurgere habet [qu. debet ?] de modiea gente, id est de populo Judmorum. . . Et simulabit se ducem esse foederis, hoc est legis et tes- tamenti Dei. Et ingredietur urbes ditissimas, et faciet qua? non fecerunt patres ejus. Nullus enim Judceorum absque Antichristo in toto unquam orbe regnavit." 3 " Aut de Hadriani equestri statua, qua? in ipso sancto sanctorum loco usque in prsesentem diem stetit." 4 " Abominatio desolationis intelligi potest et omne dogma perversion ; quod cum vidcrimus stare in loco sancto, id est in ecclesid, et se ostendere Deum, debemus fugere de Juda?a in montes : id est," as he adds with characteristic anagoge, " dimissa occi- dente litera, et Judaica pravitate, appropinquare montibus a?ternis." Ibid. 5 See the Notes, pp. 304, 305 supra. « Jerome adds that the Jews of his time reckoned the 70 hebdomads, or 490 years, as fulfilled first in the restoration of the city and temple, as under Ezra and Nehe- miah ; then the destruction of the temple, and cessation of the sacrifice, on occasion of the desolations of their people and city G2 hebdomads after by Titus, and again, yet 7 hebdomads later, by Hadrian. They are not very careful, he says, about the fact that, instead of 490 years from the 1st of Cyrus to Hadrian's war against the Jews, the real chronological interval is 69G years. Before the desolation Jerome makes them say that Christ will come and Christ be slain. But in what sense, as compared with Jewish notions, I cannot understand. IT u. ll PROM 0OM8TAMTIM1 TO PALI Of EL. BMPIRX. (JeTOmC.) 328 penal prottrmtion of [srael and Judah Got bo mam yean;* not, like many Ian- expositors, at typical <>f the previous prolonged duration of those nations* MM, 6. Jerome's \ iew of the Apocalyptic millennium was much the same figurative new as Augustine's: his opposition to the literal view of the tirst resurrection being in his remarks on Yietorinus' eomment strongly exprest.1 — At the same time he held the idea which the ancient premillennarians so much insisted on, thai the world's des- tined duration, after the type of the six days of Creation, was to be only 6000 years, and then the saints' gabbatitm to begin.' Ere passing from Jerome let me remind the reader of Ins famous Latin translation of the New Testament, the Apocalypse inclusive; — that same which has ever since been so well known as the Vulgate: and let him mark in my biographical sketch of Jerome the favourable circumstances under which he made it ; viz. while at Kome, in intimacy with Pope Damasns, with all Rome's manuscript stores at his com- mand ; also his indefatigable care in collecting books bearing on Biblical literature, as well as indefatigable labour in studving them. Hence the evidently high value and authority of the readings that ml in his translations, even when varying from our best present ('reek manuscripts. Of these I will here notice three, which I wish 1 "Qusaramus qui tint anni 390 qui pro diebut totidem rappntentor; quilms in tro latere prophets dormierit vinctus atqne oonatriclus, . . . captivitatya et mise- ri.i- decern trihuum, id Bet Israelis, ostendeiu " Bo he ealeolatea from the time of 11 ai a's captivity to the time of the Jews' deliverance from their affliction! in the last of Ahasnerna, (or Axtaxerxes Mmmon,) as related in the book of Esther, ami Makes the amount 389 y •■ ir~ 1 months : during all which time Israel " fuit in angustia, et jogo pr>^*us captivitatis. ' See my page 2NS .supra. And yet in his Preface to Isaiah Ixv., referring to different views of the Apocalyptic millennium, &c., Jerome says ; " Which if I take Jit/ ura/ii u ly I fear to contradict the ancients " — On Eiekiel xl. 6, I may obw rre, he I iys . " (i>'»( the labourers i i the comment on Hicah iv., cited bj me VoL i. p. • Compare the pi abas' octad. 21 • 324 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. my readers specially to remember: — 1. the rendering of bilibris and tres bilibres in the 3rd Seal for one clicenix of wheat and three of barley ; this marking very strikingly to any one who reflects on the so defined weight of barley that was to cost but a denarius, the ab- surdity of all idea of such a symbolization signifying famine : — 2. that of quatuor partes terra in the 4th Seal ; four parts of the earth : not one fourth part, quartam partem : — 3. the reading in Apoc. xvii. 1G either of cornua quae vidisti in bestid ; so in most MSS. and Copies ; or, as in the Laurentian Copy, cornua quce vidisti, et Bestiam ; (not Bestia ;) hi odient Fomicariam, &C.1 — On two of these I have re- marked already, in the progress of my Apocalyptic comment.2 Tet once more let me advert a second time to the exceeding in- terest that attaches to Jerome's lively depicturing of the grand event of the Roman empire's predicted desolation by barbarian invaders, and incipient breaking up into the ten kingdoms, as in the course of fulfilment in his own time, and before his own eyes. " In our time the clay has become mixt with iron. Once nothing was stronger than the Roman empire, now nothing weaker ; mixt up as it is with, and needing the helping of, barbarous nations."4 " He who withheld is removed, and we think not that Antichrist is at the door." 4 Again, among the invading Goths that desolated the empire, and afterwards partitioned it between them, he significantly reckons ten nations.5 Jerome had no idea of any such mighty chronological gap, as some modern expositors would advocate between the removal of the " let " and the rise of Antichrist. The reader will not, I think, regret my having dwelt thus long on Jerome : considering that he was the most learned of all the ancient Fathers ; and lived at an epoch so transcendently interesting, espe- cially to the students of Daniel's and the Apocalyptic prophecies. 6. Augustine. My copious abstracts in the 1st Volume from this eminent and holy Father of the Christian Church make it unnecessary for me to 1 The accusative in the Laurentian MS. excludes the Beast from participation with the ten horns in the hating, &c. of the Harlot, just as much as the reading in Bestia. So translating Jerome must have regarded the to Oiipiov as an accusative. And so possibly also Hippolytus. Sec p. 308 supra. 2 On the extremely important reading of the 4th Seal, in my Vol. i. pp. 201, 202 ; — on the reading in Apoc. xvii. 16 in my Vol. iv. p. 31. s On Dan. ii. See my Vol. i. p. 390. 4 Epist. to Ageruchia. See my Vol. i. p. 393. 5 See the citation ibid. PBB. 11 PftOM GONSTANTINB TO PALL 01 B BHFIBX. [ .1 i/gustinr. i 388 do more than call attention here verj briefly to three or fonr points in his detached Apocalyptic interpretations. 1. That the Apocalypse embraced for its Bubjeci of prefigoratioii the whole period Jrom Christ's jirst coming to the end of the world.* ■_'. That the lll.ooo of the sealing vision (as also of Apoc. \i\.) depicted distinctively (//"/ the earthly professing visible Church, hut) the Church of the saints, 01 elect* the const it ucnc\ of what lie calls the ci/i/ of Ood, ultimately united into the heavenly Jerusalem:' while the appended palm-bearing vision figured the blessed and hea- venly issue assured to them of their earthly trials and pilgrimage.4 3. That the millennium of Sataifs binding, and the saints reigning, dated from Christ's ministry, when he beheld Satan fall like light- ning from heaven ; it being meant to signify the triumph over Satan in the hearts of true believers: and that the subsequent figuration of (Jog and Maujoi; indicated the coming of Antichrist at the end of the world; the 1000 years being a figurative numeral, expressive of the whole period intervening.* I may add that he expounded the too?nan clothed with the sun, in Apoc. \ii.. of the true Church, or Civatas Dei; clothed with the sun of righteousness ; trampling on those growing and waning things of mortality which the moon might figure; and travailing both with Christ personally, and Christ in his members.6 — Further the comple- mental set of martyrs, told of to the souls under the altar, he viewed as martyrs to be slain under Antichrist.7 — As to Antichrist himself, 1 " Per totum hoc tempus quod liber iste (sc. Apocalypsis) complectitur, a primo M-ilict t :id vcntii Chriati tuque in sasculi tinem." — C. D. xx. 8. 1. Elsewhere he notes the obscurity of the Apocalypse ; very specially from its repeat- int; the same objects under different figures." — C. D. xx. 17. vm in his Doctr. Christ, iii. 51 : " Centum quadraginta quatuor (mille), quo nu- ugnificatur univertitat tanctorum in ApocalypsL" 1 " Civil ' un Jerusalem, qua n\inc in Sanctis fidclibus est diffusa per ter- ms." C. D. xx. 21. In which city he says, on Psalm exxi. 2, that the angels will be fellow -citi/' ' St e my Vol. i. pp. 309 — 313. with the extracts from Augustine in the Notes. 1 Bee pp L36, 187 supra, 8o the Greek Andreai afterwards : as also Primariui of the Latin Church, before Andreas, It continued in fact the current opinion through the Middle Ages. — That M. Stuart should hare ascribed the origin of this opinion (as Vol. i. p, I.V.i to And run, nut Awjustine, appears surprising. * So »n Psalm cxlii. 8.— On Paalm xliii. \l~>, I observe, he explains the opened H""k in Apoeal] d to St. John to eat, not of the Apoeafyptf, but of the Bible. On the Donatista u the other hand there arc the arguments following in favour of the «•©- stanHal identity of the extant Treatise with that of Tichonius: (ar- guments, omitted by the Benedictine Editor:) — 1st, that the expo- . principles followed in the Treatise agree well with Tichonius1 sitory rules, as recorded by Augustine : J 2. that one of the anti-Donatistic sentiments, which mure than once occurs in these II i oilies, is precisely such a recognition «»t" the Catholic Church as was objected to the real Tichonius, as an inconsistency, by his Bishop Parmenianus : ' — .'5. that a particular clause on the horsemen of the second Woe, quoted by Primasius from Tichonius, appears in the precise words in these Homilies;4 and also, substantially, three ex- 1 Especially the two cited as from the Tichonian Treatise in ruy Vol. iii. pp. 277, 221, ting the Beast and the Heist's image ; — 1. " Nbn abhorret a fide [recta] ut Best in ista impia eivitas intelligatur . . populus infidelium contrariua populo fideli et civiuti Dei." 2. " Imago vero ejus simulatio est, in eis videlicet hominibus qui velut tidem Catholieam profitentur, et infideliter vivunt." Which same explanations, almost totidem vtriit, will he found in Augustine's C I), xx. 9. 3. - 1 lay are thus enumerated by Augustine, Vol. iii. 99; and as rules intended by Tichonius to solve the difficulties of Scripture. 1. De Domino rpore; there being sometimes a transition in the sacred writer! from Christ the head to the Church his body, and inclusion of both under the same phrase or figon ,— A rule rightly applicable sometimes, Bays Augustine, 2. L)i' L) tmini corpora biporttto ; the true members of Christ's body and the false. — A new of things right, tayi Augustine, but wrongly expreet ; because hypocrites and Use professors do not really belong to Christ's body at all. • 3. Do promitn sprest, like aa by Augustine himself, Despiritu et Uteri ; in reference to cases w lure figures are used ; and one thing said, another meant. 4. D>- specie et rjenere : — where a species is spoken of, e. g. Egypt, Judsa, &c. ; but the whole world, of similar gentilism, shown by the strength of the expressions to be * 5. De tcni]Hjribus : — where, especially in chronological statements, a whole is said for apart, or pari for a whole ; as Christ's three days in the grave, when the actual time « - only one full day, with part of the day preceding, and part of the following ; and us of Israel's captivity, though applicable to the church's whole time of earthly pilgrimage. Tichonius applied this ltule to other 'numerals also ; e.g. to tfa 10 1-1 1, 0 ' >})■ 7. 1>' Diaboio ttjuti — things being said of the Devil when meant of the tricked that constitute hi-, body, and vie.' versa, .hist tb to Rule 1.) The agr.fin.-nt of the extant Homilies with the above wdl be noted from tin in my abstract. * Tichonius, SB] ridtt ""H"" toto'orbe diffusam;" and that for this (ib. 63) b red by Parmenfanus. So in Bom.xix: "Ciritas and . Isevt here. 1 •• Bt Dumerus, inouit, exercituam his mj riades mj riadum ; audivi nnmerum eorum • 32S IIISTOltY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PARTI. planations taken by Bede from Tichonius.1 — There remains to be noted a very important chronological indication in the tenth Homily, which speaks of Arianisin as then dominant ; " Sicut videmus modo hcereticos esse in hoc saaculo potentes, qui habent virtutem Diaboli : sicut quondam Pagani, ita nunc illi vastant ecclesiam : " and again, on the clause about all the earth worshipping the Beast, "Utique habent potestatem haeretici ; sed praccipue Ariani : " — statements possibly referable to the Arian Etnperor Valens' oppression of the Trinitarians in the Eastern Empire, which occurred during the life of the real Tichonius ; yet not probably so : as Valens' power extended only to the Eastern or Greek Empire ; not to the Western Empire, in which evidently 2 (and most likely in Africa) the writer of the ex- tant Homilies resided. Hence more probably this indication points to the succeeding century ; when the Arian Vandal kings Genseric and Hunneric 3 did really desolate the orthodox African Church. — On the whole, and adding to the other evidence in favour of his authorship the important fact of the manuscript's bearing his name, I feel little doubt in my own mind that the main substance of the ex- tant Treatise is from Tichonius : though with certain alterations in- troduced, and an abbreviation into Homiletic form, by some Presby- sed non dixit quot myriadum.'" So the Tichonian Homily vii. Primasius, after com- menting on the clause as read in his copy, " numerus octaginta millia," thus adds; " Alia porro translatio, quam Tichonius exposuit, habet, ' Et numerus equestris exer- citus bis myriades myriadum. Ubi, expositionem praeteriens, hoc tautum adjecit, Non dixit quot myriadum." B. P. M. x. 312. 1 1. Says Bede on Apoc. xiv. 20 ; " Tychonius messorem et vindemiatorem ecclesiam interpretatur." Says our Tichonius; "Si putandum est quod ipse Christus visus est in nube alba messor, quis est vindemiator nisi idem ; sed in suo corpore, quod est ecclesia." 2. Says Bede on Apoc. xvii. 7 : " Tychonius bestiam ad omne corpus Diaboli refert, quod decedentium et succedentium sibi generationum pro cursu sup- pleatur." Says our Tichonius, Horn, xiv., on the verse, " The beast was, and is not, and is to be; " " Hoc fit . . . dum filii mali parentes pessimo imitantur ; et, aliis morientibus, alii succedunt eis." (Copied by Primasius and Ambrose Ansbert.) 3. Says Bede on Apoc. xix. 21 ; " Hanc cocnam Tychonius sic exponit ; Omni tempore comedit ecclesia carnes immicoram suorum." Says our Tichonius, Horn. xvii. ; " Omnes enim gentes, quando in Christo credentes ecclesise incorporantur, spiritualiter ab ecclesia comeduntur." 2 There occurs a curious notice on Apoc. iv. 3, in the second of the extant Homilies, on the resemblance of the word iris, or its accusative irin, to the Greek word upt)vr) ; as by a writer, and for readers, to whom alike the Greek was a foreign language. " Cui nomini si una in fine additur littera, et irini dicatur, utique hoc ipsum inter- pretatio sonare videtin : nam Graeco vocabulo uprjvi} pax appellatur." — Moreover it would seem that these Homilies on the Apocalypse were for reading in the Churches. (See e. g. the end of Horn. 1.) But the Apocalypse was a book, I believe, little read at that time in the Greek Churches. 3 See my Vol. ii. p. 223, and Vol. iii. pp. 61—63. ri .u. li. PROM CONSTAMTIN1 M PALI 01 H. BMPIKB. (TichonilM.) 339 fcer of fche Latin Catholic Church after the first quarter of the fifth century, probably an African. Thus we maj fitly note its scheme «>t' Apocalyptic interpretation as one appertaining to the era under re- view: albeit, in its present form, as rather pott- Augustinian thanprs- A ugustinian. To begin, there are in two different manuscripts two different in- troductions. In the one MS. (probably the original) the writer Btates :it .nice the opening oi' his 1st Homily, the Origenistic interpretative principle of avaytrytf, as that adopted in the commentary. "In Icc- tione Etevelationis beati Johannis Apostoli, fratres charissimi, secun- dum anaqoqen . . explanare curabimus." The other thus speaks: " Respecting the things seen by St. John in the Apocalypse, it seemed to some o\' the ancient Fathers thai either all, or at least the greater part, presignined the coming of Antichrist, or day of judg- ment. But they who have more diligently handled it, judge that the thingB contained in it began to have fulfilment immediately after Christ's passion; and are to go on fulfilling up to the day of judg- ment: so as that but a small portion may seem to remain for the times of Antichrist." l — Which two beginnings are quite consistent. For the writer's evident meaning in those words, " consummanda usque ad diem judicii," is not that the Apocalypse was like a dra- matic prefiguration of the great events of the coming future, to be fulfilled in succession and order until the consummation : but rather a representation (for the most part) of general truths, detached and unconnected, concerning the Church ; all and ever in course of re- alisation, and that will be so even to the end. Thus, passing over his explanation of the primary Apocalyptic symbolization of Christ, the details of which he takes very much from Victorinus, and that of the Epistles to the seven Churches. which Churches he regards as representative of the Church uni- l.2 — in the Seals, the first rider and horse are expounded of Christ riding to victory on his apostles and prophets, the arrows the 1 "Aliqnibua ex antiqnia Patribui hoc risum eat, qudd aul tota, ant certi maxima as ii>- 1 lectione, diem jadicii, Tel adventum Antichrifti, rigniflcare rideatur. 1 11 i aotem qui diligentius tractaverunt, quod ea qus in ipeft revelatione oontinentur poet paHumam I >i>minj BalTatorii imstri fdemnt inchoata, ct ita sunt usque ad diem judicii oonsummanda ; utparra portio temporibna Antichriiti remanere videa- tur " Cited tiv the Benedictine Editor, in hi* Introductory Notice to the Comm from a very oU MS. in the Abbey <>f St. Peter at Chartree, • Horn. i. 330 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. gospel-word preached, as pointed by the Spirit, in date from after the time of Christ's ascension : the three next riders as the Devil, riding on bloody-minded, hypocritical,1 and wicked persecuting men, in antagonism to Christ's Church ; the oil and the wine of the 3rd Seal signifying the righteous whom none can really hurt : 2 the souls under the' altar as the cry of the martyred and persecuted against their persecutors. — So far with reference to the times of the Chris- tian dispensation generally. In the sixth Seal, however, the earth- quake is explained specially of the last persecution ; and the falling of bad men from heaven, i. e. from the Church,3 under it. So arrived at the sealing and palm-bearing visions he expounds the one of the Church's ingathering of its mystical number, the 1 44,000 ;4 the other of Church privileges enjoyed by them under the present dispensation:5 for he regarded the 141,000, and palm-bearing com- pauy, as one and the same body,6 constituted of the elect out of both Jews and Gentiles. The half-hour's silence he interprets, like Victorinus, as the beginning of eternal rest ; the incense- Angel as Christ : then thus proceeds to expound the Trumpets, or Church- preachments acted out ■ 7 — viz. the first, of luxurious men of the earth, burnt up grass-like by the fire of concupiscence : 8 the second, 1 Hypocritical in the third Seal, because of the rider's carrying in false pretence the balance of justice. " Stateram habebat in manu, quia dum se fingunt mali justitias libram tenerc, sic plerumque decipiunt." Of the wine and oil not to be hurt, he says, '" In vino sanguis Christi, in oleo uuctio chrismatis intelligitur." 2 Victorinus' explanation of the three last horses as " bella, fames, et pestis," is also given as an alternative ; Victorinus being however nowhere mentioned by name. " Super quartam partem terra?," is Tichonius' reading of Apoc. vi. 3 This is an explanation applied in various similar figurations afterwards. 4 " 144,000 otnnis omnino ecclesia est." A Tichoniasm. See Tichonius' Rule 5, in my Note, p. 327 supra. — The 144,000 of Apoc. xiv. are similarly explained by him : not, as by Methodius, and sometimes by Jerome, of literal monks and virgins. 5 On the verse, "I saw and behold a great company, &c," he says, Horn. vi. ; " Non dixit, 'Post hsec vidi alium populum ; sed, Vidi populum ; id est eundem quern viderat in mysterio 144 millium : ' " including alike, he adds, both Jews and Gentiles. 6 A singular explanation ; but agreeable with that of the privileges of the New Jerusalem, noted p. 33o afterwards. Tichonius' remark on, " He shall lead them to living fountains of waters," stands thus: " Omnia ha3c etiam in prcesenti vita spirit- ualiter ecclesiaj eveniunt : cam, dimissis peccatis, resurgimus ; et vita? prioris lugubris ac veteris hominis exspoliati, in baptismo Christum induimur, etgaudio Sancti Spiritus implemur." 7 " Septem angelos ecclesiam dixit ; qui acceperunt septem tubas, id est, perfectam praedicationem : sicut scriptum est, Exalta sicut tuba vocem tuam." s So Isaiah xl. 6, says Tichonius ; " All flesh is grass."—" Quos Deus justo judicio permittit incendio luxuriae vel cupiditatis exuri." it.'.;. II." PEON OONSTANTIN] i" FATJ 01 Et. EXPIRE. \ Tir/i,»iiit.\:) 331 of the Dei il Galling like I burning mountain on fcbe world : the third, nr star falling from hen en. of the falling from the Chiuvli of proud and impious men : and its making the witters bitter, of the heretical doctrine of re-baptism : ' the fourth, of evil and hypocritical men in the Church struck with darkness by the Devil, through being given up to their pleasures:'- — then t lie fifth, of evil men and heretics, fallen from the Church/' and with the heart's abyss of Wickedness fully opened, so as to obscure the Church's light by their evil deedfl and doctrine ; the men disguised with crowns, like those of the 24 church-representing elders, and with scorpion-like stings in the tail, (for the false prophet he is the tail.) striking both good, under devil- ish guidance, though only to quicken them to humility and repent- ance, and bad, so as to infuse the poison of their doctrine: — also the sixth Trumpet,4 and its horse-borne myriads from the Euphrates, (the river of the mi/stic Babylon,) of the last persecution : (that I pre- sume, by Antichrist :) the Angel's cry from the golden altar signify- ing that of the faithful who dare to resist the mandate of the cruel secuting king ; the smoke, fire, and sulphur from the horses' mouths symbolizing the chiefs antiehristian blasphemies; the serpent-like tail, with head, the false teachers and their heretical poison; and the chronological tetrad of an hour, day, month, and year answering in the tetrad of a time, two times, and half a time, or the '-\\ years of Antichrist's continuance.5 On the d iscent of the Covenant-Angel, i. e. Christ, Tichonius ex- plains his opened Book as the Bible; his lion-like cry, after planting his feet on land and sea, as that of the universal gospel-preaching by the Church over the whole world; and the seven answering thun- ders as the same with the seven Trumpet voices, or Church-preach* There is an erroneous transposition of part of the Exposition concerning the Seals, and part concerning the Trumpets, in the M.S. of this 6th Homily, which should he . the p sdex. Bo too afterwards in the 7th Homily. 1 '• Hoe in his qui n-baptisantur manifests' intelligi potest." This is an anti- whit b h i- bei n noted ;i> anti-TSoAonian. But possibly it i> Mich an anti- Donatism as TicAonitu might hare written. Bee Parmenianns1 remonstrance, noted ipra. • Th • •'/'• OTjing Woe, that follows the lth Trumpet, he explains of each and uinouucing of the plagues of tile last days, and tile coming day ot judgnu ut. , " Una st'lla corpus est multorum cadt utium dfl < cchsia per peccata." * " s. d Hon dixit qnot myriadum "1 he I ichoniasm noted ahove, p. :iJ7. N 1 So I think he means ■■ Base ran! qnatnor tampon triennii at pan [qn ris.*' — Compare the Tichonian Utile 5. 332 HISTOKY OP APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. ments, sealed to the bad, though understood by the good. — Then the introductory charge, prior to the witness-narrative, " Measure the temple," &c, is well and rather remarkably explained of a recension and preparation of the true Church "ad ultimum ;" all other pro- fessors of religion except the true, whether heretics or badly-living Catholics, like the Gentile outer Court, being shut out : — and the sackcloth-robed witnesses themselves as either the two Testaments, or the light-giving Church fed by the oil of those two Testaments : ' their appointed time of prophesying being the whole time from Christ's death, h'or the phrase " these have power," not, shall have, marks the whole of time current till the last persecution : and the chronolo- gical term 1260 days, is one inexplicable as the numeral, not only " of the last persecution, and of the future peace, but also of the whole time from the Lord's passion ; either period having that number of days."2 Thus we have here a view of the witnessing large and con- nected. And, during this prolonged time of the Church's testimony, the killing their injurers with fire out of their mouths is well ex- plained of the destroying effect of the Witnesses' prayers ; and the heaven's not raining, of the absence of blessing on the barren earth. — After which, and on their finishing their testimony, (a testimony carried on to the very eve of Christ's revelation,) the Beast from the abyss, or " wicked ones making up the Devil's body,"3 especially under Antichrist* shall conquer them that yield, says Tichonius, and slay the stedfast, in the 7r\ar£ia, or " midst of the Church ; " till after 3^ days, meaning 3^ years,b their dead bodies shall rise, and ascend to meet Christ at his coming. 1 First the expositor says, " Duobus testibus meis, id est duobus Testamentis : " then, presently after ; " Nam Zacharias unum candelabrum vidit septiforme ; et has duo olivas, id est Testamenta, infundere oleum candelabro, id est ecclesiae." 2 " Prophetabunt diebus 1260 : numerum novissimse persecutions dixit, et future pacis, et totius temporis a Domini passione ; quoniam utrumque tempus totidem dies habet, quod suo in loco dicetur." — How this time, times, and half a time might come to be viewed as a fit designative of the whole Christian aera was explained by Am- brose Ansbert. See my sketch p. 360 infra. How Tichonius might have inferred from it a nearness of the consummation to his own age will appear from a certain particular value put by him on a prophetic time, stated in my next page. How it meant the time of the future peace, I know not. 3 " Bestiam . . impios dicit, qui sunt corpus Diaboli." Horn. 10. So the 7th Ti- chonian Rule. 4 It seems plain that Tichonius refers the death of the Witnesses to this period. * This early testimony for the year-daij principle, and the reasoning added in its support, is noted by me in my Chapter on the year-day, Vol. iii. pp. 279, 280. — Prosper, Leo the Great's secretary, about A.D. 440, concurred, we there saw, in the explanation. PER. il." I'linM C0N8TANTIN1 PO I \u 01 B. EMPIRI. (Ticho/iius.) XV.) Next let me sketch, in illustration of hie Commentary, Tichonius' expoaition of the connected visions of the Dragon, Beast, and Beast- riding Harlot ; given in Apoc. \ii.. \iii.. wii.1 The travailing Woman then, he says, is tin* Church, ever bringing forth Christ in Ins members: the Dromon, the Devil seeking to de- vour them; his seven headland ten home indicating all the world's kingdoms ruled by him;2 his dejection from heaven to earth by Mi- ehael. i. e. Christ, his being east out of the Church, or hearts of saints, into the hearts of earthly men: — the floods cast from the Dragon's mouth against the woman, the multitude of persecutors: the two eagle-wings given to aid her flight from him, the two testa- ments, ov perhaps the two witnessing prophets Elias and his com- panion : the woman's «•//)ptov, in Apoc. xvii. 16; or perhaps et Bestiam. See p. 324 supra. I0 Horn. 16. PER, II PXOM I IN8TA.NTINE 10 PAU 01 i;. BMPIKX. (Tit/wnius.) 338 they are spiritually eaten by it.1 And so, as to the least's destruc- tion, Tichonius makes it (ageeeably with his system) that of the wicked who, from being constituents of the Devil's body, became memben of Christ's body.' So we advance towards the conclusion. — Omitting lesser points,3 1 may observe thai in A.poc xx. the millennium is explained, on the Augustinian principle, as begun at Christ's first coming snd minis- try: the strong man armed being ejected out of the hearts of his people by one stronger, and bound from ruling over them : the first resurrection meaning that on remission of sin at baptism ;* the 1000 years, all yet remaining of the world's sixth chiliad; (the whole for the part ;)5 and the "little while" of Satan's loosing, the 3.J years of Antichrist. As to the New Jerusalem, alike in Apoc. xxi. and Apoc. iii., it is similarly explained of the Church in its present state ; commencing from Christ's death :6 (though not without a passing counter- view, given apparently by another hand, which applies it to the glorified Church after the resurrection :7) its four gates towards the four winds marking its diffusion over the world; the tree of life meaning the cross, and the river of life the waters of baptism.8 — Agreeably with which view the palm-hearers'1 blessedness in Apoc. vii. was also ex- plained, as we saw, of the Church in the present life ; when Chris- 1 " Omnes pontes, quando in Christo crcdcntcs ecclesice incorporantur, spiritualiter ab Ecclesia comeduntur." Horn. 17. 2 Ibid. 1 Let me notice one. On Apoc. xvi. 14, speaking of the kings of the world as gather- ed to the war of the great dag of the Lord, a primary explanation is given of the Lord's great day, as meaning " the whole time from Christ's death to the end of the world." Then, as an alternative, there is added a reference to the day of Jerusalem's destruc- tion ; which however I take to be an interpolation. " Potest hoc loco dies magnus intelligi ilia desolatio, quando a Tito et Veepaaiano obscssa est Hicrosolyma; ubi, i \- ceptis his qui in captivitatem ducti sunt, quindecies centena millia mortua referuntur." Horn. 13. n. 1G, 17, 18. On Augustine, see p. 325 supra. * So the Tichoni.in Rule 5. * Horn. 3 and 19. ; This occur-, in Horn. IS, after a quotation from Apoc. xxi. 1, " I saw the New Jeru- salem descending as a bride,'' ftc. : the brief comment being thus added, " Hoc totnm de gl oi divit, ijiniii in habebit post resurrectionem." Bnt this is an insulated ace: and in three other different placet the prophecy is distinctly referred to the Church on earth - for ex ample the next Note. • So in the Homily 19, where all the particular figure* are gone into. — Similarly in H..mily 3, on Apoc. iii. 12, " I will write on him the name of the city of my God, the New Jerusalem, which deecendeth from heaven from my God," the comment is ; vain Jerusalem eeriest* I i Domino naseitur. Novam autcm dixit propter novitatem nominis Chnstiani ; et quia ex vetcribus novi crticimur." 336 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. tians rise to new life at baptism, put on Christ, and are filled with the joy of the Holy Ghost.1 To this last expository view I must direct particular attention ; as being now for the first time put forth in an Apocalyptic commentary; though not without a partial precedent, as we saw in Eusebius.2 At the same time it is to be observed that by the Church Tichonius meant Christ's true Church ; perpetually distinguishing between it and the Jicti et mail within, as well as heretics and Pagans without it. — In his explaining away of Babylon the seven-hilled city, as merely meaning the world, though expressly defined by the Angel to mean Rome, he was supported, as we saw, by Augustine. This, with his correspond- ent generalizing view of the Beast, is another of the characteristic and notable points of Tichonius' commentary. With what mislead- in"- effect it past downward into the middle age, as the received sys- tem of interpretation, will appear in my next Section.3 PERIOD 3. FROM THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, A.D. 500, TO A.D. 1100. The period included in this Section comprises that of the early establishment, and growth to mature strength, of the Papal suprem- acy over the ten Romano- Gothic kingdoms of the revived Western Empire ; also in Eastern Christendom the reign of Justinian, and rise of the Saracens, and then of the Seljukian Turks, down to the first Crusade. Its history is sketched in my Part II., Chapters iii., iv., and v. How the end of the eleventh millennary of the Christian sera constituted an important epoch in the history of Apocalyptic in- terpretation, sucb as to furnish a fit ending to the present Period, will appear at the close of this Section. — We open on it with the important question, Did prophetic expositors now, after the break- ing up of the old Roman empire, recognize the signs of the times, and look out for a Roman Antichrist ? The Latin expositors that I shall first notice under this division are 1 Homily 6 : — " Omnia ha?c [viz. what is said of the living fountains of water] etiam in prmsenti sceculo, et hisdiebus, spiritualiter ecclesia? eveuiunt: &c." 2 See p. 311. 3 Tichonius' Latin version, let me here ohserve, was not Jerome's, called the Vul- gate. Differences appear throughout. For notable particular exemplifications I may refer to Apoc. xiii. 18 ; where Tichonius, as already stated, reads "'sexcenti sexdecim," the Vulgate sexcenti sexaginta sex:" and Apoc. xxii. 14; where Tichonius reads, " Beati qui servant tnandata hcec," the Vulgate, " Beati qui lavant stolas suas in sanguine Agui." pii in/ raoM pall of b. bmpibi, a.d. 500 to 1100. (Primariue.) '■'•■''1 Primantu, />< ■r 9th centuries, re- spectively. Ami 1 shall close with another Latin expositor who flourished later, perhaps near about the end of the lltli century; I mean Berengaud. 1. Beginning with Primantu, his name appears in the second Con- ference of the fifth Genera] Council, held at Constantinople A.D. 1 where he is noted as a Bishop of the Ih/znrcne or Carthaginian province; in which province he is supposed to have been Bishop of Ad ru me fit m.2 The manuscript of his works was discovered in the monastery of St. Theuderic near Lyons, in the lGth century; and was published, with a high eulogy on the author prefacing it, by the learned GaglttBUB.' These works are all given in the xth volume of the 15. P. M. ; that on the Apocalypse occupying from p. 287 to p. 330. There is so much of general resemblance in this Apocalyptic Com- mentary to that of Tichonius, (to which indeed he refers, as also to Augustine, as an exemplar before him at the outset,4) that there will be no nerd to enter so much at large into it. after the full sketch just gi\ en of Tichonius. His mention of Jerome's Origenistic saying at the outset, that the Apocalypse has as many mysteries as words, and many hidden meanings too in each word,5 is ominous; and might well prepare us for the kind of commentary following. Indeed, his seeking for mysteries has imparted an air of raysteriousness and obscurity to parts of it, such that J do not wonder at Ambrose Ans- bert's complaining of its frequent unintelligibility.6 What follows will give a sufficient notion of his general views, and of his more re- markable particular explanations. 1 Ilarduin . f So Mn-htim, &c. - in hi~ Dedication to the French kins, Francis the 1st. B. P. M. x. 1 12. ' B.P. M. \ 287. Aii-1m rt notice* this also. " Port quern (Tichonium) Primasius, Afrii b Antistea, . . . quinque pmdietam Apocalyprim enodavit libra. In quibus, at ipse aaterit, aon tam propria quim aliena contexuit ; ejuadem scilicet Tichonii bene inteUecta deflorana." Anabert addi thai Primaaroi borrowed also from Augustine : — " aed el beats recordation U Angnetini qnaadam . . eapitnla B. P.M. xiii. im. , • II. . x 28ft mnlta IM in ejOJ dietil sa^pi'-sime. legendo scrutatum esse, nee int. 1- Ihid. xiii. 40}. Vol.. IV. 338 HISTOltY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. He begins with stating the objects of the Apocalypse. It needed to be revealed how the Church, then recently founded by the apos- tles, was destined to be extended ; (for it was to have the world for an inheritance ;) that so the preachers of the truth, though few and weak and poor as regards this world, might yet boldly make aggres- sion on the many and the great.1 Which Church, its great subject, was in different parts of the Apocalypse ever prominently though variously depicted : — alike, he says, by the seven Asiatic Churches and seven candlesticks, and seven stars ; (the fitness of the septenary to signify unity being fancifully accounted for;)2 by Christ himself, too, as figured on the scene, the Church being Christ's body;3 and yet more by St. John as a representative : (even his opening act of falling as one dead before Christ, being but a type of the Church dead to the world :) 4 also, in the other and higher visions next vouchsafed, alike by the heaven, by the figured throne placed in it, by Him that sate on the throne, by the twenty-four elders, and by the four living creatures : which last however may mean the four Evangelists : 5 — " Quod est thronus hoc animalia ; hoc et seniores ; id est ecclesia." 6 — I need not suggest the confusion of ideas, and inco- herence of interpretation, necessarily arising from this confused gener- alization, and identification in meaning, of the varied scenic imagery of the Apocalypse. The Sealed Book he explains as meaning either Testament : the Old Testament being, like the side of the Apocalyptic scroll without written, outwardly visible ; the other the New, like the side icithin written, hidden within the symbols of the Old.7 The successive sym- bols of its six Seals, as opened, he expounds very much like Ticho- nius ; with additional conceits however, arising out of his straining to find out yet further mysteries.8 Like him, besides noting certain 1 lb. x. 288. s B. P. M. x. 289, 290.— Seven being a complete number : as man is made up of body and soul ; the soul with its three parts, heart, soul, mind; the body with its four, hot and cold, moist and dry ! ' " Genus a parte," p. 290. So the Donatist Tichonius, Rule 1. 4 " Joannes qui ista vidit, (and when he saw fell at Christ's feet as dead,) totius ec- clesiae figuram portat." lb. 290. So also Victorinus and Tichonius. ' * B. P. M. 294, 295. 6 lb. 301. 7 lb. 297. 8 E. g. the fitness of a septenary, to signify completeness and unity, is illustrated by the seven moods of a verb in grammar : also by the seven ages distinguishable in the inward and spiritual history of a spiritual man : and yet other similitudes, pp. 297—299. IM'.i;. in. ' rBOM RAIL Of B. BMFIKI, A..D. 500 TO 1 LOO. ( Pi'i/inrsii/s.) 339 devilish ageneiea .-t* meant figuratively in the ueond, third,1 and jftiirf A * iSnnln, opposed t>> Christ and his Church, after their going forth to. victory, ae figured in the//,-*/, be also adds Vietorinua' literal solution of the hello, fowue, pe$tis: and like him jniiis Vietorinua in explaining they//?// Seal of atartyra generally, them^A Seal, both in genera] and in detail, of the last persecution}' towards the end of the last age of the Church: the chronology here passing from the whole period of Christianity generally to its last epoch specially. I5y which persecution (a persecution 1 presume by Antichrist, though Anti- christ is not indeed mentioned as its author) the world generally, Primasius supposes, is to be opprest. The elemental convulsions in I i Seal he expounds, as might he expected, figuratively. Tichonius, again, he interprets alike the 141,000 * and the palm-bearing white-robed'1 company to mean the whole Church of the elect : and interprets the four angels of the winds (a point un- noticed by the former expositor) to be the four winds spoken of by Daniel as striving on the agitated scene of the four great empires: while the Angel from the East symbolizes Christ at his first earning, :iini'i'_r by the power of his gospel-preaching the hostile powers ; this being the stone cut out of the mountain, which was to smite, and in fine destroy, the great image.6 The great tribulation out of which the palin-be.n ■era were to come he explains generally by the text. - We must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of <: I :" not with reference to any final tribulation. And their pre- dicated happiness he does not, like Tichonius, confine to the Church 1 He t r/i/r, like Jerome, by bilihris. — Frimasius' Lntin version, let me It ■!•"• observe, La not Jerome's Vulgate. It is mere like Tichonius', though different, '-' In the 1th Bead he thus accounts for the specification of the fourth part of the earth. a> a BOene Of injury. The world is divided into two parts, one tor God, one for the D' vil ; and tin- latter subdivided into three. Pagan, heretics, and false Olthl i uis. Now it is the first of these four only, or true Church, that is assailed. • ka mundi, circa cuius finem novissini i psjasotjatio nunciatur," p. 30.3. ih ii 21, "' They shall go into the clefts of the rocks, &e." in illustra- of the Church, and In r Christian faith, being the world's refuge under present ring and future fears * On the mysteries of tin- names of the twelve Jewish trih-s, as applied to the Chris- tian Church, Prim LRUS has not \< -•» than three folio pages, from II. speaks of Dan as if a tribe included, not excluded, p it p. 31 1 he notices the cur- rent notion of Antichrist bi ing born of the tribe of l)an. * The robe* hi-ing made white, after neglect of the grace of baptism, by the the Lamb, or perhaps by martyrdom; the palms figuring the triumph of the cross. 30S, 309. • p. 304. 22 • 840 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PAHT I. in its present state, though he seems to include it ; but refers such particulars as, " God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes," to the Church's future bliss. — The half-hour's silence he explains with his two predecessors of the beginning of the saints' eternal rest. In the Trumpets he still follows Tichonius. Throughout the time of the Church's preaching-voice, fulfilling the Angel's trumpet-blow- ings, there would be the destruction of the earthly-minded temporally or spiritually in God's wrath ; by the Devil's burning fury ; by the falling to earth, and consequent embittering of the streams of doc- trine, of many once in the ecclesiastical heaven : as also by the obscur- ation in part of the Church's light ; and by heretical teachers too, and false prophets, with venom-distilling tails, like those of the scor- pion-locusts of the 5th Trumpet : — until, under the Gth Trumpet, or in the Gth age, the four winds (this should be marked) would be loosed from long partial confinement in the mystical river of Baby- lon ; (this corresponding with the loosing of the Devil, mentioned in Apoc. xx., after the millennium ;) and with the force of eight myriads,1 or myriads of myriads, including both heretics and the whole body of the wicked, urge during the fated " hour, day, month, and year," or quadripartite period of the 3| years, the last and great persecu- tion.2 In the vision of the rainbow-crowned Angel of Apoc. x., Primasius combines Victorinus' and Tichonius' explanations. The Angel he explains to be Christ ; the opened book the New Testament ; the seven thunders the Church's preaching ; the sealing a proper reserv- ation of its truths such as Christian discretion might dictate. Again, Christ's charge to John to eat the book, and prophesy again, he explains as true both of John personally, by the publication of his Apocalypse and Gospel, so as Victorinus would have it, and of the Church's preaching always, so as Tichonius ; a sweetness result- ing to the preacher where the word is received by the hearer, and pain and bitterness where it is rejected and in vain. — The measuring the temple follows naturally; signifying, as it does, the informing and i I am not aware that any manuscript, or any Expositor but Primasius, exhibits the various reading, oktw /lvpiaofs. He notices the common reading of two myriads of myriads as that given by Tichonius. 2 Primasius thinks that thefire and suljiknr out of the mystical horses' mouths may refer to the hell whence their doctrine came, and whither it led, p. 312. Tichonius had explained them of the blasphemies uttered. PER. [XI. MtOM PALL Of u. IMPIRI, L D. 500 K) I 1 00. i /'rimnsiits.) 8 II instructing the Church, especially in matten oonoerning the altar, or Christian faith.-— Kurthrr. as to the too Apooalyptie ll'if ta«MM, their testifying included both the Church's witness, with the two Testa- ments, throughout the whole time of Christianity ; thai being tho mystical sense of the l- months,1 as Tichonius had previously set forth ;- and also specially their witness, and that of Bliss, in the first half of Daniel's last hebdomad ; ' very much as Victorinus. The witnesses' death he explains as occurring in the literal Jerusalem: this ihath including tin- biding of living Christians in secret refuge- places from Antichrist's violence, as well as the death of others: the B| ioy% of their exposure as dead being the B^ years of Antichrist. In the vision of the Woman and Dragon we still see Tichonius' track followed. It is the Church bringing forth Christ in his rncm- hert ; and the Devil wielding the supremacy of this world's domin- ion, and seeking to devour the new man : which new man is as it were eaughl up to God's throne ; because his conversation, as Paul says, is in heaven. The wilderness where the woman is nourished is this \\ orld of her pilgrimage ; the two wings sustaining her, the two Tes- taments ; the 12G0 days' period of her sojourning, both that of the Christian dispensation generally, and specially the 3£ years of Anti- christ. -A^ain, as to the Beast, of Apoc. xiii., it is the whole mass of the reprobate, making up the Devil's body ; the last of its heads being Antichrist, under whom Jul/ y and specially the Devil will act out his purposes. Primasius, like others before and after him, strongly marks this Antichrist's affected impersonation of, or substi- 1 314. — By construing the 42 months and 3J years literally, as well as mystically, and speaking of its having reference to the last persecution, (sec p. 332 supra ,) Tichonius ■ •ms to have intended to mark the witnessing under Elias; whom he makes to wings Mi>taining the woman of Apoc. xii. of the last persecution. But,he docs •his. - The prophesied drought Primasius makes to be spiritual ; also the hilling by fire from the witnesses' movtktJUi be spirit mil death, through the Church's anathema. • Through which, adds Primatras, the Jews an to believe on Jesus Christ, p. 315. He means, 1 inppose, the Jews generally, not universally. For respecting the Bi i>t that kill- the witnesses, i. c. Antichrist, he explains the abyss whence he is to rise as the " Latebra nequita cordis Judssorum." 314. — Priamaami dots not specify any indi- vidual companion to 1 Daniel's seventy weeks' prophecy, let me observe, Primasius, pp. 314, 31o, supposes to n fer to Christ'l tir-t coming mainly. But he is so obscure in part of his explana- tions ttiat I am unable clearly to comprehend his meaning. For, though speaking of the 7(' weeks, hi I hrist's coming after 82, and then allots the last week to th : the consummation. l'id he (appose the remaining seven to bethe time from Christ's birth to his diath : 342 HISTORY OP APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PAItT I. tution of himself for, Christ; and blasphemous appropriation to him- silf of Christ's proper dignity.' — The Image of the Beast (the second two-homed Beast) Primasius seems to view as the ecclesiastical prce- positi, or riders, hypocritically feigning likeness to the Lamb, in order the better to war against him : 'l and (somewhat as Tichonius too explained it) by the mask of a Christian profession, under which mask the Devil puts himself before men, acting out the Mediator.3 He gives for the Beast's name and number, GGG, the words arrefiog and apvovfii : 4 the former from Victorinus ; the latter from, or ante- cedently to, the pseudo-Hippolytus. The Vials, now filled with God's wrath, he views as the same that were previously seen held by the twenty-four elders, or seven Trumpet- Angels, full of the prayers of saints :5 for, to the wicked such prayers "are a savour of death unto death in them that perish.'' They signify generally God's spiritual judgments on them. Under the sixth Vial Primasius speaks of Christ as the king (regi, in the singu- lar,) from the East, or sun-rising : 6 and of the way as now prepared for his coming to judgment, by nothing of good remaining, and the earth being, as in the parallel symbol Apoc.xiv. 15, dried up in readiness for burning. — In Apoc. xvii. the Woman means the worldly, re- probate, or evil body; the desert in which she appears God's absence : (a striking sentiment ! ) 7 the ten horns of the Beast she rides on, Daniel's ten kings just preceding Antichrist; the dia- 1 "Ut publice audeat blasphemare, quando dignitatem ei (Christo) specialiter de- bitam sibi ausus fuerit adsignare ; et, contrarius Christo, se velit pro eo aocipiendum vel vi ingerere, vel fraude supponere." lb. 319. — And again, p. 326 ; " Contrarius Christo (quod et nomen ejus Antichristus indicat) se velit haberi pro Christo." 2 " Agnum fingit ut Agnum invadat." Ibid. The want of distinction between the two Beasts and the Dragon or Devil, continually appears. So of the second Beast. " Bestia cum duobus cornubus, qua? est pars Bestia!, facit Bcstiam adorare Bestiam." 8 " Sathanas transfigurat se velut angclum lucis, exhibens suis fallacitcr solo nomine Christum. Porro ipse et suum et mediatoris implet locum ; quod mediatorem non habet, nisi simulacrum Christi. Ipsam insimulationem dieit Bestiam habere plagam gladii, et vivere. . . Tres itaque, diabolus, bestia velut occisa, populus cum prjepositis suis, duo sunt mcdiante imagine." Ibid. It is hard indeed in such passages to catch Primasius' meaning. 4 For apuovfxat, I deny ; as a Christ-denying profession. The pronunciation of at as s. is here indicated. — Primasius here adds sundry other numeral conceits. 5 So Primasius, p. 323, by a strange mistake ; the Angel in Apoc. viii. 3 who had the incense of the prayers of all the saints, being quite distinct from the seven Angels of Apoc. viii. 2. 6 So reading ™ pao-tXti, for tois fiao-iXtvoi. p. 324. 1 " Desertum ponit Divinitatis absentiam, cujus pra;scntia paradisus est." lb. 325. . ill PBOM PALI 01 i. i.mi'Iki:. \.i>. 500 hi linn. , /,',,/V.) S49 dams teen upon. them. marking -them out as then the alone reigning powers. The aeren mill indicate Bomo; bat Borne only as a type of the ruling power and dominion.1 The destruction of Babylon in Apoc. xviii. is of course tin' destruction of all worldly, Cftriafcoppoeing power-. The millennium Primaaiui ezponnda as Augustine and Tiehonius ; the new heaveni and earth, and the new Jerusalem, as ■ new world, BO changed from the old as may befit the saints in their new bodies ; i. e. after their own reswnvetion, and the condemnation of the wicked. * '_'. The venerable fiede cornea next in our list of Apocalyptic ex- poaitore; the date of his death, in the Northumbrian monastery of which he was the ornament, being A.l). 7:io, at the age of 63. At the outset of his Commentary his full citation of the seven rules of Tiehonius prepares the reader for its general Tichonian cha- racter. It has however points of peculiarity in certain passages worth the notice. The figures of the opening vision of Christ and the seven candle- sticks, or Churches, together with the letters to those Churches,3 are explained much as by Tiehonius or Primasius ; the latter of which expositors is also often referred to by Bede. Of the new vision com- mencing in Apoc. iv. his expository views, as to order and subject, are thus stated : " Deseriptis ecclesia) operibus, quae et qualis future esset, recapitulat a Christi nativitate, eadem aliter dicturus.4 Totum enim tempus ecclesia* variis in hoc libro figuris rcpetit." Bo the seven-sealed Book, containing the mysteries of the Old and New Testament opened by Christ at his incarnation, is expounded as follows : — the 1st Seal to figure the primitive Church in its triumphs ; 1 p. 320.— This view is a little like that which Dr. Arnold and the Rev. T. K . Ar- nold, following certain German expositors have advocated in our own day : — the symbolized oh ing symbolic of something etoe« Jndicatii im;>ii> Btqne damnatia, Bgnra hnjua mnndi mandanornni ionium con- flagratione pneteribit ; . . ut, eede et tin.i in mi litis eommvtatU, . . mnndna, in melius innoratus, apte aeoommodetnr hominibm in meliui innovatie;" i.e. >\ i t h " bodies incorrupt and immortal." ib. 884; - hi A;i>c. ii. 10, explained the t$n Amy*' tribulation of the ten us from Nero to Diocletian. Se Augustine, I think, semewhere • 1 I h : l emulation, lie says in his l'n t 106, is generally after the 8th Dttt in pro- phetic - 8 I 1 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART 1. the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th the " triforme contra earn helium," of bloody persecutors, false hypocritical brethren, and soul-destroying heretics such as Arius ; the 5th the glory of deceased martyrs, under the golden altar of incense ; the Gth the last persecution of Antichrist : all much as by Tichonius. — In the 4th I observe that Bede, while reading, like Jerome,1 " super quatuor paries terra?," notices also that another Latin Version (evidently Tichonius' or Primasius')2 read " super quartern partem " answering to the rm to rtraprov of our pre- sent Greek MSS. In the sealing vision of Apoc. vii. the 4 Angels of the winds are construed by Bede as the 4 great prophetic empires ; whom Christ, the Angel from the East, restrains, in so far as the sealing or the care of his saints may require it : the 144,000 of Israel signifying the whole number of the redeemed ; 3 and the palm-bearing vision their glory after death, more especially that of the saints victorious over Antichrist. — As to the half-hour's silence after the opening of the 7th Seal, Bede suggests that it may answer to the 45 days men- tioned in Dan. xii., intervening, according to Jerome,4 between Antichrist's destruction and the commencement of the saints' reign. An original explanation, I believe. The Trumpets Bede explains generally like Tichonius and Prima- sius. The following points of detail may be remarked as interesting, and mostly [original. The seven trumpet-blasts of the Church's preaching he compares with those after which the walls of Jericho fell. — In the 1st Trumpet, symbolizing the destruction of the im. pious by fire and hail, he refers it to the torments of hell, combining the transition from icy cold to fiery heat.5 — After the 4th Trumpet i See p. 324. Bede's version is in fact the Vulgate. 2 For he gives their explanation with the reading. 3 After 3 pages in development of this mystical and Christian view of the 144,000 of the sealed of Israel, Bede adds on the literal and Judaic view in 3 lines ; " Potest et sic intelligi, quod, cnumeratis tribubus Israel quibus evangclium primo prirdicatum est, salvationcm quoque velit commemorare gentium." I observe that Mr. C. Mait- land, p. 297, cites this from Bede without any notice of Bede's other and evidently approved view ; which other is repeated by him, without any alternative explanation, on Apoc. xiv. 1. 4 " Quare autem post interfectionem Antichristi quadragesimum quintum dierum 8ilentium sit, divinae scicntise est." So Jerome, using the word silentium ; which probably suggested to Bede the explanation. 5 " Poenam gehenna? : ... ad calorem nimium transibunt ab aquis nivium." Com- pare Milton Par. L. B. ii. Thither, by harpy-footed furies hal'd, At certain revolutions all the damn'd rr.i;. til. PB.OM PALI 01 u. BMPIRB, LD. 500 TO L100. {Bede.) 348 the voice of the eagle Hying through mid-heaven, \\ ith its crj of Woe, is the voice of preachers forewarning men of Antichrist's being near :it hand i — M In the lael days perilous times shall come : " M Ami then shall that Wicked One he revealed," &c. : after which the day of judgment. — On Apoc. i\. '">. " In those dajS men shall seek death, Ac.," he cites illustratively Cyprian's remark respecting the Decian persecution, "Volentibua mori non permittebatur occidi." — In the 6th Trumpet the I Angels loosed are explained as the same with those holding the winds in Apoc. vii. ; the plague heing that of Anti- christ and his heretical ministers loosed from the Euphrates, or river of Babylon, aur:unst the Church; and the hour, day, month, and year signifying the evil spirits' constant preparedness for destroying men. — The rainbow-crowned angel vision in Apoc. x. is inserted with a new recapitulation, to signify the preparation made by Christ's first coming for the destruction of the Adversary: — Christ's feet like pillars of fire answering to Peter, James, and John, who seemed pillars of the Church ; the planting them on sea and land, the preach- ing the gospel over either ; and the seven thunders the Church- preachings under influence of the divine septiform Spirit ; with re- servation of its mysteries from all but fit hearers. — In this Bede follows IVimasius. In the Vision of the two Witnesses, Apoc. xi., the measuring reed is explained by Bede as the gospel-rule, whereby all but true pro- fessors are excluded from the Church, and counted with Gentiles. These tread down the holy City, or Church, not only specially during Antichrist's time, but also in a manner always ; he being the proper head of which they are the body. Meanwhile the two Witnesses, or Church formed out of the two people of Jews and Gentiles, and with Christ as their head, perform their ministry; ' the 3.V years' time of their sackcloth-robed witness being commensurate with that of the treading down of the Holy City, and especially that of Daniel's abomination of desolation, or Antichrist. Their death signifies An- Are brought : and feel by turns the bitter change Of fierce extremes, i stn met by change more force, From l» di of raging fire tojrtarrv in ice. i did this idea of hell-torments begin ? ' At the end of this virion Bede DOtiOM the idea of Enoch and Klias' 3J years of prophesying being tin- tirst half of the last (if Daniel'l 7" hebdomad*, and Anti- christ's 3* years' reign the last half, lint this (inly as an Opinion current with certain other expositors ; — " Quid.wn interpn tantur." 316 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. tichrist's all but suppression of the witness during the time of his ivml^ii : ' the great city of their death being the " civitas iinpiorum " which crucified Christ, and the Z\ days of their exposure as dead the 3. j years of Antichrist's reign; after the end of which the saints rise to glory.2 As to the Beast in Apoc. xiii. and xvii., its body is the whole body of the wicked, its last head Antichrist : the 2nd lamb-like Beast, mean- ing Antichrist's pseudo-Christian false prophets;3 and what is said of their persuading men to make an image of the Beast, the persuad- ing men to imitate and become like him. As to the city of Anti- christ's origin Bede notes doubtingly the idea of its being the literal Babylon.4 His name, like Primasius, he explains as tutov, avrtfiog, or apvov/j.E. — The contrasted 144,000 with the Lamb on Mount Zion, he explains (as before in Apoc. vii.) not as mere virgins, but the whole faithful Church of Christ. Of the millennium Bede sets forth of course the now universally received spiritual view, which had been first propounded by Jerome and Augustine. Bede introduces his Apocalyptic Commentary by a versified sketch of what he viewed as its general purport and more, characteristic points:5 and he concludes by a request to the reader for his prayers. 1 This view deserves to be remarked. Not, says Bede, that they do not still (i. e. after the Beast's conquering and killing them) resist the enemy with their testimony ; hut because the Church is then left destitute of its virtues, the adversary outshining it with his lying signs and miracles: — " Nouquod tunc eodem testimonio non nitantur hosti fortiter resistendo ; sed quod tunc ecclesia virtutum gratia destituenda credatur, adversario palam signis mendacii coruscante." The not suffering their bodies to be put in graves he thus explains. " Votum eorum dixit, et impugnationem. . . Facient autem perspicue de vivorum occisorumqne cor- poribus : quia nee vivos sinent sacra celebrando in memoriam colligi, nee occisos in memoriam rccitari, nee eorum corpora in memoriam Dei testium sepeliri." * " Et post 34 dies, &C. Angelus nunc indued! factum quod futurum audit, regno Antichrist i perdito sanctos resurrexisse ad gloriam." 3 So too Gregory i. ; ap. Malv. i. 425. 4 " De Babylonc natum." So, he says on Apoc. xvii., " quidam." 5 The reader may be interested to see these introductory verses. I therefore sub- join them: Exul ab humano dum pellitur orbe Johannes, Et vetitur Coici est cernere regna soli, Intrat ovans cceli Domino dileetus in aulam, Regis et altithroni gaudct adesse choris. Hie ubi subjectum sacra lumina vertit in orbem, Currere fluctivagas cernit ubiquc rates ; Et Babel et Snlymam mixtis confligere castris ; Hinc atque bine vicious tela fugamque capi. rr.u. in.' rooM i -\ii oi a, bmpirs, a.u. 500 ro L1O0, (Amtbert.) ■ '•il •• Bxplioato tandem tanto tamque periculoeo labore, Bupplioiter ob- mx&qne deprooor, ut si qui nostrum boe opBsoulum lectionc \>-\ trsn« Beriptione dignum duxerint, auctorem quoque operis Domino ootn> mendare meminerint ; ut qui aon Bolum mihi. sod et illis, laboraverim. Dlorum ricissim qui meo Budore fruuntur votii precibusque remunerer; li^iu< pie v it a\ cwj use. >s aliipiatiMUis odoiv tanKii|ue aspersi, . sins merit is faciant visa iVuct ihpie potiri. Amen!'' &. AmbfO&6 Anxbert is my next Latin Expositor. He 0x68 his own Bra t«i about A.l). 760 or 770. Bar be dedicates bii Apocalyptic Commentary at its commencement to Pope Stephen ; and at the end tolls ns that it was written in the times tit' Pope Paul, and of Desi- deriua, king of the Lombards.' Now Desiderius was king of the I. nbarda from 756 to 77 i : In which year be was defeated, and the Lombard kingdom overthrown by Charlemagne. Also Pope Stephen III died in 7.37, Pope Paul in 707, Pope Stephen IV his successor in 77:2. - He further tells us in his Postscript, that he was a native of Provence in Gaul ; and had become a monk of the monastery of St. Vincent in Sanmium.3 Elsewhere he mentions that he had to write the comment with his own hands, the aid of a notary not being led him.4 The Commentary is a copious one, occupying Borne 'J-'iii folio pages in the Bibliotheca; viz. from p. 103 to p. 0.57 of its xiiith volume. He makes mention of Vic/oriiutx as t lit' earliest Apo- calyptic expositor among the Latins ; and as expurgated and altered Sed mitem sequitur miles qui candidus Agnum, Cum (luce percipiat regna biata poli. Squamous eel Anguis : per Tartan casoa maniplos Submerpit fiammia peete fameque suos. Hujus qua faciee, itudiumve, ordove dnelli, Ar- que, qaarve phalanx, palma, vel anna forent, Pandera dum enperem, veteran lata beta paragrana, Ezoerpaj cliui j>i~ gennina panca nana . Copia ne potior genarat faetidia menaia, Convivam aut tenuem tanta parare retet. tni> ergo lapiant si fercnla labria, Eh gnanti laadai da mpat Batra Deo. Sin aUaa, animal tamen amplexatui amlooa, ■ coiripiin- puiuii. li inge, rngo. 1 B. P. M. xiii * Tritheraius strangely write-, of his age ; " Claruit sub Arnoldo Impcratorc A.D. 890." Quoted B. P. M. dii ■ Ibid. 667. ' " Qnia in boo tam laborioeo op . • . toooso mflfl Tidentur; ea qna propria exarare contendo." p. Itw. lie was in ilii- i < » r - irdi. 348 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. by Jerome : also of the two next as Tichonius and Primasius : — a specification satisfactory, as showing us that we still possess all the earliest Latin expositors on this Book. A few detached notices on it are also mentioned by him as occurring in the works of Augustine and Pope Gregory the 1st.1 In his comment Ambrose Ansbert treads in the steps of Tichonius and Primasius so closely, that there seems to be as little need as in the case of Primasius to give lengthened details. At the outset he recognizes John's representative character, — representative of the Church generally, of holy preachers particularly : 2 also the principle of the Church (or at least its prelates') being figured in the twenty- four elders : and all comprehended indeed in Christ himself too, as being his body ; the 24 thrones being thus included, as if one with it, in the circuit of Christ's own throne.3 The seven-sealed Book Ansbert views with his predecessors as the Old and New Testament ; the Old written without.4 An ominous notice of the seven different modes of expounding, viz. the historic, allegoric, mixt historic and allegoric, mystical, parabolic, that which discriminates between Christ's first and second coining, and that which " geminam prceceptorum re- tinet qualitatem, id est vitce agendas vitceque figurandce," is developed in some six folio pages preceding his exposition of the Seals.5 — In which exposition of the Seals, while explaining the 1st, as usual, of the progress of Christ and his gospel, it is spiritual evils that he con- siders chiefly symbolized in those that follow. His chief difference from his predecessors is in making the rider of the black horse in the third Seal, with a pair of balances, to mean the Devil and his fol- lowers deceitfully weighing the world against Christ, so as to cheat men with the idea of the world being the more valuable ; 6 also, in the fourth Seal, in making Death and the pale horse that he rides to mean the Devil killing men's souls by means of heretical teachers. 1 p. 404. 2 p. 407. s " Quia singulariter ct principaliter universam Dominus, sive in proelatis sive in subditis, judicabit ecclesiara, idcirco seniores et throni una sodes dicuntur." lb. 464' I suppose the subditi meant here are the subordinate clergy. 4 p. 469. 5 lb. 470 — 475. I think Ambrose Ansbert will be found sometimes as difficult of understanding by modern readers as he tells us he found Primasius. 6 " Quibus (sc. malis hominibus) Principis sui affectus paratissimus servit; cum, staterem in manu tenons, temporalibus stipendiis quorumdam vitam mercari quacrit, qua? illorum suamque esuriem saturare queat." In contrast with which he adds Christ's saying, " What shall a man give in exchange for his soul ? " — lb. 483. ria. m.] pbom pal] of a, RMPIBK, lj>. 500 po L100. (Antbert.) 349 Ju which Seal, lei me obserre, he reads with Jerome and Bede " on the four parts of the earth," not M the fourth part." ' Further, it is irvable thai under the sixth Seal he makes the rocks of refuge in tlu- last greal persecution, and under tears of the approaching da] of judgment, to be u futfraaia mmetorum ; " that is, of departed saints ami nt" angels. For, says he, even with regard to "the elect." and the good works that may have preceded, yet " neeesse est ut semper ■d Cfnlestiam avium confugiamus latibula ; id est Angelorum inter- sionibus ab ira Judicantis dob depreoemur liberari."2 So does the taint of angel and saint worship, then current, appear on the face of this Apocalyptic Exposition. In the scenic figuration next follow- ing the angels of the winds are explained as the evil spirits acting in the four great idolatrous empires, so as by Primasius; and the 144,000 as the mystic number of the elect: the numeral 12, here squared, having parallelism with the 1*2,000 stadia measure of the Jerusalem. Proceeding to the Trumpet*, he makes the preparatory half-hour's gilenee t<> be that of the Church's silent contemplation : (a half-hour, not a whole hour, because in this state its contemplation can never be perfect :) and then (first I believe of expositors) compares the D Trumpet-soundings with those of the jubilee-trumpets under the old law : as also those sounded on the seven days' compassing of sho; — Jericho, the type in its fall of that of this world.3 — Incon- utly with what he had said before of the need of the "suffrages of the saints," he explains the Angel- Priest with the incense-offering so as Tichonius, Primasius, and Bede before him, to be Christ our Mediator.4 In the 5th Trumpet he suggests that the specification of " hair as the hair of women " might refer to the fact of women having 1 " Hunc super quatuor partes terra; pote-tatcin accepisse denuntiat." On which he comments, as meant of the four divisions on the Devil's side, — heathen, Jewiah, tie, and that of fabe profcaaion within the Church. Anaberl does not teem to lieen aware of any other reading. This is the rather to be observed, because, though he u~'d the common Vulgate Latin version, yet it \\ a> lure and tin re with \'ioc. xvii. 10, noticed p. 352 Note' infra. -' lb. |s7- ■ lb. 1!'7. H' • •'■■ - thi- with unusu:il brevity. "Has certe Angelorum tubal ill.T pneeignabant qua in Jubflaauaibuj per Moyaem beta huaee memorantur. Qui- bn- Kptem dicrum circuitu claugcntibus. in typum lmjus sa:culi, muri Jericho ceci- irrantur." 1 Thia their concurrent explanation should be noted, in OOntfOferay with the Ro- manists. Ansbert cites 1 John ii. 1 ; " If any man sin we have an adrooate with the Father, Jc*u-> (lirist the ri^'h" 350 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. been so often misled by, and given patronage to, heretics: e. g. Con- st antine's sister, and afterwards Justina, in the case of Arius and the Ai£an heresy; Priscilla in that of Montanus; Lucilla in that of Do- nates.1 In the 6th Trumpet he supposes the four Euphratean Angels to be identical with the four Angels of the winds in Apoc. vii. ;2 and the hour, day, month, and year to be ecpuivalcnt to the 3^ years ; like Primasius and other expositors before him. After this I see no variation from Primasius worth noticing, either in the exposition of the rainbow-croivned AngeVs figuration in Apoc. x., or that of the Witnesses in Apoc. xi. Indeed he often quotes at length from Primasius, though without acknowledgment; for example in the exposition of the verse, " Thou must prophesy again," as applicable both to John specially, and the Church univers- ally.3 The two Witnesses also he makes to be the Church preachers generally, as well as Enoch and Elias specially ; 4 reproving Victo- rinus for suggesting Jeremiah in the special case, instead of Enoch.5 The great city in which the Witnesses would be slain might be either the world, or the earthly literal Jerusalem : their witnessing time of 1260 days ( = 3^ years) either, mystically, the whole time of Christ's Church witnessing ; (a 'period borroiced from the 3^ years that was the whole time of Christ's ministry ;)6 or 1260 days literally : the 3-| days' apparent death of the witnesses being the 3^ years of the last persecution. Following speedily on which will be the 7th Trum- pet of the last judgment, at Christ's coming.7 — In Apoc. xii., he ex- pounds the travailing Woman, both of the Virgin Mary and the Church, specially and generally. — On Apoc. xiii. he makes Antichrist to be the eighth head of the Beast, accordantly alike with the symbol of the Beast from the sea in Apoc. xiii., one of whose seven heads had been wounded to death but revived ; and also with the Angel's explan- 1 lb. 503. 2 " Eosdem angelos qui super quatuor angulos ventos, terrce ne flarent, alligatos tenebant, in fiuminc magno Euphratc vinctos perhibuit." p. 505. 3 See the full quotation at p. 154 of my 2nd Volume. 4 So, he says, Jerome and Pope Gregory. lb. 522. 5 See my p. 293 Note6. e So at p. 537, in his notice of the woman's flight into the wilderness for 3| times. " Cur autem hoc totum ecclcsia; tempus tribus annis et sex mensibus generaliter de- signetur patet ratio ; propter evangclicam scilicet praedicationem, [sc. by Christ,] quas trium temporum et dimidii spatiis edita fuisse cognoscitur." — I do not remember to have seen any such reason given for this mystical sense in Ansbert's predecessors. — Elsewhere, p. 545, Ansbert compares the equivalent 42 months to Israel's 42 stations in the wilderness. 7 pp. 526, 528. im i:. in." prom I'm i. or is. surras, \.i>. 500 i o 1 1 00. 1 ifaubert. | 85] atorj observation to that effect in Apoc, wii.1 The second or two- horned Beasl In- explains distinctive})! from tin- other, like < hfegory and Bode, as Bignifj tng the j>n aehers and ministers qfAntuthriti .•'-' feigning the lamb, in order to earn OUJ their hostility against the Lainh: just as Antichrisl too, the first Beast's head wounded to death, would, he says, exhibit himself j*re Cliris/o,3 in Christ's place. The •• bringing fire from heaven.'" he explains as pretending, and teeming to men. bo have the power of giving the Holy Spirit, such as Simon tfagUS wished' to obtain by money;* and that the second Beast would, by its preachings, signs, and dogmas, make men believe that the Holy Spirit resided in Antichrist.'' (This idea seems to me original, and deserving of remark.) Also that the /least's inuujc meant Antichrist, as pictured to themselves by men (after the antiehristian preachers' teaching) to be Christ's image, though really the Devil's image. — On the Beast's norfche observes, that its being required on the forehead meant a man's profession ; on the hand, his acts : and that this was the ease even vithin the Church, in the case of false professors. Fur- ther, as names containing the number 666, he mentions Irenams' retrar, as well as those in Victorinus and his interpolator, arreyuoc, yevgiyuoc : there being added for the first time a Latin solution also, (a very curious one.) Die rax'.* After the Vials, in which nothing appears to me observable, but that he makes the ulcer of the first Vial to be infidelity, (such as with the Jews and Pagans,7) the subject comes up again in Apoc. xvii., of the Beast and the Harlot riding him. Here Ansbert speaks of the old notion that the Beast that was and is not meant Nero, once one lioman emperors, and destined to rise again in the character 1 P. .512. 641: repeated again p. 648, "quia soli propositi praedicatores atque mini^tri Antichristi." Here he also nearly follows Irenaeus. 3 lb. 644. 4 " Qnoa ut illi miniatri Sathans fiacQina deeipere poaaint, eoram ipsis Spiritum sanc- tum ilant ; . . sicut dudum Simon Magna, &C." p. 649. 4 " Quomodo intclligcndum est dare illi spiritum, nisi quia sivc pnrdicationibu-, scu signis et miraculis, suadcrc hominibus conatur spiritu propluti.e pit iium BOM Ai.- tichristum t" p. • p. 662. Mr. C. Maitland (p. 319) erroneously inaofibat the invention of this to : four centuries later. Ansbert speaks of it n hi- nun dix uvery ; ' * in - venimna." 7 p. •")7'i. — Let ne add that the Euphrates, the riret of Bafeylonj will, ho ruaaiuVira. ■ ■ 1 ap arhen its power to injur.- :md peneettto is dried up ; and that thus the H ay will be prepared for Christ the King from the East, according to l'rimasius' reading of the word in the singular ; or, if in the plural, for the apootlea and mini ' Church. lb. 660 and 352 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. of Antichrist, as " absurd : " ' adding that the Beast (answering to Antichrist's body) had in fact existed from the beginning in Cain, and the wicked afterwards ; and that it might be said to have been, and not be, and yet be, because of the fleeting and successive genera- tions in whom he rose and fell of evil men.2 — Of the seven kings symbolized by the Beast's seven heads, of which five had fallen, his solution is certainly as " absurd" as that he ridicules: — viz. that, as in man the five senses exist before reason, and then, on reason's un- folding, man's sixth and mature age begins, to be improved to the man's salvation, or abused to his destruction, so in its sixth age, then current, the world had come to its maturity ; and, preferring error,3 that so in the seventh would come Antichrist.4 — On the mil- lennium he of course follows his two predecessors and Augustine. And the New Jerusalem, and its blessings, he explains partly of the Church's present blessings ; partly of those to be enjoyed in its fu- ture and heavenly state.6 4. Early in the next, or 9th century, flourished Haymo, Bishop of Halberstadt ; who wrote an Apocalyptic Comment which forms a thick substantial duodecimo, (i. e. in the princeps Editio printed at Cologne, A.D. 1529,) after collation, it is said, of many manuscript codices. But I do not see need to cite from or refer to it at any length. Eor I have found it, on examination, to be very mainly copied or abridged from Ambrose Ansbert. There is scarce a chapter in which the examiner will not observe this. — I shall therefore only mention four notabilia in his Commentary ; — 1st, that in Apoc. vi. 8, on the 4th Seal, he reads like Jerome,6 Bede, and Ambrose Ansbert, "super quatuor partes terrae, on the Jour parts of the earth," not the fourth part ; explaining it as meant either of the reprobates in all the four parts of the earth, or the four great kingdoms of pro- phecy : (he does not seem to have been aware of any different ren- dering :) — 2. that in support of his view of the 3^ days of the two ' lb. 592. 2 Ibid. So Tichonius. See p. 334 supra. 3 p. 593. 4 Ansbert reads in verse 16 "the ten horns and the Beast;" (to. dtita xipaTa kui to diipiov') not, as the common copies of Jerome's Vulgate, "the ten horns on the Beast," tin to Orjpiov. 5 So on the river of life ; " Possunt cuncta hnec non inconvenienter ad proesens tempus refcrri, quo, ad instar Paradisi, prsedicationis fluinine sancta rigatur ecclesia " p. 646. At p. 617, however, on the absence of the curse, he explains it as fulfilled " in ilia (eternd felicitate," &c. 6 Haymo used the Latin Vulgate version ; but often notices other various readings. ri k in. pbom r\u. 01 it. I'MiMKi:. ld. 500 to 1100. (Andreas.) Witnesses lying dead meaning S\ years, he cites (first I believe of expositors) the well-known passage from Ezekiel iv., as well as i li.it from Numbers rir.: — :>. thai the reading first given 1>\ him in A [" ><•. rvii. L6 is "oornna quae vidisti in Bestia," >-t r« dnptov; there being noticed however by him afterwards the other reading " regea Bestia," given by Ansbert, or Km ro Oiypiov i — I. thai on Apoc. w hi. 8, Bpeaking of the reprobated merchandise of Babylon, be applies it. to those who then sold their Minis for lordships and bishoprics .• mitatus ct episoopatus, casterasque dignitates hujus BSBCuli." 1 now turn to Primaaius1 and Ambrose Ansbert's two chief con- temporary expositors in the G-beek Church and empire; viz. An- dreas, and his follower Areihas. •">. Andreas was Bishop of CsBsarea in Cappadocia. His age is said by Bellarmine, and also by IVltan the Jesuit, in his Preface to the first printed Edition of Andreas' Apocalyptic Commentary,1 to have beeu uncertain: save only that it was later than Basil, the famous Father of the fourth century, since Andreas quotes him. By Cave and Lard* ner.- while admitting its uncertainty, he is assigned to the latter pari of the fifth century. And so too Professor M. .Stuart.3 But I think internal evidence is not wanting to fix his date a half-century at Least if not a whole century, later. For first, besides other authors, he quotes Dionysius, the so-called Areopagite;4 one whose work is cited by no authority of known earlier chronology than the middle of the sixth century.'' Secondly, after noticing (under the fourth Seal) a pestilence and famine in the ieror Maximin's territory, at the close of the Diocletian persecu- i. in which dogs were wont to be killed that they might not prey Oil the uuburied corpses, Andreas speaks of the very same things 1 Prefixed t<> the original Edition in Greek, which is appended to Commelin's Edi- \ I>. 1696) of Chrysoetom's Commentaries on St Paul's Epistles; also to Peltan'a . in the B. P. M. Li at. •• Vizisse ridetur cures' exitnm seenlj i>tiu-., ,n- >>e anno 500. Inoerta enim prorsns Qlins ;' tas." Lardni r v. 77. 1 In Apoc. Vol. i. |). 2. 3 On Apoc. xviii. 21—24, after stating the reason of the Apocalyptic Babylon's doomed utter destruction to be its having deceived all nations with its sorceries, and shed the blood of saints and prophets, And. eas thus states the applicability of these character- istics to the Persian capital Ctesiphon ; Ai wv uttuvtwv t>]v ao-ff3ii irapa Iltpcrais BafiuXtova C})\ovcrdai eiKOV, cos iroXXtuv ayttov Kara (5i«r/>opous Kuipov? p. e x 9 ' t o v vvv Gt£apiv))V alpaTit, Kai cos /ua-ytiais /cat aira-racs on)i>£/.cos xaipovaaV though the distinctly Roman origin and local empire of Daniel's Antichrist forbad his resting on this solution of the prophetic symbol. Again on Apoc. xvii. 6 he similarly charac- terizes the then Persian rulers and capital; KvpiwTtpws 6s. kul t; irapa Ilipaai? to Kparoi txovaa Kai BafivXwv xai -rropvti -jruoctayopi vtrai' adding ; tgcs iv Tlipriidi tovtwv [pupTupwv] KoXaatu tis av t£apidpii<7aiT0 ; 4 The following chronological sketch (taken from Gibbon) of the Roman wars with Persia will illustrate what has been said : a sketch commencing from the aera of the great Theodosius, and his peace with Persia about 390 A.D. A.D. 422, a slight alarm of Persian war; which however scarcely disturbed the tranquillity of the East. A Christian Bishop having in 420 destroyed a fire-temple nt Susa, (the then Persian capital,) the Magi excited a cruel persecution of Christians in Persia. This was in the last year of Yezdegerd'B reign, and first of his son Bahram's. Armenia and Mesopotamia were filled with hostile armies ; but no memorable acts feu. in.' prom rui. oi ;;. BXPiftl, A.n. 500 po 1100. (Andrea*.) the Peraian empire and the religion of the Magi. Vburikty, on Apoc. xrit. I — :<, Andreas argoee- against ancient Borne being meant the city which n>>\\ reigns orer the kings of the earth," beoaoae of its having tome l:>/ii/ time before lost its imperial dignity:' a statement scarcely applicable to the time of Theodoric, A.I). 600, when Borne exhibited not a little of its ancient splendour;2 but Strikingly according with the period from after its ruin by Totilas, about the middle of the sixth century, till the accession of Gregory to the Popedom at the end of thai century ; when, to use Gibbon's language, Koine had reached the lowest point of depression.3 — Fifth) './, he alludes to the Roman Bmperore reigning at Constantinople, as those that had held a rod of power strong as iron for the depression of heathenism:1 a characteristic probably referable to the time of Andreas' writing as well as to times previous. In which case the period of the Coustautinopolitan Emperor's great depression at the time followed. A truce for 100 years was agreed on ; and the main conditions of the treaty tpected tor nearly 80 yean : i.e. till about A.D. 502. Gibbon v. 428. A i > A short Persian war ; in which Amidu was taken by the Persians, • i \ duly ■— hed, and " the unhappy frontier tasted the full measure of the Calamities of war." A peace followed; and Dan was built by the Romans near Nisibis : which for some years proved on that part of the frontier an effective defence. Gibb. vii. 188 D. 640. Nuihirran (also called C'hosroes) invades Syria, takes Antioch, its capi- nighters the people, pillars the churches, and sacrifices to the Maaian god, the sun. — A.D. 641, 642, he i> forced beyond the Euphrates by Belisarina ; and, Dara and i having shortly after wardi roocoatfully resisted a Persian attack, "theealami- mspended by those of pestilence ; and s tacit or formal agreement D the two sovereigns protected the tranquillity of the Eastern frontier." Gibb. vii. Mil - :;is. In Cotshos the war still continued, till A D. 661 ; when a peace of fifty years was agreed on. lb. 339. — A.I). 672- — 579. Renewal of war. Dara taken ■ Syria overran and despoiled ; Casarea (in Cappado* Uened; till in the battle of Militenc the tide of IUOO Si turned in favour of the Komaus. — A.D. 579, Nushir- van's death. Gibb. viii. 175—177. Shortly after this Chosroes, Nushirvan's grandson, under the pressure of civil war, rled for reiuj. to the Romans ; and was soon with their aid restored. On Phocas' mup. mperor Maurice, and usurpation of the Eastern empire, Chosroes, A.D. 603, invades the empire ; A.D. Gil OOnqueri and desolates Syria ; then takes and tacks Catearea; and then, A.D. 814, Jerasalem; the Magi and the Jews orging the holy warfare : the- sepulchre of Christ is pillaged of the offerings of 800 90,000 Chi In 616 Asia Minor is overran again to the Bosphorus; or eight years the p. nrfan dominion, and i'* i/ liahed ; the Christians meanwhile b tted and oppressed : till tterai • d repulse of the Persians, and vi l j. Gibb. viiL 217 ' 'H yap iraXaui 'l'umi) IS iroWi.v to Tift jiarriX ua? Kpuro? airtfiaXiV i< {/■woOoatnOti hi auTijv To iipfrimv WaXl* OVaOTpttpttP a^ituua. • 30. i viii. 15':- : ' Ai' <«'■ Vi|T(U<; \aO*) »c*ij fill/ Tan tuji/ tvvinwv'l'wuutwv \fp(Ti, t«i« Kparaiatt u>« o aioi)pot, Tit teVij tiroi/iaviv \piaToi 6 (hoi. On Apoc. .\ii. 5. 356 HISTORY OP APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PATtT T. of Chosroes' invasions, from A.D. 611 to G22, would so seem to be set aside. — Sixthly, lie speaks of certain Scythian Northern Hunnish nations, as among the most powerful and warlike of the earth : ' — a statement perfectly applicable to the rcra of the empire of the White Huns of Bochara and Namarcand : whose kingdom in 488 stretched from the Caspian to the heart of India, when Perozes the Persian king fell in an unfortunate expedition against them ; 2 and continued till their subjugation, about A.D. 550, by the Scythian Turks of Mount Altai.3 — On the whole we may date Andreas' Treatise, I think, with some measure of confidence, between A.D. 550 and 570 : — about 550, just before the Huns' overthrow by the Turks, if An- dreas' word Hunnish be construed strictly : about 575, if the word seem applicable also to the cognate race of the Turks.4 Let me now turn from this argument, which has indeed occupied us too long, to our Author's Apocalyptic Commentary. Like his predecessors, he speaks in the introduction of the tripartite sense of Holy Scripture, its body, soul, and spirit : and that the spiritual or anagogical sense is applicable in the Apocalypse, even more than in other Scripture.5 Yet in fact Andreas admits a larger mixture of the literal, here and there, than Tichonius, Primasius, or Ansbertus : and there is also somewhat more of a consecutive historical view of its different parts ; as of a prophecy figuring successive events from St. i On the Gog and Magog of Apoc. xx. 8 he writes thus: Eivai 8i top Ttoy nai tuv Maymy -rifts fitv 2,kv6iku e0j/>) vofxi^ovaiv virtpjioptia, unrip kclXov/jlzv Ovvvlko., •nvicrijs nriytiov /3acri\cias cos opw/xiu ■KoXva.v&pwiroTtpu ts. nai TroXi/jLiKWTtpa, fxovri ot -r?; Qua XuPl 7r,oos T0 KpaTi]dai Ttjs oiKovfxtvi] the seven Churches (representative of all Churches), on whieh 1 g^ve two or three of his detached remarks below.-' be exemplifies in the heavenly soene nexl opened the literaliaing tendency 1 spoke of, by explaining the yZasty «m before the throne, not only anagogically of the virtues ami blessed tranquillity of the heavenly state, but literally also, as perhaps the eei/xt til line //eareii. --(){' the s, n ii-st ,i'rJ . (the Hook of Cod's mind and purposes, or Hook of prophecy) he explains the several Seals to signify as follows: — 1st, the apos- tolic Bra, and apostles' triumph over Satan, more especially in the conversion of the Gentiles: — 2nd, the era of anti-gospel war, and bloody martyrdoms, next after the apostolic; when Christ's words were fulfilled, " 1 came not to send peace on earth, but a sword:" — 3rd, thai of Christians' grief for the falling away of professors, through inconstancy, vain-glory, or weakness of the flesh, and so, when weighed in the balance, being found wanting ; the oil of sympathy for such being mixt by true Christians with the sharp wine of rebuke : (there being also perhaps, adds Andreas in a more literal sense, a famine at the time:) — 4th, a calamitous a>ra of joint famine and pestilence, in judgment on the apostate and impious,' such as Eusebius relates to have happened under Maximin the Eastern Emperor, when corpses lay unburied, and dogs were killed that they might not devour them:4 — 5th, the martyrs' cry for further venge- ' On A.p00- i. 1, "things which must shortly come to pan,*' he says: To tv -r«xft yiviadai ">« h rjfiipa 17 i)(div \i\oyto-rai . • 1. On the threat to the Ephesian Church of removing its candlestick, Andreas ! it to the transfer of the earlier Ephesian Archbishopric (tov apxiipaTiKov t»)%- Ef/)f(Tou dpovov) to Constantinople ! 2. On tbi Bpistle to Pergamoi, he says that he had formerly read Antipas' martyrium. :{. The promise to the Church of Thyatira, " / will i/irc to him the morning star," hi explain! as meant either of Isaiah's Lucifer, (Le. morning star,) to be trodden under foot by the saints; or of Peter's morning star, viz. the light of Christ, to be .ed into the hearts ; or of John Baptist ami Elias, the herald-stars of CI fir^t and second coining, with whom the conquering saints an- hereafter to be as- sociated. s Andreas makes not the slightest allusion to any limitation of the scene of the judgment GO the fourth part ut "the earth: whereas in the Trumpets he expressly - the limitation to the third part of the earth. So that I doubt \\ h • t H < r Andrea*' copy did not read to o* Ttn\ ytjs, like Jerome's; or rather, perhaps, to t>- :<>V, for Tn TtTapTOV. * Brief headings are added, (such as on this S.-al. Aeons ti;s tituotijv c/iiiiiytdoc, 358 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. I Qoe against their injurers,1 and so for the consummation: in regard of whom, while waiting till the martyr-number should be completed, it was shown that, white-robed in their virtues, they now repose on Abraham's bosom, anticipating eternal joys : — 6th, a transition to the times and persecution of Antichrist: (though some had suggested, Andreas says, both here and in the sealing vision, a retrogressive reference to Titus' destruction of Jerusalem : 2) in reference to which times of Antichrist the earthquake figured a change of things, or revolution, as usual in Scripture ; the obscuration of the sun and moon God's judicial blinding of men's minds ; the falling stars the apostasy and falling away of those who were thought to be lights in the world ; and the rolling up of the sky, perhaps physical changes in the natural world/or the better,3 such as Irenreus expected at the consummation ; or perhaps, seeing that the unrolling of Hebrew scrolls (unlike that of our books, says Andreas) was the unfolding of their contents, the revelation and manifestation of the heavenly blessings laid up for the saints.4 — After which the 144,000 of the sealing vision- depicted the body of true Christians, distinguished on Antichrist's coining by the sign of the cross from unbelievers : (not the Christians saved at the siege of Jerusalem -.) the winds held sig- nifying some deadly stagnation of the aerial element then to occur ; 5 and the palm-bearing vision the happiness of the heavenly and ever- lasting rest, by God's throne, of the innumerable company of both earlier martyrs and the martyrs under Antichrist : when (the wicked having been cast into hell) the" angels and saved ones of men will constitute but one family. At the opening of the seventh Seal a regression is supposed from tfxipaivovtra t«s tirayofitva<: -rots aaifitai /uaaviim ,,, linn (Andreeu.) 359 this palm-bearing scene : its Loosing, as of the 7th end last Boil, in- dicating as us result the dissolution of each polity of this world;1 the silence in heaven, the anodic hosts' reverential awe, or perhaps their ignorance of the tunc of the consummation ; the half-hour '>t' its duration tin- brief space intervening before the end; and the Trumpet-figurations judgments in the interval. Of these Trumpet- woes be explains thojlrtt, which was to fall upon the land, literally,2 (and 1 think right Iv.) of the burnings and slaughters through in- vading barbarians, by which the third part of things inland would bo Consumed:1 the second, on tin- sen, figuratively, as manning the J)e\ il and his burning wrath, tailing on the world, especially near the time of the consummation : 4 — the third, again, similarly, of sulferings through the Devil fallen star-like (as Lsaiah's Lucifer) from heaven: — and tiie eclipses in the fourth of W»V much the same judgments as in Joel ii. 31 ; mercy however restricting their duration to the third part of tin- day and the night. — Then the Angel's warning-cry, next heard, he speaks of as marking Angels' pity for men's woes.5 And he interprets the fifth Trumpet's scorpion-locusts of demons, (once bound by Christ, but now loosed a little before the consummation;")6 with influences darkening the soul, and for some fated quintuple of time" wounding with a poison-sting, which being that of sin, is death : * — also the sixth Trumpet's four anyels from the Euphrates of hell's most evil demons,9 bouud (like those of the previous plague) 1 Andreas seems to hive regarded the 7th Seal u containing within it the seven Trumpets. : Not (as some, he says, explained it) hell-torments. See p. 844 supra. * Tas ik fiapjiapiKiav %npwu yivopivai irupiroXijcrti'i te kui avopoKTaariav utn\)iipai. Hii personal experience would make him well enter into this. See my p. 3ot, just before. * Some explained it, he says, of the sea and those living in it, us destined to burn with ezpictforjf tire after t:ie geni r.il resurrection : tui Katiapaiw irvpi . . . m£tu t>jj/ ava. And so, Andreas intimates, he might himself have preferred to explain it, but for the circumstance of its being said to be the 'ird part only that arse burnt up: whereas, in fact, the number of the lost is more than of the saved. * ThvS Andreas reedi hi re ayytXuv, not afTou. * camovat out o Xjjkttov i vavt)pwir>t)v i£ aiwvwu Trupadpo/iiiii. I suppose six millennaries, agreeably with the view of the early Fathers. 4 Or, adds Andreas, (taking the book as before in the sense of a record of gross sinners aud their sins,) John was taught by eating, &c, the sweetness of sin at the first, and its bitterness afterwards. * Some, observes Andreas, otherwise expound the temple of God [the inner temple] as the Old Testament ; the outer court, with its larger circuit, as the New Testament, so greatly more comprehensive : the 3£ years signifying the short time in which its mysteries are to be in force ; viz. from the time of Christ's 1st to his 2nd coming. " tiTi ti)u uiuv 'ItfiovaaXii/i, ari -rtjv KcctioXiKiiv £kk\ii(tiuv. In which clause either expression seems intended by Andreas of the Christian Church ; for he explains himself to mean the tticttoi and ooki/xol opprest by Antichrist's tyranny. See Note* p. 365 infra. I'i'.i;. in i u< > m fall OF u. imimki. a-.d. 500 to L100. (Androat.) 381 by God's meroy with miraculous powen antagonisticallj to tin- Sa- tanic supernatural powen of Ant Iohriii i the time of their slaughter by Antichrist, that of their warnings against him being completed i scene of their lying dead, the «'1<1 and desolate Jerusalem : i \n- tiehrist there living his royal seat probably, in orderto seem the t'ul- liller of the prophecy, u 1 will raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen." and BO deeei\ ing the Jews into a belief on him : ) the rising of the Witnesses. :>'. days after death, their literal resnnvet ion : the tenth part of the city falling, and seven thousand slain, the judicial fall and ruin of the impious of the seventh age of the world, not even the Witnesses' resnrreetioii having induced repentance: the rest that glorified God, those that, when the martyrs rose to glory, might be deemed not unworthv of salvation. — Then the seventh Trumpet figured the general resurrection; the temple's concomitant opening, the manifestation of the heavenly blessedness of the saints; and the lightnings and thunderings, the torments of the damned. In the vision of the Dragon and Woman, Apoc. xii., Andreas (fol- lowing "the great Methodius," whom he cites) ' makes the Woman to signify the Church, bringing forth (just as in Isa. lxvi., which the citation refers to) a Christian people : the moon under foot meaning either the world, or the Jewish ritual law ; and the male child, and his iron rod. having fulfilment in the Roman Christian people and emperors, ruling the heathen.2 Further, the Dragon was the Devil : his seven heads symbolizing seven chief devilish powers, from con- quering which the Christian warrior wins his diadems ; his ten horns, the ten antidecalogic sins, or decuple division before the consumma- tion of the mundane empire: his symbolical fall, that when he was first cast out of heaven on his transgression; or that spoken of by Christ as fulfilled on his coming, when Satan seemed like lightning to fall from heaven. — During Antichrist's 3£ years' reign, the Church's abstraction from the world is to fulfil the figure of the W •nan's flight into the wilderness, with perhaps a literal flight into is: the two Tot anient s being in God's providence the wings supporting and preserving her from the waters, or multitude of the _".) Mipra. • \ppr\v £* uiov 6 t»|v- fKKXtfiriat Xaov' . . Ci' ou »)« o irtctipos, -ra itferj iiroip.s 'Pwpaiwv fiaaiXtv: £\eucto^«vos. So again on Apoc. xvii. 11, xviii. 24. 5 Ttjv 'Poi/xateuv /3acri\f lav, t?7 5iaif>£TEi c 7 , ht* Ti|i< waKaiMM 'l'X"' ''' *".""T,,s ava\ap- fiavuvaav. * B IM of its t»incr Hid of the groat city meant, " This is the city which ruhth ov t the king* of the earth," in the prwont tarn*. i\ tiov f-rr- avrutu [fiu(Tt\tiivii] fiXaarravuti/' ov yap i£ a\\ou •Ui/ui/9 . . oAV u>« I'luuuiuiv jiaaiXtvi . . ikivanai. 3Gi HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION*. [APP. PART I. moans not only an hour, but also one of the year's four seasons. In verse 1G he reads " The ten horns and the Beast (rat to drjpiov) shall hate the whore." But in his comment he speaks as if the ten horns did so, under the Devils influence, not Antichrist 's : and marvels at his so acting against a harlot antichristian city.1 Reverting to Apoc. xiv., I may observe that Andreas views the 111,000 with Christ on the Mount Zion (or Christian Jerusalem) as the virgin-saints of the New Testament ; a body different probably from those of Apoc. vii., because of the fact of the former being noted (which the others are not) as virgins. — The three flying angels are warners against Antichrist, and the Babylon of this world. — The earth's harvest he makes to be Christ's gathering of the good ; (like wheat, with its increase of 30, 60, or 100 fold;), while the vintage is the gathering of the bad to judgment.2 — Then, advancing to the Vials in Apoc. xv., xvi., he explains the harpers by the glassy sea to be the saved ones ; and the glassy sea itself, mixed with fire, to symbolize their tranquil happy state, yet as those that had been saved by fire : the song of Moses being that sung by the saved ones of the Old Testament dispensation, that of the Lamb by the saved ones of the New.3 The statement that none might enter the temple till the plagues of the seven Vial-Angels 4 had been fulfilled, he expounds to mean that the saints might not enter on the rest of the heavenly Jerusalem, till after the finishing of G-od's indignation against the wicked. — The plague of the first Vial he makes to be the inward corroding ulcer of heart-grief at the plague suffered; and perhaps also literally outward ulcers, the fit symbol of that within.6 Again, the statement under the sixth Vial respecting the way of the kings from the East being prepared he expounds as meaning that a way would be opened for Gog and Magog to come across the Euphrates : or perhaps for Antichrist coming from Persia, whither the Jewish tribe of Dan, whence he is to spring, was once carried captive : he, 1 oio o-i/i/£py)jo-£i 6 oia/3o\os tou vir' uvth i)vio)(oujUEi/ots 5e/coc Ktpacrt . . t?jv SKirop- vturracrav bk twv Oilwv zvtoXwd ttoXlv . . tptifxuxrai. * The vine to be trodden without the city of the just, -rtjs tuiv oiKaiwv iroXecoi. 3 Compare my own remarks on the passage Vol. iii. pp. 474, 475. 4 In referring to the dress ascribed to the Vial-angels, he notices the curious reading of Xidov, as well as of \u/oi>, like Jerome before him: " clothed in stone pure and white." 5 eikos &£ aai aio-y>)T kutu Xpienov To\fxav, Kai vir' avrov (AvTf£pi(TTou) avnptiovetiut. ■jrpotTOoKeop.tvw Tots QtOfjLuyuiQ \ovcaiviQ' UTt IV Till a\?|fa>S VtUp VtllO, Tt] KtlVvKtKI] FKK'\tJ. i, the glory of the New Jerusalem is on Apoc. \\i. 8 defined as the sain'.-' i l glory : and again, speaking of the 12.000 furlongs of the city, x\i- 16, Andreas thus mystically explains the number : tuiv p.iv X'Xitov oijXoi/j/tojv t»|C; cnrcpavTOU ^aifji,' 3G6 H1BT01X OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. and nations of the earth bring their glory into it, he expounds of the then manifested glory of the good deeds of such as have reigned over their passions, and have pleased Christ.1 On the " sea then being no more," he explains it both literally and figuratively. What need any more of the sea, when men need not to sail on it, for fetching from other regions the earth's fruits and merchandise ? And what can there be of the troublesome tossings of life, which the figure means, when no more of fear or trouble is ever to betide the saints ? Iu a concluding summary Andreas states very distinctly his view of the Apocalypse being a prophecy of the things that were to happen from Christ's first coming even to the consummation.2 I observe in fine that there is an air of much piety in this Com- mentary. I may exemplify in Andreas' remark on the sin of adding to, or taking from, divine Scripture, Apoc. xxii. 18, 19.3 He here waxes quite warm in speaking of the superiority of Scriptural to all classical or dialectic knowledge.4 6. Arethas, a successor of Andreas in the Bishopric of Caesarea, was his follower also in great measure in the Commentary that he wrote on the Apocalypse. Thus much he tells us himself.5 Ke- tijv TiXaoTiira, t (i. e. the seven-sealed Book) tmj/ airo tijc civtov (Christ's) irupovaiaq p.£XPl T,'£ crvvTtXciaQ yiytviiptvwv. 3 So Andreas understands the passage ; and not as referring simply to taking from, or adding to, the Book of the Apocalypse. wQ CTKOTOVQ OU<7T?J/C£. I must add that Peltan's Latin translation, to which alone I had access in my three first Editions, is often disgracefully incorrect. A notable example has been given p. 362 supra. s On Apoc. viii., speaking of the incense-Angel, he says; " Huic angelo Andreas, qui ante me digne Csesareae Cappadocia? episcopatum sortitus est, quemque pontificem assimilat." And the heading title to his Commentary in the Latin translation, and I presume in the original Greek also, is as follows : — " Aretae, Caesarea? Cappadocise Episcopi, in D. Joannis Apocalypsim compendiaria explanatio, ex bcatissimi Andrea? Archicpiscopi Ca-sarea? Cappadocia?, Deo gratis, commentariis concinnata." Dupin is evidently mistaken in saying that there is no ground for regarding this Arethas as a Bishop of Ca\saiea. rr.u. in." i hum r\u. 01 B. BMPIBB, \ i>. 500 TO 1100. (Aretha*.) 887 speeting his date there seems to me to hare been i considerable mis- take on the part of moel thai have expressed an opinion abont it. \ ce Coccius, the Fditor of the B. L\ M. (which work gives a Latin translation of Aivthas" Commentary in its ixth Volume,1) ami Cave too. and Lardner, and just recently Professor M. Stuart,' assign to him the date oi' A. D. 540 OT 550. On the other hand ( lasimir I hidin and Pabrieius incline to identify him with a Presbyter of the same Cappadocian Cawarea, of the name Arethas, who, about A.D. !>-jn. tranalated a work of the Constantinopolitan Patriarch Buthymius^ But, says Cave,* Oudin had no argument or evidence to adduce in favour of his conjecture. Nor indeed Fabricfos cither; if (not hav- ing access to his work) I may judge from the reference to him in Lardner.4 I have observed, however, very decisive evidence in the Commentary itself, of Arethas having lived as late at least as near the end o\' the eighth century. For he speaks of the capital and palace of the Saracens as being then still at Babylon, evidently mean- ing Bagdad:*— a capital not built till A.D. 702;° and where the Saracen Caliphs continued to hold a waning empire through the ninth try, till its extinction A.D. 934 by the Bowides.7 A curious re- ference to Constantinople, which will be found in my page 370 fol- lowing,^ may possibly appear to furnish a further indication. The identity of our Cesarean Bishop with the Cesarean Presbyter that tranalated Buthymius seems to me more than doubtful. The very appellative of the one as a Bishop, the other as only a Presbyter, constitutes a presumption against that idea. Moreover, Arethas' reference to the Saracens and Bin/dad seems to indicate the fact of their empire being still powerful there. — I say still, after Arethas' ••in h »c usque tempus;" and powerful, because of his representing it a-< in place of the old lion-like Babylonian empire. Hence, on the whole, we may 1 think reasonably reckon his date as somewhere 741— 7»L 1 On the Apocalypse, Vol i. p. 268: " Arethas . .who lived aeei the middle of the Gtli century." 1 lli>t. Litt. i. 10S, ad aim. 540, " Verum id gratis atlirmat Oudinus ; nee cniru ; .:.' atom quo KntentiaiD raam eonfirmet." ' Hog t<»>, i. : dim to tin- \th Century; but without Riving his reasons, la Apoe. xiii. 2 : "Pero utur fiabyloniorum : euiSofi orum regnum nuu qudd, in hoc tuque tempus, regiH eoTum Babylone *it." li. P. If, 771 - — I have noted thiaalreadj in my VoL i p Vol. i. nj). 461, 162, and Vol. iii. p, " See my Vol. i. p. 166. :jl')S history OF APOCALYPTIC [NTEBPBBTATION. [.VIM', part I. within t lie limits of the first half of the 9th century; between A.D. 800 and 850.1 In the heading of his Apocalyptic Commentary there is, as hinted by me just before, an intimation of its having been very much taken from that of Andreas. He generally indeed gives the opinions of the latter ; sometimes in the form of direct quotation, and by name ; more often silently : adding however from time to time some strange conceits of his own.2 It is only the more important variations from Andreas that need here to be noticed. And these are as follows. Under the sixth Seal he singularly explains the earthquake, &c, there figured, of the literal earthquake and elemental convulsions at Christ's death and resurrection : 3 particularly dwelling on the adjec- tive o\r] attached to t critical Editions, /.«t j'i ilii a Domino (mmui. tpei aderat. Port hvjnaenim mortem neqoaqoam jam in Judsd man- . Bpheenm commigrasse ; " &c. — A statement which i- palpably in- l Pint on Apoc i.!t; B. P. M. 743: " Rclcgatum autem [pram in Patmum in-ulam sub Domitiano fui->>-. Bnaebhu Pamphfli in Chronica mm citat." Next on A.poo. iii. 10. I?. P. If. 751 ; '• Ilor.im tentationia . . pereecntioaein Qlam dioit qua aeennda port \ .cm sub Domitiano excitata fuit, quemadmodum in II i-tori;i and BuaebtOJ I'am- phili teetatar: quando etiam iil'-m BTangeliata in Patmum ab eodem Domitiano exilio •u>. fuit." In which last paaaageh '•■ it simply aa Bnaehina' opinion, th.it St. .John waa then baniah< il to Patmoi ; but rather proponndi it ai hia own alao. v Vol. i. p. 10. 1 The idea of St. John'- living to the end of the world aroee rather, we know, from - -aying, (John xxi. 22,) " If I will that be tarry till I oomi 701* iv. -I 370 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTEIIP, llETATION. [APP. PART I. kings, Christian kings, and Antichrist.1 The Babylon there mentioned he prefers to understand of Constantinople ; with reference appa- rently to some recent domineering of the civil power over the ecclesias- tical; which made that city answer, in his view, pre-eminently to the type of Babylon.2 — On the summons to the birds in Apoc. xix., to gather to Grod's great supper, he strangely explains them to mean the souls of saints, called from a state of depression to meet Christ in the air.3 — And, finally, he makes the New Jerusalem to represent the habitation and polity of the saints after the resurrection, con- junctively with Angels: " Civitas quod omnium turn Angelorum turn hominum futura sit domicilium." 4 G. I now return Westward from Greek Christendom, to note a somewhat later Latin Expositor of the Apocalypse ; 5 one whose 1 A curious notion. 2 " Et qurenam haec (Babylon) ? Nulla sane alia quam Constantinopolis ; in qua olim colcbatur justitia, nunc autem in ea homieidaj habitant, ex mutua contentions, dum cives laici ecclesiasticis aquari conteudunt : irao ne aequales quidem fieri con- tend sunt, nisi aliquis etiam ex eis premium referat, ad majorem divinae indignationis acceusionem." B. P. M. 778. 3 " Aves qua? per medium cceli volant animas dicit sanctorum ; qua?, a depressis humi rebus emergentes, juxta magnum Paulum procedunt ad occurrendum obvire Do- mino in aera." B. P. M. 783. 4 p. 786. i In passing let me here briefly notice a curious passage that occurs in a Treatise on Antichrist by Adso, a monk of the monastery of Derve in Champagne ; dedicated to Gerberga, Queen of Louis d'Outremer, and consequently of about the date of 9-50 A.D. Having spoken of Babylon as Antichrist's birth-place, of his being educated by sor- cerers at Bethsaida and Chorazin, then coming to Jerusalem, proclaiming himself the Son of God, by gifts, miracles, or terror converting kings and people to acknowledge him, and then at length persecuting the saints, and commencing the great tribulation of 3j years, — Adso proceeds to state that the precise time for his manifestation would be marked by the ' discessio ' of its constituent kingdoms from the Roman Empire : (so, like some of the early Fathers, he explained the airo'' n ngaud.) '571 epoch, 1 now think, was near about the conclusion of the period in- cluded in this Section, though elsewhere referred hv me to a c n- siderably earlier period : — 1 mean lurni'iamL In mv Vol. iii. p. 279, L have noticed tins ( 'ommentarv. I hail stat- ed originally that the writer (probably, from his reference to the Kulen of that order, a Benedictine monk ) had in a singular manner intimated his name under the enigmatic form of (i reek numerals ; ' also that by Ins noting the facts of the Saracens who had overrun Asia, as well as the Lombards who had conquered Italy, having had their king- dom* Overthrown when he wrote,'- his BBFB seemed fixed as not earlier than the end of tin- ninth century. An approximation this to his real age which well agreed with that drawn by the Benedictine editors of Ambrose, from his specification of archdeacons receiving hush-money for overlooking the fornication of the priesthood, as a sin of the then times : this crime being prominently noticed in Synods held at Paris, Chalons, and Annis-Q-rannm, in the same ninth century.3 But the crime continued flagrant long after, so as to be by no means any cer- tain or specific chronological designative.4 And a notice as to the then existing Jerusalem being inhabited by Christians5 seemed to me afterwards to mark a much later era than the 9th century ; in fact one subsequent to the taking of Jerusalem by the crusaders. A lateness of date corroborated by the late epoch at which Berengaud's comment i to have come into notice.0 on Mount Olivet by Michael, or Christ, with the breath of his mouth. Soon utter which (not immediately) would follow the hist judgment. This treatise ia given in the 9th Volume of the late Paris Benedictine Edition of ooL l(it7 — 1652. It is the nine that hai been incorrectly ascribed bj to Alcuin, by others (e. g. Malveiulu, i. 306) to Uabanus Maurus. 1 " Quisquii nomen auctoris scire desideraa, literal ezposlttonnm in capitfbna Beptem un primas attende. Nnmerna quatuor Tooalinm quaa decant, n Qneoas posu- .' Now the first letters of these seven parts, or visions, are B K N G \ and if 1 1 a o be inserted, which together make up (-5 + 5 + 1 + 70 = 81,) the name will his. 1 " Sarw . Aaiam subegerunt, Gothi Hispaaiam, Longobardi [taliam, ^Vi . tnpore qno risio ista Johanni demo itestatem nondum ac- oeperant sed und horA tanqoam rages ; t int, quia singularum ista- 3 i on A.poc. wii. . p. 17-s Note ', where Berengand is also noticed. :uv Vol. ii. p. It. b Sec p. 3',(i, Note '. * I copy what follows from Mr. C, Haitland ■• 'About this time (viz. \ D. , without name or date, 1 Commentary of Be ngand into notice. It ■ d from by the B . published • 1 1'*' : and • ■ by Dionysi in, who wrote not later than 1470." So itland, before him ; Reply to fetch, pp 19 372 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC [NTERPBETATION. [APP. PART I. The Commentary is one too original to omit noticing ; and goes on a regular connected chronological plan, which (however unsatis- factory it may be as an exposition) makes it easy to read, in compa- rison with the other Latin Commentaries of the sera under review. This chronological plan is sketched at the outset, and adduced re- peatedly, even to the end. It is founded on the frequent septenary division of the Apocalyptic prefigurations : to all which seven (except the seven epistles to the churches) Berengaud supposes that sub- si initially the same chronological reference and order attaches; a chronology commencing from the creation, and reaching to the con- summation. Thus in the opening figuration of Christ he remarks on eight par- ticulars as given in the description; his priestly garment, his zone, his head, his eyes, his feet, his voice, his sword, and his face as the sun : and of these the first seven are expounded as typical of that " civitas Dei qua) ex omnibus electis constat ;l et quae ab initio usque ad finem tendit, in septem partes divisa." "Which seven parts are, 1. the elect from the Creation till the Flood; 2. the patriarchs and saints from the Flood to the giving of the Law ; 3. the multitudes saved under the ministry of the Mosaic Law ; 4. the prophets ; 5. the apostles ; 6. the multitude of the Gentiles that believed in Christ ; 7. the saints that are to conflict with Antichrist at the end of the world. The 8th particular noted in the symbol, viz. Christ's face as the sun, he makes to prefigure the Church of the elect after the resurrection ; when they too shall all shine as the sun in the firmament. — The testifyings of the saints in these seven ages of the world would be, he suggests after Bede and Ansbert, like Israel's seven days' corn- passings of Jericho ; and that during their preachings in the seventh age its end would come suddenly. After this, the seven Epistles to the Churches having been ex- pounded as lessons of warning and instruction to the Church in general,2 Berengaud explains the heaven that was afterwards opened Neither of these authors notice the reference by Berengaud to Jerusalem, as a chrono- logical indication. 1 Observe how Augustine's view of the Civitas Dei, as made up only of the elect, had travelled influeutially downward. * On the promise, " I will write on him the name of the New Jerusalem," &c, Be- rengaud observes that it may seem marvellous that this New Jerusalem should be described as descending from heaven, when it is known that the elect continually as- cend from earth to heaven, instead of descending. But he solves the enigma by ex- vik. in PBOM lviit'i k. i.MiMur. \.i>. .Mil) in I 100. I fit rc>i>/ituVc The intent of the wheat and barley was very obscure. Perhaps the choiiix for two pounds) of wheat meant the two Testaments, the food for souls; the denarius marking its connexion with Christ;2 plaining it of Christ's descent ; in whom all the saints (the constituency of th> Jerusalem] were even tin n C di rally existent. 200. II' r. Berengaud oontruta the ineeMant oeenpation En divine worship of the twenty-bur elden and lour Hum: creatures, with the earthly-mindedneei and earthly occupation "t many in monatti i • "Denarim Dcminnm detignat. Bin* ergo libra- tritici denario copnlantnr ; <|uiu 374 BISTOET OP APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. while the barley might signify the good works of saints. Or. the whcaten bilibres might be the two precepts of love to God and man ; the denarius, the eternal life that is their reward, as in Christ's para- ble of the workmen in the vineyard, Matt. xx. ; the Church (in the voice from the four living Creatures) praying Christ to give the de- narius of eternal life to them that observe those precepts.1 By the wine guaranteed from hurt might be meant Christians of active life ; by the oil those given to contemplation. 4th Seal. The pale horse symbolized the Prophets ; pale through fear of the evils they denounced on sinners : the rider, still Jehovah Jesus ; He being death to the reprobate. (A rather harsh appella- tive this for Christ, Berengaud allows ; and that, but for the require- ments of the Seal's chronological place and order, its symbol might naturally have been expounded rather of Antichrist.') — By Christ's apostles the prophets' ivritings had been spiritually explained. There- fore, it being needless to enter on that, Berengaud confined his spi- ritualizing illustrations to the history and doings of the prophets ; as of David, Elijah, Elisha, &c. &c. 5th Seal. Souls under the altar. This vision referring to the mar- tyrs under the New Testament dispensation, Christ opened its seal, when he explained to the doctors of the Church his parables and dark sayings about the sufferings of his disciples, and their after glory. 6th Seal. The elemental convulsions, &c, here enacted, figured the destruction of Jerusalem, falling of its priests and governors, darken- ing of its nation, once bright by the revelation granted it, even as the sun in the world's system, and passing away of God's covenant and the Old Testament dispensation from the Jews to the Gentiles. The cry to the hills and rocks for covering was illustrated by the actual hiding of many of the Jews in the cloacae from the Romans' fury : as Christ hath said, " Then shall ye begin to call upon the hills," &c. In the Sealing Vision the four angels are explained to mean the four great empires, combined at length into the Roman, which deso- lated other lands, restraining the winds of life and happiness : Christ quod sancta Scriptura loquitur ad unius Dei omuipotentiam, magnitudinem, bonitatera, atque scvcritatem pertinct." I suppose Berengaud meant the denarius to figure Christ, somewhat like Arethas, (see p. 368 Note -,) as having the king's image on it. 1 Compare Arethas on the same Oth Seal, p. 368, supra. in.] ru"M FALL OMU IMPIBl, A.B. 5( » 1100. 1 Btiwngavd.) being t ho scaling anijel. iin ; the faithful amongst whom, dead to the law, lived to God. prophets themselres being like burning stars to light the people ; and with • that had bitterness' in them, acting so as to produce repentance. * By whose doctrine the elect Jews were struck, and .1 ndaism eclipsed in them. • >r^ preaching against the fir^t of the three woes; viz. h I like a falling -t.ir from haarreu . during lln months of which Bra, a period meant to signify man that sought death by mixing in the world would ba sickened at it ; and so return, and live. ' Mart I to the four angels ; i. *. (these bejpg the same as the four in A; i out of tin- Roman empire ; an empire signified also by rlon'a riv.-r. the Buphi rtyrs be supposes by their ravin ■ ition and gospel-pn iching to hairs stirred ttpfhe Roman Pagans to per* them; — the hotl mi; the Roman emperors ; the sulphur from the b vi >utln theii and th ■ tire their persecuting proolam itiona. 876 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. his feet the two Testaments, the Book opened in hand that of the Scriptures, the seven thunders figures of the seven virtues, unknown in their full spirituality except through Christ, and sealed up par- tially from weaker Christians, unable to bear them, the charge to eat the book, and prophesy again, being true both of John personally, when returned from Patmos, and of all the apostles and Christian teachers, — after this Berengaud supposes a sudden transition to the times of Antichrist, and of the two Witnesses against him : the transition, he says, being not unnatural ; as passing from Christ's ministry when the Jews were cast out, to that of Enoch and Elias, which is to restore them. And, in the account of the Witnesses, Berengaud expounds the mea- suring the court and its worshippers to signify Christian ministers, ministering to their edification : the reed being the gospel ; the rod, church discipline ; and those cast out as Pagans, the Jews : the fire from the Witnesses' mouth signifying their doctrine kindled by God's Spirit ; their heaven-shutting, a judgment literally to be understood, it might be, but rather spiritually : their place of death, the street of the world's great city, Babylon,1 consisting of all the reprobate ; and its duration, 3^ days, meant in the sense of 3f years.2 Then, their revival and resurrection described, the prophecy passes, says Berengaud, to describe the history and evils of the great Witness- slayer, Antichrist : a commencement being however made from the Devil's first injuries to Christ and the Church, at his first advent; prior and preparatory to the last injuries through Antichrist. — In Apoc. xii. the travailing Woman might mean both the Virgin Mary and the Church:* Christ himself being the male child born of the one, Chris- tians of the other ; the one snatched up to God at his ascension, the others at death: the opposing Dragon's [or Devil's] seven heads figur- ing the reprobate of the same seven ages, as before specified ; and his dejection effected by Michael, through Christ's ministry, casting him out of the hearts of the elect, into the reprobate. The Woman's 3J times'' nourishment in the wilderness, after the Dragon's dejection, means first, and on the scale of literal time, the early disciples feeding on 1 It is not Jerusalem, says Berengaud, for three reasons : — 1. that the great city of the Apocalypse is always Babylon : 2. because the present Jerusalem is not built pre- cisely on the site of the old : 3. because the present city of Jerusalem, being inhabited by Christians, cannot justly be called Sodom and Egypt." See the citation in my Vol. ii. p. 430. 2 A passage noted by me Vol. iii. p. 279. 3 So Arethas. Ill PROM FALL Or B. BMPIBB, i D ■ " 1 1 00. i Uceemjaud . | 9 i « Christ's doctrine, separate from the world;1 as also the feeding of the •suit of the faithful ("dapibus gloria) coelestis patrie ") on the gl< of i heavenly home, during the whole time from Christ's passion to the world's »iul : while the wilderness of her refuge symbolised hea- ven: (such is Berengaud'a singular explanation ;)' somewhal like the wilderness of the ninety-nine sheep in Luke xv. l. — Then at length the Devil goes sgainsl the remnant of the Woman's seed, left at the of the world; ami attacks them through the Beorf, L B. Anti- christ. of which Beast Berengaud explains the seven heads as the seven principal vices, affixed like the seven wicked spirits in the parable; and the ten lorn* wearing diadems, as the nations subjugated by him : his mouth speaking great things, as of one boasting himself to be the Son of God ; his blasphemies, as of one denying Jesus Christ's god- head, asserting the worthlessness of Christ's religion, and inability of martyrs and saints to profit men : also as arguing from the fact of men's passions being implanted by God, in proof that they might abandon themselves to licentiousness. (This is, I think, the earliest suggestion I have noticed of Antichrist being in any way an avowed infidel, and ojicn advocate of licentiousness.) — The second Beast he in- terprets as the Preachers of Antichrist : its two lamb-like horns sig- nifying his constituency of Jewish and Gentile reprobates; just as the is seven horns figured all the elect: and the Beast's image, images of Antichrist, which Antichrist's priests will make men wor- ship.— As to his name and number, says Berengaud, I know it nol : for any one might at baptism have a name of that number given him. Then, passing on to the vision of Apoc. xvii.,the Beast-ridin;/ Harlot is explained (besides her general signification as the world) to be iallv Rome ; and her predicated burning and spoiling by the ten kings, as the destruction of ancient Home by the Gothic barbarians-.3 ( with reference however, as Rome was professedly Christian at that time, to the reprobate in her:) also th<- Beast (here the Devil) ridden by her. as that which " loot" during his unquestioned sovereignty of the world before Christ's coming; which " m not" i. e. in the same power as before, since Christ's overthrow of Satan ; and which " u to 1 The 3J years' duration of Christ's ministry being the ground-work of tin bug) r inter knebert Bee p. 360 mpnl 1 Compare Methodius' " a malis desertum ; " j>. 2'JH supra, i I beg mv mark this. 378 HISTOIIY OF APOCALYPTIC I VI T. It PliKTA'ITON. [aPP. PART I. be" again, on Antichrist's revelation. As to the Beast's heads, they meant the same as the Dragon's in Apoc. xii. Of these the first Jive had passed away when John had the Apocalypse revealed to him, the fifth being the Jews just then destroyed by the Romans: the sixth sig- nified the then existing Roman Pagan persecutors ; and the seventh, Antichrist. The eighth, or Beast itself of Apoc. xvii.,1 Avas, as just before observed, the Devil. On other lesser points I have only to add that Berengaud makes the 144,000 of Apoc. xiv. to be the elect in heaven,2 while the 144,000 of Apoc. vii. were the elect alive on earth ; explains the earth's har- vest of the good, its vintage of the bad : in Apoc. xv. reads \idov for Xu'ov, like Jerome and Andreas, said of the dress of the Vial-Angels ; and interprets the Angels themselves as preachers of the same seven seras as before. In Apoc. xvi. he makes the Euphrates'1 drying up to mean the drying up of persecution, that so the way may be opened to the Gentiles to believe ; explains the millennium like Augustine ; and, on the Angel's showing St. John the New Jerusalem, notes very distinctly John's representative character ; " Johannes typum gerit eaeterorum fidelium." In conclusion, on considering retrospectively the character of the Apocalyptic exposition of this our 3rd Period, from a.d 500 to a.d. 1100, or thereabouts, the question following may naturally suggest itself; — How was it that when the " let," so much talked of by the earlier Fathers, had just before this period's opening been so striking- ly taken away, by the utter breaking up of the old Roman empire proper, and its division into something ominously like the ten pre- dicted subdivisions of prophecy, there was yet wanting among pro- phetic expositors all recognition of that sign of the times ;3 and little thought or care being manifested about the apparently necessary con- sequence of Antichrist's development occurring even then synchroni- cally. And we shall find, I think, in answer to the question, that three causes connected with prophetic interpretation powerfully con- tributed to that result : — 1st, the universal prevalence in the West of ' He seems to make the Beast of Apoc. xiii. Antichrist ; of Apoc. xvii. the Devil. 2 Without spot, says Berengaud, because of the pollution contracted from the •world having been washed away by penitence and tears, or by works of charity, at p r flagella, by scourging, or at any rate " post mortem igni purgatorio." — Purgatory was now established. 3 At least till Berengaud ; see p. 377. u i of ft. iMPXi * unwary.) B79 the Origenie or Tichonian anagogie principle of interpretation, through- oat almost the whole of the period under review;1 and indeed to a considerable extent in the Bast also; whereby all thai was topogra- phically or chronologically most definitely applicable to Papal Rome in the prophetic symbols was spiritualized away into some mere general religion! or moral truth : witness the explanation! of the •■•alyptie symbols of the Beast, and Brasfs srren hauls, and Beast's tea horns, and Babylon, in l'rimasius. Bede, Ambrose Ansbert, Andiv- m if reepectdrely the body of the Devil regnant, the world's suc- sive ages, the world's kingdoms, and world itself:'2 — 2ndly, the of the Greek Byzantine ruler being still called and thought of as Roman emperor, after the Gothic catastrophe, albeit not having ie itself as the seat and centre of his power, like the Beast of the Apocalypse; as also, some three centuries later, Charlemagne and the Frank emperors in the West: whence the reasoning, as if the •■ let " still remained, that we see exemplified alike in Adso of "West- ern Europe,* and the pseudo-Athanasius,4 and Theophylact and (^cumenins too, who were Greek Biblical expositors of the 10th aud 11th centuries:5 — 3. the generally received idea of the time they lived in being a part of the Apocalyptic millennium, precursive to the little 8$ years' season of Satan's loosing, and the manifestation of Antichrist.'"' — To all which there is to be added the political fact that 1 Mr. C. Maitland says (p. '279), with reference to the mediaeval era, which he ration from the Bytantine dominion, accomplished A.D, 730, ''Once more the popular style of [prophetic] exposition is entirely changed." My readers will naturally be surprised at such a statement : as they will hare teen that in the West, for Mine two or three centuries after Unit date, all the chief expositors, as Bede, Ambrose Ausbert, Haymo, did but follow the same mystical anagogie style of lithm as Tichonius and Primasiua before them ; while in the East Arethaa pro- Uy followed Andreas of the (3th century. Possibly Mr. C. M. may have meant that it changed after Jerome. & e pp. 341, 8 ; - 362, 3G3, supra. S i Adto of the 10th century : abstracted p. 370 supra. So too Lanfranc, Arch- bishop of Canterbnry in the 11th oantnryton '1 Thess. ii. 7 : — " He who now lettetA . he means the- Roman empire ; after the destruction of which Antichrist will come." ' Pot th. dthananUS, see ;>. 313 Note*. 5 Thfojihylart was Archbishop of Bulgaria in the 11th century. Speaking of the ■an ampin! and of its taking away as of an event still future in hi> time, he say* ; mono inatdiahitor [Antichristns] Imperio, eiqne .in horuiuiim turn Dei impcrium rapere." So too II ; an expositor who was bis contemporary, or marly so. (See MalTi In their exposition of St. l'aul these both follow OhrySOStom generally ; and, like him, forhore from writing an] direct Apocalyptic commentary. it m iv b ■ on this point the rarmisings of Indrtai and Irtthtu. • So ali the expositors alter TichonhlS and Augustine. 380 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. the Bishops of Rome, (the true Antichrist, as I doubt not,) rose gra- dually and almost furtively, in the first centuries of this sera, to poli- tical power ; and with such admixture too of lamb-like pretensions to sanctity, as well as lion-like pretensions in character of Christ's Vice- gerent,1 as served in that dark and unintellectual a;rato blind the minds of expositors to the Pope's real answering to the prophetic Antichrist : though this was but in truth what Hippolytus and others had inferred from prophecy respecting the mode of Antichrist's incoming. Further the moral fact is to be remembered, that the corruption of Christian doctrine and worship enforced by Papal Pome,2 which was one grand mark of the antichristian apostasy, was participated in, more or less, by the expositors themselves, alike in the West and in the East : 3 whence the rather their blindness to the great fact of the already de- veloped Antichrist. But, as the 11th century wore away, everything prepared for, and symptoms very significative betokened, that a new sera of prophetic interpretation was approaching. The Papacy had risen under Gre- gory VII, ere the conclusion of the 11th century, to such a height of power as well as of pretension,4 and abused it to the enforcement of such unchristian dogmas, albeit in the profest character of Christ's Vicar, as to force on the minds of the more discerning surmisings about the Popes and Papal Pome, and their possible prefiguration in Apocalyptic prophecy, scarce dreamed of before. Already, just before the year 1000, Gherbert of Pheims had spoken in solemn council of the Pope upon his lofty throne, radiant in gold and purple ; and how that, if destitute of charity, he was Antichrist sitting in the temple of God.5 And Berenger in the 11th century, as if Apocalyptically in- structed, and with special reference to the Popes' enforcement of the antichristian dogma of transubstantiation, declared the Poman See to be not the apostolic seat, but the seat of Satan.6 — The passing ' So Gregory 1. See my Vol. i. pp. 401 — 403. 2 See my Vol. i. p. 473. Mr. C. Maitland (p. 291) well cites the Papal jurist of the 14th century, Marsilius of Padua, in testimony to the otherwise well authenticated fact that Papal Rome's revolt from the Byzantine emperors, under Gregory III, was a consequence of the emperor proscribing, the Pope affirming, the worship of images. 3 See, for example, Ambrose Ansbert's exprest approbation of angel-mediatorship, p. 349 supra. * Especially in Gregory's mighty contest with the emperor Henry. 5 See my Vol. ii. p. 78, Note '. 6 See Vol. ii. pp. 280, 281. Let me observe that it is stated by Bishop Hurd that Berenger wrote a Commentary pbb in. raoM pall of b. RMPiBi, ld. 600 to 1100. {Summary.) 381 away of the millennial year L000, withoul any such awful mundane catastrophe, loosing of Satan, and manifestation of Antichrist, as bad been popularly expected,' tended to make men earnestly reason and question both OD the Long received millennial theory, ami on thai of the Antichrist intended in prophecy, more than before.8 — Moreover the incoming of the 12th century from Christ promised (should the world last through it) to open to expositors the first possible oppor- tunity of some way applying the year-day principle (which had aever been unrecognized) not to the smaller :i\ days1 prophetic period only, hut also to the great prophetic period of the 1260 days, without aban- donment *>f the expectation, ever intended, of Christ's second ad- vent being near.3 Such, I say, were the new circumstances of the times, which pro- mised to operate powerfully in the new opening sera on prophetic interpretation. Besides that the very intellectual expansion of men's minds necessitated a change from the long established mystical sys- tem of interpretation, for one more definite and explicit. Even in the Commentary by Berengaud, with its seven successive seras, (how- ever unskilfully and unsuccessfully applied to the Apocalyptic pro- phecy.) we yet see an illustration of the natural tendency of expo- sitors' minds, then already acting, towards the adoption of some chronologically consecutire scheme of Apocalyptic interpretation : in place of that so long prevalent in Christendom, which explained it as mainly significant of general and constant Christian truths or doc- trine* : — some one more consonant in this respect with common sense ; and also with the precedent of Daniel's prophecies, as ex- pounded in great part by inspiration itself. § -i. FROM A.D. 1100 TO THE REFORMATION. In this fourth Period it is my purpose to sketch most prominently on tl: H : and he ascribes Bercngcr's anti-Romish sentiments on the subj' cl of transubstantiation to this origin ; as 1 have observed in my Vol. ii. p. 281, on the WitneM - Hon much could we hare desired that this Commentary should hav< been preserved to us! Hut I am not aware ttiat it i> anywhere extant, my Vol. i. p. 170. • Mr. Paha [On v7aldenses, i>. of Tissington, a writer of the Mth cen- tury, saying that it WSJ a day-dream of Bet Bgl r*l I" tengarium somnium) that at the expiration of 1000 yean from < lm*t'~ death Satan was loosed; and his loosing evidenced in the promulgation of before unequalled heresies ami errors by the Romish Church, especially that of transubstantiation. I my Vnl. in. [e . 382 niSTORY OF APOCALYPTIC interpretation, [app. PART I. the partially contrasted and partially accordant views of the Apo- calyptic prophecy, propounded very influentially by the Romanist Joachim Abbas and his followers, on the one band, and the early pioneers of the Reformation on the other. A briefer notice will suffice of Anselm of Havilburg before Joachim, and of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas after him. — I have already just hinted the various new and important characteristics of the now opening sera which combined to exercise a considerable influence on Apocalyptic inter- pretation, and to give a new and increased interest to the Apocalyp- tic Commentaries that now appeared : besides that, in the progress of time, new and important acts had occurred in the history of Christendom, with which to compare the details of prophecy. Germs of thought now arose that were to receive afterwards a fuller deve- lopment ; and prophetic views destined, ere very long, to help towards producing great aud unexpected results. 1. And 1st, before proceeding to Joachim Abbas, let me briefly notice a short Treatise on the Apocalyptic Seals by Anselm, Bishop of Havilburg in the Magdeburgensian Diocese :l a Treatise composed A.D. 1145, as appears on the face of the document ; and on the fol- lowing occasion. It seems that Anselm (who had been previously Secretary to the Emperor Lotharius the Second) having been sent on an embassy to the Greek Emperor Manuel at Constantinople, was challenged by some Greek bishops there, publicly to discuss the points of difference between the Latin and the Greek Churches; with which request he complied: and that having successfully'defended, as was thought, the Latin cause, he was desired by Pope Eugenius to write an abstract of the discussion ; which he did, in the form of dialogue. By way of introduction to this discussion, and with a view to answer difficulties on religion, which might arise in some minds, from the circumstance of so many different forms of religion existing in different countries and different ages, he prefixed to the Dia- logues a preliminary book, showing that there had been from the first one body of the Church, governed by one Spirit ; that in the Old Testament times, from Abel even to Christ, the Church ,had ever held the rite of sacrifice, though with ceremonies often varied ; and been under the influence of faith, though with imperfect knowledge 1 It is given in D'Achcry's Spicilegium, Vol. i. 161. im:i;. hi. lnoM ah. IKni m mi. u.nuiM atiov t.l/isrh/i.) :*s:t of the articles of Christian faith i also, with reference to New Testa- ment times, that various different successive stales of the Church had hern expressly foreshown, indeed srreu different states from Christ to the eoiisuininat ion ; the preiigurafioii of them having,' been given in (the ApooalyptU Seals. In this curious manner it is thai Anselm's views on this prophecy were giyen to tlio world. It ma\ perhapi be called the earliest church-Scheme, properly speaking, of the Apocali/ptic Seals ; and is, in brief, as follows. 1. The u-hitchor.se typifies the earliest state of the Chureh, white in the lustre o[' miraeulous gifts: ' the rider Christ, with the bow of eramgettc doctrine, bumbling the proud, and conquering opposers : so that the Chureh (Acts v. 1-4) was then daily increased. 2. The red horse is the next state of tbe Church, red with the blood of martyrdom ; from Stepben tbe proto-inartyr to the martyrs under Diocletian. 3. The black horse depicts tbe Cburcb's third state, blackened after Coiistantine's time with heresies, sucb as of Arius, Sabellius, Nes- torius, Eutycbes, Donatus, Pbotinus, Manes; men pretending to hold tbe balance of justice in their discussions, but falsely weighing words and arguments:1 while on the other band, Church Councils hid down what are rightly called Canons, (so Anselm seems some way to have understood the voice from among the Cherubim in the Apocalyptic vision,) by which the faith was defined. k The pale horse signified the ChurcWs fourth state, coloured with the hue of hypocrisy too generally prevalent afterwards; "aa pale is neither white nor black, but either falsely." And so, adds Anselm. baa the Chureh sutl'ered from these, that the rider may well be called Death. Death the slayer of souls. — This state be makes to have com- menced from the beginning of tbe fifth century, and to have con- tinued even to his own time. Nor will it terminate, he asserts, till the time when the tares shall be separated from the wheat in judg- ment, and the saints follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth. uls uader the altar. Here is the Church's fifth state. Then the BOUla of the saints which will have shed their blood for Christ. ;uus albus primus est status ccclcsi .. mir&culorum nitidtn ot pnlcher rimus.' ■' " II ' T. "Iri . . . (jui, ilum in inanu mi h! r.im truti n.in t » a hah nt. ado propoauQt ; ted aiinus caatot lerisumo unius yel minimi yerbi pondcre fallunt, et in partem ml errorii pertrahunt." 384 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. considering the infinite miseries of the Church in its three previous states, moved with compassion will cry out, " How long, 0 Lord, dost thou not avenge our blood ? " 6. The sixth state of the Church is when there shall arise the most vehement persecution in the times of Antichrist,1 answering to the great earthquake of the sixth seal. Then Christ, the Sun of right- eousness, shall be hidden ; Christian professors fall from the Church into earthly-mindedness ; and the heaven, or Church itself, pass away, together wdth its sacraments, altogether from the public view. 7. The seventh state is that of the saints' rest ; a rest in the beati- fic vision : as it is said, " When he had opened the seventh seal there was silence in heaven for about the space of half an hour." So Anselm of the seven Apocalyptic Seals : a scheme chiefly ex- hibiting views of the Church's successive trials and evils. — I may observe, further, that in one or two passing notices of the vision of the Dragon and travailing Woman, Apoc. xii., he makes what is said of the Dragon's persecution of the Woman, or Church, after she had brought forth Christ her male child, to be chronologically parallel with the times of the red horse of the second Seal ; also the Dragon's going forth to persecute the rest of the Woman's seed, Apoc. xii. 17, to have been fulfilled in the heresies introduced after Constantine's overthrow of Paganism,2 by heretics that bore on their hearts the mark of the Beast. 2. I now pass on to Joachim Albas ; a person of gi*eater repute and greater influence, as an expounder of prophecy, than any other whatever in the middle age. He was a Calabrian by birth, and in early life had made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem : a city at that time still held by the successors of the Crusaders ; though threatened by Mussulman enemies surrounding it. The lively recollection of what he then saw had probably not a little influence on Joachim's interest in and views of prophecy.] Indeed it was there and then, in the Holy Church and Sepulchre, that the idea was first impressed on his mind of having a call to the illustration of prophetic Scripture.3 1 Norbert, a contemporary of Anselm, and friend of the celebrated Bernard, is an example of the expectation entertained at this point by some persons of reputation, of the speedy appearance of Antichrist. See my Vol. ii. p. 368, Note 2. 2 Compare pp. 315, 333 supra. 3 See Moreri in his Dictionary, on the article Joachim. PBS. IT.] l woM A.i>. L100 TO THE &SFOBMATION. (Jbaehim Abboi.) 385 About thr year 1180 be had been elected Abboi of bhe monastery of Caracio in Calabria, near Cosenza: but, having already at that time become famous For his gift in Scriptural research and explication, he received express permission from Pope Lucius 1J1, in the vear 1 Isl' to retire awhile from the Abbacy and its active occupations, in order to give himself more entirely to these studies. In 1183, at the Con- \ent of Casemaire, Luke, then a monk of the monastery, and after- wards Archbishop of Cosenza, tells us that he was assigned as secre- tary to Joachim:1 and that night and day both himself and two other monks were employed by Joachim, as his assistants and scribes in two works on which he was then busy ; one on the Concord of the Old and New Testament, the other on the Apocalypse.2 It was for a year and a half, according to this informant, that Joachim thus oc- cupied himself at the convent, "dictating and correcting." At what time he finally finished his Apocalyptic comment seems uncertain. In A.D. 1190, when our king Kichard was at Messina, on his way to the Holy Land, he was full of the subject. We have in Roger de Hoveden an interesting account of the king's sending for him, and hearing him lecture on it, induced by his high reputation for pro- phetic lore;3 together with a sketch of certain views as to the future which he then propounded from the Apocalypse: views partially con- tradicted however by the event soon after ; and which in the com- mentary, as finally corrected by him, appear, as we shall see after- wards, considerably modified. In the copy of the commentary handed down to us,4 I observe a notice of something that he states 1 1 take my account from Plenty's Ilistoire Ecclesiastique, Liv. lxxiv. — Luke makes this year US-'!, the date of the commencement of Joachim's writing : — " II en obtint la permission d'ecrire, et oommenfja I le faire." Ibid. 2 " L'Abbe me donna a lui pour lui servir de secretaire ; tt j'tcrivois jour et nuit dans des cahiers ce qu'ildictoit et corrigeoit sur des brouilloiM, avec deux autres moines I lie intimate connexion of the two Works will appear at my p. 387. 3 " The same year (1190) Richard hearing by common report, and by the relation of many persona, that there was a certain ecclesiastic of the Cistercian order in Cala- bria, named Joachim, abbot of Curacio, who bad the spirit of prophecy, and predicted future events to the people, sent for him ; and took pleasure in hearing the words of his prophecy, and wisdom, and learning. F'or he was a man learned in the Holy Scriptures; and interpreted the visions of St. John the Evangelist, which the same John relates in the Apocalypse, which he wrote with bis own band : in hearing which the king of 1 I his followers took great delight." What follows in Soger respecting Joachim's explanation of Apoc. srii., \iii., xvii., and ot the. Woman, Dragon, and Beast Antichrist, there symbolised, is given at p, intra * My edition i. that of Venice, 1527 ; of 224 I VOL. IV. 26 386 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. himself to have heard in the year 1195.1 Hence I conceive that he corrected and improved the Work till near the time of his death ; whigh happened, according to Fleury, in the year 1202. — I now pro- ceed to give a sketch of his exposition. A brief Prologue, and then an Introductory Book, are prefixed to the Exposition ; which Exposition is itself divided into six parts. — In the Prologue he takes care prominently to state, that he had not entered on the work presumptuously, and merely from his own judgment ; but by the authority, and at the command, of the Roman See ; a brief Monitory of Pope Clement on which point, and one which alludes to the previous mandates of the two Popes preceding, is inserted.2 And, in the same spirit of deference to the Roman See, he leaves also prefixed a solemn charge to the Priors and Brethren of his Abbey, to have his writings immediately and formally sub- mitted to its judgment; incase of his death occurring before this was done.3 From the Introductory Book, (one of several chapters, preceding the main Commentary,)4 it may suffice to note what he says of the Three Ages, the Apocalyptic seven-sealed Book, and the Concord of the Two Testaments. J See p. 397 infra. Again, he in one place seems to allude to A.D. 1200, as the date of his filial recension. See my Note *, p. 388. 2 " Breve Admonitorium seu Preceptorium Summi Pontificis, ut quam citius perti- ciat expositionis Apocalypsis, et se Pontirici presentet." " Clemens Episcopus, servus servorum Dei, dilecto filio Joachim Abbati de Cura- tio, salutem et apostolicam benedictionem. Canonis suadet, et debitum evangelical charitatis, ut in cunctis actibus nostris ad id plurimum intendamus, qualiter] secundum veritatis evangelic ae testimonium opera nostra bona luceant coram hominibus ; ut ex eis proficiendi materiam capiant, et ex- emplum. Quum igitur, jubente et exhortante bona? memorial Lucio Papa prredeces- sore nostro, expositionem Apocalypsis et Opus Concordia? inchoasse, et postmodum auctoritate Domini Papa: Urbani successoris ipsius composuisse dicaris, caritatem tuam monemus et exhortamur in Domino, per Apostolica Scripta mandantes, quatenus la- boribus tuis in hac parte peroptatum et debitum tinem imponens, (gratia Domini pro- sequente,) ad utilitatem proximorum opus illud complere, et diligenter studeas ernen- dare ; veniensque ad nos quam citius opportunitas aderit, discussioni apostolica? sedis, etjudicio, ut praesentes. Sin velis in abscondito retinere, diligenti cura prospicias quii possis Summi Patris-familias oflensam de talento scientia? tibi crcdito satisfactione placare." Leaf l2. * Datum Late, sexto Idus Junii, Pontificatils nostri anno primo. (i. e. A.D. 1188.) 3 The date given is MC ; which is evidently incorrect. I presume it should be MCC. Leaf l2. 4 It occupies from Leaf 22 to 262. * N. B. In what ensues a numeral so marked, l2, signifies the second page of the Leaf. ram. it.] raoM \.n. LtOfi tc no utoaaraTioN, {Jhmcikm Abba 1. Noticing t lio did Jewish threefold division of time, before the hue, mult'i- the lair, and inidrr the Messiah or i/ns/iel, he ob- serves that tlie last period of these throe may he itself divided into three; vi/.. that of the i/osjwl letter, i/nsj>el xj>irit, and vision of \; 80 making up five in all;1 and Chat, omitting the fire! and ia>! of the five, he would mean hy the three shifts if the world* when spoken of in his Treat ise, 'the three intermediate a-ras : viz. 1. from Abraham to John the Baptist and Christ; 2. from Christ to the time of the fulness of the Gentiles; 3. from that to the con- summation. 2. He states that certain mysteries of the Old Testament history wire depleted by the seven Seals of the Apocalyptic seven-sealed kf : and that these mysteries were opened by Christ after his resurreetion.3 :}. He illustrates the concord of the two Testaments; and corre- spondence of certain events affecting the Old Testament Church, with certain that affected the New Testament Church, the latter being a kind of fuller expansion and accomplishment of the types of the former : and this in the seven aeras following, signified under the seven Seals.* We have here the key to Joachim's Apocalyptic views. Old Tist vmi.nt. From Ahram or Jacob, to Moses and Joshua ; in which :rra occurred Is- - \* .ir with the Egyptians. Joshurt • David Wan with the David to Eliai and EUsha. — Schism of Israel and Juduh, and civil wan. EUiha t" baiaft and Hexekioh. — w.ir- fir*t with Syrians, than with ■ : ins, resulting in [sjraal'a ten tribes1 destruction. Hezekiiili to Judah'i captivity by the ■iii.in-. ; after preriona partial ring from t!.' .- under Pharaoh N'ch'i. Meanwhile there had b maritan countries a mixt people ; h • thi n. half not. New Tkstamfxt. -! A I 1. From Christ to didth of John the BVungelitt. — Conflict of the Church with the Jews, under the N. T. Mo- ses. 2 Death of St. John to Constant ine.— Persecutions of Pagan Home. ■iistniit ine to Justinian. — Persian oppression of the Charon; Schism of the Greek Church from the Latin. 1. Justinian to Charlemagne, Persian persecutions; Ssncena overran snd desolate the Greek Church and na- tion. ."> Gharlemagnt to thr time note ]»■<■- tent The Greek Church now se- parated ban the Soman. German Bnpamn ban Henry the 1st 'men ■WSBS th in heathens) endeavour to destroy the libortin of the Church. The Latin or Roman Empire an- swers to Babylon. ' 1 Lea: to 10. . - 1. i Leal b Hee p. 891, Not. - i .mil •, infra. 388 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [aPP. PART I. 6. Jetcs' return to Malacki's death. — Babjfbn overthrown by the Per- sians. Jews suffer from Assyrians under Ilolofernes, and Syro-Mace- doniana under Antiochus.' 7. Malachi to John the Baptist and Christ. World's Jirst state ends. 6. Times just about beginning, in whieh the Roman Babylon (or Babylon of the Roman empire) will be struck to death. 7. End of the second state in the world's conversion and sabbath.2 "Apertio sexti sigilli," he concludes, "nuper initiata, in paucis annis vel diebus consurnmationera accipiet. Exinde erit sabbatum, sicut in diebus Johannis : 3 et in eo status iste secundus consurnma- tionera accipiet. Ut autem in tempore sexti signaculi percussa est vetus Babylon, ita et nunc percutietur nova. Et sicut tunc Assyrii et Macedones deterruerunt Judseos, ita et nunc Saraceni, et qui post eos venturi sunt pseudo-propheta?, facient mala multa in terra, et talem tribulationem qualis non fuit ab initio. Consummatis autem pressuris istis adveniet tempus beatum : " — a time when " the know- ledge of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.,'4 Other chapters are on "the Dragon and Antichrist;" " De duplici intelligentia distinctionis ; " " Pulchrum mysterium ; " " On the dif- ference of sabbaths ; " " On the perfection of the numbers five and seven," &c, not now needful to enter on. Let me only in passing call attention to the heading of one ; " De vita activa designate in Petro, et de contemplativa in Joanne.'''' 5 On various occasions this view of Peter as type of the priestly order, John of the monastic, is put forward by Joachim. In proceeding I omit noticing the Part i. of Joachim's Comment- ary,6 relative to the Epistles to the seven Churches, as not to my point : and pass on to its Part ii.,7 Leaf 114, where it enters on the subject of the Seals : observing^ as we pass on, that he explains the four Cherubim around the throne to signify the four ecclesiastical orders of pastors, deacons, doctors, and the contemplatives : 8 or, with a certain reference to chronological succession, first, the apostles ; second, the martyrs and confessors ; third, the doctors of the 4th and 5th centuries ; fourth, the virgins or monks.9 ■ An evident anachronism ; as it was not till long after Malachi that the Syro-Mace- donians opprest the Jews. But (L. 8) he calls Human a Macedonian. 2 At Leaf 9-, he allows two generations, or some 60 years, from A. D. 1200, as the in- terval of transition from the second to the third state. I shall have to remark after- wards on certain inconsistencies and obscurities in his statements about his 6th and 7th Periods. J What sabbath in St. John's days ? 4 Leaf 9*. 5 Leaf 17'-'. 6 From L. 262 to L. 99. 7 Extending from L. 99 to L. 123. ' B So L. 106, on Apoc. iv. 6. * So on the opening of the four first successive Seals, L. 114 — 116. ME, i\ PKOM vn. L100TOTH1 UrOBM LTXOD <-l<> LICK) to I'll 1: SI loini \ HON ./ ui.-hiui Abbot.) '-''r>\ Babylon; eoce enim appropinoual desolatio tua; a ssoculii predicts est. . . . Nnv>si' ot «-u i iii ut 111 wzto recipias quod in quinto tempore coDtulisti." lint who or what is Babylon? Whoever by moral or physical influence opposes the Charch of Peter.1 Specially he in- oludes here all false Christians or false members of the Roman Church in the Germanic Roman Empire; those princes inclusive who an- to tear tin- Harlot, as stated in Apoe. wn., ;nnl ulin BTC aftcr- wards openly to tiurht with the Lamb: M I psi enim reges <|ui per- enssnri sint Eormcariam, ut entundent ropCrflciem terra', pugnaturi sunt com Agno ; el Agnus rincet illos." 2 This dcty of judgment, lie is to be understood in a larger sense, as well as stricter: the large for a certain indefinite period of judgment ; as Paul, " Us on whom the ends of the world are come:"3 a stricter, when the just shall rise to eternal life, the wicked to eternal punishment. — Here the earthquake is the earthquake of terror in the hearts of men : the sun and moon darkened, the spiritual eclipse of Christian doctrine, as set forth both by the monastic and the clerical orders: (of which, as even now almost commencing, fearful Symptoms appear:) the heaven passing air, ni. the passing away of the light-dispensing Church, so as that there he no more public preaching: (though some will still exhort in t :) just as it is said in Apoe. xiii., "that none might buy or sell." i. e. none offer (professedly) the priceless gospel, but they that had the Beast'fl mark. The islands ami mountains fleeing rt/m// menus the dissolution of episcopal churches and monasteries. The kings of the ear'h noted are the same that in Apoc. xix. are seen to gather List the Lamb; being God's instruments, bad though they be, for purging the Lord's threshing-floor of its chaff" in the mvstie Bahy- lon. At which time many thousands will fall in martyrdom, to complete the martyr-number, as intimated in the fifth Seal.4 — Then, Babylon having thus been judged, the Mahommedan nations (joined by false prophets apostatized from Christianity) 1 " Quicnmque Petri ecclesiara moribus viribusque impugnant, Babylonis se filios (ontn-riUM tut." 117'. ; On Apoe. xvii. Joachim mnrc fully explain! himself about Babylon, and the Beast, and the kings that loved the harlot j the latter iii'duding wicked anti-papal pr I Q i. priaeea Babylon, it must always be remembered, is roppeaed iiv Joachim to mean the Western fi taj so to include what be caVa ./'/< the true Bimilth Church, within it. Iiut see the CoMBeSt "n that Chapter. ■ 11H. :h<- ( 'oniment on Apoc. xvii. 392 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. will prophesy triumph to their law. But the Lamb shall conquer them. Sealing Vision. — The four angels here are the same evil angels as those that (Ps. lxxvii.) once afflicted Egypt ; and which use infidel nations that surround the Church as their agents : judicially permitted to withhold the life-giving influences of the winds ; i. e. of the preaching of spiritual doctrine. (Or, if good angels, they may signify the four preaching orders, judicially withholding the word, under God's direc- tion ; like as in Amos viii., and in the rain-withholding of the two witnesses.) The sealing angel is either Christ, risen from the dead, and having the name of the living God as the Divine Author of life : or perhaps the Roman Pontiff, charged like Zerubbabel of old to re- build Jerusalem and the temple ; Christ acting and triumphing in him, "maxiuie cum ipse solus principaliter teneat locum ejus."1 — "Whichever it be, he will arise as with the influence of the morning sun ; at which the wild beasts, or adverse powers of darkness, will get them away to their dens (Ps. civ.), while he preaches with certain evidence the near resurrection of the dead : — that so, in this breath- ing-time between the two last tribulations, the faithful ones may be prepared with the armour of light, to resist in the evil day ; to com- plete the mystic number of the elect 144,000, including both converted Jews and Gentiles (these being the same that are again mentioned in Apoc. xiv., and figured too in the 144 cubits of the Holy City,) and to fight the remainder of the battle, under the Lamb and his followers, with the Beast and kings of the earth. — The interval will be like the six years after the return from Babylon, in which the Temple's rebuilding was completed. — Besides which 144,000, an in- numerable number will be killed for Christ's name, whose blessed- ness is declared in the palm-bearing vision ; a blessedness partly in this world, where they begin the ascription of praise to God the Saviour, and lasting afterwards through eternity : the angels (here meaning all the elect ones 2) crying, Amen ! Their serving him alike day and night in his temple, means serving him in times alike of joy and sorrow, in his Church ;3 for no temple appeared in the New Je- 1 120*. 2 " Omnes angeli in hoc loco omnes illi electi homines intelligent sunt; qui, etsi non sint enumerati inter quinque ordines qui specialius pertinent ad civitatem, perti- nent tamen ad suburbana et vicos." L. 1212. 5 " Non quidem post fincm seculi, cum cessabit servitus et nox doloris ; sed in omni PIE. IT .1 PBOMA.D. L100 TO TH1 i;i:i <>i:\i ation . [Jonrhiut Abbot.) 393 rasalem; nor is servitude known in beaven. Ami bo at length they reach heaven afterwards; when they drink of the fountain <>t' life in his presence, where there are no tears. 7/7/ Seal. As in Luke xxiii. it is said that " the women rested (silurrunf) on the Sabbath according to commandment," so the half- hour's silrncr of this seal may mean the sabbath-keeping, especially in ■ contemplative life. So in Ps. lxxxiv., " I will be silent to hear what the Lord God may say concerning ine." — In the corresponding a?ra under the Old Testament, viz. after Ezra and Malachi, there was a cessation too from writing Scripture. So under the coming 7th Seal the time of expounding Scripture will be ended : the mysteries of the Old Testament being solved " per concordiam ;" or manifest concord, I suppose, with those of the New Testament dispensation. (Did Joa- chim believe the prophetic Expositor's office closed in himself'/') — He adds ; " The half-hour specified I deem to be the seventh and last half time of the 3 -J- prophetic times, whether literally or mystically under- stood." ' Part III. — With the Trumpets Joachim makes the chronology of the Visions to retrogress to the commencement of the Gospel dis- pensation : the seven Trumpet- Angels being New Testament preach- ers, appointed to raise their voice like a trumpet; just as Israel's trumpet-priests round Jericho. With what those priests did in one week we may compare what has been done in the sixth age of the world : the world being fated to fall, together with Antichrist, on the completion of seven times from Christ's birth ; which seven times are all included under the world's sixth age.2 The incense-Angel is explained as Christ, after his death and ascension, offering (together with the saints) the prayers of his peo- ple ;3 then sending down fire of the Holy Spirit on the apostles, and all others of spiritual understanding. Whereupon, like the thunder- tempore isto quo persevcrat editicium tcmpli, ct ignis purgatorius aliquantos affligit." 122*. i L. 123. * " Notandum quod non corrucrunt muri Jerico, nisi in scptimo, yel post septimum circuitum, ct quasi in consummation diei. Corapletis septcm temporibus ah incarna- tionc Domini, cum rami Antichristi ruet paritcr pnesens mundus. . . Etcnim septcm ilia tempore sub sexti continental n-tatc." L. 124, 1 Christ is the one mediator between God and man, says Joachim distinctly ; ju--t as says the Scriptures. Hut not, he presently adds, the only intrm-xsor. KUr " (In- cipitur (quod absit) ct err.it univcrsa ecclosia i qu;e quotidie sanctorum luffingia OOtt- fidentcr expostulat." (!) 134*. B94 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART T. mga and voices in vision, the voice of the Gospel sounded forth to the world ; and a movement of men's hearts and souls resulted, like to the earthquake. — This stated, Joachim next proceeds to expound the Trumpets. Trumpet 1. — The Trumpet-Angel here is the Apostolic band, and chiefly St. Paul, preaching against Judaism the spirituality of the law ; while the hail, mixed with fire and blood, cast on the earth, sig- nifies the spirit of hardness of heart, mixed with fiery and bloody zeal, infused into the Jews : x the result being that a third of professedly believing Jews (the vain carnal-minded of them) apostatized from the faith to Judaism or heresy. Trumpet 2. — This Trumpet- Angel signifies the Martyrs and Doc- tors of the post-apostolic age, preaching against the Nicolaitan heresy : Nicolaus with the zeal of his hot malice, who taught doctrines like those of Balak, being like a burning mountain cast into the sea of G-entilism ; through which a third were caused to die from the faith. Trumpet 3. — The third Trumpet- Angel symbolizes the Christian Doctors from the time of Constantine. The falling meteor was Arius : whose pestiferous error fell on bishops and priests, from whom should flow forth streams of wisdom ; and embittered the waters, Scripture being now perverted by them. — Which Arian error, and Arian persecution too, continued till the time of the Saracens.2 Trumpet 4. — The Trumpet- Angel in this case typifies the Holy Monks and Virgins : who, like celestial luminaries, walking in the high pathway of contemplation, gave light to the world ; but were in a large measure quenched by the outburst of the licentious Ma- hometan heresy, and of the Saracens. The Woe-denouncing Angel that next followed, I think, says Joa- chim, to have signified Pope Gregory I : who wrote so much, and so earnestly, on the world's end as near at hand, and the coming trials of the consummation.3 If his predictions were not fulfilled, the failure arose, not from Gregory's having been deceived, but from God's mercy in withholding judgment, and prolonging the time of probation. Trumpet 5. — " And who the scorpion-locusts of this Trumpet but 1 " Facta est grando duritioe, mixta cum igne zeli, et cruore odii, et missa est in cor Synagogae, semper terrena quoerens." 127*. " 129!. J Such, the reader may remember, is in part my own explanation of the vision. It is interesting to rind it suggested so early. But, so viewing it, how could Joachim place the Saracens, as he does, before, not after, the woe-denouncing angel ? rr.it. i\. pbom ah. 1 1 do to tii i BBP0BK4TIOS [Joaohm Abbot.) 898 the heretics commonly culled I'ttthnrriii^ the modern Manichces ?" S.i Joachim expounds the s\ DDOl. It is notahlc as ahont t In- earliest application o( such Apocah pt ic emhlems by Komish writers to anti- K cnish schismatics. And here, let me ohservc, .loachim gives the current account of these heretics (the commingled Waldenses and Cathari apparently) jtist.no doubt, B8 it had reached him: nor can I pass on without briefly sketching it, as being a testimony hitherto unnoticed. He tells then that they believed all ho&ei and jlesh to have been created by the Devil.'2 and Christ not to have come in the flesh ; condemned lawful marriages, and enjoined abstinence from eating flesh :3 though plausibly professing all the while to be the holders and teachers of the apostolic faith :4 that they tired a simple life, supported by their own labour; and made great pretence to purity and righteousness;5 yet, when meeting at night in their synagogues, did there the deeds of darkness :6 that their origin was of ancient date, beyond known re- cord:7 that they were divided into believers and perfect men; the latter alone bound to observe their stricter rules of life:8 that they were bent on proselyting;9 using, or rather abusing, Scripture (like the lamblike-horned false Prophet) for the purpose;10 affirming that the poor man, on joining them, became instantly rich;" arguing from their own simpler and more primitively Christian life, in con- trast with that of the Catholic clergy : 12 that in doing this they made light of the risk incurred ; even as if they despised the present life, 1 130". So A.D. 1179, in the third vear of the Latcran Council : " Hx*rcticorum q uos alii Catharos, alii 1'atarinos, alii Publicano* vocant." Also, in A.D. \\^'-'<. 1 * « ■ j ■• - Lucius III.. '• Imprimis Catharos, et PatarinOS, ct eos qui se Iluiniliatos, vcl l'auperes de Lugduno, falso nomine mentiuntur : " Hard. vi. ii. 1683, 1878. and again the Letter of Innocent III, A.D. 1199, which has been referred to by DM Vol. ii. pp. 3o4, 126; " Quosdam qui Valdenses, Cathari, et J'ntnini dicuntur." * " Omnia corpora," 130-'; " omnein camera," 133. s 13J-. * 131. — " Verbis verisimilibus : " " Ha:c quasi rationabiliter coneinantes. 131, 182. * "Justitia pr.editos." 131. Compare what I have said of the heretics examined at the Council of Arras, early in the 11th century, in ray Vol. ii. p. 276. * " Nocturno. ut J'ertur, tempore." 1302. T " Diu est n BOO ennfuta fuit sreta ilia : licet nesciamus ii quo fuerit inchoata vel aucta." 1 31-. Hence the 5 mouths, or loO years, assigned to the locusts figuring them. Compare my remarks <>n this point Vol. ii. pp. 3.57, 381 impart what is said in my Vol. ii. p. .'i'.tS, of the twofold division of the Walaeiuee into the Perfect*, and the general b: :':.e Y. ■ n *:::. SrT':-rs ■ :'r::u :':.r <;■.:::■• and fiom the North oarage nations north of German y : ail which, until the sixth Trumpet-blast, eontinne bound in, or by, the great ~zrz: Z ..; iriTr? :: 1. -. ..:. e~; z :-. :.z. e r.; :- :r.:r'.iri : : ': r J, ; . - wark to the Church. But when the sixth Yial has been poured out, nil :'-■: Z .;__-..:--:. -a,:^. Z".~i .:: . :i:i :'..v-.- y ~-r? :.:r : :...'. :z. Rmmr, the proud city, the mystic Babylon. (Would that it may take warning!) A prelude to which has been seen recently in the case of its Emperor Frederic : who (in 1189) crossed the sea with multi- tudes: but returned (in 1191) with a mere remnant, nothing done.* — 7_r L.--.:±;f -r-iii ::' :i~ =711: ;1 iii« -~ :..-.~ . zz. L.:r.r :z~.~ fbrce ; the serpent-tails, secret poison ; whereby (the numbers being •-.vr^-.iT.rZ- :if rz-r-j — Zl 7:Zi L:zz.zz^z^ : -er z'z.r : ; :.j. z>z.z 'zj - r- -rz:= - — -: :: : -en :Z zz.z'z. -.- Zir ?: _1 7:i.Z;~ :Zr:Lrr .-_::-_::.:-r? the identity of these powers, especially the Saracen, with the ten toes of Daniel's image: as also with the ten horns of the Beast: or ten kings in Apoc xviL, that are to tear and desolate the harlot city Borne.3 — Aii ir Zt r~.~ :Zl: _t ii z.:~. :■: t :.. : zz'z.' — z- -zz.: :: Z:-_-i in thus a second time supposing the Saracen power to be an actor on :::•:::: :~ :ir ■::"_ ^ ~t_ i.? .:: : '.- i:i T:- :■:: :r::._-r :'_t Z-i.-: « Z^iT lr:ii :_: :ir. Z:r: -.-z^.: : :-r ir^i :t.t 1 :...,_ :.? .:? „l?: „r^_ :: Z — .:■?- t~_: :"iiz. :rZrf. In Apoc ix. 30 a notice having been added of men's general non- :-:-:-,:..: -Jr.+z zz.-. : '.._• .t- Z: ~r-~rz.r.: zi-i. ir. i :: :lr- -;:>_.-- ping «t«i««* and idols. Ac,4 there is given in Apoc x. a vision of i~ i^rr! ::' Zn:. --::: :: ;i_::;-t :i- rrfi".:- t-rZr-r zz.r Li-: iz: _-- - •- zzr. .._:. z. :ir rZ : r-eirj; :i-« LZr^i :: s.Z-^:::^. i:: :_r Ht i.r. ::: :: :.- zzzz-i—Z-z" izz.z--i-~z But who meant by tkit Arnqtl? Doubtless some eminent preacher, .1 :-t -; _:\: i:_: t :—: ::I_.Z :: -;: !::■:: ..„-^:.: irj-i-r-i;- ? * Ibid. s im Joachim. " Sed fate ctiat • .:-:: -■:.-- — -J--- ' et mta " as the fceaShen :- - --- PER. iv." from a.D. 110U TO THE reformation. {Joachim Abbas.) 399 from heaven to earth, i. e. from the contemplative to the active life: the iris about his head indicating his spiritual intelligence ; his face like the sun, the communication of the lisjht of spiritual intelligence ; his feet M pillars of fire, the firmness of his tread (through recog- nition of their concord1) in either Testament, Old or Xew, the land or deeper sea : as also his shedding forth lustre on either : his lion- like voice being a cry directed against the infidels remaining ; and the aw thunders the accordant answering voices of doctors inspired by the seven spirits of God : voices sealed however from the carnal ; as says the apostle, " The natural man understandeth not the things of the Spirit of God," and Christ, '; Cast not your pearls before swine ;" though the book of Scripture wiU be still opened to all. The Ansel's oath indicates that it will be one part of the answering preacher's mission to proclaim the last time, and day of judgment, as near at hand : though till the event it must remain uncertain, as Augustine says.2 how long may be the last day spoken of in Scripture, or in what order the details of judgment ; save only that the judgment must begin, and that speedily, at the house of God ; and that the subsequent " time being no more." means the ending of the trouble- some times of the world in the final sabbath : 3 which warning erv. however, the children of this world will not hear; but saw ■ "Where is the promise of his coming ? "4 In the charge " Go'take the Book and eat it,"1 John is the repre- sentative of the monastic order ; b as Peter elsewhere of the clerical. And, the latter being almost efiete and worn out,6 it will be the spe- cial office of the former, when enlightened by the spiritual expo- 1 " Quid in pedibus ejus, qui erant quasi columna ignis, nisi sensum concordur duorum Testamentorum .'" 137". 13$. This, concurrently with what he savs of the Angel being a great preacher, descending from the contemplative to the active life, makes me think that Joachim regarded himself as mainly the Angel intended : one grand point of his views being the concord of the Old and New Testament ; as stated -upra. • In tine mundi, vel circa ipsum finem. has res didicimus affururas : — Helvam Tesbyten venturum, fidem JudEcorum, Antichristum persecuturum, Christum judica- turum. mortuorum resurrectionem, bonorum malorumque discretionem, mundi con- flagrationem, ejusdemque renovationem. Qua? omnia quidem ventura esse credendum -od quibus modis, et quo ordine veniant, magis tunc docebit rerum expen quim nunc ad perfectum hominum intclligentia valet" Quoted by Joachim, L. 140. " L « 139«. 1 141*1 14S . his designatis in Joanne." So too in Joachim's Introductorv Book, 17*, &c. • " De hac serotina prsedicatione, quam facturos est ordo ille querv. Joannes, consummato jam pent Mo ordine quern siynijicat Petrus. \.c." 400 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. sitions of the messengers of truth, to preach the Gospel of the com- ing kingdom. — This will be the third preaching course opposed by the enemy : the other two being that by Moses, and that by Christ and his apostles.1 Apoc. xi. 1 ; " And there was given me a reed like a rod ; and the Angel said, Rise and measure the temple, &c." The holy city here mentioned means (not Jerusalem and the Jewish synagogues, nor yet the Greek Church and empire, which are rather Samaria, but) the holy Roman Church and empire, " tota Latinitas : "2 the temple sym- bolizing the ecclesiastical order, generally; the altar, specially the consistory of cardinals.3 To this Church was the promise given, " Thou art Peter, and on this rock, &c. ;" while the Greek Church, be- cause of its schism from the Universal Shepherd, and not being under the apostolic reed or discipline, is but like the temple's outer court, which is cast out and given to the Gentiles. Already we see this in great part fulfilled ; the Saracens having widely laid waste the Greek churches. And it must be desolated yet more;4 just as the ten schismatic tribes of Israel were in Old Testament times wasted, and carried captive, by the Assyrians.5 — And, adds Joachim, (here more fully stating his view of the judgments coming on Rome and the Pope- dom, which views, already hinted under the sixth Trumpet, will occur again at Apoc. xiii. and xvii., and call for the reader's special notice,) because of the Latin Church not repenting, but adding sin to sin, therefore the Gentiles, after desolating the Greek or outer court, are also to tread for 42 months the holy city, or Latin Church and Em- pire : 6 — the so defined period being identical with the 3| times of the reign of Daniel's little horn, or eleventh king.1 1 Ibid. 2 Ibid. Compare what I have observed on Lateinos, as the name and number of the Beast, "Vol. iii. pp. 252, 253. 3 1422. 4 On the capture of Constantinople, and overthrow of the Greek Empire by the Turks, whom Joachim and others regarded as very much identified with the Saracens, this exposition of Joachim's might naturally be recalled to mind, as if then having its fulfilment. 5 Compare again the Concord of the Old and New Testament ; as noted by me p. 387 supra, from Joachim's Introductory Book. e At L. 143, 145, Joachim distinguishes between the being given to the Gentiles, so as was the Greek Church, and the trodden down, which was to be the punishment of the Latin ; the latter being still, " in respect of faith, a virgin." 7 Under the 11th king, says Joachim, (L. 145',) or as a contemporary with him, I think, there is to rise also the king of fierce countenance told of in Dan. viii. 23 : — the two combining in persecuting the Church, as did Pilate and Herod : the one, like Pilate, a Gentile chief ; the other, like Herod, a heretic. At L. 143 Joachim draws out a curious analogy between the Jews, Greeks, and PIB. IT.] PBOM \ D. 1100 TO TBI tlFORMATION. {Jooekm JtibtU.) 101 On the Apocah/ptic Witnesses there arise, says .Joachim, tin- t\\<> questions; l. Who the two f ~. Whether to be taken penonoJhf or Ji./uiuiUvtl-/ .' On tin* prima ty <|iirst ion lie states the general patris- tie opinion t hat they were to be Bnocfa and Elias; hut. with defer* enoe, oxproaooa bia own opinion that they meant rather Motet* and Elias: — the same that appeared together at Christ's transli juration, and whom what is said in the Apocalypt ie sketch of the Witnesses better suits: \ i/.. their turning the waters into blood, which M did. oonjointlj with other plagues in Egypt; and inducing a drought of 8] yean, which did Elias. — As to the second question, he quotes Jerome, Baying, when asked about Enoch and Elias, the then supposed Witnesses to come, "that all the Apocalypse was to be apiritwilh/ understood : because otherwise Judaic fables would have to be acquiesced in; such as the rebuilding of Jerusalem, and re- newal in its temple of carnal ceremonies. "2 Whence, argues Joa- chim, we must suppose that Jerome only expected two individuals, or perhaps two spiritual orders, to come in the spirit and power of Enoch and Elias, so as did John the Baptist previously ; to preach, and have the fight with Antichrist.3 — On the whole the leaning of Joa- chim's mind seems to be to Jerome's view ; and that the spiritual or figurative signification was to be attached to the indicated witnesses, .'/ tee and Elias ; the two orders of clerics and monks being perhaps thereby intended: (the latter by Eliot who was unmarried:4) some Latins on the one hand, and on the other Mary Magdalene, John, and Peter, BUC- pulchre : — Mary Magdalene first approaching it, while jrerl dark, (so a- tip- ./- tot are in the dark,) and reporting to John anil Peter John, who was to become episcopal head of the Greek metropolitan city, Ephesus, next ap- proaching it, but not entering in; until after Peter, the future Bishop and head of the Latin Chnreh, hid tir-t entered. Bo, ultimately, the Greeks are to be recovered from their schism and In n-y ; and to join the Latin or true Church of Christ and r. L. 143 — 111. 1 Whoee death i- not recorded, adds Joachim, like other deaths ; it being said that none knows his sepulchre. ■ tine Jerome, at my p. .118 supra. i Joachim mentions another thing itated by Jerome, as both his own and an earlier patristic notion Bnoeh and Bliaa; \iz. that in their not dying theee two « • p typic il "t thoee th it at the conrammation are not to die, hut only to in- changed at Christ*! ooming. Hut how could they i»- moll a type, mtlmiis Joachim, if thej ■ !%• yet persona//'/ to ronfli. t with Antiehri-t, and die in the oonflid i I.. 1 is. 1 HP Hence the probability that, if these two were meant in the Apqcalyji-e, it wai only in a figurative sense. 4 ■• m,,., , (tjui itor popnli Israel ; Helyaa \ir tolitarina oon li il fili<>- ant Dxorem. Ille ergo dgnifloat ordinem clericorum ; iste ordinem mona rum." 148s. vi. i.. iv. 2G 402 IIISTOUY OP APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. individual preacher having also previously appeared, as in Apoc. x., or some spiritual preaching order, answering to Enoch : which three he further identifies ' with the three angels flying in mid-heaven with gospel-voice and warning cry, before the fall of Babylon, described in Apoc. xiv. — At the same time, when coming to the notice of the 42 months of the prophesying, he enunciates both as regards the Apoca- lyptic Witnesses, and the Beast also that they are to conflict with, a larger and more general explication, as well as the more special : " the 42 months in which they are to preach, clothed in sackcloth, signifying so many generations of the cleric and monastic witnessing orders ; " 2 i. e. according to his own explanation elsewhere,3 on the year-day principle, 1260 years. During all which time, says he, the Gentiles andantichristian unbelievers, even till Antichrist, are to tread the Holy City ; though but partially, and not so as under Antichrist proper: — just as we have already seen the outer court (or Greek Church) many years trodden by them.4 — The Witnesses' shutting heaven during the time of their prophesying is to be understood figura- tively ; so as in Isaiah, " Make the heart of this people fat, &c-," and, " I will command the clouds that they rain no rain on my vineyard : " also the fire evoked by them from heaven, of the powrer of the Spirit in their words to confound their adversaries.6 Their being said to stand before the Lord of the whole earth, may mean before Daniel's little horn, or xith King ; (just as Moses and Aaron stood before Pha- raoh ;) seeing that he, as Prince of the world, is to reign for 3} times, in judgment on the sins of men. Or, if Christ be meant as the Lord of the whole earth, their standing before him may indicate that in the time of their witnessing (or at least before its conclusion) Christ is to appear in that character, and to take to himself this earth's 1 L. 1472. 2 " Quadraginta duo menses, quibus proedicant induti saccis, significant tot idem generationes ; quibus (et verbis et exemplis) clamant dicentes, Penitentiaru agite; ap- propinquavit cnim regnum ccclorum." 14S2. 3 Viz. on the Jive months of the scorpion locusts. See p. 396 supra. Hence no doubt, in part, and from Joachim's notice about the two generations from A.D. 1200, noted p. 388, the Benedictine Editor of Bernard draws his inference ; '• Abbas Joachim existimabat Antichristum intra sexaginta annos a suo tempore ad futurum. Vix.it autem circa annum 1200." (Vol. i. p. 846. Paris 1839.) Besides that elsewhere, viz. in his Lib. Concord, ii. 16, and v. 118, Joachim writes, " Accepto haud dubie die pro anno, et 1200 diebus pro totidem annis." So Brit. Mag. xvi. 370, 371, referred to by Todd and Harrison, Warb. Lect. 432. I have not observed any more direct expression of opinion to that effect elsewhere in Joachim's Apocalyptic Commentary. 4 L. 1482. > L. 149. it. k. i\ peom ld. UOfl torai ufobvatiok. ( Jbwekm dhbai.) MM dominion: as it is said in I'salm ii. S, "I will give thee the heathen for th v inheritance, .-ml utter bkjv4 parti of the earth for a pom ■Oft." ' •" And tcheH they shall have eo»i/>tetr,l thrir t est i mom/, the Urns', \r." I'.v this Beast (as will 1).' a^-iin stated on Ajwic. xiii. and wii.) there seems to be meant "the unbelieving mult it ml ■ that wrivin persecute the Church, from Christ's death down to Antichrist inclu- sive : " the same as the fourth Beast of Daniel.- Which Heist, to- wards the end of his reign,1 (false prophets assisting.) will both hv fraud and force make war upon the two witness-leaders, and the body of the saints, too. more generally -. • first however indicting a death- blow on the Babylon (or Beaten) power resisting him.5 — As to the place o{' their slaughter it Blight be the literal Jerusalem, were the two \\ ltnessesto be slain two men literally. Against this, however, stands the fact that .Jerusalem is never called the great city, so as Nineveh or Babylon.6 Therefore we may rather understand generally by the phrase the kingdom of this world; the body of the citizens of which have had part in slaying the saiuts, and in spirit participated in Christ's crucifixion: also by the witnesses slain, all the preachers of truth.7 At the same time, if the prophecy is meant tpeeudly about two individual witnesses, the city mag be (though still not necessa- rily so) the literal Jerusalem; Daniel's 11th king having then pro- claimed himself saviour of the Jewish people, and led them hack to Jerusalem. — As to the 3| >/ays of the witnesses lying dead, the mean- ing i> affbeted by the same considerations. If the witnesses be two bodies or successions of men, and the l'J(">0 d"//s of their prophesying be meant typically of the whole time from Christ to the cousumma- i Ibid. ! L. 149k Bee Joachim on Apoc. ix., p. "!>7 supra. Bin m n _rni mi factum eat pneliom contra1 lanctoa." IfiO. * " Praenntflnu cos [aanctoe) duobus viris qui aint dueei eornm." ibid. • MPriui dabit nporam raaiateateea sibi iiutiua pereutere Bubylonem; etpostea ira (ornn coi.timuu i.e RUB." ibid. 4 Ibid. — Jar. w.i B| WM • ithir overlooked by .loachim, or con-idercd inapplicable. Anil, if the latter, not without : • my Vol. ii. p. 186. It ia BCVec to !>,• fbrgettea m this point that the kpocelypee baa itaalf noal axpveaely defined "the ■ " in it tii mi an t'. El •/ RotlU : and to mppoga any < it her ijiiit dit! ryto ba alao intended in it by thai iel£aame appellative ia to rapp '> oii.m confusion. : IfiO, l"'ii-. Joachim thus observes on the adverb ir/n-rr ; ('• irhrrr also their I. or I ■ i- ( rm - i r i • il ; " "!!•« tdvaihUun wbi plerumque in drrini pagiai Mn tam 1- ei situm, (|uam aut populum qui aliqundo t'uit in loco, nut populi eju-ihin limHitwdi- ncin rignai." WO*. MM EI8T0BT OF APOCALYPTIC INTKKPRETATION. [APP. PAUT f. tion, (already in Joachim's time near 1260 yearn,)' then the 3.V dags must mean some lesser time, after which the kingdom under the whole heaven is to be given to the saints. But if they be two indi- viduals, and the larger specification of time is to be taken literally, then there must be meant the two literal witnesses' literal resurrec- tion at the brief literal interval of S\ days : though not the general resurrection of the dead, which is to be not till the end of the world.' He speaks of a large gathering of people, on the occasion, and to the place : and says that in the earthquake following, the tenth part of the city (the holy city or Church) which fell meant those clerics who, though professedly in Rome, are yet really infidels, belonging to An- tichrist ; and who will then openly apostatize from the faith : also that the seven thousand are laymen deceived by these clerics of Antichrist's faction, and who will also similarly apostatize. But if Enoch (or perhaps Moses) and Elias are thus to come in the third state before the consummation, how need we to watch and beware, lest any enemy come saying, " We are Enoch and Elias," and deceive many ! Because it is as clear as the light that a Beast with two horns like a lamb is to come ; symbolizing false prophets, such as Christ bids us to beware of.2 Trumpet 7. — Now the mystery hidden in the Old Testament, from Moses to John the Baptist, will be consummated. — The great voices in heaven are preachers of that aera in the Church, announcing and rejoicing over the coming'good ; the 24 typical elders representing the union of all prelates in the song.3 — The time of the dead being judged is that of the Beast and False Prophet being cast into the lake of fire ; Antichrist and his fellows being specially meant in the corrupters of the earth then to be exterminated : 4 at which Jtime will begin the third or sabbath state ; 5 corresponding, perhaps, with 1 Ibid. ■ 148. About the False Prophet see p. 408 infra. s 152. 4 " Ad Antiehristum et socios ejus referendum est ; quod, sicut praeter solitum cor- rupturi sunt terram, ita praeter solitum exterminabuntur de terra." He compares this, and makes it parallel, with Zechariah's prophecy : " I will gather all nations ; and I will pour out my spirit on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and supplication ; . . and I will take |away the false prophet from the land." 153. * " Ad tempus illud referendum est in quo Bestia et Pseudo-propheta mittentur in stagnum ignis ardcns sulphure ; et ad tertium station mundi, qui erit in sabbatum et quietem : in quo, exterminate prius corruptoribus terra;, regnaturus est populus sanc- torum Altissimi ; quousquc induti novis corporibus, et pacto judicio generali, ascendant simul cum Domino suo ad paratum sibi regnum ab origiue mundi." 1522. I'l.u. l\. PBOM \.l>. II'1" i" nil 1:1 i OEM b I IOH ( ■ I,,„rh'uii Ahbai.) LOB A.poa w i. "1 nw thrones, &c:"' until the saints in the nes bodies ascend to inherit the kingdom prepared for them. 1 think, adds Joachim, thai there will elapse bul ■ brief interval between the sixth trumpet's sounding and the seventh's.1 Past IV. Apoc rii. -The travailing Womanhaee figured, Joachim makes to mean las Church generally; but specially that Church of hermits and virgins, the children of which are the 1H,000 of Apoe. \iv. : this Church answering to the prototype of the Virgin .Mary, •• Queen of heaven ; " being clothed with Christ the Sun of righteous- ness, trampling on all sublunary glory, and bearing the crown of the twelve virtues/' Of the Bgnred Dragon, or T)evil, the hodi/ are the multitudes of the reprobate; the Dragon's seven heads, the seven chief Church-persecut- ing successive kings of the reprobate ;4 his ten horns, ten kings that have yet to reign ;5 his tail, the last antichristian tyrant at the end'of the world ; (he third part (said of the stars drawn by the tail), the same third as in the four first Trumpets.6 The Apostolic Church having brought forth Christ, its male child, lie said. u Who is my mother? Are not these? ")7 the Devil tried to kill him ; but he rose, and ascended into heaven. — In the lir.-t battle of martyrs ensuing, Michael, the invisible protector of the Church, acted chiefly through Peter and his successors;8 the in- visible Dragon through the Dragon's two first heads, Herod and Nero. This great battle may seem to have ended in the days of Constantine. And so the Apocalyptic song of exultation is to be referred to that emperor's time, when the saints then surviving wrere crowned with 1 " l'uto autiin quod mox, ubi complcta fuerit passio sanctorum, incipict Septimus Angclu> exaltaxa rooem mam ; oetendena jam omnino conrammata ease myeteria rcgni Dei tpparentibaa aignii in tola at lun.i at itellii (Luke xxi.) ; ...xu mpe at quod die- turn est in hoc loco, ' JJ li hi/his mart unr a in ,' m 'Mptima parte liujus libri scriptuin ; ' Yid: i' runt mi pi r aaa, . • Bt ri.gna\erunt euni C'hristu.' " iSfJP, i Ibid. ' L. I'd, 164*, \ ■'>■'>. ;.ti in capita -• pli-m Mint imnuna tyrannorum qui sibi pcr>cqucndo e< ( ill ~i.nu per t< mpora moeaawmnt." \N ho the kin^ maanl " in imunl hnjni libri nrffiaenter .. u 166*. Joachim thu« dNtiuk.'ui-ht M tin- Dragon's sr\ en lieads from the Beast's: — "Capita i.oii populi, intelbgendi rant ; oapita rera Bettia populi, non n - ibid. J Joachim notes the fact of the diadems being distinctively on the ten horns in tin - ease. ibid. B M rapri. ' 157. " 168*. lb< s.mii mistical seuseJoachim (ibid.) make-, to attach to Michael in Dan. Ml. 1. 406 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. glory.1 — Thereupon the Devil, (cast down to the earth, or into the hearts of the earthly-minded,) persecuted the woman by means of the Arian heretics and heresy ; - and she fled to a life of retirement and contemplation: the two wings helping her being wisdom and the love of God ; the time of her sojourning in the wilderness (like Elias' 3£ years of seclusion) being 42 mouths, or 12GO days ; i. e. the whole time of the Dragon, and that in which all mysteries are to have their consummation; the water cast out of his mouth against her being Arian heresies and persecutors.3 — The Dragon' & first war having thus been against Christ and his apostles, the second against the early martyrs under Pagan Rome, and third against the confessors against Arian- ism, his fourth was to be against those that were given to contempla" tion, psalms, and prayer.4 Apoc. xiii. — The Beast here figured is a compound and combination, says Joachim, of Daniel's four Beasts. — In Daniel the first Beast was the Jewish Antichristian body ; the second the Roman Pagans ; the third the Arians; the fourth the Saracens: the first resembling a lion, with two wings, answering to the Pharisees and Sadducees ; the second a bear ; the third a leopard, with four heads ; (signifying the Arian Greeks, Goths, Vandals, and Lombards;) the fourth very ter- rible, and having ten horns.5 All which bestial resemblances were united in this Apocalyptic Beast; and which had similarly also seven heads in all, and ten horns. — How terrible Daniel' $ fourth, or Sara- cenic, is told by its desolation of the churches in Syria, Palestine Egypt, Africa, Mauritania, and the islands of the sea; where Christ's name is abolished, and Mahomet acknowledged as the prophet of God.6 Besides that the other Beasts submitted after a while to the Christian Church : but this, though once humbled and apparently dead, has revived, and is as terrible as ever. The ten horns with dia- dems are ten kings yet to be, at that closing time of the calamitous 1 L. 160. The reader will do well to mark Joachim's adoption of Constantine's own historical explanation of this part of the vision. So, very much, Eusehius, as we saw p. 311 supra ; Andreas, p. 3G1, and Anselm, p. 384. 2 160-. Still I conceive Joachim is on the right track. 3 161, 1612. 4 162. * 1622, 163. — One might be curious to know how Joachim satisfied himself in not applying to Daniel's four Beasts, (signifying as they did the world's four great em- pires,) the inspired explanation of the parallel four parts of the symbolic image, pre- viously exhibited : as these were also to signify the four great empires, destined to rule successively till the consummation. — Joachim's solution is quite original. 6 " Alas indeed ! " adds Joachim, " if Antichrist, when he appears, shall do as much evil as this Mahomet, his precursor and preparer ! " 1632. pan. it.] kkom \.\k linn ro mi; 1 1 i : " Qothi at Vandali ct Longo. Rardi ct alii Ari.uii herctici partim dclcti sunt ab excrcitu Romano, partim td Catho- Li .mi tnlcin con\ir~i." lo.;-', 104-'. With winch compare my notice of the three horns plucked up by the Papa] Autichri-t, in my Vol. iii. p. 167. 1 He tall* ol si^ns and prodigies accompanying. " Anno etcnim 10*.>.5 (ut fertur) in- aanutfonil DnminiWB, signum in ipparuit admirandum ; Itallai scilicet inuumir.K cin 'iimi|iie • 1 i — « urn-re, et vehit in inoiluin avium aereas Wffil'tM pcrvagari." Quo pnaoadanta signo, ad axhartatioaaaa QibaaJ Pape, fte." la my Edition it is nlv by mi*tak>-. • 166. 4 lb. Compare the report of whit Joachim >ii.l t-i kin,' Richard on this point, as given p. 119 intra, from R>_"r 'ar H'.i">. KM my p. 897,) 0» peihapa 1200, tha failure iii main ratal tl of the Bnglith and French kini;'* expeditious. * Ibid. IDs HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART 1. 42 months, #■£ years, or 1260 days of duration, taken generically, with reference to the " totius Bestiae universitatem," the length is stated as 1260 years in Joachim's Book De Concordia1 : l besides which there is to be a final paroxysm of the Beast's persecution for 3£ years literally.2 The second Beast, says Joachim, is plainly explained by John him- self to signify a false prophet, or pseudo-prophetic sect or body ; 3 the two horns being not improbably, he adds, Satan's counterfeits of the Enoch and Elias that are expected : just as Antichrist will be his counterfeit for Christ. Hence the double danger of receiving the counterfeit as true, rejecting the true as counterfeit ! " "What if Enoch and Elias were to knock at thy door to-morrow ? "4 — It would seem that these false prophets will issue out of the bosom of the Church ; knowing and speaking the Christians' language, and so more powerful to deceive.5 These may confederate with the former Beast, Daniel's eleventh Horn, and make the earth worship it : as Simon Magus confederated with the Pagan Nero against Christianity, the Jews with the Romans, and Arians with the secular emperors ; or as the Pathareni, " the dregs of heretics," now sustain themselves through worldly potentates.6 And so soon as " the new Babylon " (i. e. Borne) 7 shall have been given into the hand of the Beast to be desolated, and Daniel's eleventh king (the last of these kings) have begun to reign in the Saracen kingdom,8 then the false prophets may seize the occasion of making an alliance with the Gentile king ; and preach up his religion as true, the Christian as false.9 — But why two Beasts ? Because, as Christ is both anointed king and priest, so Satan may put forth the first Beast to usurp his kingship, the second to usurp his priestly dignity : the latter having at its head some 1 1652. " Qualiter anni isti ad totius Bestiae universitatem pertineant in opere Concordia? dictum est." " Accepto haud dubie die pro anno, et 1260 diebus pro totidem annis." So Joachim's Liber Concordia?, 2. c. 16, and 5. c. 118: a passage cited by Dr. Todd on Antichrist, p. 458, from a Paper in the British Magazine ; and here expressly referred to by Joachim. I have already at p. 402 noted this. 2 1652. 3 1662, 167. 4 1662, 1672. 5 1672. 6 " Pathareni, haereticorum fex, mundi potestatibus se tuetur." 1672. So Joachim, writing near the year 1200 A.D. It will interest the reader, I think, to compare my historical notices, Vol. ii. pp. 357, 403. 7 Or Rome's reprobates. See Joachim's explanation on Apoc. xvii. p. 412 infra. 8 " Tempore quo rex ille undecimus et ultimus in regno Saracenorum regnaturus est." 1672. 9 167-. Joachim suggests the resemblance of this second Apocalyptic Beast to the earth-born goat's little horn in Dan. viii. ; whereas the^rs^ Apocalyptic Beast is to be resembled to the little horn of the sea- originating fourth Beast of Dan. vii. l'l K. 1\. P10M VI'. L100 to III!. Ill I (iKM \ I K.N. <.I,utcltim AUnlS ) i09 mighty prelntr, some I'/iiri/sa/ Po/i/i/K as it were. 000? f&S /'•/'"/'" world; who may be the very AnHehritt, of whom -st. Paul speak being extolled above :ill that is called God and worshipped ; sitting m the temple Of Gfod, ami showing himself as God.1 This may ho while making use o( the strength of the first Beasl for Ins purposes. — Other doctors regard the tirst Beast, or Daniel's eleventh king, and al>>» lioL,'. as Atttiehrist : which I, says .Joachim, regard as thus tar true, because there are. as St. John says, many Ant iehrists 5 ami what may be wanting of fulfilment in the one, maj be supplied in another.3 The Betut'l image Joachim makes to mean " some tradition com- ji >sed by false prophets in memory of the first Beast,"'' saying that tins is the kingdom that is to endure for ever ; some expression, I suppose he means, of the Beast's mind, profession, and doctrine.4 Its receiving breath and speaking is when the malignant spirit shall do miracles by it. The character to be impressed is some edict of his commands ■:' the sellers and buyers that must bear it, preachers and hearers. — The name and number GGG, said to be "the number of a man,"6 is mysterious. " We must wait and know the name, before speculating as to the number ; which name however is not revealed." This premised, Joachim proceeds to a passing speculation on the sub- ject, as fanciful surely as any of the speculations of his predecessors. The number GGG may be fitly typical, he says, of the whole time from Adam to the end of the world. For GOO may represent the six ages of the world, or whole time of the Beast; GO the six periods of the 1 I must give the original of this remarkable passage, 168. " Sci verisimile videtai quod, -ii ut BeetM ilia qua asccndct de mari habitura eft quendani magnum regem de ma, qui hit similis Neronis, et quad bnpemtor totius arbu, ita Beetia qua; ascendet do terra habitura -.it gWflflToHl mafftltm I' r> latum, qui >it nmilu Sy moras t-t qua>i titivirsalis Po/ttifez in toto orbe tcrrarum ; et ipse sit il/e Anti- christ tu de quo dicit I'aulus, Quod extollitur, etc." — -so Bernard thought the Anti- christ might be an Anti-Pope; and Theodoret, much earlier, said that the Antichrist iv rrj uocXqertf apiraati t»ji» trpotopnai/. See my Vol. i. p. 394 ; iii. p. 99. 1 108. * " Aliqua specialis traditio, quam component pscudo-prophetrc in menioriam ipsius B; dicentcs hoc esse regnum illud quod mansurum est in eturuum." ibid. Bo . •' Imago lignificat niij|iai](lissiiu;uii tr.iditiunriu ijiMiis." ' At IV-, on me cI.ium- on ApOO. IT., " I M>K the conquerors over the 1 J. . image," Joachim thus Ttli I planatiou ; " In imagine doitrina Bel designatur." 1 " Quid per characterem, nisi aliquod scriptum, vel edictum, preceptorum ipeioa." 168*. * Some Latin codices for" numerum huminis," read " numerum nomini.i," Joachim tells us. 410 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. sixth age from Christ, in which the Beast has more grievously per- srruted the Church of God; 6 the time (42 months) of Daniel's eleventh king, or little horn, in which the persecution is to be con- summated.— This however he admits to he speculation. "Expectanda usque ad tempus revelatio hujus nominis ; et tunc ei qui habet in- tellectuin licebit numerum computare."1 Apoc. xiv. — xvi. I must hasten over these intervening chapters, to resume and complete the abstract of Joachim's views on the Apo- calyptic Beast, as again described in Apoc. xvii., and the Babylon connected with it. — The 144,000 on Mount Zion he expounds as the monks and virgins of the Church, opposed to those that had the Beast's mark ; and who in the fourth period have to sustain the chief burden of the conflict against the Saracenic Beast : 2 — the first of the three Angels flying in mid-heaven as identical either with the woe-denounc- ing eagle of Apoc. viii. 13, (i. e. " the holy Pope Gregory I, whose voice of warning of God's coming judgment was just before the false prophet Mahomet's deceptions,"3) or the Angel-prophet with the little book of Apoc. x. 1 ; the other two with the Witnesses of Apoc. xi. re- spectively ; 4 the voice of the first synchronizing with the opening of the 5th Seal, and 5th period ; the other two with the opening of the 6th :6 the last (perhaps the two last) sounding after the destruction of Babylon by the Beast and ten kings ; 6 and when, the Boman Christian Empire having thus fallen, they will be hoping to destroy Christ's name from oft" the face of the earth.7 — The voice, " Blessed are the dead, for they rest, &c," intimates the glorious sabbath awaiting both those who, after the completion of the sufferings of Christ's body in the sixth period, shall then reign with Christ ; and those too who, Antichrist having fallen, shall remain on earth in this life until the last day :8 in which day at length will be the harvest of the good, and the vintage-treading of the bad. ' Ibid. 2 So on Apoc. vii. See p. 392, supra. The Beast here meant, of the Church's 4th period, he defines as the Saracenic Beast previous to the healing of the deadly wound ; and so under his last head but one. 170. s 173. See p. 394 supra. * So p. 402 supra. 5 See Joachim's Scheme of the Seals, p. 388 supra. 8 Joachim must have remembered that the Witnesses are to be slain in the street of the great city Babylon. How then, it may be asked, prophesy against the Beast alter Babylon's destruction ? — But in that verse about the Witnesses he inconsistently explains the great city as the empire of this world. 7 1732. * " Adjunctum est de rcquie subbati : quod nimirum, ut sexta. die passus est Donii- FBI. l\ PBOll ah. lllMiToTiii tirOKMATIOK. (JaagJWss jjbbeu.) ill 9 .1 oaehim comes lo hii Putt \ .. ami t.i the rials of math poured out by the seven Vial Angeb :' which, though y/xriiil/i/ called the letf plagues, j et had reference totheaanae mx or aeren periods, and same evils, that were before noted under the Seals' and Trumpet-' septenaries; with this ditl'ereiiee however, they were now de- pleted distinctly as etl'usions of (iod's jealousy and wrath against those who Buffered from them.1 of these Vials the firal was poured OO .ludai/ers. who worshipped the Beast under his first head of Herod and the Jewish synagogue: the 12nd on the Gentile Church's re- creants from the Christian faith before Constantine : the 3rd on the Arian hishops and teachers after Constantine: the 4th on the hypo- critical o[' the contemplative orders: the 5th on false ones in the Clergy and Conventuals, who, though they ought to be God's seat, haw yet yielded themselves to be the seat of the Beast:3 the Oth on the Roman State or Empire, as being the New Testament Babylon ; the drying up of its Euphrates figuring the weakening of its strength, through God's just judgment, SO SS to disable it from resisting the kinurs from the East that are to come and desolate it.4 — After which its desolation that "Wicked One " is to be revealed, of whom Paul speaks ; the three spirits like frogs, next figured, being meant of him nus, sabbato autcm requicvit a luboribus suis, ita in sexto tempore (ut saepe jam dictum est) complebitur passio oorporii Christi : et erit post hue sabbatum gloriosum : seu in illis qui jam rccnabunt cum ( hristo ; sen in his qui, Antii riristo ruente, rcmaue- bunt rapex terrain, mansaii in hac vita pro Telle Dei, quousque complcatur illud tempus quod vocatum est novi-aimus dies. In quo novissimo die, consuniiuatis uni- t laborious sanctorum, quid jam nisi messis et vendi'inia restat I " 175. The above is important as bearing on Joachim's millennial view's. Compare the Note ' p. 40.5 ; also p. 388 supra. 1 It i- in be observed with reference to these angels, that Joachim, like Andreas and others before him, had in his Latin Version the curious reading, " vestiti lapide innndo ;"' airreeahly with the Greek reading \«tW, instead of \ii>oi>, in Apoc. xv. 6; and which like them he explains of Christ, the rock: (so L. 1842:) also that he ex- plained the oi rurtMrrw, in xv. 2, of those that neeived no other doctrine than that of ■ inin Church, and who were thus triumphant over the Beast. (L. 183.) 1 Along and obeeare itieqntairioa precedes Joachim's comment on the viids, with r ferenoe to the reaaoni and objects of Ood'i outpouring of hie jealousy. So from 177 Co 1*J. It springs not from hatred on his part against those who suffer from them ; but from desire of, and with ■ view to, their conversion, l • 1S(j-'. • Joachim in his explanation refers this 0th vial specially to the iiuiiiilmii, or Christian profnssfng men of the w.irid tritlmut the inner sanctuary of the Church " quatenus inchoato tempore M ECS, -• utiant saltern satfSTMM plagnm, i|uam iiitus, pro •ansa • . grarierii plagei raJnere sentirs nan sirssant "— TTmi doseiiptim ■ from t)i< I ,-r/we/, Joachim distinctly explains as to lie taken ft'fei ally. 190s. The suhjeet is referred SO Bgan in his Comment on Apoc. wii. 16, " ten horns shall hate her," A:e. .~s.ee L. Vj'j-. 412 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. and his associates. — And then who can tell how soon Christ may come ? " Behold I come as a thief." — Finally, by the air on which the 7th Yial is poured out, there is meant that spiritual Church which will remain after the judgment on Babylon; a judgment by which it will be cleansed, and made meet for the bridal.' — So Joachim comes to the vision of the Harlot and Beast in Apoc. xvii. Paet VI. Apoc. xvii. — The Angel-revealer of this vision is the 6th Vial- Angel ; the 6th period, current at the time referred to, being the time of its right understanding.2 By the harlot he meant Borne : — not indeed the Church of the just that sojourn in Borne, but rather the multitude of Bome's reprobate or opposing members ; the harlot's place moreover being not in one province or kingdom, but over the whole area of the Christian empire.3 The kings of the earth that fornicate with her, Joachim makes to be bad prelates with the charge of souls :4 the Beast (as before) the infidel powers, in connexion with the Boman empire, that have persecuted the Church, from the apos- tolic age till now.5 Its seven successive heads are as follows : — 1. Herod and his successors' Judaic kingdom : 2. the Boman Pagan empire, to Diocletian inclusive : 3, 4, 5, and 6, the four Arian em- pires, Greek, Goth, Vandal, and Lombard : 7th, the Saracen or Ma- hommedan empire, now still existing. Besides which, says Joachim, seven Icings are mentioned : not as identical with the heads, but sim- ply thus, "And there are seven kings;" i. e. kings eminent among the persecutors. Which kings chronologically correspond with the seven periods of our sera ; though neither chronologically nor politi- cally correspondent with the seven heads : being 1. Herod ; 2. Nero ; 3. Constantius ; 4. Mahomet, or rather perhaps Chosroes ; 5. the German Emperor who first troubled the Church about investitures ; 6. Daniel's little horn, or eleventh king ; i. e. Saladin, the reigning Saracen or Turk, who has just taken Jerusalem.6 This is the " one that is;" (the 6th period of the Christian sera being the standard time present, used by the Angel in his statement ;) and under and ' " In aere spiritualis ilia ecclesia designatur, quas relinquetur velut munda seges ; excisis de terra tribulis, et cunctis rcliquiis Babylonis." 192*. 2 Joachim notes at the outset both the importance and plainness of the vision. " Qui nescit quod passura sit meretrix pro erroribus suis, de facili decipitur nutibus oculorum suorum." 194. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. * " Bestia significat universas gentes infideles quae aliquando subjectae fuerunt Romano imperio, et persecute sunt Christum, etecclesiam ejus." 196. 5 196'-, 197. 1MK. 1\ | IKoMA.n. 1 Kill I'll Till. IJI'I <>i;\| \ I |,,\ ,.J,„iehi}n Abhot.) L18 by whom the Boman Babylon is in be desolated. after which, alike the 8th king and 7th head haying perished, (the latter rounded onto death,) a brief respite will be granted for the faithful, then the lieast arise under its revived 7th, i. e. its Btb bead,' and the 7th king,1 to make one more persecution, and :it'ter it to perish for ever. With regard t<> the ten 4om»,or ten JHayt,thal have not yet received power, but receive it one hour after the Beast, there is a dillieultv : for, ac- cording to Daniel, it is while these ten are reigning that the eleventh if. to arise. Here however it is said, after the Beast ; not, after the CM king.3 — That the harlot city reigning over the kings of the earth, and to be spoiled by them, means Rome, is undoubted; this being told us not by other Fathers only, but Peter himself:4 but in the sense of including the members of its empire, not those within the city walls only. The comfort is, adds Joachim, that Jerusalem tarries in Babylon ;5 and that to it the promise is given, " Thou art Peter, 1 One of the seven, says Joaehim, as uniting all the errors of the seven. 196s. * Probably, say- Joachim, "sub nomine sexti regis alius surgcre intelligatur post alium : [qu. ilium t] quatcnus post ilium de quo (licit Joannes, Units est ;" (197:) i. e. Saladin. It is rather difficult to understand Joachim's meaning. Probably Joachim was puzzled by his mistaken reading of "post bestiam ; " referred to in my next Note. * "post Bestiam." — So Joachim reads. An, evident mistake in the Latin transla- tion : M the Greek is not una to Oripiov, but /xiTa tov dtipiov. 4 Referring to 1 Peter v. 13; "The Church which is in Babylon;" meaning, it was understood, Rome. 198. 1 " In hoc verbo ['the Chunk which is in Babylon'] consolatio non Bodies fact, est populo qui vocatur Rotnanu- : quandoquidem in ipsa urbc qua; vocatur Babylon peregrinatur eiritea Jerusalem." 198. A writer in the British Magazine for 1839 strongly marks this distinction in Joachim. Joachim's plan, say- he, was the ultra-Gueltic plan of regenerating society by means of the l'op< . ir, and the monastic orders; with Bupersee- sion of all the Church-meddling power of the Roman or German emperors, (the dyptie Babylon,) and of the secular clcrtry, who " fornicated with " or favoured it. — The remit was to be, adds this writer, "that Babylon, with the aid of many clerici, men of the expiring [2nd' St itus, WM to lay waste the courts of Jerusalem ; • ri-h by the hands of the Bestia Patarena and of Antichrist ; and . remnant of the Clerici. OS Church secular, perish likewise: but a remnant of the eremitic order t«i survive all tribulation, and reign with the Holy Ghost in the Srd status." Todd,p 166. [nthi nipieaaiim Bettia Patharena, and its identifica- tion with Antichrist, the writer sucmi to me incorrect. See on Apoc. xvii. The writer in the B. M. further obeorTCS that Joachim and the Joachites spoke of mij-fi/.s, or nn/sti'iis, IMpubliem, in contradistinction to the^nit- chrittux perns. The (onner he sappoaed to b<: not one Antichrist or Pseudo-propheta, but many ■■'. born, and which "was destined to subvert the Babylonian empire, pal forth ten boms, afflict the church during 56J jean of the tn tioni of the period of transition . [or time of the end 1 then at last, •• regnantibus boa illis, singulis In snis lods," to put forth its bom of blasphemy, being the nth kiiiL.'. and ItUtt hn Todd. 161. The writer refers to a Commentary of Joaehim on Jeremiah, a> well as that on the Apocalypse. The 414 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [aPP. PART I. &c. :" so that it is only the sons of Babylon, within the Roman Cliurch and empire, to whom the doom belong.1 So loug as the waters she sits on remain, the kings cannot prevail against her. But when her Euphrates is dried up, then they will attack her ;2 God having put it into the hearts of these " exteri reges " to give their kingdoms to the Beast, or ruling chief of the Beast, on seciug his success against the subjects of the Roman empire : the result of which alliance will be the tearing and spoliation of Roman Christendom, together with persecutions of Christians and Christianity ; whence a general apos- tasy, though not without some faithful martyrs. In Apoc. xviii. the Icings of the earth that wail over Babylon are wicked, prelates : thejire spoken of, that of the eternal punishment of her reprobate members, of which the temporal is but a pledge ; the merchandise, that of ecclesiastical functions, bought or bartered by priests for money.3 — The song of exultation on the fall of Babylon, given in Apoc. xix., Joachim expounds as the song of the Church on earth ; escaped out of, and freed from, the New Testament Babylon : a song which he compares with that of the Jews restored with Ezra from the ancient Babylon ; and " such as had been never heard in the Church since the days of Constantine." * Its two subjects of con- gratulation are " the destruction of the Harlot, and the liberty of the Church:" and alike converted Jews, ("for then the Jewish people will be converted to the Lord,") and Greeks too and Latins will join in it ; crying " Hosanna ! Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." 5 The song of the twenty-four elders, &c, is explained to include the answering Alleluia in heaven, as well as of the earthly ec- clesiastical orders symbolized by the four living creatures, for the former, which I have not seen, supplies what is wanting in the Apocalyptic Comment to the completeness of this view. The writer adds, however; " Whether the ten- horned empire was the Bestia itself, still future, or a future form and predicament of a Beast which had long existed, is a point on which the Abbot of Flore does not express himself with perfect consistency." Ibid. 1 198. — Joachim here speaks of some that rested on Benedict's words, quoted by Pope Gregory I ; " Rome shall not perish by the assaults of kings ; but by earth- quakes, &c." This however, says he, had reference to the Gothic kings then attacking Rome. 2 1972. He refers to the 6th Vial. ' He exemplifies in those who refused to impart the divine sacraments, intrusted to thorn "pro salute vivorum et mortuorum," " nisi aut accipiant aliquid, ant accipere sperent." 201. Also in those who " inhiant temporalibus lucris," and seek the favour of the rich; (199;) and altogether resemble Judas, who for thirty pieces of silver betrayed Christ. 2012. Compare Apoc. ix. 20 ; and my historic illustrations of ir, in reference to the time when Joachim wrote, Vol. ii. pp. 17 — 20. 4 203, 203*. ' 203*. IT. II. IV llidM All. 11O0 10 nil. I! 1. 1 i>KM \ II I '\ . i. /,-.', •// in Abbot.) ill liberation of the righteous, the oonvonion of the .lews, and bringing in ot'tlu' fulness of the Gentiles.1 Ami so, a. ids Joachim, will begin that kingdom for which we emit iniially pray, "Thy kingdom come."' — Oh bow good, says bo, will it I"' for us to be there: ("irist being i ur shepherd, king, meat, drink, light, life!8 But, after this so solemn ■ rejoicing, there remains yet another tribulation,1 depicted in the chapter following. Apoc. \i\. •" Ami 1 saw heaven opened, a ml hehohl a white horse, ami I saw the Beast, ami the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered to make war. A.,-." Parallel with this, Bays Joachim, is the prophecy in Zee*. \iv. 2 ; " 1 will gather all nations to Jerusi- lein to battle: and the Lord shall go forth and light against those nations." — Here is the Beast " which had been, and was not, and is to id from the oejfM and go into perdition r" i. e. the Beast under his last h
SO applied. Coni|);u-' - -. p, Ii88. * 211. idum aliquam sui partem incaroeratus fui rit D tempore quo su- j>.-r.i \ it i um Christui in die mortis suae ; secunddm viro\mi\ ipitum sun- rum, i \ ..i die, rel bora, qu Pseudo-propheta mittentur instagnum \% uii.il in partem incepit .il> illo sabbato quo n quievit Dominus u pulchro : secundum plenitndinem sui, a mind 1 leudo-Prophetaa." 211. * "Tunceritm , rminuserit inarbitrio Dei." 210*. "Quit quiim brere esse poterit sabbatnm ipsum i " ibid. j •■ !-• i !ri.i proBlia" (vi/. tli.it jring Babylon, or Rome, that of tl. ■ unb, and t. . the two first pre-sabbatical, the a fortaaaii rrunt vniiiii, ut [lie Homo Peccati possit omi interesse ; maxim At the : the healing of his deadly wound. 210*, 211. • I.. . T L. _ ?OL. IV. 418 HISTORY OF AI'oi'Al.i 1'TIC I NTK Ill'UETATION. [APP. PARTI. " The rest of the dead lived not till the 1000 years were ended," the saints are then to rise, and enter at onee on life eternal, without that terrihle ordeal of the judgment of the white throne which others must go through.1 But he admits dillieulties in the view ; and the need of waiting for further illustration. — As to Gog, he might very possibly be the Antichrist.2 The new heaven and new earth Joachim expounds to mean the final blissful state, when the tares shall have been gathered from the wheat, and the just shine as the sun in the kingdom of their Father ;3 — the new Jerusalem, on the other hand, to figure the Church even in. its earthly state, and from its first beginning at Christ's birth.4 So I conclude my abstract of Joachim ; an abstract which I have made at greater length and in more detail than any other, because of its peculiarity, importance, and interest.5 For the same reason I subjoin in a Note Roger de Hoveden's account6 of Joachim's Expo- 1 " Forte intelligamus sanctos protinus post resurrcctionem suam absque terribilis illius judicii examine, et absque intervallo dierum, intraturoa ad veram vitam ; caHeros vero non statim, sed post consummationem judicii." Ibid. Compare Joachim on Apoc. xix. 14, p. 416 supra - 213. H 2152. 4 " Non est referenda ista visio, et iste descensus, ad horam illam ultimam in qua manifesta eiit gloria Hierusalem ; sed ad tempus nativitatis ipsius (Christi)." Ibid. 5 Let me quote from Fleury a brief obituary sentence on this remarkable, and I trust sincere, though on many points deluded man. " Vers ce terns la mourut in Ca- labrie l'Abbe Joachim, fameux par ses propheties. II avait environ 72 ans quaud il tomba malade a Pietrafitta, pres de Coscnze ; ct mourut an milieu de trois Abbez et de plusieurs moines : a qu'il recommanda de s'aimer les uns les autrcs, comme Jesus Christ nous a aimez ; ce qu'il rcpeta plusieurs fois. II mourut le trenticme jour de Mars 1202; et son corps fut porte en son Abbayc a Flore." Fleury II. E. Liv. lxxv. chap. 41. 6 The interpretation of this vision according to Joachim, Abbot of Curacio, is as follows : — The woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, signifies the Holy Church covered and clothed with the Sun of Righteousness, which is Christ our God : under whose feet the world, with its vices and lusts, is ever to be trampled. " And upon her head a crown of twelve stars." Christ is the head of the Church : ner crown is the Catholic faith which was preached by the twelve apostles. " And bringing forth, she was in pain to be delivered." Thus the Holy Church, which is continually blest with new offspring, is in pain from day to day, that it may bring forth souls to God; whom Satan endeavours to snatch away, and draw down with himself to hell. " And behold a great red Dragon, having seven heads and ten horns." That Dragon signifies the Devil : who is well said to have seven heads ; for every wicked one is a head of the Devil. He puts seven as the finite for the infinite, for the heads of the Devil are infinite ; that is, the persecutors of the Church, and the wicked. Hut though they are infinite, nevertheless this Joachim in his exposition specified seven persecuting powers ; whose names are Herod, Nero, Constantius, Mahomet, Melsemut, Saladin., Antichrist. St. John also says in the Apocalypse ; " There are seven kings ; five have fallen, and one is, and one is not yet come : " which the same Joachim thus explains : There are seven kings, namely, Herod, Nero, Constantius, Mahomet, Melsemut, Saladin, Antichrist. Of these, five have fallen ; ir;; IV.] ROM A.n. L10Q i«> Mil; ui ITOBM I PIO* I 1 0 si: i. at of A |n ii*. xii. \iii., to OUT King Richard; wherein we shall be namely, Herod] Nero, Conatantiua, Mahomet, Bfeleemut : and one is ; namely, i ; who at tlii-* time opproem tin' church of Qod, and keeps poaeeaesra of it with the sepulchre of out Lord, end the holy city .1. roeelem, and the land En which tin- feel of »>n r Lord stood. Hut he shall In ■ ihorl time 1"-'' it. Than the kin:,' of England aakodj " When >.h:il 1 this be ?" To whom Joachim as- :. ■• Winn seven yean ihall have elapsed from the day of the taking of Jemaa> h'ui." " Then." said the king i>r England, "Why have we romo :ut.' sn M«m " •in Joaehim replied, "Your coming ia very nsoessaiy ; beeauM tin Lord will give you nctory orer hia enemiea, and wfl] exalt your oame above all the prinoea of the earth." It follows : " One of them ia not y,t come ; " namely, Antichrist. Concerning this Antiehriat the aame Joaehim says thai he ia already born in the city of Runic, nnd will be elevated to die Apoitolie tee. And concerning this Antiehriat the Apostle " ii ia i salted and placed in opposition, above all that is called Qod: " and "then -hall be revealed that wicked our, whom the Lord Jeans will .slay with the breath of hi- mouth, and destroy with the- brightness of his Mining." And the kiiiir turning to him said : " I thought that Antichrist would be horn in • 7i, or in Babylon, of the tribe of Dan ; and would reign in the temple of the Lord, which is in Jerusalem ; and would walk in that land in which Christ walked ; and would reign in it for three years anil a half : and would dispute against l.lijah and Enoch, and would kill tlutn ; and would afterwards die ; and that, after his death, God would give sixty days of repentance, in which those might repent who should have erred from the way of truth, and have been seduced by the preaching of Antichrist and his false prophi It follows ; " and ten horns." — The ten hornsof the Devil are heresies and schisms ; Jamatica set up in opposition to the ten commandments of the law, and the precepts of God. " And unto hi- head -even crowns." By crowns are of this world, who will believe on Antichrist. " And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven;" because of tie great multitude of men believing on him. "And cast them upon the earth." — lie calls the inferior . believe on Antiehriat star- ; and says, " the third part of the stars of I x multitude of men believing on him. " And cast them unto the earth : " — th I - all into hell, who shall continue to believe on him. '• Which stood before the worn in who was about to bring forth J that when she had . ht forth, he might devour her son." The Devil ia always practising against the Church; that he may seise her offspring, and di rour what he baa seized : and he is properly said to " stand ; " i. never declini s from his wickedness, but ala .\ - • still' in malice, and inflexible in the craft of his fraud. Or, in another - rnifiea the end of this world : in which certain wicked nations shall arise who are called <■ . and shall destroy the Church of God, and subvert the Christian race. And after that shall be the day of judgment. Andinthetim Antichrist many Christiana abiding in caverns of the earth, and in the solitude of the roek-. shall keep the Christian faith in the fear of the Lord, even until the destruction of Ant tie ia what he means when he aaya, " The woman fled unto the wilderness of Egypt, where she had a place prepared by God, that they should their .-" Bnt " her man-child, who should rule all nations with a rod of i- Christ: who, alter his passion and resurrection, .led into I:. - . it the right hand of God the Fath r Almighty, and shall : to judge the quick and the dead, and the world by fii ire, and persevere in the way of his commandmi .;i be 'lit up to meet him in tin- air, and shall be with him tor e And although lined this opinion concerning com; rtheleaa Walter, archbiahop of Rouen, ami Crirard, arch* i John of Worm-, ami Barnard, bishop of Bayoune, an i ecch d in the Scripts roared to p. kSO history OF A.POCALYPTIC INTEBPRETATION. [ APT. PABT r. enabled to compare his prophetic views in the year A.D. 1190 with those in A.D. 1 190 or 1200.1 Moreover, ou account of this its peculiarity and interest, I have thought it well worth the while to draw up, and append on the op- posite page, a Tabular Scheme representing it; though certainly no very easy task to me. This will, 1 think, much facilitate an acquaint- ance with it on the part of my more intelligent and inquisitive readers. although many plausible arguments were adduced on each side, the matter still remains undecided. Maitlaud's Translation, Letter to Digby, p. 70. 1 See Note ' p. 386, and Note 2 p. 338. Ere closing this notice of Joachim, let me recall to my readers' recollection his contemporary Pope Innocent Ill's interpretation of the Apocalyptic number 666, as signifying the time of the duration of Mahommedism ; an interpretation given by him A.!). 1214 to the 4th Council of Lateran, and which I have referred to in my Vol. iii. ]>. 257, on the Number of the Beast. It is as follows. " Post tempora Gregorii perditionis filius Maehomettus pseudopropheta surrcxit : cujus pcrfidia etsi usque ad ha?c tempora invaluerit, confidamus tamen in Domino qui jam fecit nobiscum signum in bonum, quod finis hujus bestiaa appropinquat : ' Cujus numerus,' secundum Apocalypsim, ' intra sexcenta sexaginta sex clauditur :' ex quibus jam poene sexcenti.sunt anni completi." Hard, vii. 3. And so too, as we saw ibid., Roger Bacon, referred to by Mr. Foster in his Ma- hommedanism Unveiled, 232. The agreement of this view of the coming future, chronologically, with that of Joachim will be evident ; and, no doubt, helped it on to a more general reception and belief. m. IV. PROM \.n. Il(,i' i<> Tin B1FOBMATION. ,.J<>,icliim Abbot.) 181 = § — > > « 1 •" - 5 •|..iil~ii\.iuii\.> 1M.I«, -papus £i "I " "l.W ... 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B e 3 sa s2g3 d f < - - > — _ X 00 422 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. The observant reader cannot but have remarked the novelty of many of Joachim's views; alike on some of the latter .Seals, Trum- pets, and Vials ; on the year-day construction of the 12G0 prophetic days of the AVoman and Witnesses ; and on the Dragon, Beast, Harlot, and Millennium : views not only conceived with much origin- ality of thought; but also propounded and urged with a measure of earnestness, and conviction of their truth, abundantly greater than had attached to any previous Apocalyptic Expositor, subsequent to the grand epoch of the Gothic overthrow of the Koman empire. — And could these new opinions on the Apocalypse, promulged thus publicly and earnestly by one so venerated as the Abbot Joachim, fail of exercising a marked influence on the subsequent interpretation of this wonderful prophecy ? In truth we find the effect marked and speedy. In the Romish Church itself, while some held mainly to the old generalizing views of Tichonius, Primasius, Ambrose Ansbert, Bede, and Haymo, — of which class Alberlus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, both of the xiiith century, were much the most illustrious — others, as Almeric, Pierre d' Olive, &c, quickly followed in the track of Joachim with yet bolder innovations. Moreover certain open dissidents from the Romish Church, despised nearly up to this time as contemptible heretics, began too to make their voice effect- ively sound forth, on two points at least in which Joachim had inno- vated ; a voice which, after one temporary suppression, has even to the present day never ceased. The fulness with which I have sketch- ed the views of the Tichonian commentators, makes it needless for me to enter at all prominently into others on the same principle : and I shall therefore content myself with placing a brief notice of the Apocalyptic views of Albertus Magnus, and of those of Thomas Aquinas, below.1 It is to these innovators just mentioned, whether 1 1. Albertus Mag it it; . The celebrity of this man is handed down to posterity in his surname, Albert the Great. He is spoken of by Mosheim as a man of vast abilities, and the literary dictator of his time. Born early in the thirteenth century, he was in 1260 made Bishop of Ratisbon; but soon retired again to the Dominican convent at Padua, of which he was Provincial : and, after a life spent in study, died there in 1281. His works are said to make up twenty-one folio volumes. His Treatise on the Apocalypse was printed separately at Basle in small 4to, in 1506 ; the edition which I now have in hand. His frequent reference to Ilaymo is stated in a commendatory Preface prefixed by one Bernard of Luxembourg, of the order of Preachers. " Same etiam in roborationem dictorum suoium allegans Haymonetn ; unum dc antiquioribus expositoribus Apoca- brpseoa : qui fuit inagister Karoli Magna, monachus Ordinia Sancti Benedicti." But i\.' A.D. 1 1" UFOKM LTION. I .i!'- /. M vithin atwMomt the Etomufa Church, that 1 vrishtodrswmi reader'i chief attention, in ali that remains ofthu present fourth Section. |ililr a- much, 1 tllink, ms tn II. i\ BO : al 0 Sometimes In MM <•' - to have been a oommentator oi oalebritj in the preeeding century ; and - Mom moreover to " ,' .. to DM m< noticeable in Albert's Apocalyptic Commentary. i'hc fyirtln h : i nave depicted the Church Universal, with reference to live chroaolqgioal periods : — via, 1. that of the apostles; 2. of the post-apostolic martyri to Constaatins ; 3. that of the Ariaa straggle, and struggle with other heretics, in the 4th and 6th centnriee ; l. that of the confessors and d afterwards, during whose time Mahomet introduced Ins heresy; ■">. that of still later time ^1 inppose i-ouuiu-.i'liu' bom Co. i during which the temporalities of hares, ware increased ; b. that of the time then prea at ; [" per banc signantur :ii ia nntilnwi;") 7. and lastly, that of the future time, apparently of Anti- christ.—In the second Epistle, to Smyrna, In like Bede), as an alternative explanation of the tern stays of tribulation spoken of, that it may have reference to the ten persecuting kings designated by the Beast's ten horns ; \iz. Nero, Domitian, i. Ajatonine, Severus, Maaiaoin, Uecins, Valerian, Aurelian, Dioeletian ; or per- haps to ■• the tiiui ■ of tea Popes [the ten perai cut) ii Popes, I presume] after Clement." As i pji neral view of the Stats, he cites and aoqaiesces in lifi\th being that <>f Antichrist's invasion. — In ApOC. \. the vision to Albert , to describe Christ's .i from heaves at his incarnation ; the seven thunders being the voic here, terrible from the denouncing of the seven-fold punishment of the lost, (viz. exclusion from the s untaf inheritance, and from the vision of God, &c. &c.,) understood by the good, sealed to intideU. — In A]>oc. xi. the temple means the Church ; the caitimj mi', the excommunication from it of false brethren. 1 I months are explained both of all the time of tile wicked trampling the Church, and especially of tli- Antichrist; the Knoch and . evidently Joachim, had lately saia Moses and Ehas;) the place of their slaughter as the literal Jerusalem, where ( hrist had been himself literally crucified, and would now be eruiiiied figuratively in his members; tl day* of their lying dead in the sen*- • Jther of :\\ years from after Antiehri on the year-day principle ; or more probably of 3| days alter their death. J— In a • V I, the Olossa Ordimaria, or earliest Latin ripture Comment, compiled by Walfrid Strabo, finally Abbot ol ELeichi nan, aaaonastery neea i, who died about A 1>. 860. lie was often called / bom having studied at the School at 1 ulda, soGi ■ « from his souinting.— The G bsterlinearis was compiled by ■ l.aon in the. 11th century. On which l)r. B. U. Maitland had to remark in hi- with the Morning Watch, p. JU. OnApocai.2 aa^n and alao an '' alia Glcaaa '* differing be former. t See pp. £48, 844 anpra. fr. C M. p 388 speaks of Albania having M even attempted to clear the l of the efaarge of eonnti a incing the yt nr-day principle," and of the " attack " i on it by him baring such effect that "it never again held up it- head " I s two notices o.i the point, that the re.uler may judge.— 1. '-Jhcit, / I 'I 1IISTOKY OP APOCALYPTIC [INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. Ami, in so doing, it will be with special reference to these two grand bermeneutic innovations which I alluded to as so important xii. the woman a explained as either the Church, or the Virgin Mary : the twelve stars of the coronet meaning, on the former hypothesis, the twelve apostles; on the latter, the twelve prerogatives of the blessed Virgin : while the Dragon's seven beads figure the seven evil spirits, and his ten horns tlie ten kings, as in ban. vii. — In Apoc. xiii. the Beast is Antichrist: (or possibly, as Haymo, the Devil:) the seven heads signifying all powers adhering to him ; or else the chiefs of iniquity from the begin- ning, Tain, Nimrod, the four empires, Antichrist. God's tabernacle, blasphemed by him, meant Christ's flesh, perhaps, in which dwelt the fulness of the Godhead bodily : (might not questions about transubstantiation have suggested themselves to Albert as he wrote this ?) or else Christ's saints. — The second Beast signified the preachers of Antichrist : the image of the Beast, a conformity to Antichrist, urged on men by the preachers; (" sic elicit Glossa et Haymo:") or perhaps a material image. The name and number 6(56, construed in Greek word-, might be, as Bede says, ai/Tifios or Ttnav : the latter as the sun of righteousness, which Antichrist would call himself : or perhaps, adds Albert, with the same idea, in Latin words, J)ic Lux ; in the sense " Die me esse Lucem." A conceit this last copied from Ansbert.* The seven Vials are described as the seven last plagues on the reprobate, in the time of Antichrist ; though the specification following might lead us to suppose a succession of plagues was meant from the earliest promulgation of Christianity : " In prima continetur damnatio Judajorum reproborum ; in secunda Gentilium repro- borum ; in tertia fuereticorum ; in quarts damnatio Antichristi ; in quintal suorum ministrorum ; in sextu falsorum Christianorum ; in septima damnatio dsemonum." — The great city Babylon is stated to mean that " vanitatis mundanae : " the seven mountains, all the proud : the seven kings, those of chief wickedness in the course of all time ; 1. those before the flood ; 2. those from Noe to Abraham ; 3. those from Abraham to Moses; 4. those from Moses to the Babylonish captivity; 5. those from that captivity to Christ ; 6. those from Christ to the time then present ; 7. Antichrist. dies : id est post 3^ annos post mortem Antichristi. Et sic sumitur dies pro anno : et sic intelligent illud de generali resurrectione. Sed probabilius videtur quod quarto die resurgunt a. sua interfectione, sicut alii exponunt." SoonApoc.xi.il. Then, 2ndly, at the end of Apoc. xi., in his notice of the " dubitabilia " of the chapter. " Tertio quaritur super illo verbo, post 3j dies. Glossa ; post 3j annos post mortem Antichristi. Contra, post eorum mortem non regnabit (Antichristus) tantum. Kesponsio : — Quarta die p6*st mortem resurgent. Et, quod objicitur de Glossa, dicen- dum quod 3.^ anni non computantur a morte eorum, nee a mortc Antichristi ; sed a principio suae praedicationis, vcl a tempore potestatis Antichristi. Sensus est Glossa?, post 3^ annos ab eorum pranlicatione, vel Antichristi potcstate, quae terminabitur in ejus morte." Thus my readers will see that Albert has not a word of objection against the year- day principle itself, as here applied ; or a word to clear the Gloss of countenancing it : but only answers a chronological objection, by first suggesting the literal explanation as more probable ; secondly suggesting a terminus it quo, with which the Gloss's year-day view would suit. Thus Albert admits in fact that the year-day explanation may he the right one. How far it be true that the year-day principle after this u attack " by Albert " never again raised its head," appears from the fact of the year-day view of the 3J days being advocated as an alternative by T. Aquinas and Lyranus, among others, in the two next generations after Albert, and also by Berengaud and Bemardine, as Mr. C. M. himself tabulates them all four, p. 271 : not to add the Jesuit Ah-asar, long afterwards. . I should observe that Mr. C. Maitland's representation as to T. Aquinas explaining the 3$ days as possibly 3£ years, is taken from an Apocalyptic Treatise generally ascribed to him, which I have not seen. * See p. 351 supra. i • t it. i\ reoM \i>. LIOOtothi eufokmatiom. (T.Aquinaa.) in Joachim's explanation; \i/.. 1. thai of the Apocalyptic Babylon being in ■ certain sense Papal Home; 2. thai of the predicted AhH- The Cm Aonit might mean either ten kingdoms into which thi Roman empire was to be divided in the time of Antichrist, or all the reprobate. On the iiu'l/i mnium Albert repeat* the old Auguatinian explication. The Vi i ti "i In- interpreti as a Bgnre of the tainta' glorified I. l'homas Auuinas. This angelic doctor of the Romish Church was a pupil i>t' Albertns bn1 r:m a shorter career than hia master: the date of his birth being 1224, of his death 1274. The soene of hia literary laboora and triumphs was Italy; chiefly Naples, where he His canonixation, or ;;h the recent Popish Editor and Annotator * of his work IntichrittOf-f which is the subject of my present notice, characteristically ex- presses it hi-< apoMeosis, was solemnized in L323. Whenoe a question as to the sup- : early date of the MS.; superscribed as it is us a work of St Thomas, But, it is, lr.s hune was such, that the Pope's act was anticipated by the public voice; mul the title taint attached to him even before the year 1300, per prolepain. His subject, Antichrist, leads him necessarily to speak of Apoc. xi., xiii., xvii., con- oerning the Apocalyptic Witru Mi », B tst, and Babylon. He begins by noting what is to precede the preaching of the two witnesses, Enoch and / a universal agitation of the people, as predicted by Christ, Luke x\i. '_'">, 26 ; a general religious hypocrisy, as predicted by St. Paul, 1 Tim. it. 1 ; and, agreeably with St. Paul's prophecy to the ThessalonianB, an «7rocnv I': imbulis ad Judicium. They are connected Treatises ; and were published at Rome, with the usual license, in 1S10. They contain each of them about 130 .) 1 old another extract from this Comment; one respecting the mystery of' iniquity, and its working at the time even when St. Pan] wrote. '1'. Aquinas says | iraliter occultatum opi ratur in Bctil qui videntur boni, et tamen sunt mali ; et hi operantur otticium Antichristi." Pretty nearly a Correct view I OOnCX IVO, On the of Antichrist's enthronizstion, spoken of by St. Paul, he offers the three it explanations of thi ./■ risk tempi* restored ; the Church; (to which latter he seems to incline ;) or i«v vaov taken in the sense " as a temple." \ Bee my Vol. ii p 4SI HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. christ's provable elevation to the throne of a Universal Pontiff', iu fact the Papal throne. The careful guards with which Joachim fenced erunt, ct contrndicendo iniquitati corum." — On their resurrection he dibcusscs the question whether they are bo to rue, like Lazarus, as to die again i and concludes in tlie negative : and, on the earthquake eonenrrent with their ascension, explains the tenth of the city that fell to mean many just that will then fall by the sword of the enraged Antichrist ; the 7000 being the number that never bowed their knees to him. Thus he regards the city here meant as the holy city Bpoken of Apoc. xi. 2 ; which, as well as the temple of Apoc. xi. 1, he interprets (p. 121) to signify the Church. Then, on Antichrist, he makes the literal Babylon his birth-place ; explaining what is said in Apoc. xvii. about Babylon " being drunk with the blood of the saints," Of the blood of saints killed in Old Testament times, before Christ's coming ; also, like Adso* (after Augustine f), tells of his being nourished in Chorazin and Beth* saida, and infused with the Magian philosophy of Babylon. The Beast's (or Anti- christ's) seven heads he makes all bad princes adhering to him ; the ten horns (like Andreas j) his anti-decalogic enmity. — The second Apocalyptic Beast he expounds, after Albert, to be Antichrist's false apostles and preachers : the two horns like a lamb indicating their (professedly) preaching Christ, holding Christian doctrine, and pro- fessing Christ's miracle-working power; but all in falsehood. <} " They will in fact exalt their head Antichrist, as we exalt Christ." He speaks (p. 87) of Antichrist making war with the saints, " per blandimciita et promissioncs et cxhortationes," and this even (p. 114) by urging the authority of Scripture, as well as by violence; repeats the old patristic notion that he will pretend to be Messiah to gain the Jews, and rebuild the temple at Jerusalem: also (p. 92) that, to gain the Gentiles, he will utter oracular statutes, answering to the Apocalyptic Beast's speaking image, and to Daniel's maozim. Elsewhere (p. 82) he adds Albert's explanation of the Beast's image, as meaning resemblance to him in heart. — He alludes to some of the Vials in the course of his argument. The 4th Vial poured out on the sun, (p. 104,) means poured out on Antichrist ; because Antichrist " se solem existimabit, et dicet mundunnillu- minatum per euin esse : ipse enim sibi usurpabit nomen veri solis, id est Christi." (I have elsewhere quoted this, viz. in my Vol. ii. p. 69, in illustration of the notable fulfilment in the Roman Popes of some of the chief Roman doctors' own declared anticipations about Antichrist.) Further, on the 6th Vial, he advances the extraor- dinary fancy, that by " the waters of the Euphrates being dried up" we are to under- stand the interdiction of the waters of baptism, in order thereby to a preparation of the way of Antichrist. The denounced going into captivity of those that send into captivity, &c, he explains of Antichrist's being sentenced to the prison of hell; so perishing by "the sword" of divine justice. (129.) I may add that in one place, (ii. 67,) he makes the scorpion-locusts' tormenting power in Apoc. ix., (elsewhere, i. 99, expounded of Antichrist's false preachers,) to signify the tormenting power of bad angels over the lost in hell ; so that these wretches shall " wish to die, and not be able." Finally, with reference to the consummation, he, like Bede and Albert, explains the half-hour's silence, in Apoc. viii. 1, of a certain respite-time of tranquillity for the gospel-preaching of the 7th trumpet, before the end of the world ; and with Bede too || * See the Note p, 370 supra. f In Matt. xi. J Sec p. 361 supra. $ " Doctrinam habebat similem doctrinae Agni, id est Christi, et miraculorum Agni similitudinem : sed veritatem coruuum Diaboli ; scilicet doctrinam fcetentem, et vir- tutem miraculorum phantasticam. Et inde aperitur falsitas Bestia;, i I' .1 \tickrist.A At the same time they proclaimed, agreeably with the predictions of Joachim, that the Third Age, the Age of the Holy makes it to pwhylf Daniel's last l"> days of the L836, following on Antichrist's reign duriiu' the 1290 : a tranquillity soon issuing in a general state of carnal security, as in 1 Th' as. r. 8. ' H the millennial bimding of Sattm he in one place (i. 119, 120) the old Auguetiniaa explanation, as having reference to time past, and commen- cing from Christ** mini bewhere (ii. 68) to apply it to a judgment! on the Devil " In illi tententift ultimi judicii praserunt executioni M mnea angeli, qui pneerunt mahs angelia ail torquendum : qui at w 1." It ma another Stop, in the track of Joachim Abbas, to the abandonment of the so longxeoeived millennial theory of Augustine. — Oaoemomthe Mass Jsmsalsm eyasftoJ mm state is ffrplainfd of the saints' heswaaly ;) and among the hallelujahs of praise attending its introduction (90;, Thomas Aquinas somewhat fancifully I on the music of the seven planetary rphen a, 1 Bee pp " 118 suprj. i Bee pp. 108, 109. ■ See pp I tpriL 1 •• Qu< a ic. I'e -tiam Antichristum, Apoo. xiii."» quidsen hasreticorum jam si qi tea dieunt omnea eonfoasores qui fuerunt in ecclesid .i tempore Silveatri damnatoa, et in inferno." — On which eays Aquinas' 128 II isrouv or APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PABT I. Spirit, a time of light ami reformation, had even then begun to dawn with the opening of the new liiith century : ' the rumour being also widely and Lnfluentially circulated by them, that the Franciscans, in their revival of preaching, were tbe fulfilment of the prefigurative Apocalyptic vision of the Angel flying abroad with the everlasting gospel, to preach to every nation under heaven.2 — Then, a few years later, Jean Pierre tV Olive, another professed follower of Joachim, and leader in Languedoc of the austerer and more spiritual section of the recently-formed Franciscan body, in a Work entitled Postils on the Apocalypse, affirmed that " the Church of Rome was the Whore of Babylon, the Mother of Harlots, the same that St. John beheld sit" ting upon a scarlet-coloured Beast, full of names of blasphemy, hav- ing seven heads and ten horns;"3 and the chief and proper Antichrist a pseudo-Pope : * also, very remarkably, that some reformation, with fuller effusion of gospel light, might probably be expected prior to Rome's final predicted destruction ; in order that, through its rejec- tion of that light, God's destruction of it might be the rather justi- fied before the world. de Ferrari : " Ex Amalrici discipulis erant isti ; qui dicebant Romam esse Bahylonem,* et Romanum Pontificem Antichristum ; sanctorum cultum idololatriara esse, &c." He refers for authority to Berti, Brev. Sec. xiii. : and adds ; " Ideo tempore Silvestri Papa, &c, quia ipse excommunicavit eos ;i quibus exulavit." Th. Aquin. De Anti- christo, i. 102. Mosheim states that Amalric was sometime Professor of Logic and Theology at Paris : that his disciples received with the utmost faith Joachim's predictions ; that he held sundry heretical opinions : and that his bones were dug up and publicly burnt in the year 1209. Mosh. xiii. 2. 5. 12, 13. ■ Mosh. ibid. * See my Vol. ii. p. 34. 3 So Mosheim xiii. 2. 2. 36. Vitringa, p. 1007, says, " Legi exeerpta intorpreta- tionis ejus Apocalypticae (i. e. P. Olivi) cum admiratione." He refers to Baluzius' Miscell. as containing it. — In his Section 54, selected for condemnation by the Papal inquisitors, I see the Apocalyptic Harlot is made to comprehend both Rome Pagan and Rome Papal. " The woman here stands for the people and empire of Rome, both as she existed formerly in a state of Paganism, and as she has since existed in the [profest] faith of Christ, though by many crimes committing fornication with this world." ap. Gieseler ii. 304. 4 " Quod Antichristus proprius et magnus erit Pseudo-Papa, caput Pseudo-Pro- phetarum." Gieseler ii. ibid. To whose abstract of Pierre d'Olive's 60 Articles I beg to refer the reader^ Pierre d'Olive died, according to Gieseler, A.D. 1297- * In this, I ought to observe, Amalric had for a supporter the Parisian " irrefraga- ble doctor" of the Schools himself, Alexander de Hales. (Died 1245.) In his Com- ment on Apoc. xvii. 2 he thus writes : — " The Franciscans dwelling on earth, that is, loving the things of earth, were made drunk, that is, were turned aside from their right path, by the wine of her corruption ; i. e. of the city of Rome, or of some pi-elates of the Church." Cited by Mr. C. Maitland, 338. I have not myself had an opportu- nity of consulting his Apocalyptic Commentary. [V.] \.1>. I I >>' I To I'll!. Ui'.l OHM \ I Ms. ,/•;/„ ,-h,ir,l. OrrminsX Tlu' satin- riew of Papa] Rome m echoed l»\ not ■ fen other profesl Romanists. An. I bo, however inoonsistenl these its prepa- re, u travelled down i h r. »u 14] i the riiith century ; t < > be stereo* typed in the rivth for all literary posterity, in Dante'e [nferno,1 and the Epistles o\' Petrarch.* — Horeover, near about the same time with Pierre d'Olive, by another professedly Romanist expositor, the usual strange oversight as to the predicted disruption of the old Woman empire into ten kingdoms having long before taken place was in a certain manner corrected. I allude to Wberhard, Bishop of Salz- burg: who, in the Council of Ratisbon, held A. I). L240, while declar- ing thai the Popes under a shepherd's skin concealed the wolf, and that llildehran 1. L70 years before, had laid the foundations of the Babylonian Empire of Antichrist. — declared also that the old Roman Empire had been long taken away from the earth, according to St. Paul's prophecy, the new Western Empire being but a name and shadow:3 and that there had risen in its place ten horns. "TuTCSB, (ira'ci. ASgyptii, At'ri. Ilis|iani, Qalli, Angli, Germain, Siculi, [tali;" and among, and over them, the Pontifical little horn, having eyea and ring great things."4 — Further, a, century or so later, another expositor, Oremius, in a Treatise about Antichrist, suggested with reference to "the great city " of the death of the Witnesses, "spirit- ually called Seldom and Egypt," that, though more probably Jeru- i. yet it might also verj possiblj he Papal Home ; and, as to the Antichrist's birth, that although Babylon, yet this might be mii in its figurative sense of Rome.5 ' Inferno, Canto xix. 106: — I>i mi paator 8*0600186 '1 Vangel Quando oolei chc riede lovra I'acque Pic ■ t regi a lui fa riata : Quel'a cli'' ("I. nacque, die
  • oe oorna ebbe argomento. Tbia with refen nee specially to tin- riimmy and avarice of the Popes ami , Church. On which says his Commentator, Pompeo Venturi; " Dante empiamente in- i nana 1 1 d rand ate in Etoma ; e, \>< r meglio dire-. /' - In hii ixth Bpiatle he calls the Papal Court the Babylonian Barlot, Mother of all idolatries and fornications. B * Avnitinus' Aiiii.il. Boiom. B. vii. ' M lect. Ampl. I borrow thi* from Mr. ('. Maitland, \>. ol7 ; aot q»t- ! . ! : 1 \ I ) I Of i.mistie A] re between T. Aquinas and the Reform- t A.D. 1317, (died 1310,) and Dionyiut CorthuaiatlUS ahout the middle of the 15th century. 430 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. 4. Meanwhile, in a different and purer channel, — I mean among the Wahlensian 8ekUmatic», or rather WaLdemsmn Witnesses for Christ, — the same idea, quite independently taken up, was never thenceforth forgotten ; and was thus transmitted downwards by them to the AVicklillites and Hussites of the xivth and xvth centuries. Already before Joachim had published his Apocalyptic Book, as it would seem, the Waldenses in their Noble Lesson had hinted that whereas the Antichrist was to come, " even then there were many Antichrists ; " Antichrist being explained by them, not in its peculiar and proper meaning, but as opposers of Christ.1 In 1207 we find the AValden- sian Arnold asserting and defending in a public disputation at Car- cassonne, the proposition that Rome was the Babylon and Harlot of the Apocalypse.2 About A.D. 1250 Reinerius tells us that this re- presentation of Papal Borne, and of the Pope being the head of all errors, was one of the Waldensian heresies : 3 and somewhat later, As regards the latter, I believe there was nothing very new or remarkable in his Apocalyptic view. — In Petrus Aureolus I infer from Mr. C. M.'s notice of him, p. 3 19, that the Saracens, Byzantine Emperors, and Turks, figured prominently among the Church's enemies, supposed to be Apocalyptically predicted. — But Lyranus' scheme was more peculiar, lie explained the prophecy as continuously historical, (without break even at the 7th Trumpet's sounding,) in reference to the history of Roman Christendom from the Apostolic sera to the time of the end. Thus the Seals run on to Diocletian's time : the 6th Seal figuring the terrors of Diocletian's persecution; the sealing vision, the saved Church's conversions under Constantine. The six Trwn- pets are the voices of Councils, or Church, against the chief successive heretics, Arius, Macedonius, Pelagius, Eutyches, Valens, and those of A.D. 493 in Italy and Greece ; the Angel of Apoc. x., the emperor Justin interposing with his little book of decrees in favour of Catholic truth ; the two witnesses, Pope Sylvester and the Bishop Mena, exiled or imprisoned for Z\ years (answering to the Apocalyptic 3j days) by Justini- an ; * the man-child of Apoc. xii., Ileraclius ; the Beast of Apoc. xiii., Chosroes' son wounded in conflict with Ileraclius; the 144,000 of Apoc. xiv., monks and virgins to that number slain by the Saracens soon after Heraclius' death ; the Vials, acts of lto- man Popes, or of princes sanctioned by them, against iconoclastic or Ghibelline em- perors, heathen people, or false Popes, from Adrian's iconoclastic bulls, A.D. 740, to Peter the Hermit and the 1st Crusade A.D. 1094. The oth Vial Lyra construed of the emperor Otho's vial of wrath on Pope John, thrust by Cresccntius into the Papal see : so says Pareus, making Papal Rome the "seat of the Beast. "f — Further, Lyra ex- pounded Daniel's 45 days as 45 years. Malv. ii. 244. 1 See my Vol. ii. pp. 370, 393. 2 See ibid. 371. 3 See my Vol. ii. p. 371. * The common explanation, says De Lyra, expounds the two witnesses as Enoch and Elias. the future witnesses against Antichrist ; and that their bodies, after slaughter by Antichrist, will be " in medio civitatis magnae ; i. e. Conyregationis An- tichristo adharentis, qua; crit valde magna." f The Babylon of Apoc. xvii., however, Dc Lyra explains, I think, to he the Turkish empire ; the seven hills its seven chief provinces, and seven kings those provinces, ruling Pashas. iv ' rROM I i>. 1100 T" rii i - i:ikm;m \ i 1. 1\. (//'. /;,•/,/,-.! | :; | perhaps a oentury or more later, the whole theory is developed in their treat iee on A nt ichrist.1 .">. And then next, turning to another e.tunt rv. hut to religionists of ipa Valdensic origin,1 and certainly an main points of Valdensic. principles, we find the same mighty truth (for such I must beg per- mission to call it) proclaimed by // 7. •////; v"1 ami his Wteliffite f>l~ lomer*. Among whom. A.D. L391, Waiter Brute** testimony stands so conspicuous, as detailed to us by the venerable Foxe from original documents,4 written ami registered on his being brought before the Bishop's Court at Hereford, that 1 think I cannot better conclude this Section than by a brief abstract of it, as exhibiting the WieUffite \ I ;;lyptie views. li seems then that this Walter Brute, by nation a Briton or Welsh- man, who was -a layman and learned, and brought up in the Uni- versity of Oxford, being there a graduate." was accused of saying, among sundry other things, that " the Pope is Antichrist, and a se- ducer of the people, and utterly against the law and life of Christ." ng called to answer, he put in first certain more brief "exhibits :" 5 then "another declaration of the same matter after a more ample tractation ; "6 explaining and setting forth from Scripture the grounds of his opinion. In either case his defence was grounded very mainly on the Apocalyptic prophecy. For he at once bases his justification be UWt, a< demonstrable, of the Pope answering alike to the chief of the f aUe Christ* prophesied of by Christ, as to come in his name ; to the Man <>f 8in prophesied of by St. Paul ; and to both \\\vj/r.'.t -/.and Beast with the two lamb-like horn*, in the Apocalypse: ■it i/ of Papal Rome answering also similarly to the Apocalyptic !<>n. No doubt, lie admits, this had been a mystery long bidden. But •. and only recently revealed, it would not be unaccordaut with 1 Il.i days additional of the 1885 signifying l"> days of repentance granted to such as should have wor- shipped Antichrist :"' — also the explanation of the Beast with seven heads and ten horns; as meant of a yet future Antichrist. For all this, arguefl Walter, both Scripture and reason contravene. How is it likely that one avowedly of the tribe of Dan should propose him- self, and be believed on both by Jews and Christians, as Christ, when it is notorious to both that Christ is of the tribe of Judah r ■ Or how again, when coming as a man of war and bloodshed : whereas the character of Christ's coming is foretold as one of peace, under which men should beat their swords into ploughshares and pruniiiL,r- hookaf Then he opens his own view of those prophecies. 1. That in Dan. xii. 11. which says that "from the time of the sacrifice being taken away, and the abomination of desolation set up, there shall be L290 days," refers plainly to what was said before in Dan. ix. :— how that "after 70 weeks Christ should be slain, and the city and the sanctuary destroy ed by a prince that should come ; and that he would confirm the covenant with many for one week ; and in the half week the sacrifice and ofi'ering should cease; and in the temple there should 1m- an abomination of desolation : and even to the fulfilling up of all, and to the end. shall the desolation continue." For, as the 70 weeks after which Christ was to be slain meant week* of years, not days, so, similarly, the 1290 day* of the desolation meant 1200 year* : and the prophecy had fulfilment in the fact of the Romans destroying Jeru- salem; and. on its last desolation by Adrian, placing an idol, or abomination, in the holy place : a desolation which has ever since continued, now nearly about 1 290 \ ears ; and which was to continue till the revealing, or in other words the exposure, of Antichrist. — 3o Adso, p. 37" ropfi. ' Compare T. Aquinas, p. 1J7 npri. 1 Ho* irell and justly ugued ! iv. 28 •131 aiSTOBT OF APOCALYPTIC IXTKP.PIt STATION. [-VPP. PART r. 2ndly, in Apoc. xiii. thejirst Beast there figured in vision with seven heads and ten hums, which men explain of an imagined yet future Antichrist, meant rather the Roman emperors; who did much perse- cute the Lord's people, hoth Jews and Christians. For the Woman seen seated on this Beast afterwards was expounded by the angel to mean the city on seven hills, (i which then reigned over the kings of the earth," i. e. Home ; " a city upholden by her cruel and beastly emperors:" — and its power was to continue 42 months, or 12G0 days, i. e. 12G0 years ; a day being (as before) meant for a year : just as also the ten days of tribulation predicted to the Church of Smyrna signified the ten years of Diocletian's persecution ; and the 5 months, or 150 days, of the scorpion-locusts of Apoc. ix. the 150 years of the locust-like begging friars, from their first rise to their primary ex- posure by Armachanus.1 And the prophecy was fulfilled in the dura- tion of the Roman empire just 1200 years , ; from its commencement under Julius Caesar, to the death of its last emperor, Frederic.2 But then " who is the Antichrist, lying privy in the hid Scriptures of the prophets ?" — " I now pass on to the declaration of that con- clusion," says Walter Brute ; " bringing to light the things which lay hid in darkness. For what was said in the darkness let us say in the light ; and what we have heard in the ear let us preach upon the house-tops." If then, proceeds he, the high Bishop of Borne, calling himself God's servant, and Christ's chief Vicar in this world, do make and justify many laws contrary to Jesus Christ, then must he be the chief of those false Christs foretold by Christ as to come in his name, and deceiving many. Now 1st, as to the fact of the Popes calling themselves Christs, it is evident: since Christ means anointed, a cha- racteristic and appellation specially applied in Scripture to Icings and priests ; both of which the Popes claim to be, as both high priests and chief Icings, invested authoritatively alike with the temporal and spi- ritual sword. Then 2ndly, as to the difference of Christ's laws and the Pope's, the first of Christ's laws is that of love; but the Pope wageth war both against infidels and against Christians. And though it be alleged that miracles have been done by those who have preached 1 i. e. Fitzralph, a great enemy to the Friars ; in 1333 Chancellor of Oxford, in 1317 Bishop of Armagh. • Here Walter Brute is less happy. His own theory of Antichrist required his application of this chronological period as the measure of Papal Rome's duration in power. i\/ ntOM \ P. L10Q i" i ill- REFORMATION. (W. B or enga jed in such crusading wars, yet does aol this just ity (hem ; be- ■• for no miracles may we do contrary to the doctrines of Christ."1 An. I. u i • miracles, did aol the Egyptian magicians perform them P Is it nut Baid by Christ that falsi- prophets would rise, that would do them: by Paul, that Satan was transformed into an angel of lighl P by Christ again, that at the last day he would have to rejecl many saying to him. •• We have prophesied in thy came, and in thy n:i ae done wonderful works P" even as the second Apocalyptic lieasl was said to do miracles P The standard of truth must be (Jod's word. •■ [snot my word like tire &C. ': " -Further, Christ's second law mi l>e said to be that of forgiveness and mercy: mercy to sinners. Put here too how contrary the Pope's and priests' law : giving judicial sentence ot' death, and perhaps exciting crusading wars against here- tics. In which last act there is a practical ante-dating of timet too. For Christ said that here the tares were to grow with the wheat ; and the separation to be made by himself only at the time of the day of judgment.1 Whereas the Pope would have the separation made by himself now; so changing times, as well as laws. Then next our confessor and prophetic expositor proceeds to argue againsi the Romish doctrines of the keys, auricular confession, tran- substantiation. ami a sacrificing priesthood.3 And, after describing the universal and awful habit with all classes of the priesthood, of • - Mini; prayers, pardons, Ac.," in direct contradiction t<> Christ's char_ •. ■ I'n ely ye have received, freely L,rivc,'' he breaks into the ex- clamation ;* '• 1 would to God that all the buyers and sellers of spi- ritual Bufifrages would with the eyes of their heart behold the ruin of the great city Babylon, and that which they shall say after that fall. For doth not the prophet say. ' And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn for her. because no man shall buy any more their merchandise: crying, Alas I that greal city Babylon, because that in one hour she is become desolate?' " — Then he expounds the second i the Popes, with their assumed kingly and priestly power; Bpeaking like a dragon, and allowing none to sell their sin- ritual pardons. A..-., but such SB bore their mark; interprets the . with the number 666, to be DTI I i.i:i:i : and i du with another earnest word of warning from Apoc. xix.:" My counsel is, let the buyer be aware of those marks of the Beast ! For, after the fall ' 17-3. i Kij. ' 171. 171. ■ 183. ' 183. 436 BISTOBT OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. of Babylon, ' If any man hath worshipped the Beast and Ids image, and hath received the mark on his forehead or on his head, he shall drink of the wine of God's wrath, and be tormented with fire and brimstone in the sight of the holy angels and of the Lamb ; and the smoke of their torments shall ascend evermore.' " § 5. THE .ERA AND CENTURY OF (THE REFORMATION. At the Reformation the light which had previously gleamed here and there on the subject of Antichrist, and then been at length for a while all but extinguished, burst into a blaze; and the voice of the Waldenses, Wicliffites, and Hussites, protesting against the Popes as the Apocalyptic Beast, and Rome as the Apocalyptic Babylon, re- vived, after a temporary suspension, in power hitherto unparalleled. Vain was the authoritative prohibition of writing or preaching on the subject of Antichrist, by the 5th Council of Lateran.1 There was an energy in the impression and the voice, as if derived not from books or earlier traditions, but from the Spirit's own teaching. Alike in Germany, Switzerland, France, Denmark, Sweden, England, it was received as an almost self-evident and fundamental truth by the founders of the several Protestant Churches : indeed as, in itself, a sufficient justification of the mighty act of their separation from Rome.2 But the difficulty remained to adjust and explain certain details of the Apocalyptic prophecies respecting the Beast, Antichrist, and Babylon ; as well as to offer a satisfactory and consistent solu- tion of the many other mysteries of this prophetic Book. Nor was the difficulty slight ; or one soon, or as yet fully, to be overcome. It is my purpose in the present Section primarily, and at large, to set forth the Apocalyptic views in the 16th century of the Fathers of the Protestant Reformation ; then very briefly, in conclusion, to sketch the views of Apocalyptic exposition with which, after long 1 " Tcmpus quoque pwfixum futurorum malorum, vel Antichristi adventum, aut certum diem judieii, preedicare vel asserere nequaquam prassumant." Harduin ix. 1808. — I have already quoted this in my Vol. ii. p. 84. 2 " On this principle [viz. " that the Man of Sin, or Antichrist, could be no other than the man that Jills the Papal chair"] " was the Reformation begun and carried on ; on this the great separation from the Church of Rome conceived and perfected. For, though persecution for opinion would acquit those of schism whom the Church of Rome had driven from her communion, yet on the principle that she is Antichrist's, they had not only a right, but lay under the obligation of a command, to come out of the spiritual Babylon." Warburton% Works, p. 488. pi k \ . i in 1 1 \ \m> i i n 1 1 h <»i i in ufobmation. (Luther.) 437 reflection, the r meet tin- arguments bo fearfully urged against them from tlu' A.pocalj ptio Hook. I. Tin: pi;i>ti:stan r V \ rnr.us. 1 Ami on this head my illustrations of the history of Apoeah pi 10 interpretation must commence of course with a brief sketch of tho news of the great Father of the Reformation, Luther. — In my Vol. ii. ch. iv.,1 I have described the time and the manner in which the idea of the Popea being the Antichrist broke upon his mind; and also in the chapter v., next following,2 how it was primarily from DtuiitTs prophecies respecting the little horn and the abomination of desolation, thai he drew this his conclusion. It was also there in- timated that in L522, at the time of concluding the translation of the New Testament, he had come to doubt of the genuineness of the Apocalypse as an Apostolic or inspired Book.3 But it wrould seem from a Latin Treatise of his, now in my hands, " De Antichristo," dated by himself at its ending, Wittenberg, April 1, 1521,4 (the very day, I believe, before his setting out for Worms,5) that the doubt had not then fixed itself in his mind: for he not only alludes in mure than one place to the Apocalypse,6 as an inspired prophetic book, but interprets the prophecy of the scorpion-locusts in Apoc. ix. in considerable detail. And other evidence appears to the same effect in the writings of the year L520just preceding.7 A few years later, vi/.. in 1528, he is stated to have found and republished an Apoeah p- tic Commentary, expounding the Beast to mean the Popedom ; writ- ten some hundred years,8 or rather, as Pareus shows, some 150 years before Luther's time:9 an evidence of his inclining then again, as at first, to view the Apocalypse as inspired Scripture. Finally, in » Pp. 117 el 2 Pp. 13.5 et seq. ' lb. p. 186 Note '. 1 ■ V ale in Chrieto, mi Vincilae ! VvitteabergB, Anno M I > N. X. I . , prima Aprilis." 4 So Merle d'Aubigne. • " In nobis impleri oportet quae Daniel, Chriatua, 1'etnn, I'aulus, Judas, Joamua in Apocatypri, pradixernnt." B. (The original Edition before me so distinguish! m : the alphabet, four peg i tter.) li. ngoea from the Apoealjpae in hia anawer to the Pope'i Bull, dated Dee. 1620. . • v. 876, Waddington . ■ Bneh i- the general statement. • " The Author diapnting <>u Apoc. xx. tonehing the 1000 jean, teatifiea that lie wto4 '. -. which, aaith he, is our precept date." Bo Pareue, p. 12, Bngliah '1 ranalation. (Amsterdam. 1644. [taw ma from him that it eontaini the aame Pro- whieb Lyra in hi-. PoatQl had noted, and which is prefixed alao to Joachim . in which latter it is ascribed to Gilbert of the xiith century. 438 BI8T0BY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PAIIT I. 1 .■>:![, lie prelixeil io the Apocalypse in his great Edition of the Ger- man Bible a brief explanatory sketch : from which, and from certain notices found elsewhere in his writings,1 I may give what follows as in the main his views on the subject. Like most of his predecessors, he judged that the Book must be more or less a prefiguration of the chief events and seras of Church History : the Seals chiefly prefiguring the physical or political evils under which the Church and world connected with it was to suffer, the Trumpets the spiritual ; and either septenary running on from the commencement of the Christian aera to the consummation. — Thus in the Seals, the 1st, or white horse and rider, indicated (as in Zech. i. 6) the persecutions of tyrants ; the 2nd, or red horse, wars and bloodshed; the 3rd, or black horse, famine; the 4th, or pale horse, pestilence and mortality : all to have fulfilment, from time to time, to the last day : — the 5th Seal figuring martyrdoms of the saints, early begun, and ever and anon repeated, even to the end ; the Gih, great political revolutions ; andits sealing and palm-bearing visions, the preservation and ultimate salvation of the saints. The 7th Seal's half-hour's silence he does not explain. — Of the Trumpets he makes the 1st to figure the heretic Tatian and his Encratites, en- joining righteousness by human works of merit, so as did afterwards the Pelagians ; the 2nd, Marcion, and the Manichees and Montanists, exalting their fancies above Scripture ; (so as of late Munzer and his Anabaptists ;) the 3rd, Origen and the false philosophy, revived in our own high schools; the 4th, Novatus and the Donatists, denying repentance to the lapsed ; 2 the 5th, Arius and the Arians ; 3 the Gth, Mahomet and the Saracens : contemporary with whom was the Woe of the Papacy ; depicted alike in Apoc. x., xi., and xiii. And here, on Apoc. x., xi., is the most curious particular explana- tion in Luther's Commentary. Deeply impressed with the Pope's and Papacy's mock show of Christ and Christianity, and with an im- pression also, probably, even then, of the resemblance of those seven i Where not otherwise stated, the interpretation given will be found in Luther's Preface, or marginal explanatory Notes to the Apocalypse, in his German Bible. 2 " Among these four," says Luther, " nearly all our clergy may be classed." 3 So in Luther's Preface to the Apocalypse. In his earlier Treatise " De Anti- christo," spoken of a little before, he explains the locusts to mean the Romish School- men, " Scotists, Thomists, and Modernists ; " who, headed by Aristotle, introduced the dogmas of freewill, merits, and the efficacy t»f good works for salvation. The star that fell from heaven, and opened the pit whence the locusts emerged, he makes to be Alexander dc Hales, or Thomas Aquinas himself. G. ii. \ I ill; v.i; \ LND CBMTUKT OF TH1 ElB FORMATION. | Luther.) I thunder*, which Bounded in sequence to the rainbow-crowned Lngel't cry, ttt the "Papal mandate* and thunder*} he was led to explain the whole vision, including the Angel himself of the Popes and Pope- dom. "The mighty Angel," he Bays, wwith a rainbow and a little bitter book, is Popery ;" Popery in the speeimisness of its s|iiritn:il forma and pretensions. Bo the Popes, he thinks, an- figured as a mock Christ on tin- scene of vision; the opened booh being thai of Papal laws, given the Evangelist to eat, as representative of the Church visible; the lion-like voice and seven thunder*, the great swelling words and thunders of the Popedom. — Moreover, it is the Popes that are still symbolized'-' at the commencement of Apoe. xi. as measuring the temple, or Church, with their laws and regulations; og out the court without ; (in the sense, I presume, of anti-papal heretics;) and establishing a mere formal kind of Church, with ".it ward show of holiness. — The subject having to be renewed and more fully dew-loped in the vision of the two Beasts, Apoe. xiii.. Lu- ther speaks of the interposition, for the comfort of God's people, of two intermediate and very dill'erent visions : viz. 1st, of the turn Wit- \ oifying a succession of faithful witnesses kept up for Christ; 2ndly, of the Woman with child, meant of Christ's true Church, and God's provision for her, during the Beast's reign, in the 1 A remarkable explanation of the tew n thunders ; and which I have already cited in my Vol. ii. p. 122. "Great .•>/', nufrr.) Ill seven thunders, was never, I believe, adopted by an] other expo- sitor of note : ' the other has had its advocates and follower! even to the preeent a -But it was quite impossible thai Apocalyptic interpretation could ur° on without thai question being considered, and concluded on. Accordingly we find that, almost immediately after Luther's publication of his Bible, it was ilis. ussrd by the chief Protestant prophetic expositors that fol- lowed; and in mosi cases the year-day principle applied to explain them. In my chapter on the year-day question, Vol. iii. p. 284, I have illustrated the somewhat curious ground on which they fancied that this view might be partly based, from Oriander's Book entitled yecfura do I' Id mis Temporibus, ac de Fine Mundi:" a Book first published at Nuremberg, A.D. 1544, and dedicated to Albert, Marquis of Brandenburgh and Prussia. " Sunt duo genera annum m magnorwn in sacris litteris ; unum Angelicwn, alterum Mosaicum. Annus Angelicus constat ex tot annis civilibus nostris ex quot diebus noetris constat annus noster civilis. Nobis enim qui coelo inclusi sumus cursus solis ab occidente ad orientem, et rursus ab oriente ad ieiiteni. diem absolvit ; id quod fit spatio 24 horarum. Angelis autem, qui extra et supra globos a?thereos versantur, dies est quern sol in zodiaco ab austro in aquilonem, et ab aquilone rursus in aus- trum, circumvolvendo conticit." So that to an Angel's new (as out- side, I suppose, of our solar system) the only mundane revolution observable would be the annual; and consequently our ;/rar be to them a tolar H to 1328." He doej not give ri G n OOI or authority ; and I have not ob- 1 it in the lew writing! of Luther that 1 hare myaelf read. Bui rupposmg this :. then Lathes may be anmbered aa among thooe to whom the application of the year-day principle to the great prophetic period! IQggeeted iteelf, as possibly the true one. ♦ Oaiander adda th.a it wmi ofanpoKe da/ft thai Christ -pake when he ien< word to II. rod, " lit hold, tn -d'li/ and tn-niorrmr I east out ra])ias, i Hi i Idi " I beliore that the predicted restoration of the .!• Fold 1. historical and notional, as begun by Cyrus, and continued By ( < /ile election, adopted into a to Antichrist's destruction ; •'*. that which " incipiat I I I HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTKKl'UET ATION. [APP. PART I. Proceeding to the Trumpets, (the silence in heaven having been ex- plained simply of the waiting on God's revelations in admiration, and the Incense-Angel as Christ the intercessor, the great remedial object in all the heresies and troubles about to be noted under the Trumpets,) he thus expounds them ; premising that the use of trumpets in Israel was for convoking assemblies, moving the camp, and war. — The 1st was the Trumpet of alarm, as sounded by the apostles and early Christians, against Judaizers and pseudo-Christian philosophers : the 2nd, that against Valentinus, the Manichees, and Montaniste: — 3. against the star fallen from heaven, or Arius : — 4. against Pelagius and Pelagianism : — 5. against the first AVoe, Popery : Gregory the Great's successor, Boniface, having, under Phocas, opened the pit of the abyss, with his Papal keys, by becoming Uni- versal Bishop : the locusts figuring the Papal clergy, the king of the locusts the Pope ; the time mentioned (five months) having reference to that brief duration of the natural locusts ; and indicating that the time of the plagues figured was defined and limited by God. In Trumpet 6, the second Woe, or Mahommedan Saracens and Turks, was figured with reference to their course of universal desolation : l the Euphrates being taken literally ; and the four angels loosed ex- plained as Arabs, Saracens, Turks, Tartars ; the previous four great Euphratean powers of Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes, Persians, hav- ing had their power long bound. After a curious interpretation of " the rest of men non-repenting," in Apoc. ix. 20, as if meaning people, both nationally and individually, that were spiritually killed neither by the Papal nor Mahommedan plague, i.e. who, though neither Mahommedans nor Pagans, had yet not given themselves to God,2 and must consequently not expect to escape God's judgment, Bullinger proceeds to Apoc. x., xi., a part re- lating (as I believe in common with him and other Beformers) to his own times ; and which he appears to me to have explained better a restituto evangelio, et extremo judicio, et progrediatur usque in secula seculorum." Which last is to be the most absolute restoration : and is the same that was meant by Peter in Acts iii. 19 — 21, speaking of the restitution of all things ; and by Christ when he said, " Then lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh." A passage very observable. 1 He quotes Nicephorus ; Tots ol Sa/oaKjji/ot »)/o£ai>To Ttj9 tov iravTos tpmxwaiui'i. p. 120. * " Colligimus ex his non sufficere ad vitam piam et beatem ne quis sit Papista aut Mahumedicus, &c." p. 123. He explains the various sins specified in their spiritual fulness, as against the first or second code. PB1 1 BRJ liND OBNTUBT OF THB BIFORM ATIOV I Ihril'uii/riW I I ."> than all else in his Commentary. The AngeUvirion in eVpoo. x. he explains of Christ's intervention through the Reformers,1 against the Papal Antichrist and Mahommedans ; fche antithesis between Christ, as here figured, and the Papal Antichrist, being drawn OUt in detail. The hook opened is the Gospel, opened to men h\ gospel-preachers, and with the aid of printing, in spite of the Pope : the seven thunders, the gOSpel-preaching by Christ's faithful servants, a> In men with the spirit of those two apostles who were called BOM id' thunder ; the Beating them being meant in the sense of authentica- tion to the good, and that of being hidden to the wicked: the oath (one deeply to be noted'12) alluding to the 3^ times of Dan. xii. ; and showing to Christians at that time living thai their redemption, as to he effected at Christ's coming and the resurrection, was even then drawing nigh: the charge, "Thou must prophesy again," meant of preachers of St. John's spirit and doctrine against Antichrist and Mahommedanism in the las; times;* and showing (I beg attention to this, as a point in which I now first see that Bullinger anticipated me) that God's own legitimate commission attached to the ministers of the reformed Protestant Churches, although not ordained by bishops.4 He notes how by translation of the SS into German, Spanish. French, Italian. English, besides sundry Eastern languages, John's doctrine might be said to be preached by faithful ministers over a large part of the world. This is the case even now ; says he : •• Eodie ists et audimus et videmus."5 Finally, " the court within "6 cast out, he takes to be the Soman Pontifex and Pontilicii, "excom- municated by God;" but does not apparently follow up his own principles by explaining it, in the manner I have done, of the excom- munication as acted out by the Doctors of ' thr Reformation? So Bullinger comes to the Witnesses. — The number two indicated these Witnesses for Christ to be but few, yet sufficient. The 1260 days of their witnessing in sackcloth, and of the Geutiles treading the Holy 1 Afl beginning however before Luther. -• . aim tee maximi momenti, ooneolatione pleniarima, oinnibneqne omnino salutarU 1 1 I hominitma." p. 1- I. Si ■ my Vol. ii. p. Ml. Another i>:is^:il,"- to thi tame effeel oeenn ■ little before in Bnllinger, on 1 » i -~ p. \'l<\. ad init . • Jc>hu bearing hen i tymbotic or r iracter. So, Bullinger lays, th ■ ■ mill T Aqnin u the latter thus ; "In Epao Joanne bitelliguntnr alii prmaiee- kntichristi Tnlt inatanter prndieare.'1 p. 18 ♦ p. i:;i. » pp. 186, 186. • Bullincjer take tir->t the reading lavodtv ; hut refers to i£u>6iv alao, : p. I BI8T0KX OF apocalyptic [NTEEPEETATION. [vPP. PART I. City, are an uncertain, yet, in Gk>d"s purpose, definite time. For above 700 years we know that there have existed such, who opposed themselves to Papal abominations. — The statement, " When they shall have completed their testimony the Beast shall kill them," he applies individually ; in the sense that none shall be cut off till they have done their appointed work. The great city of their slaughter is the' empire of Papal Home, spread over the world : analogously with the fact of their Lord's place of crucifixion having been within the old Roman Pagan empire : — the Papists' prefigured joy at Christ's Witnesses' death being ever notorious ; and just recently illustrated from the rejoicings of the Romanists, even then when Bullinger wrote, at the news of Queen Mary's persecutions of the Protestants in Eng- land :' the 3| days of their lying dead, the short time before their revival in others ; so as Huss and Jerome, for example, killed at Con- stance, were quickly revived first in the Bohemians, then in Lauren- tius Valla, Savanarola, Luther.2 The Witnesses' ascent to heaven he makes that of their departed spirits entering Paradise ; and the falling of the tenth of the city, and killing of the 7000, to mean the mighty defections already begun from the Papal Church and empire. He notes too the taking and sack of Rome itself in 1527, by the Consta- ble Bourbon.3 — On the 7th Trumpet he says, " It must come soon : therefore our redemption draweth nigh." Passing on to Apoc. xii., Bullinger explains the travailing Woman, like most of his predecessors, of the Church ;4 the triumph and ascent of Christ's members being assured and involved in that of Christ himself: who is here figured not merely as the Child caught up to God's throne, but also as Michael the Church's protecting Angel. But he gives a new interpretation to the Woman's flight into the wilderness ; as meaning that of the Church from Judcea and the Jews, (who of old constituted Cod's enclosed vineyard,) to the Gentiles? The 3^ times are expounded generally, as before. And so too, in a general sense, the Dragon's seven heads and ten horns ; as indicating that the Devil " praefuit omnium seculorum monarchis impiis, et om- nium cornuura vel regnorum sanguinolentorum praesultor fuit." G — Then, in Apoc. xiii., the first Beast is rather remarkably made by him the old Pagan Roman empire ; remarkably, I mean, for Bullinger, ' p. 146. 2 p. 148. 3 p. 149. 4 The Church " of all times." p. 156. He hints an allusion also to the Virgin Mary, i» the passage on the child-hearing. 5 p. 158. Compare \V. Brute, p. 432 supra. 6 p. 157. IT.!:. \ i .: \ \\i> . ;mi:;-i OF IH] BSFOBMATION. (BulHnger.) 117 i P • ■' s'.i :>. (As offered by Papal expositors, e. g. \'< isuet, the ex- planation was quite natural.) The seven beads bad allusion bo Rome's seven bills : and also to seven oi' its kings ; whether the seven earliest kings, OT the seven Julian F.iiiperors, ending with Nero: in whom (sc. NenO the Beasl suffered a deadly wound; which however was healed by Vespasian.1 'The ten horns mighl indicate that Koine's empire was then made op of many kingdoms, or perhaps that it at last was to he dissolved into many: viz. under the desolation of the Qotfa and Vandal invaders of the 5th century; as it was said in the prophecy, u He that killeth with the sword shall he killed with the The second Beast is explained to he the Papal Antichrist, (being the same as Daniel's little horn and St. Paul's Man of Sin,) rising up under Gregory I. and his successor Boniface, to be Universal Bishop, soon after Totilas1 utter destruction of old Home; just as this second Beati was seen to rise after the jurat. The Beast's two lamb-like horns indicated his claims to both sacerdotal and royal supremacy, in heaven too and on earth: agreeably with which the Pope has the two swords, and Boniface VIII, at the first Jubilee, A.D. 1900, appeared one day in the pontifical habit, another in the im- perial purple. Bollinger draws out here a contrast of this Antichrist and Christ : and notes his changing times as well as laws ; substitut- ing bis ferisa for Christ's sabbaths, his traditions for Christ's written Scripture. In short, one must be blinder than Tiresias. he says, not to see in the Popes the great predicted Antichrist/1 — The mage of the Beast is the i i or Western Secular Empire: which is, indeed, say- he, but the shadow of the old one.4 The explanation of the second Beast's giving breath to the image i3, on this hypothesis, obvious. Unless the Pope confirm the new emperor's election, his election is invalid: and in the ceremony of his confirmation he has to take an oath of allegiance to the Pope. So is the emperor in a manner the Pope'fl creature ; and in case of Councils alike, general or national, (so Bollinger all but touches on what I believe the true explanation,) the Council " Papa- spiritn regitur." * — But already be has had to meet difficulties from his explanation of the first Beast. 1 p.1 ■ pp. 171, 173. • p. 171. ■ much as Luther. See p. 440 tupri. C Sippolytat, p. 286 mipri. 1 p. 448 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. The second was to exercise all his power tvwinov, before, or in presence of, the first. How does Bullinger get over the difficulty ? He refers to Aretas, saying, that it might be in the sense of following and im- itating} I need not say how incorrectly. Again, it was to make the earth adore the first Beast. How so ? By making men regard the Ro- man empire, says Bullinger, as something divine. Further, the mira- cles of the second Beast, said to be done in sight of the Beast, meant in sight of the first Beast's image, or ghost. And his causing that all who adored not the Beast should be killed, was meant of not adoring the decrees (the Conciliar decrees) of the new Roman empire, as in- spired by the Pope. On the name and number he prefers Irenaeus' solution of hareivog : dwelling on the Latinism of the Papacy, much like Dr. More afterwards.2 Proceeding onward through the next three chapters, it may suffice to observe that he interprets the Angel with the everlasting Gospel in Apoc. xiv., and also the two Angels following him, of gospel- preachers then in existence ; the invention of printing aiding their progress :3 — that the Vials of Apoc. xvi. are explained as the closing judicial plagues on the Papal Egypt : the 1st being the " posca Gal- lica," which first broke out, he says, A.D. 1494, in the Neapolitan war between French and Spaniards, and was rife especially in the Romish convents ; * the 2nd, pestilences generally ; the 3rd, Popes and Papal princes, stirring up bloody wars in which themselves were slain; the 4th (on the sun), heat and drought; the 5th (that on the Beast's seat), the darkening of Rome's majesty through the progress of the Reformation; the 6th, on the Euphrates, the drying up of the resources and powers of the Papal Babylon ; while the three frogs consequent thereon were the Papal legates e latere, issuing forth to the kings of the earth, (and so, like the frogs of Egypt, even in king's houses.) to stir them up to war against Christ's gospel-ministers. The 7th, or Vial on the air, meant elemental convulsions, like those predicted by Christ, Matt, xxiv., as to precede his coming : and the three parts into which the great city would fall in consequence, those of true Christians, Papists, and " neutrals." — Further, on Apoc. xvii., 1 p. 176. 2 See my Vol. iii. p. 2-53.— On the number 666 Bullinger further intimates a chronological solution. It was about 666 years from the revelation of the Apocalypse to Pepin's endowment of the Papal See. p. 193. — Under the witnesses he says ; How long the duration of the Pope is to be from the fated 666 God only knows s p. 199. * p. 215. Compare my solution Vol. iii. pp. 358, 363, 374. P1B.T.] n;\ LHD t Beasl ai the old Etonian empire, be speaks of the Apocalypse as here conjoining in the figured Beast, whereon the Woman sate, both the Beati and B isf$ image, old and new Borne, the empire and the Papacy.' The i and ia not" he thus explains. The old empire was from Julius to Nero, in the Julian Csssara; then, after a while, became Real again under Trajan.- The "Jlrr heath (hut have fallen" were the five emperors thai had followed after the deadly wound under Nero; vi/.. Qalba, Otho, Vitelline, Vespasian, Titus : the one " that is," Domitian ; the 7th, thai was to last but a short time, Xorva ; (so does Bullinger unconsciously mil in with Victorinus ;) the 8th, Trajan : which last might be called of the seven, as having been adopted by Nerva.1 — The statement that the ten kin^s received power at one hour with the Beast, he makes to have reference to the second Beast, or Popes, not the first ; (so again showing, indeed now confessing, the difficulty from his solution of the first Beast;4) these being the ten horns, among which the Papacy was as the dominant little horn ; also, while ex- plaining the ten kings desolating Rome primarily of old Rome's de- solation in the days of the Goths and A'andals, he suggests (after Luther) that there may not improbably be a second and future sense, as well as the primary one ; and that these kings may be ultimately instruments for desolating Papal Rome too, though none but Christ will destroy it. — Finally, the bridal in Apoc. xix. Bullinger makes to coincide with the saints' resurrection;5 the vision of Christ ami his army on vhite horses to symbolize the last judgment ; the Beast then taken with the False Prophet to be the Papal Roman Empire :6 (mark again this necessary inconsistency resulting from his former explana- tion of the seven-headed Beast :) — also the millennium to be the 1000 years either from Christ's ascension to A.D. 103 A, when under the pontificate of Benedict IX Satan seemed loosed to deceive the na- tions ; or from A.D. GO, when Paul speaks of the Gospel having been preached over the whole world, to the pontificate of Nicholas II, A.D. 1000 ; or from A.D. 73, the date of the destruction of Jerusa- i " Conjunct Bcstiam et imagincm Bcstis, Bcstiam ct insidentem Bi -ti;r, IQper- bum scortum, ut diriuurc uon lia-.it. Ik- ut pique ergo imperio locus est cxponendus." p. 826. : Or jerhaps, he says, (wc must mark this his aliter,) it was as the old Roman em- pire ; and " is not, and yet is," as the new western empire, which is of the old but the shadow and image. * p. 230. * p. 281. » p. 252. * p. J VOL. iv. 29 450 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. lem, to the poutifieate of Gregory VII, A.D. 1073. At the same time he objects not, he says, if any prefer to follow the chiliasm of Papua*1 — The Gog and Magog loosed he of course interprets of the Turks : makes the first resurrection to be that from sin, the second that from the grave : and iu the figured new heaven and earth recog- nizes the renovation of this our world.2 Bale, Bishop of Ossory under Edward VI, and twice an exile from Eugland, viz. in 1540 under Henry VIII, and in 1553 under Mary,3 next calls for our notice. — He published his Apocalyptic Commentary, under the significant title " Image of both Churches," i. e. of the true aud the false, shortly, as it would seem, before Bullinger's.4 It con- sists of three Parts, published at three different times, and paged as separate volumes : the first with frequent marginal references to pre- vious authors, of the incorrect printing of which he complains griev- ously ;5 the other two, in consequence, without. His first Preface gives a very copious list of Apocalyptic expositors, from the earliest period ; which I think it may be well to abstract below.6 i p. 265. 2 pp. 280, 282. 3 So Part i. B<; " John Bale, an exyle also in this lyfe for the testimonye of Jesu." See Bale's Life, prefixt to the Parker Edition of his works. 4 He alludes frequently to the persecutions of Protestants in England at the time when he wrote ; and this in his first Volume and Part, as well as the others. So in the primary Preface ; " The boystuous tyrauntes of Sodoma, with theyr great Nemroth Wynchester, (i. e. Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, mentioned Part 2, § 6, on Apoc. 13,) . . have of long tyme taken much payne ; and many have they cruelly burned ; as was seene of late years in Coventrie, London, and other places." Of these Anne Askew is mentioned, p. 170, who was martyied in London under Bonner, in 15-16. Again, at the conclusion of the whole work, on the last page, there occurs the following passage, as written while Henry VIII was still living. " In the which dayly prayer is that most worthy minister of God Kyng Henry the 8, afore all other to be remembred ; which hath so sore wounded the Beast that he may before his de- parture, or Prynce Edwarde after him, throw all his supersticions into the bottomlesse lake agayne." Hence it is evident that the English persecutions and martyrdoms of Protestants that Bale refers to arc those of the later years of Henry VIII, after Cromwell's fall.* In the Parker Edition the allusion to Henry VIII is omitted; being copied from some later Edition than mine. 5 " Two cruell enimyes have my just labours had . . . The Printers arc the fyrst ; whose headie hast negligence and covetousnesse commonly corrupteth all bookes. These have both dysplaced them ; (sc. my many allegaeions, both of the Scriptures and doctors, in the mergent of the first Part or Volume ;) and also changed their numbers, to the truthes derogacion." Preface to the 2nd Part. — Bale was of a rather choleric temperament. 6 1. Patristics.— Justin Martyr, Melito, Irenams, Hippolytus, Victorinus, Tichonius, * As regards Bullinger his Treatise is dated, we saw, 1557 : but Bale does not mention it in his list of neoteric Apocalyptic Expositors, given in my Note 6 above. ram. t.] nu and dbntubi 01 rai ufoemation. Bale, 451 The iSEmZi he explains, maofa like other Reformers, bo prefigure, as they were opened, the mysteries of the seven ages of Christ's Church, though not without certain peculiarities in tin- details: — i. Christ and his apoetles' triumphanl progress: 2. the earlier heretics Bgured by the red horse, and Pagan Roman persecutors Bgured bj its rider with the great sword: 3. the Arians, Pelagians, and all false Pre- lates ; with the Devil, holding his deceitful pair of balances, fur their rider: 4. Popery as commencing with Boniface I, and Mahoinmedism with Mahomet : the horse symbolizing "the universal synagogue of hypocrites, or dissembling Church of Antichrist; pale as men with- out health," and ridden by " Death and Damnation:"1 o. the mar- tyrdom of Christ's saints, specially by the Papal Antichrist; e. g. those of the Publicans,'2 Albigenses, and Waldenses: G. the con- Jerome, Augustine, Trimasius, (" which volume I have redde,") Aprigius, Cassiodore, Isidore.— (The Aprigius spoken of was, he says, Bishop of Pace in Spain, and made a notable work on the Apocalypse, A.D. 530.) '_'. I'.t ned icti ncs. — Bede, Alcuin, Ilaymo, Strabus Fuldensis, Rabanus Maurus, (qu. Adso ?) Ambrose Ansbert, Robert of Tuy, Joachim Abbas, a certain Benedictine monk of Canterbury, and Easterton, also Anglus. 3. Regular Canons. — Hicardus de Sancto Victore, Gaufredus Antisiodorcnsis. •1. Carthusians. — Henricus de Haaeia, Dionysiiu Ilikcl. 5. Sa-uLir 1'riests. — Ambrose on the seven Trumpets, Bcrenger, Gilbert, an Eng- lish " Auetor I centum annis," John Huss, Paulus Burgensis, Mathias Dorinck, Jacobus Stralen. 6. Carmelites. — Baconthorpc, Tytleshale, Thomas de YUeya, John Barevth, John de Vernone, Nicholas of Alsace, Bloxam, Elyne, Tilneye, Winchingham, Thorpe, Egidius, Haynt'in. 7. Auftvtinuma.— Angvstin de Anchona, Jordanes Saxo, Bertrand of Toulouse, -tin of Rome, Philip of Mantua, John Capgrave, Sylvester MeoCCtiU of Venice. 8. Dominicans. — Jordanes Botergiu-, H 1 1 ^r < > Barchxnonenaia, Albertns Magnus, Ste- phanus Bisonttmns, Nicholas Qorham, Bernard de Trilia, Paganus Bcrgoni' Alvarna de Catnroo, Frederic of Venice, John Anniasof Vifcerbo, Savanarola. 9. Franciscans. — Al •. Belial de Hanibalis, Petrol J. Cathalanus, John WaUeys, !'• tn> Aurcolus of Toulouse, Nicholas Lyranus, Astesanns Asteash^ Benrardhros Benensia, Theodorie Andne of Thooloni a Tztelmaa. 10. Xeoterici. — Luther, Sebastian Meyer, George -l'.milius, Francis Lambert (died 1-330,) Zwinglc, John Brencius, Calvin, Melchior Hotman, " and many other1 more." In this long list not merely direct Apocalyptic Expositors are included, but those thai have En works on other subjects commented indirectly On any part of the Appeal] 1 Compare Bishop Hooper, p, l-"i*. " Read the 0th of Apoc. and ye shall perceive that at the opening of the 1th Seal there came out a pale horse, and he thai nl on it was i ii. . . This hone is the time wherein hypocrites and dissemblers entered into the Church, under pretence of true religion, as monies, friars nuns, • ul-. w ith hi raperstition than all the tyrants that ever were have killed bodies." * i. c. the Pauli'.. in the Work he refers to Bullingcr himself us a contemporary. Sic p. 1-j7, Note ', infra. 29 • IT,;.' HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. vulsions of Antichrist's kingdom, now at length revealed in its real character : convulsions begun under Wicliff,1 continued under Huss, and now experienced yet more : the true sun Christ eclipsed in it ; the moon-figured Church, once fair, now taught only of flesh and blood ; the stars, or doctors, fallen from Christ's heavenly doctrine, &c. ; the heaven of true doctrine past away ; their mountains too of strength passing from before them, under the preaching of the "Word and with a fearful looking-for of judgment.2 — In the Sealing Vision the Angels of the winds are explained to mean Antichrist and his agents, seeking to withhold the Holy Spirit : and the sealing of the 144,000 as figuring Christ's intervention to mark and seal his true Church ; an intervention specially evident at the time then present. — In the 7th Seal the half-hour's silence betokened the peace then to be given to the Christian Church, when Babylon shall have fallen, the Beast been slain, and the Dragon tied for 1000 years. For, as all the age after Christ is called by John "the last hour,"3 this half -hour may well mean the 1000 years of Apoc. xx. " In the time of which 1 " Anon I behelde a merveylous earthquake arise. Most lively was this fulfilled such tyme as William Courteney the Archbishoppe of Caunterbury, with Antichrist's sinagoge of sorcerers, sate in consistorie against Christes doctrine in John Wycleve. Mark the yeare month day and houre ; and ye shall wonder at it." This was in 1382. During the sitting of the Synod, held at Grcyfriars in London, an earthquake shook the city, and alarmed some of the members of the Synod. Wicliff, who did not attend, used to call it afterwards, in irony, " the earthquake Synod." 2 Let me here give a specimen of Bale's style and Commentary. " When they have done all mischief, . . and can doe no more, then run they to those hipocrites [the Papal priests], then sceke they up those Antiehristes. There must they be confessed ; there must they hide their sinnes. They must be covered with hys dyrty merites, and with hys holy whoredome. And, to be prayed for, that monastery must be builded ; that prebendary or chauntery must be founded. There must be masses and dyrges; there must be anuaries and headmen. He must be buried in S. Frauncis' gray coate ; and he in our Ladie's holy habite. He must have S. Dominike's hoode : and he S. Augustine's girdle. — And thus they cry to those earthly hils and rocks, to those filthy dunge heaps, . . Fall on us with such stuffe as ye have ! Cover us with your works more than need ! Pray, pray, pray ; sing, sing, sing ; say, say, say ; ring, ring, ring ! Give us of your oyle, for our lampes are out ! Helpe us with your Latyne Psalmes ! Releeve us with your lippe labour ; though all be but dunge and earth ! Comfort us with Placebo ! Help us with Requiem etemam ! Poure out your Trcntall masses ! Spew out your commendations ! Sing us out of that hotte fierie Purgatorie, before we come there ! " The reader will see in the above a characteristic sketch of Bale's own style, and also his hot temperament. But let the passage also further bring home to his mind the wretched delusions, under the name of Christ's religion, which prevailed for ages in England : and from which, in God's mercy, the glorious Reformation was our deliverance. For Bale's sketch is a sketch from the life. 3 1 John ii. 18. A passage often alluded to, we have seen, by the earlier fathers Jerome, Augustine, &c. : see my Vol. i. pp. 396, 397 : and also by later expositors : see my Vol. ii. pp. 365, 391, and p. 416, Note 5, supra. riK. \. n;\ wi» oiNTDBi oi mi, ssfoemation. (Bale.) 158 iweete silence shall Israeli be revyved, the Jewel be oonverted, the heathen come in Bgayno J Bud Christ seeke up his lust sheepe, and bryng hym agayne to hys Polde; that they maye appeare one Sock, lyke as they have one shepcherde." The nil et* the Trumpets Hale, like others before him, identities with those oi' the Seals : ' the 1st beini,' figurative of the wicked .lews and Qentiles, oppoaed to and persecuting the Christiana in the apostolic a'ra ; the 2nd of false brethren, inciting the Etonian emperors against Christians; the 8rd of heretics, such as Arius, Eutyches, Valens, that fell by apostasy from Christ's Church, and poisoned by their heresies the streams of religious doctrine; the 1th of the progress of superstition, image-worship, and hypocrisy, ob- scuring the light of truth, and ending in Popery and Mahoinmedism. — Then the Wbo-denovmemg Angel he makes to be men like Joachim Abbas, raising their warning-voice ; followed afterwards by such as Arnold and 8awmarola. The fallen star of the 5th Trumpet Bale explains as " the shyning multitude of prelates, pastours, and re- ligious fathers, fallen away from the doctryne of the Spyrite" in the middle age : darkening the light by false teachers, as by smoke from hell : and from which came swarms of Cardinals, Popes, Abbots, monks of every order, schoolmen, &c., like beasts. The 6th Trumpet's horsemen from the Euphrates (the river of Babylon) he expounds to mean the Antichristian Papists, ever prepared for evil, whether at the hour, day, month, or year : many, however, from among the four angels (whom he pretty much identifies with the horsemen) " that were sometime Antichristes, hypocrites, tyrauntes, and murtherers, having been loosened from Euphrates by the present age's gospel- Trumpet's sounding ;" " the Lord having anoynted many with his it in this age to preache delyveraunce to the captive, and to open the pryaon to them that were in bondage." 2 The Vision of Apoc. x. Bale explains clearly and strikingly, just aa Bollinger, of the Reformation: the book opened being the Scrip- tures; the Angel, the gospel-preachers of the Reformation, whose light is to be seen alike in the isles and on the continent ; the seven thunders, God's fearful coming judgments: which fact was to be noted, though the mysteries were sealed up and hid; such as about the hour and day of judgment, of which knoweth no man. As to ' p. 1093. l p. 129. 45 1 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. the time, limes, and half a lime of Daniel, which seemed alluded to in the Angel's oath, the time was that from Daniel to Christ ; the times, the ages from Christ to the 7th Seal's opening, and 7th Train- pet's sounding; the half-time, that from thenceforth, wherein the days shall be shortened for the elect's sake. Of which 7th Trumpet the sounding must be near, though lohen we know not. And then in that 7th age of the Church all shall be finished. So " are the faith- full to be assertened that their final redemption is at hand." l In Apoc. xi. (which begins his second Part and Volume) Bale makes the measuring-rod to be God's word, " now graciously sent us out of Zion, by men having his special grace, as by John, to have dominion heere in the midst of his enemies:"2 the temple, God's congregation or Church, denned and discriminated by his word from the synagogue of Satan ; the altar, Christ ; the Gentiles cast out, Popish prelates and priests that forsake Christ ; the Holy City, " the living generation of them that fear and love God ; " the two "Wit- nesses, faithful protesters for Christ, that continue with God's people all through the time of the Church's oppression by the Gentiles ; and that were never in more power than now, in this sixth age of the Church. — Of the Witnesses' slaughter by the Beast Antichrist, when they have individually finished their testimony, and their reviving in others, much, says he, has been already fulfilled, though something remains to be accomplished yet. The 3^ days of their exposure, or 7 half-days, he supposes to be the seven ages of the Church. The "Wit- nesses being seen by their enemies to ascend to heaven, is illustrated from the acknowledgment often made even here by Bornanists, to their having been godly men. The " tenth part of the city falling," is the decay of the riches of the Papal Church. — " Thus," says Bale, in concluding this subject, " have we heere what is done already ; and what is to come under this sixt Trumpet, whereunder we are now, which all belongeth to the second wo."3 The 7th Trumpet, he adds, is to introduce the full declaration of God's word, and peaceable time figured by the half-hour's silence. Which, however, will not always continue ; as there is to follow in that last age the outbreak of Gog and Magog, and the last judgment.4 Passing to Apoc. xii., Bale interprets the vision of the Woman and Dragon much as others before him. The woman is the Church bring- 1 p. 1 17. A passage cited by me more fully, Vol. ii. p. 144. 2 Tart ii. p. 7- 3 p. 2b*. * p. 272, 26. ' l'l. ::. v. .v.k\ \\n C1NTUH <>r Tin: m:iou\i \ i m\. [Bolt I 158 in.,' fort h Christ in his members ; tin- Dragon, the Devil ; the Dn- gon's mom heads baring i probable reference, he says, t.> the world's i Rgeej and their likeness respectively, he conjectures, 1st, (and before the flood,) lo the serpent, in whioh form he first tempted man; 2, to the calf, u the early object of idolatry; B, 1. •">. 8. to Daniel's lion, bear, leopard, and terrible Beast] 7. Ionian; this last figuring the Papacy,— In Apoc. xiii. he makes the jir. i iMiin 01 TH1 i;ii OBM \ i [ON. I Clu/I r<( us. i 157 ger'a other new of the prophecy's reference also bo the time of the endi sa\ ing thai i' ia roaorvod :is their deal in) to tear and desolate the bar- lol Rome: a thing already indeed begun, not only bj secular rulers, but even eccleeiasl icaJ ; aaCranmer, Latimer, Lather, Zuingle, CalTin, Bollinger,1 Ac. In /Lpoc. \i\., Hair says, mi the T.avth's bridal} " Bence the be* gynning of the world have the faithfule prepared for tliis heavenlye marriage j and in the resurrection of the righteous shall it be per- fectly solemnized, celebrated, and magnified ; such time as thej Bhal appear in full glory with Christ . In this" latter time will the true Christian Church be of her perfect age, when all the world shall con- - • his name in peace, and apte unto this spousage." — Yet on the ■millennium, Apoc. xx., contrary to his previous identification of it with this coming period of rest and evangelization of the world,2 a period destined to follow on the destruction of the Popedom, he re- rerta to the old Augustinian solution : making it the 1000 years from Christ's ascension to Pope Sylvester II : so "Wicliff, says he, in his book Be Solutione Sathancc. Then was the Devil loosed in the Papal supremacy ; and the Turks also, as Gog and Magog ; though no doubt the foundations of the Popedom were laid 100 years earlier by Phocaa. It was OOW at length a plenary loosing; but only "for a little while :" as Berenger, and then the Waldenses, Wicliilites, &c, very soon after opposed the Papacy; and subsequently, yet more, the Reformers Luther, Ac, ■• And 1 doubt not but within few dayes the mightie breath of Christ's mouth, which is his lyving gospele, shall utterly distroye hym." On tin- /i'ii- h, net n and earth Bale professes to look for an earth purified and renovated by the fire of judgment, " goyng before the Judge ;" very much as in King Edward's Catechism, cited by me at p. 2ot of this Volume. 1. A brief notice may suffice of the two interpreters Chytrmu and M ■ hrat, who published some twenty years later, in the middle cei'a of tin- Reformation; for they both very much followed in the track of their predecessors. Thus in David Clii/ traits' Explicatio Apocalypsis,puhli.-lied Wit- 1 M. irk this notice of Bullinger. p. IVJ, U&mpzi. 458 HISTORY OP APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. tenberg 1571, the six first Seals are made to depict the gospel-pro- gress, wars, famines, pestilences, persecutions, and political commo- tions, &c, as from time to time repeated, or continued, throughout the whole time of the Church ; and the Sealing Vision the multitudes sealed and saved through all this same period. Of the Trumpets the four first Chytraeus interprets of the heresies of Tatian, Marcion, Origen, and Novatus ; so as Luther, says he, in his Bible, " ad mar- ginem Editionis Germanicae : " the 5th, of the Papacy, as established by Gregory and Phocas' Decree ; the 6th, of the Saracens and Turks; the Euphrates being specified, says Chytraeus, with a more specific geographical reference than others, because of the Saracen capital Bagdad being situated by it. — The Angel vision in Apoc. x. is Christ's succouring the Church in those times of darkness, by opening the Scriptures and raising up true preachers : x John's charge to prophesy again being given him, not so much in his personal as in his repre- sentative character: the office assigned to these gospel preachers being to attack the Papal and Mahometan errors, till the 7th Trum- pet's sounding, or end of the world. — In Apoc. xi. the figuration of the temple showed that even in the worst times, under Popery and Ma- hommedanism, there would be a Church of God, recognizing the true altar, or Christ in his characters of Priest and Mediator ; and the ex- clusion directed of the outer court meant God's own exclusion of Papists ; boasting themselves to be the true Church, but rejected by the measuring rod of God's law. The 1260 days of the Gentiles treading the holy city are to be explained, Chytraeus adds, as angelic days, i. e. as 1260 years : and to be calculated (I noted this a little previously2) perhaps from Alaric's taking Rome, A.D. 412, perhaps from Phocas' Decree, A.D. 606 ; on the former of which suppositions the date of ending would be A.D. 1672 ; on the latter, 1866. Cor- respondency with which view of that mystic period the two Witnesses signified all Christ's successive witnesses during the 42 months of Antichrist's reign ; such, says he, as have been recently detailed in the " Catalogus Testium." 3 Their death and speedy revival he ex- plains, like Bullinger and others, to signify the speedy revival of other witnessing and witnesses, on each individual occasion of their temporary suppression by Antichrist. — In Apoc. xiii. he follows 1 The seven thunders Chytrreus makes the seven-fold gifts of the Holy Spirit. 2 p. 411, 442 supra. 3 Compare my notice of this Catalogue, Vol. ii. p. 204. vr.lt. v." Ili ami 0BHTUB1 Of nil U IfOBM \ 1 ION. I dCtwlorat.) Bollinger in making the first Beast the old Pagan Roman Empire] explaining too its seven heada after him : onlj he makea the wound* ing of the seventh head to be that by the Gfotha. I ihould have obearred that he notes on the L260 days, how want had explained them of the Interim, from May L5, L648 bo the beginning of L552: — the lirst iutroduet inn this. I belie\e. of the Interim into Protectant Apocalyptic interpretation. The second Beast is Borne Pontifical ; the image of the Beast the "Western Empire, the shadow of the old one. — The Beast's name and number some, he says, explained as a title, e. g. Aaravoc ; some as chronologically marking the time from Christ to Phoeaa or Pepin. The millennium is the 1000 years from Christ to Gregory VII and the Turks. \utin Miarlorafs Exposition of the Revelation of St. John, pub- lished A.l). 1574, with a dedication to Sir \Y. .Mihlmav, Chancellor of the Exchequer under Queen Elizabeth, is professedly collected out of divers notable writers of the Protestant Churches; viz. Bollinger, Calvin, Gaspar Meyander, Justus Jonas, Lambertus, Musculus, (Eeolampadius, l'ellieanus. Meyer, Yiret. — The first novelty that I observe in it is on the '2ml Trumpet ; where the figure of the burning mountain cast into the sea is explained of the Roman empire swal- lowed up. as in the sea, by Christ's kingdom. The 5th Trumpet is applied to Mahomet and the Pope; the 6th to the Papal Antichrist yet more strongly. — On Apoc. x. I mark the clear decisive explana- tion of its Angel-Vision usual among the Reformers, as figuring the opening of the Scriptures, and revived gospel-preaching at the irmation : also the exclusion of the outer court in Apoc. xi., as signifying the exclusion of Papists : there being here, however, in Marlorat this variation, that on the Angel's oath, living securely 88 as he did under the Protestant Queen Elizabeth, he not unnaturally expresses a strong opinion that the 2nd Woe had past in his time, even though the 7th Trumpet might not have sounded. — In Apoc. xii. he interprets the Dragon' M seven heads like Bale: in Apoc. xiii.. the first Beast as Antichrist and his kingdom: (the deadly UXHtnd, mad'- by Bfahomet, being healed by the Pope*:) the second Beast as monks and priests supporting the Papacy j the Beas/\~< image as the images of saints; the dm and number, much as Chytreus. Finally, in Apoc. xx. he explains the millennium as the period from I • to Antichrist ; during which Satan, he says, was re- 460 HISTOBY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. Strained : and he takes occasion on it to reprobate the errors of the Chiliasts. A word, ere I pass to the last quarter of this century, on Bibli- andcr : an expositor contemporary with the two former ; and who, in his exposition of the Seals, as I learn from Eoxe,1 offered certain no- ticeable novelties. Like Berengaud he supposed them to symbolize successive ages of the world from its beginning : but not the same as Berengaud. According to Bibliander the 1st Seal figures the age from the Creation to the Flood ; the 2nd from the Flood to Moses ; the 3rd from Moses to Christ ; the 4th from Christ to Constantine ; the 5th from Constantine to the commencement of Papal supremacy by Phocas' grant, and of Mahommedanism by Mahomet about A.D. 606 ; the 6th (including Pepin and Charlemagne's acts of aggrand- izement to the Boman Church) from Phocas to the Councils of Con- stance and Basle A.D. 1431 ; 2 the 7th from thence to the consum- mation. 5. In conclusion of my Historic Sketch of Protestant Apocalyptic Expositors of the century and sera of the Beformation, I shall now briefly state the opinions of Foxe, Brightman, and Pareus ; expositors who published in the last quarter of that century, as dated from A.D. 1517. The Exposition by Foxe, our venerable English Martyrologist, was written (as appears by two chronological notices in the book) in the year 1586 ;3 and had been only advanced to Apoc. xvii., when the work was interrupted by his death.4 The next year it was published by his son, under the modest title of Eicasmi in Apocalypsin ; {Con- jectures on the Apocalypse ;) with a Dedication to Archbishop Whit- gift ; in size making a thin folio of about 400 pages. It seems to me to deserve attention, not merely from the venerable character of the writer ; but also from the learning and original thought and views manifest in the Commentary itself. 1 Foxe, pp. 43, 44. 2 There is a little obscurity here ; but I think this is Bibliander's meaning. Com- pare what Foxe says, p. 60, on thejth Seal's not figuring the events of the 7th millen- nary, but rather of the 6th. 3 First, on the 6th Seal, where he speaks of the current year as A.D. 1586 : sccondly) ■where he states it as 286 years from A.D. 1300, on Apoc. xi. — Eicasmi, pp. 60, 123. (My Edition is the original Edition of 1587.) * See the notice at the conclusion of the Commentary, p. 396. IT.it. v.1 vkv wi> 01MTUA1 01 PHI UF0BXAT10N. /•■ ■ ■ 1 * *> I Thus, tn begin,1 be makes the form and Hotmnmn of the- rrationa on the careful use necessary of the allegorical meaning, so as not to set the historical. " Nun me fugit istud, nullo niodo fastidiendas esse omncs in Bcriptnria aUagorias." Both Christ and Paul, he says, uses them ; " at maxime in ei- bortando, WTI^til^j doeendo." " In pmphclando non ita proprie luditur allegoriia< aut, si in prophetiis u-u ita veniat quandoque, ut per similium collationem parabolas adhibcantur. at nun ideo tamen sensus historicus per allcgorismos et tropologias ever- tendus > H ; pra wrtmi ul>i res ipsa ad historias nos mittit, non ad aUegoriaa." '- The same view that Mr. Faber has in our own days advocate d ; whether as an ori- ginal idea, or adopted from Foxc. See hi- Snored Calendar of Prophecy. It seems from Foxe that Petmi Artopams had so construed the 1st Seal before him. Foxe (pp. 46 — 50) critic:- -. and shows the inconsistency and nntenableness of, the old Church-schemes of the Seals at some length. How is Christ the rider of the 1st horse, when represi nted otherwise as on the throne, opening the Seals • How on a wnr-hOTW, and with bow in hand, as a warrior ; when going forth (according to those . not to inflict judgment, but limply in the peaceful progress of the tro How in the 2nd, 3rd. and Ith Seals one and the same rider, the Devil, when the dif- ferent hones, with different colours and characteristics, might seem to require differ- ent riders to each ? Moreovt r. how could the Devil be supposed the rider, when the time at which he would be so riding forth wil that at which in the millennial vision [such being i of Apoe. \\.] he was figured as bound in the abyss I — Again, in the 2nd Seal, " the killing one another" could only be applied to civil wars and slaughter, not to dissensions of Christiana, — And, as to the 3rd Seal, the small price* of a di narioa lot the mi ssnre of wheat and three measures of barley, conjoined with the intimated abundance also of wine and oil, might rather signify a dearth of men to buy, than a dearth Of the provisions to be bought. \. 's view, p. 66. ' Yi/. 1. under Henry IV and V in England j 2. in the Council of Constance, and in Bohemia; 8, under the Soman Pontiffs in Italy; 4. under the Emperor Charles Y in (iennany ; .">. tinder ll< nry V 1 1 1 in Bngund; »'>. under Henry II in Caul ; 7. un- der Janus II in Scotland ; 8. und< r Charles I\ [q France ; !(. under Mary in Eng- land; 10. under Philip II in Spain and r landers, p. 66. • Foxe does not enter on the question of the size of the eha nix measure. 403 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. others figuring the last judgment. And he thence infers that it may signify primarily the overthrow, following on the completion of the first set of martyrs, of the Roman Pagan persecuting emperors and empire accomplished hy Coustantine : yet so as to symbolize also, secondarily and chiefly, the greater day of judgment ; on the comple- tion of the second and final set of Christian martyrs, slain by Anti- christ. Which judgment, Poxe thought, might be regarded as very near at hand. The Sealing Vision, included in the same sixth Seal, showed the preservation of the saints at this period of the judgment, amidst the physical disturbances of the mundane system, (for the stagnation of the winds, the literal winds, indicated a stop in the usual course of nature,)1 and conflagration of the world; just as the fate of the anti- cbristian and wicked had been depicted in the previous figuration : the 144,000 sealed, whom Foxe identifies with the innumerable body of the palm-bearers, being the universal church of the redeemed. — Then the half-hour's silence in heaven, Foxe, dissatisfied with other views, conjectures to mean the peace of the world under Augustus, preceding Christ's birth : and that the prayers of all saints that fol- lowed, being prayers of the saints after Christ's death and ascension, while under persecution from Jews and Romans, brought down on their persecutors the judgments symbolized in the Trumpets. Thus Trumpet 1 was the destruction of Jerusalem by t he Romans; Trumpet 2 the plague and other troubles under Aurelius, after the fourth Pa- gan persecution : Trumpet 3 the plague under Decius of which Cy- prian wrote, and that far greater one, together with all the other troubles, under Gallienus ; Trumpet 4 the convulsions and quenching of the political lights of the Roman empire by Goths, Vandals, and Lombards ;a Trumpet 5 the woes possibly of the Papacy, but more probably in Poxe's opinion of Mahommedanism, the one from Phocas, the other from Mahomet ; 3 (the five months specified having refer- ence simply to the time of the natural locusts, that constituted the figure, making their ravages ;)4 Trumpet 6 the Turks. On which 1 If any preferred to take it metaphorically, then the winds might mean the gospel- preaching stopt by four evil angels, chiefly the Papal agencies. * So falling on what I believe the right interpretation of this 4th Trumpet. He adds, as an alternative, that if any prefer to understan I the obscuration of the firma- mental luminaries ecclesiastically, it may be explained of the darkening of heaven by Mahommedanism. 3 Here again, I conceive, Foxe is in the right 4 p. 90. ram. ▼. i ;■ \ \m> entrust 01 rai uroxMATioit. ■/•". la>t point Foxe la my strong. '■ it is dearer than the Light it si-li'." vs. "that this is the main intent of the Trumpet."1 Hf dates tin- Turks' power in Asia from A. I). L061, when the alliance was formed by them with theOaliph of Bagdad;1 and traces their history thence downwardto A. P. 1678. " Ami the rest," [1 is said, Apoe. ix. BO, " repented not of worship- ping idols, &c" The Anglo-Rhemenees, obserrea Foxe,1 explain this Of heathen idols. But were the (i reeks that have been slain ami en- slaved by the Turks, worshippers of sitc/t idols ? — Then he proceeds 1 0 the vision of Apoe. x., xi. ; all under the same sixth Trumpet, *• in qui hactenus reraamur."4 In Apoe. x. the magnificent vision of Christ, there given, signified chiefly two things : — 1st, the restoration of gospel-preaching, " Thou must prophesy again ; " the book in the Angel'l hand figuring (Soil's word, and John being a representative person cm the scene of vision: 2nd, a declaration of the surely ap- pTOaching judgment under the seventh Trumpet."' He explains both these of his own a-ra. though as ber/uti indeed earlier, even from the time of AViclilf ; (times included likewise in the Turkish woe-period, Of 6th Trumpet ;) and he refers in one place, as illustrative, to the wonderful discovery of printing.-— Mark specially, he observes more than once, the word " Prophesy again."* It implies there having been previously a cessation of it; so as in fact for centuries under the Papacy. — Then, preparatorily to the next vision, Foxe has a dis- sertation to show that the great Antichrist of Scripture prophecy is I'ope, not the Turk ; and the temple he was to sit in, the Christian Church. Accordingly in Apoe. xi. the temple is the Church; its w court true worshippers, its outer false: also the measuring it indicated its reparation and reformation, during the then current woe of the sixth Trumpet. " f.s- i,i our dag.*' This reformation implied a previous corruption of it. he adds, by Antichrist: the progress of which he fcrao — l. to the 12 months, during which the Holy City was to be trodden down, it was no doubt the same as the 12 months of Apoe. \ii.. xiii. And this, arguing from the length of the Jewish and Roman Pagan persecutions of the Church, from Herod's behead- 1 p. 98. Rightly, I doubt not, again. I have noticed this in my Vol. ii. p. I the An eel's oatb. ■ P r Is. ' p. 99. * pp. 99, 100. * pp. 102, 10.3. See the joyous citation given from Foxe in mv Vul. ii. ]). 111. * p. 107, &c. 46 1 EIBTOBY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. ing of St. John to Constantine, and which he computed at 294 years,1 he deemed to he on the scale of one month to seven years ; a singular scale, applied however by him to the number in Daniel also ! This then would be the duration of the Turks and Pope jointly oppressing the Church ; a term equal to that of the Jews and Pa- gans' oppression of it, till Constantine. And as from Satan's loosing, and the rise of the Ottomans, A.D. 1300, 286 years of the term had, when Foxe wrote, elapsed, there would now remain of it but eight years more. — Similarly the AV^itnesses' 1260 days of prophesying in sackcloth, dated by Foxe from A.D. 1300, would [on the scale before mentioned have to end in 1594. At the same time he mentions Aretius' and Chytroeus' view of the period, as one of angelic days, i. e. of years : ending, if measured from Constantine, in 1572 ; if from Alaric, (A.D. 412,) in 1672; if from Phocas, in the year 1866.2 — The witnesses prophesying 1260 days in sackcloth, and then being killed by the Beast, he explains of the proceedings of the Council of Constance in the condemnation of Huss and Jerome ; (so too, he says, Bibliander : ) its first Session having been Dec. 8, 1414 ; the last, May 22, 1418, just 3| years after. After which time their principles, thought to have been suppressed, soon revived. Foxe dwells long and minutely on this history ; deeming it evidently a very remarkable fulfilment of the prophecy.3 — Since which time the revived Witnesses had come down to the time of Luther and the Re- formers.— All this had been under the sixth or Turkish Trumpet ; which Foxe regarded as then, when he wrote, near its end : the 7th Trumpet being thus close at hand ; when the Church would have its time of blessedness accomplished, in Christ's coming and the saints' resurrection. In Apoc. xii. the Woman travailing was God's true Church, — that same of which David in his 87th Psalm described the glory : 4 the Dragon, the Devil ; seeking through Herod to destroy Christ at his birth, and persecuting him afterwards till his death and ascension. After which event the Woman flying into the wilderness, which 1 See on Apoc. xii., next page. 2 pp. 144, 145. 3 At p. 180 Foxe briefly notices Huss's dream and prophecy, as I more fully have done, Vol. ii. pp. 459, 460 ; not aware, when I did so, that any other expositor had noted it before me. * " Glorious things are spoken of thee, thou City of God." p. 197. Foxe contrasts this with the Romish pseudo-Church. ME. T.] IE* AND 0BNTUE1 01 tin: UFOBMATION. i/'-'/ci If',.", signified ■ hiding-place from the more immediate observation and furj of tin- enemy, like the oaves and dens of the earth spoken of in Hi'!). \i. 88,' had tor 1260 mystic days, meaning 294 years, as stated before, L e. until the time of Constantine, (and the l>e\ il's ooincidenl millennial binding,) to undergo oppression and persecution.1 The thst lir, ist of A-poo, \iii. is explained by Foxe, as by Bullinger, of the heathen Roman emperors : bis eeven heads, besides their primary signification of Rome's seven hills, meaning either, so as Bullinger had interpreted them, the seven original kings of ltome, or, as Chytreus, the seven Julian emperors to Nero ; or perhaps, as Peter Artopeus and D. Fulco, (Foxe should have added the earlier Osi- ander.) the seven orders of chief ruling magistrates, Kings, Consuls, Decemvirs, Dictators, Triumvirs, IVsars, and Emperors of foreign aueestry.3 (Let my readers mark this very important step of pro- greas in Apocalyptic interpretation.) The ten horns Foxe inclines to interpret as the emperors who originated the ten Roman Pagan persecutions of the Church. The 12 mystic months of his ruling as a persecutor were to be taken, as before, to signify 42 x 7, or 29 1 years. And here Foxe recounts, somewhat mysteriously, that his secret of the mystic numbers, and true scale of computation in- tended, had been revealed to a friend of his, a martyrologist ; meaning, I presume, himself.4 — The Beast's head wounded was ful- filled in the Goths' destruction of old Kome ; its healing, in the uprising of the Roman Papal supremacy. — So he comes to the second it; which he interprets of course as the Popes, or Antichrist: who. while reviving the old Roman Empire that had been wounded to death,5 fulfilled also the symbol of two hums like a lamb by their hypocritical pretensions to Christianity; as also indeed, agreeably with the Apocalyptic sketch, to miracles. It had in Hebrew the name BPQWyi {Jtomamu) = GGG ; a name which Foxe preferred t<» others of the same numeral value in Greek or Latin: and in the oaths of fealty to the Romish Church, imposed on all functionaries, 1 P ■ p. 206. Foxe here hints that " the little season " of the Devil's looting may in- dicate > seetmd 294 yeew Of OppW ion from after the end of that millennium; or ii of the Turk' kMHffag against Christendom ahout A.D. 1300.- 1 p. 214. Osi.uider published A.I). 1644. See my Vol. iii. p. 110, N • p. 216. * The Beast's image he seems at p. 268 to m tke the restored greatness of . Empire. But he does not enter on the point distinctly, iv. 30 Il66 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PAKT I. secular and ecclesiastical, stamped them as it were with the Papal character or mark.1 Of the Apocalyptic ViaU the five first were explained by Foxe as woes poured out on the old Roman empire ; the other two on that of Papal Rome: viz. 1. Gallienus' eXjtofi or plague; 2. and 3. the blood- shed in the civil and foreign wars of the persecuting emperors ; 4. the plagues of drought and famine about that same a?ra; 2 5. Rome's destruction (the seat of the Beast) by the Goths ; 6. the Turkish plague from the Euphrates, the same as in the 6th Trumpet.3 The millennium, or 1000 years of Satan's binding, he explains, as I before observed, of the 1000 years from Constantine to the acme of Papal supremacy, and the outbreak of Ottoman Turks, about 1300, A.D. On the whole, the following points seem to me chiefly notable in Poxe's very valuable and interesting Commentary : viz. his reference of the fifth and sixth Seals, partially at least, to Diocletian's persecu- tion and the revolution under Constantine ; his strong and distinctive application of the 6th Trumpet to prefigure the Turks ; his applica- tion of the visions in Apoc. x., xi., of the Angel's descent, John's pro- phesying, and the measuring of the temple, to the Church's revival in the Reformation ; and his explanation, after Fulco and Artopseus, of the seven heads of the Beast ; all advances in the right path, I conceive, if not altogether correct : — also his date of Satan's binding, as one to be computed from Constantine ; Poxe being, I believe, the first so to compute it. He was followed herein soon after by the Romanist Alcasar. Here I conceive him to have been quite in error ; as also in that on which he thought himself favoured with peculiar discernment; viz. the scale on which the prophetic periods were to be calculated. Passing over Junius, as an Apocalyptic expositor' not so important as to call for any detailed notice,4 I proceed to one of whom it is my 1 pp. 260, 270. In his discussion of Apoc. xiii. Foxe devotes some 40 pages, or more, (from p. 224 to 268) to a controversial discussion with Romanists on the great subject of the Antichrist and Apocalyptic Beast. - So very similarly, says Foxe, p. 332, the expositor Fulco. s p. 373. 4 Francis Junius, or Du Jim, was professor of divinity at Leyden, and joint trans- lator of the Old Testament with Tremellius. He was born of a noble family at Bourgcs, A.D. 1-645, and died of the plague at Leyden, A.D. 1602. In 1592 he published a Latin treatise on the Apocalypse, which was dedicated to Henry IV., r; i:. \ i : \ \\:> CKNTUK1 91 Mir. ISfOlMATION. (BrigJUmatt.) 46) duty t«> ipeafc fully end particularly. 1 mean Brigktmm, His Com- mentary, which is dedicated feo "the holy reformed Cbarohei of Brisany, Grermanj, and France," appean bo have beea written and lirst published in the year A.D. 1600, or 1601, before the death of Qaeen Elizabeth.' It is one of greed rigour both in thought and language; and deservedly one of the mosl popular with the Protest* ant Churches of the time. He himself gives a brief summarv of it : which 1 here subjoin, with a few illust rat i\ e Not, ■>.'-' " Apoc. fi The 8mk. 1. The truth is first of all opened, and overcometh. [this is the white horse,] under Trajan. Hadrian, and Antoninus Pius;3 at the voice of the first Beast. (>uadratns, Aris- tidee, and Justin Martyr. 3. At the voice of the second Beast. (viz. the same Justin Melito of Sardis, and Apollinarius.) cometh forth the red horse under Marcus Autonius Verns, confounding all things with wars.4 5. The third seal being opened, the third Beast, Tcitullian, crieth out under Severus the emperor, when the hlark hone scourgeth the world with famine and barrenness. 7. The fourth seal is opened; and then speaks the fourth Beast Cyprian, us beiug emperor; when the pale hone wasted all with war, famine, pestilence, and wild beasts. 9. The fifth is opened,5 and King of France and Navarre, and of which an English translation was printed and reprinted in 1-V.rJ, IV 1. 1696, 1616. The Edition of 159C has pp. 286.# I will just note from it the following particular*, lie makes the 1260 years range from ' th to Pop< Boniface, A.D. 1294 ; the millenium of Satan's binding _- reckoned from the time of his casting down by Christ. The woman of Apoc xii. he make* the early Juda?o-Christian Church; and her hiding in the wild. to have been partly fulfilled in the Church's safe refuge at Telia during the .'!J years of the Jewish war. The remnant of her wed was the faithful Christian Church raids; and the witneeaing <>f her children in nckoloth prolonged to Bonifaoi . Then, at Bonifaoa'i Jnbilee, the people from the Papa] nations having gathered at Tome, certain Christian witneeaei wen banged there; and the Papists rejoiced over them as in Apoc. xi. 10. Tut. .">} years after, Boniface was made prisoner by a French .-.d. and soon died. In 1301 a great earthquake happened at Home : and the witnesses rose to heaven by the gathering of converts to the true Church ; — the Apoca- lyptic heaven. . also the 2nd page of the Freface. My Edition is the 1th. 1. a- . il. Bright - In Apoc. iv. the Book with seven seals is suppoaod to have been the whole Apoca- Book. 1 The triumph o: ith Brightman illustrates from Hadrian's Edict, that no Christian should be condemned unless found guilty of some violation of the civ i 1 Bnaab. iv. 3. cially tin- wars with th. I'arthians and the Marco-memi. * The openitig epoch of the ht'h Seal is, according to Brightman, the persecution had a son of the same r his Gothic lore, born at iied at Windsor, 1677. 30 • 468 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. some intermission of the public persecution given under Claudius, Quintilius, Aurelian, and the rest, till the 19th year of Diocletian. 12. The sixth is opened, when Diocletian and Maximian Herculius rage : till at length they were cast out of their empire by the power of the Lamb ; for fear of whom those tyrants fled, and hid themselves.1 " Apoc. vii. The seventh seal offereth first a general type of all the ages following. 1. When wicked men were ready to trouble all the world with contention, ambition, heresy, war, they are restrained by Constantine the Great ; till he had sealed the elect, by provid- ing for the faithful (who were few and living in obscurity) in that great calamity of the Church which straightway followed. 9. Which rueful time being at last passed over, the prosperity and happiness of the faithful grew great.2 " Apoc. viii. Secondly, to this seventh seal belongeth the s ilence that was in heaven : i. e. peace procured by Constantine. 2. The trumpets are prepared, and Constantine calleth the Nicene Councd to cut oft" troubles, which yet by it are more increased. 6. The Angels sound the trumpets ; at the sound of the first whereof the contentions of the Arians about the word co-essential arose. 8. At the sound of the second, the burning mountain of ambition is cast into the sea, by the decree concerning the primacy and dignity of bishops. 10. At the third the star falleth from heaven ; the Arian under Gallienus : the white robes given being an emblem of the temporary respite for 40 years ; and the intimation about other martyrs to be sacrificed, before God's promised vengeance, having reference to the martyrdoms of the next and last Pagan persecution under Diocletian. 1 The elemental convulsions of the 6th Seal are supposed to be those of Diocletian's persecution, when the very Church itself seemed to be blotted out of the visible heaven ; the kings' subsequently figured flight and terror, on the other hand, the overthrow of the Pagan emperors by Constantine, and their awful deaths. 2 Brightman places the Sealing Vision distinctly under the 6th Seal ; but makes its figured symbolization to give an anticipative view of what was to happen after- wards under the Trumpets and Vials, (p. 240.) The contention, ambition, heresy, and war, specified in his summary, are made by him the four evil angels of the sealing vision : the same, he says, that were developed in the four first Trumpets ; and ar- rested all four by Constantine, the sealing angel. The sealing was by means chiefly of the Council of Nice ; into the spirit of which, however, few entered ; so that the true Church, or number really sealed, was small. The 144,000, depicted as the first sealed, were the first-fruits and representatives of a true church of the elect, similarly sealed, down to A.D. 1300; (p. 251 ;) when the palm-bearing vision began to have fulfilment, in the ingathering of a larger multitude of Gentile converts, after the Waldenses, &c. ; it being intended to include ultimately also the converted Jews, restored to the privileges of Christ's Church, (not Jewish temple, as of old,) after their great tribulation. I'll;. \. n;\ LND C1NTUS1 Of Til I I IFO&M \ I IOS , I Bright 'man.) 169 heresy being defended by Constantius and Valena. L2. At the fourth, the third pari of the ran (the Ohmrek «j' AJrioa) is smitten bj the Vandals. L8. The world ia warned concerning more grievous Trumpets to ensue b\ (ire^ory the Great. •• A[mh\ i\. i. At tlic fifth sounding the bottomless pi1 is opened,1 and swarms of Locusts crawl out: that is, of religious persons in tiic West, of Saracens in the East.2 13. At the sixth the Turks in- vade the world, which is punished for the Komish idolatry.3 •• A [me. x.- 1. At what time the Turks rise up, the study of the t rut li * in many in the Western parts is kindled. 9. By whose en- deavour the interpretation of Scripture is restored again to the earth.' 1 Thfl key-bearing opener of the pit is, according to Brightman, the Pope. " Doth not the Pope worthily boast of his keys, and earrieth them instead of an ensign ': " p. 289. • The live months, or 160 days of the locusts, he explains of two or three differenl periodl of that duration, markl d in the Saracen ravages ; such as that from their tirst Syria, about A.D. 630, to their overthrow by the Emperor Leo, A.D. 780. ■■ We define this first overrunning of the earth by the Saracens in 1.50 years, not beennee at the end of these yean they were straightway cast out of those countries which they had conquered; but because they had ill success afterwards in their battles against the Romans ; being often conquered, put to flight, and slain, hardly holding that which they had gotten, much less getting any more." p. 300. This r. nbUm the view afterwards given by Daubuz ; and adopted by myself from him, .i» well M by many others. * "The hour, day. month, and year," Brightman reckons on the year-day principle the 396 years of the Talks' duration, measured from their revival under the Othmans, A.D. 1300 ; and thai that the year 169G would see their destruction. (Com- pare, at p. 463 supra, Foxc's eommencing date, A.D. 1051.) This anticipation was na- turally called to mind on Prince Eugene's victories about that same year ; (indeed one of our Bishops had repeated Brightman's prediction previously;) and the over- throw of Turkish supremacy consequent. « This prefigured revival of the study of the truth is supposed to date from the times of the Waldenses: the little book opened being the Scriptures, especially the Apocalypse : a book now little, because so much of the whole seven-sealed Apooalyp- B '<)k had been already developed. This is notable, as the first step, if I mistake not, towards Mede's remarkable and I doubt not erroneous view of the little book, as a separate and detached Part of the Apocalyptic prophecy, of which more in the next Section. The main and most important idea, however, of the symbol figuring the opening of the Scripture-, at the particular time figured, viz. under the 6th Trum- pet, Brightman, unlike Mcde, loses not. The seven thunders Brightman explains as the voices of the three angels flying through mid-heaven, and the others after them, in Apoc. xiv. 6, &c. ; • of which the mysteril I m r<- for a while to be kept secret. — '• There shall be time no more," he construes as, " Then thai] be no more delay." i He allots 200 years to the Waldcnsian and Wieklitlite time of preparation, as in- cluded in this chapter x., tin ir earnest desire Of spiritual learning being figured in the eating of the book by John : (for John was a type of Christ's ministers :) and that then a fuller prophecy was given ; and through the unfolding of history by Luther, • But, says Pareus (p. 20*2), wit!. to this Idea of Brightman's, " there (viz. in Apoc. xiv.) only six ugi Is arc mentioned " Brightman mrludtn, I oono the one like the Son of man on the bright eloud of xiv. 11 which included, tin n- I Ittl mentioned in the closing part of that chapter, to be added to the three h. I 470 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART 1. '-\|)oc. xi. 1. Prophecy being restored, there was a more full knowledge of the age past : namely, that the Church from Constan- tine's time for 1200 years was hidden in the secret part of the tem- ple ; l the llomans in the mean time boasting of the holy city and outmost court. 7. And that, at the end of those years,2 the Bishop of Rome shall wage war against the Church, cut the throat of the Scrip- tures with his Council of Trent, yea, make very carcases of them, and triumph over them for three years and a half; and should also, by the help of force and arms from Charles the Fifth, tread upon the saints in Germany : who yet, after three years and a half, lived again in the men of Magdeburg and Mauritius ;3 struck the enemies with a great fear ; and overthrew the tenth part of the empire of Rome. 15. The seventh Angel soundeth ; and, about the year 1558, Christ getteth himself new kingdoms; England, Ireland, Scotland embracing the Gospel.4 " Apoc. xii. The first part of the seventh trumpet giveth yet a more full light into the state of the age past; the century-writers of Magdeburg being raised up by God.5 The whole matter is repeated from the beginning : and we are taught ; — 1. that the first Church Melancthon, Guicciardini, &c, the faithful were prepared for understanding the state of the church and of Christian witnesses in former times, as figured in the next chapter, 'Apoc. xi. (p. 345.) — All this too seems to me very observable. 1 Retrospectively Brightman supposes the subject figured in the temple-measuring to join on to the time of Apoc. vii. So the reed like a rod had reference to Constantine's rod of authority ; by whom there was the first defining of the temple. Another point observable. " The reed's being like a rod teacheth us that the truth was to be greatly helped and underpropped with the authority of princes : for a rod is often put for a sceptre . . that sceptre which kings carry." (p. 317.) I was quite unac- quainted with Brightman when I first took a similar view of this point in the symbol. Brightman's " church hidden in the secret part of the temple," may have furnished Mede perhaps with the first hint of his atrium interim and exterius. * The two witnesses Brightman makes to be the Scriptures, and the assemblies of the faithful, (p. 356.) — Their 1260 lunar years he explains as but{1242 Julian years. These, measured from Constantine's accession A.D. 301, ended in 1546, (pp. 353, 361,) the year of the assembling of the Council of Trent ; which in its third Session slew the Scriptures, by making the Vulgate the only standard, and the authority of tradi- tion equal to that of Scripture. The slaying of the assemblies of the faithful was by Charles the Vth's victory over the Protestants, April 22, 1517 : against whom the Protestants of Magdeburgh rose in Oct. 1550, 3£ years from the former date ; and in 1555, having united with Maurice, overthrew Charles's anti-Protestant plans, and procured freedom to the Reformed religion, (pp. 366, 375, 376.) 3 So Cuninghame, afterwards. 4 p. 381. This view of the epoch of the 7th Trumpet's sounding was peculiar, I believe, to Brightman. 5 p. 3S9. Mark this reference to the Centuriators of Magdeburgh, and their " Cata- ljgue of Witnesses ; " noted also p. 458 supra. I'l.n \ i ;; \ wn u.\nn or nil iti .n>i;\i I FIOW ■ • Urii/li/niaii.) Ill of the Apostles was most pQN, yet most of all afflicted by the 1 »r a- gOD,' i. e. tlu> Roman heathenish emperors, WOO emlea\ oureJ with all theil migfal that no way nii^'ht be given to any Christian to ihc high- eat empire; — •">. at length thai Constantine the GhreeJ was horn, the mali- child of thfi Church ; at whoso birth, though the tir.-t purity tied into the wilderness tVom the eves of nun. yet this Constant LD6 threw down the Dragon from heaven, the heathenish emperors being driven out, ami put from ever reigning again in or against the Church: — 13, that, all hostile power being taken from the Dragon, he perse- cuted the Church under the Christian name by Const ant ins and Yalens : — lo. and that he sought to overwhelm her, fleeing from him, with au inundation of barbarians rushing in upon the West; 17. which tlood being dried up, he stirred up the war of the Saracens. ■• Apoc. xiii. 1. The Dragon being cast out of beaven by Coustan- tine, he substituted the Beast to be bis Vicar there; which Beast is the Popo of Koine, who sprung up at once with Constantine, was made great by the Nicene Council, was wounded by the Goths in- vading Italy, was healed by Justinian and Phoeas, aud thenceforth made greater than ever before. 11. The second Beast is the same Pope «>f Koine, enlarged in his dimensions by Pepin and Charles the Great; who gave him a new kind of springing up, whence he grew extremely wicked.2 " Apoc. xiv. for lout) yean from Constantiue, the Church abiding in must secret places, was hidden together with Christ, but did no i matter famous and remarkable by the world. 0. Those 1000 1 The Dragon's ten horns are explained as alluding to the Roman ten Praitorian or imperial Provinces. - Mirk here, 1st, Brightman's singular distinction of the two Beasts, as each alike the Popes and their empire, only at two snaeassiTe tunes; the earlier from Conatan- ■ . Pepin, the second from Pepin and Charlemagne; the one being the primary 'k head, the other the teoondary teventh, <>r eighth .• 2ndrjr, the notice (the list I have observed) of Jiutiniam'e Decree ]ai an epoch of Papal greatness : (p. 138;) 3. that Brightman make* the Beast's tin home here to be the ten Christian emperors, on the 1 ith head, from Constantine to TheodosJas the 2nd thai gave power te I ' ipe : whan that wonld in Qod'i time hate the whore and tear her. as he considers foretold in Apoo. wii. 16, were n Rome's seYen hills i little while," viz. 100 jean from Constaatiaa'i pernors! to Constantino pli ; then heinj; overthrown by the (i"th>; tin n restored sgain ;i- Popes in the time of Phoeas, or Pepin: so being the 8th head, and y turn- of the -rt. * An explanation of the rising of the dead, small and great, and the judgment of the great white throne, in which Ijrightman, I believe, .>taii (i nii in oi mi utOBMATiOM. ^Pmreus.) IT.') mcnt against the Antichristians j 8. the preservation meanwhile of a true Church t<> himself during Antichrist'a reign, via. "the Church militant," figured under the L4a\000 sealed ones; 4. their ultimate blessedness ami songs of victory, "as the Church triumphant," in heaven.-— On the seventh 8eaV* opening, Parana explains the Imlj- hour'* silence to be merely ■ break and pause, during which Bt, John ad from the contemplation ; anas aeriea of viaioni being then marked as commencing. For be makes these visions to retrogroM to the times of tlie begin- ning of the Christian Church. First, Christ, as having asct nded, is seen acting as the High Priest for his people; and semis down the fire of the Holy Ghost on his disciples, in answer to their prayers: — con- Bequent on which are the voices, thundering*, and lightnings} typify- ing what before was typified under the red, black, and pale horses; and an earthquake, moreover, answering to the revolution iu the church and world, caused by the rise of tbe Papal Antichrist and of Mahomet. The Trumpet* Parens refers to the same time respectively as the corresponding Seals : the 1st being significant of the injuries to the faithful, from the time of Nero to Domitian ; tbe 2nd, of tbe blood- shed of the subsequent fiery Pagan persecutions to Constant ine ; the 3rd, of the preparation for Antichrist, in the rapidly-developed ecclesi- A apostasy ; an apostasy fitly figured as a star falling from heaven, and embittering the streams of Church doctrine: the 1th being the darkening of the Church for some 300 years, from Silvester to 1 1 regory 1. under the advancing apostasy; the 5th and Uth, the rising of the itern and Pastern Antichrist, or tbe Popes and Mahomet: the ations by the former of whom were depicted under tbe figure of tt* ; (the time jive month* has ing only reference to tbe usual time of locusts making their ravages;) those by the latter under that of i and horsemen from the Euphrates. In the case of the Eupbra- tean horsemen the /OUT angel* hound were Arabians, Saracens, Tartar-. Turks: the M hour, day. mouth, and year," for which they were pre- pared, designating only their preparation at any day that the Lord should send them, for Parens, while noticing Brightman'a notable view uf this el mowing a period of 896 yeari from A. D. 1300, luring the Turkish empire'i duration, hesitates t" admit it. — \ . i\. 'Jd. is explained (quite rightly I cou- 176 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. ceive) of the Papists still persisting in idolatry, after all the Turkish desolations of Christendom. In Apoe. x. the vision of the Covenant- Angel shows Christ's pro- visions for the preservation of a Christian ministry, and for the open- ing of his word,1 during all the long times of opposition, especially that under Antichrist. (So that Pareus, like Brightman before him, made a less definite application of this prophecy to the times of the great Lutheran Reformation than some of his Protestant predecessors had done.) — By the seven thunders were meant the thunders of Christ's servants against tyrants and Antichrist, during the time spoken of.2 By the Angel's oath it appeared, he says, that but one Trumpet more remained after the Turkish woe to the consummation. " Thou must prophesy again" is applied by him to all the preachers of truth who lived near the end of the 5th and Gth Trumpets ; a reform- ation of the Church being thereby promised, to take place in the last- time, so as stated in the next vision of Apoc. xi. Accordingly the temple-measuring he explains of the Church's reformation, (Anti- christ's followers being excommunicated,) as begun about the time of Huss, continued A.D. 1517. The 12G0 days of the Gentiles treading the Holy City he inclines to reckon as 1260 years, beginning from Boniface's grant of the title of universal Bishop to the Roman Pope, A.D. 606 ; a period ending, says he, A.D. 1866. 3 But he leaves the decision of this point with Cod. The two Witnesses he understands indefinitely for all true Christian witnesses : their anti- Papal witness being developed more and more clearly as Antichrist's tyranny and iniquity was more and more manifested.4 Their symbolized slaughter, when individually they had completed their testimony, and the 3^ days' exposure of their dead bodies in the great city of the Papal em- pire, had respect to the repeated slaughter, and as repeated revival very speedily, of Christ's witnessing servants : Foxe's particular case of Huss and Jerome at Constance, and Brightman's case of the Coun- cil of Trent's temporary triumph over Protestantism till its revival i Pareus (p. 199) explains the Book in the Angel's hand as hoth the Apocalyptic se^en-sealed book and the gospel. 2 He notices the emphasis in the expression, tos iavTwv 01MTU11 01 im UFOBMATION. (Porsttt.) 1/7 through Prince Manner, both included. The Witnesses' resurrec- tion be explains of the martyred saints' resurrection literally; and makes the truth pswi of the <-itj/, thai fell, to be the pari thai fell off from the groat city of Papal Christendom at the time of the Re- formation. In Lpoc. xii. the Woman (as usual) he makes to be chiefly Hi*1 Church bringing forth Christ m his members; though the literal new of Christ's birtli of the Virgin Mary might be also in St. John's mind : the Dragon, the Devil ; his seven heads and ten horns symbol- ising indefinitely the multitude of earthly powers under him. The battle, or rather war in heaven, is explained 1st spiritually and literally, ot' the eoutliet of Christ and Satan ; 2nd historically, of Constantine's being advanced to the throne of the Roman Empire. — The waters cast after the Woman are both heresies, sueh as the Arian ; and also the Hood of invading barbarians. The Woman's 12G0 days in the wilderness are to be dated from the Papal Antichrist's constitution by Phocas. as before ; she having been for 300 years, from Constantine to Phocas, in movement thitherward. — In Apoc. xiii. Pareus considers and rejects the idea of the first Beast out of the sea symbolizing the Old Roman Pagan empire; and applies it to the Popedom, with re- ference to the Pope's asserted imperial power and authority; his '// wound being that of the 40 years' Papal schism, begun A.D. 1878, and healed at Constance. The second Beast was the Papal Antichrist in his character of a seducing Prelate : the head with the members, or whole crew of his seducing priests. The image of the lieast Parens deems to be one image for many ; meaning the images of saints, which the Papal Beasl requires men to worship. The name and number he makes with Irenrcus and Foxe, respectively, to be ajmwet and B^QPO"l* — IQ Apoc. xiv. the first preaching Angel is ex- plained as Wiclitl'e and llnss; the second as Luther; the third all faithful preachers since Luther. — In Apoc. xvi. the seven last plagues are the plagues under the last of the four periods into which the Christian ara is divided: \iz. 1. that to Constantine; 2. that to Pho- cas; 8. that to Leo and Luther: Land last, that after Luther. The Brsl Vial is the ulcerous sores that fell on the Papists from Luther's I: formation ; the 2nd. the deadly decrees of the Conned of Trent ; the 3rd, tiie persecuting Papal Bishops ami Doctors becoming Mood for haying shed the stints' blood, — a plague yet future; the 1th. a 478 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. fresh heat and light from the Scriptures opened by Christ, yet with the result of only the more enraging the Papists ; the 5th, the darken- ing of Home from its former lustre; the Gth, the drying up of the resources of the Antichristiau Babylon or Rome ; the 7th, the smit- ing of the air or natural atmosphere with pestilence, and the universal destruction thence following. On Apoc. xvii. Parens explains the Beast to designate Antichrist not simply, but as clothed with the skin of the Roman empire : an empire which " was" under the old government of kings, consuls, <&c. ; Wntch "is not" because of the Roman ecclesiastical hierarchy not hav- ing begun in St. John's time ; and which "«• to ascend out of the bot- tomless pit " at the time of Phocas. Further the seven kings, answering to the seven hills, are construed by him, after Aretius Napier and Brightman,1 to signify Kings, Consuls, Dictators, Decemvirs, Military Tribunes, and Emperors, according to the enumeration of Rome's ruling magistrates given in Tacitus ; Jive having passed away, and the sixth, or Pagan Emperors, holding rule at the time when St. John saw the vision : the seventh head being the Roman Christian Emperors from Constantine, and the eighth the Popes or Antichrist. " And is of the seven" Pareus understands to mean that this eighth would have the same ruling power as the seven previous. (He notes, in passing, that other Protestant expositors made the eighth to be the French and German JEmperors of the West.) With regard to the ten horns symbolized, be supposes them to have sprung out of the 7th head, or that of the Christian Caesars. The statement that the ten kings, after rising at one and the same time ivith the Beast, are to strip and make bare the Woman, or Rome, he speaks of as a thing still future.2 But they are not, he adds, therewith to destroy the 1 This explanation has been ascribed to James I. (So Daubuz, p. 514, on Apoc. xii. 3.) In King James's comment I find the explanation stands thus : " The seven heads of the Beast signify as vrell seven material hills, whereupon the seat of this monarchy is situated ; as also seven kings, or divers forms of magistrates, that this empire hath had, and is to have hereafter." He is said by the Editor of the Edition of his Works in 1616, the then Bishop of Winchester, to have written this com- mentary on the Revelations before he was twenty years old ; which would be A.D. 1586. And I see in Watts's Bibliotheca that 1588 is put down as the date of its first publication. Now this was the same year that Foxe's Eicasmi was published, giving the same solution ; and giving it as from Peter Artopaeus and Dr. Fulke, both some yean King James's seniors. See my p. 465 surpa, Fulkc published on the Apoca- lypse A.D. 1573, and died 1589; Artopaeus earlier. And, as I observed at p. 465, Osiander suggested nearly the same solution yet earlier. 2 On this passage Pareus strongly insists that the right reading is £7rt to Giipiov ; not, what Bellarmine would Lave, Kai to tfj/fuoj/. I-K.u. v/ bfti wo n:\inn 01 mi. UKnUfATIOJ I /'turns.) 478 r.i[>;il Antichrist : lit- being destined to survive Koine's destruction, and to be destroyed only by the brightness of Christ's coming. On Apoc. xx. tin- millennium is explained marly at) the A u^ust in- inn principle; Satan having no power, sa\ i Parens, after Chr tirst advent and ministry effectually to maintain Paganim : and that his destined post-millennial looting was at the time of Antichrist's full development in (ire-orv VII ; i.e. A.l). l<»7o. Meanwhile the saints and martyrs did all reign with Christ in heaven after death. during thai earlier part of Antichrist's reign which lasted from 606 to 1073; in which, although lie was not then fully developed, thev had yet to encounter and resist him. (Parens hen1 takes occasion to controvert the (,'liii lasts ; ihcflrsf res'irreetion heing Spiritual, be Bays, not corporal.) — Then Gog and Magog are explained as the Turks loosed about the time of Gregory Vil, ; and finally that it the heavenly glory of the redeemed that was typified under the figure of tin1 Xete Jerusalem. There is much that is valuable in Pareus' exposition. One point in it that specially deserves notice is his explanation of the fun Beasts ; distinguishing between them, as he does, as symbolizing the Papal Antichrist the one in his imperial supremacy, the other in his tioai and prelude supremacy. He seems however to bate rlooked the agreement of the Papal pretensions as Christ's I with the character of the Antichrist of prophecy: on which preten- sions in fact the Pope's grand super-imperial supremacy was wholly grounded. Nbr was he more successful than his predecessors, as I think, in solving the difficulties of the Beast's seventh head j though clear as to the eighth. On certain other points he appears to rue to have retrogressed, rather than advanced. reader has now before him pretty much the state in which •alyptie interpretation was left among the Protestants, at the the a-ra and century of the 'Reformation. The advance made by them in it seems to me to have bees very great: at least in t' I parts of the prophecy with which they were most concerned, resi iog the Beast Antichrist, the witnesses, and vision of the rain!' 1 who held the opened /3l/3XlOV,ol ptpXttuni u>v /\\\ hand, aed John to prophesy. inwhile as to the liamish divines and exposi This was to be our second head of inquiry in the j resenl Section. t80 HISTORY OP APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. II. The Romish Apocalyptic Expositors of the cera and Century of the Reformation. It seems, as both Foxe and Brightman report to us, that for some time following the Reformation the Romish Doctors were very shy of the subject.1 At its first outbreak indeed, on Luther's anti-Papal protest, some unguarded Doctors of the Papacy, in the true spirit of the 5th Council of Lateran, just then concluded, which had solemnly identified the then existing Romish Church with the New Jerusalem of the Apocalypse.2 — I say there were certain Doctors, as Prierio and Eck, so unguarded as to take up the Lateran theory, and broad- ly declare the Papal dominion to be Daniel's 5th monarchy, or reign of the saints.3 But what then of the little horn, or Antichrist, that was to intervene, according to Daniel's declaration, between old Rome's iron empire and the saints' reign ? The question was so puz- zling that it must have been abundantly palpable to all thoughtful Romanists that such a Danielic theory was untenable ; and that some better one must be taken up, if the Papal citadel were to be defended on prophetic grounds. The same of the Apocalypse. So at length, as the century was advancing to a close, two stout Jesuits took up the gauntlet ; and published their respective, but quite counter, opinions on the Apocalyptic subject : — the one Riuera, a Jesuit Priest of Salamanca, who about A.D. 1585 published an Apo- calyptic Commentary, which was on the grand points of Babylon and Antichrist what we now call the futurist scheme: the other Alcasar, also'a Spanish Jesuit, but of Seville, whose scheme was on main points what may be called that of the wholly prceterists. Either suited the great object of the writers nearly equally well ; viz. that of setting aside all application of the prophecies of Antichrist from the existing Church of Rome : the one by making the prophecy stop altogether short of Papal Rome ; the other by making it overleap almost altoge- ther the immense interval of time (that of the Popedom's domiuancy inclusive) which had elapsed since the prophecy was given, and 1 " Post Thomam ilium haud quisquam fere sit ex tota. ilia cohorte Pontificia., infinitaque seribentium multitudine, qui vel verbum iu hanc Apocalypsim commentare sit ausus." Prffifat. - See my Vol. ii. pp. 442—444. 3 So Merle d'Aubigne, ii. 138, of Siluestre Mazzolini de Prierio, Master of the Sacred Palace at Rome; writing against Luther, "que la domination Papale 6toit la cinquitme monarchic de Daniel, et la seule veritable." Also of Eck, in the Leipsic dispute ; ibid. 61. (3rd Ed. Paris.) it.k.y." vi; \ \\n (!\ni;v 01 Tin. i;i i "i;\i \ i [ON. i h'ilirni.) 481 plunge in its pictures of Antichrist into a yel distant future, just before the ooneummation. Ribera's futurist Commentary, when urai published, excited vehemently tin* indignation <>f our countryman BrightwUM ; and indeed ser\ed to hasten on Ins OWD antagonistic and masterly exposition of the Apocalypse.1 Again, Alcatar'* was published just in time to receive the notice, criticisms, and rebuke of the Protestant expositor ParetU.* From the notices in which latter author, and a tew too that have met my eye elsewhere, I now abstract a brief sketch of either exposition. I so borrow from others because of my not having had access personally to the commentaries themselves. 1. liibera. And let me at the outset beg my readers to observe, respecting this expositor, that he bad not the hardihood which has been manifested by modern Futurists, to suppose the plunge into the distant future of the consummation to be made by the Apocalypse at its outset. For while, as Pareus states, liibera has thought good to explicate the argument of the Apocalypse as if it were nothing else but certain commentaries upon our Lord's prophecy in Matt, xxiv.,3 be makes it biyi/i with the early period of the Church. So his 1st Seal's white horse and rider signify the gospel-triumphs of the apostolic ara ; his 3rd Seal's black horse and rider, heresies; his 1th Seal. the violence of Trajan's persecutions of the Church, and multitude of deaths of Christians under it, by sword, famine, wild beasts, &c \- length in the 6th Seal Ribera explains the phenomena there figured as meant of the signs before Christ's second coming spoken of in Matt. xxiv. and Luke xxi.:1 and construes the sealing \ ision ' S.> in the Dedication of his Comment " to the Holy Reformed Churches of Britain, Germany, and France." Sayi Brightman: "Bat mine anger and indigna- tion bunt out against the Jesuits. For when as I had by ebanoe light upon li . Commentary apoa this same holy Revelation, [a it even so! said I. I > the Papists take heart again; so as that hook, which of a long time before thtrj would scarce raffer any man to touch, they dare now take in hand, to Entreat fully upon it 1 What : was it but .1 vain image or bug, at tin- sight whereof they were wont to tr> . in the dim light, that now they dare be hold to look wishly upon this glasse in tin clear sunshine ; and dare proclaime to the world that any other thing rather is poynted at in it than their Pope of 'Borne ? " .r partly in his Preface, partly in the body of his Coni- ' Panus, Pref p, ig, * [hid. pp. 112, 116, 128.— On the 6th Beat Btbera - dyptie figure of souls under the altar •• ! to the ancient custom of Christians layii \ul. iv. 31 482 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETAION. [APP. PART I. too, icith all that follows in the Apocalypse, to have reference to the times of Antichrist : the four winds (life-giving winds) being meant literally ; and their restraint by the four good Angels indicating the calamities then destined to fall on the persecutors of the saints.1 The 144,000 of Apoc. vii. he makes to be the Jews converted to Christ at the consummation, though inconsistently afterwards explaining the 144,000 in Apoc. xiv. of both Jews and Gentiles under Antichrist ; and taking the number 144,000 literally. Passing to the 7th Seal Ribera explains the incense-offering Angel to be Gabriel ; and the thunderings, &c, consequent to signify gener- ally the judgments impending. Which judgments of the four first Trumpets he explains literally : — as plagues respectively of hail, of some great fiery globe (qu. as of a comet ?) cast into the sea ; of a fiery exhalation falling from heaven ; and of signs in the sun and moon, such as in Matt xxiv. The locusts of the 5th Trumpet how- ever he expounds figuratively of a woe of cruel and barbarous in. vading armies, (as barbarous as the Goths and Vandals of old,) with their crowned kings leading them on against the Church. In the 6th Trumpet the four angels are evil angels, bound at Christ's first coming, but now at length let loose to hurt men.2 — In Apoc. x. the descending angel is the same that proclaimed about the book in Apoc. v. ; and who swears that, because of men's not having been led to repent by the six previous Trumpet-plagues, the end of the world and last judgment are now at hand.3 — St. John's direction to prophesy again meant simply that he had still many things to pre- dict against the Gentiles. — In Apoc. xi. alike the temple and holy city figured the Church : and the city's being given to be trod by Gen- tiles meant that it would be obtained and occupied by Antichrist' with armies consisting of heathenish men.4 Ribera's slaughter- place for the two witnesses, (I presume, Enoch and Elias,) when slain by Antichrist, or the Beast from the abyss, is the city Jerusalem :5 their 3^ days of death denoting Antichrist's 3^ years.0 The 7th the relics of saints under the altar. ' For when,' saith he, ' an altar is buildcd, there is made under it a sepulchre for to keep the relics : and the priest, dipping his finger in the chrism, makes the sign of the cross upon the four corners of the sepulchre, &c.' " But in this, remarks Pareus, " Ribera is to be hissed at : . . for this custom is superstitious and gross idolatry, idly invented many years after." p. 119. ' lb. 137, 138. 2 lb. pp. 153, 159, 1C2, 164, 176, 185. 3 lb. 197. * lb. 212, 215. 5 lb. 235. o Crcssener, p. 176 : who adds that on Apoc. xx. Ribera inconsistently objects to the year-day principle. l* K is. v.] i:k.v ami CBNTDB1 01 Tin: i;i i.u:m \ i k.n. (Bibtra.) 188 Trumpet ia that of the last judgment : hut it is here noted by an- ticipation ; as the prophecy reverts to ■ description of Antichrist's kingdom and doings.1 In Apoc. xii. Pibera acts out the futurist. The Woman is the Church travailing in the last times, just before the >l\ years of Anti- christ: seeing that her '.V, years in the wilderness coincides with those of Antichrist's reign: for he identities the Dragon with the Beeat Antichrist.-' Then, as to the Beast and his great city Babylon, iii Apoc. xiii. and xvii., here is the main point in Pibera's system. lie admits that the Woman in Apoc. xvii. is Home, Papal Home; ■nd argues from xvii. 1G, that shortl;/ before the consummation the ten kings, figured in the Beast's ten horns, shall overthrow Pome; this being probably before the coming of Antichrist. But how so, seeing thai the Woman is seen sitting on the Beast from the abyss, which in Apoc. xi. Pibera had admitted to be Antichrist ? Because in this chapter xvii., with marvellous inconsistency, he makes the Beast to be the Devil reigning. Yet in Apoc. xix., just after, when the Beast is taken, (of course the same as in the preceding chapters,) and the Dragon, and False Prophet, he admits the Beast to be An- tichrist, just as in Apoc. xi.3 Elsewhere Eibera doubts whether it will be the ten kings before Antichrist, or Antichrist himself, that will destroy Rome, after having his seat a while there.4 But what of the Pope when Pome is destroyed? Pibera, admitting that the Papal seat will be destroyed, says that notwithstanding the Pope will aii:l be the Soman Bishop, though he sits not at Pome; just as during the absence of 7<> years at Avignon.5 In Apoc. xvi. the vinl- f.es are expounded literally, as those on Egypt. In Apoc. xviii. Pome's burning is explained to be in judgment on the sins both of old Pagan Borne, and of Rome apostatized.'' On the millennium Pibera follows Augustine. It is the whole time from Christ's resurrection to Antichrist's kingdom : the new Jeru- salem being viewed by him, Pareus seems to bint, as a figure of the Church of Pome.7 i lb. 217. - I •1 lb. 438, 411. 1-50 of Apoc. xvi. ' « lb. 111. ! 12. * lb. 441.— And *» Bellanaine, MJI Mnlvi-n.l * II). 166. 7 lb. 507, 54!'. — Uihtr.i, say- M.il' Itnmgly that it i- |0 nppOM tbat tbe old Roman unpin. klM DOt 1" I D takl n DM the old Father* expected, because of the German empire being t.ti.11 esiled thi 31 • Is I HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. 2. A1 earn r. Of this expositor, and his Prcsterkt system, Pareus gives a very succinct yet clear sketch, which I cannot do better than copy. Al- casar, he tells us,1 explained the Revelation of John as teaching, " that Eome, of old the head of Pagan idolatry, by an admirable vicissitude was to be changed into the metropolis of the Catholic Church ; that the Roman Church was gloriously to triumph both in respect of the Roman city and the whole empire ; and that the sov- ereign authority of the Romish Pope should always remain in the height of honour." Alcasar exults, and gratulates the Pope, that he first out of the darkness of the Apocalypse should have showed this light. But surely, observes Pareus, this might cause laughter or shame even to the Roman Court itself. Further, Pareus states that Alcasar's general argument is that the Apocalypse describes a twofold war of the Church ; one with the Synagogue, the other with Paganism ; and a twofold victory and tri- umph over both adversaries. More particularly the development of the subject was thus : — 1. from Apoc. i. — xi. the rejection of the Jews, and desolation of Jerusalem by the Romans : 2 2. from Apoc. xii. — xx., both inclusive, the overthrow of Paganism, and establish- ment of the empire of the Roman Church over Rome and the whole world ; the judgment of thegreat "Whore, and destruction of Babylon, being effected by Constantine and his successors : 3. in Apoc. xxi., xxii., under the type of the Lamb's Bride, the New Jerusalem, a de- scription of the glorious and triumphant state of the Roman Churcji in heaven? empire. This is but, says he, in rather curious accord with Luther, the simulacrum or ghost of the old empire. Let me here add that Bellarmine closely followed Itibera iu time and prophetic views. Only, instead of partially applying the .year-day principle, as Ribera had done, he declares absolute war against it ; anticipating Dr. S. R. Maitland in some of his arguments. So far as I know it was noic for the first time since St. John that the principle was formally denounced. ' Pref. p. 16. 2 Yet Alcasar confesses the later Domitianic date of the Apocalypse. lb. 17. 3 lb. 17. — Alcasar's Commentary was the result, as Malvenda tells us, (i. 333,) of above 40 years' study. It was the prototype of the Prfeterist system of Grotius, and the more modern German rationalistic expositors. The general character of Alcasar's Commentary is given in the text. It may be well perhaps to add one or two less important particulars here. — And 1st, let me state, with reference to the 3£ days of the witnesses lying dead, that Alcasar applies it to the Jewish persecution of Christians ; leaving it indifferently to be taken either for so many years, or months. (Par. 210.) Thus Bellarmine's attack on the year-day principle had not convinced Alcasar. — 2. He strongly impugns the interpretation of the Beast of Apoc. xiii. as Antichrist : declaring it to be indubitably the Roman P1B. \i. FROM \ n. 1610 I') I'm PBBMOB MVOLUTXON. Is.'> § \ i. raOM in i: l'vn or i ll i i i; \ w i> < i \ u i:\ OJ nil i:i:- i'i'km \ rii in. LBOl r \.n. L610, i" in l. i k i.n. n i;i.\.ii r n.iN. The century and era of the great Reformation bad past: thai, Reformation on gospel principles of which Pierre d'Olive bad expresi his expectation u a probable final testing to the Romish Church ; in order. 1 > v her rejection of it, to justify cvt'ii before men lier divinely doomed utter destruction.1 And so the now separated powers of Protestantism and Popery, in professing Christendom, stood face to face in opposition ; with their armoury and weapons of argument, as well as of political force, out drawn, or preparing against each other. Among which of course was the argument from prophetic SS, specially of the Apocalypse, which both parties profest to receive as divinely inspired : and which, according to its own opening words, as well as according to the early Christian fathers' acceptation of them, was to be regarded as God's prefiguration of the things destined after St. John's time to befall the Church and the world; and con- sequently as involving hit view and judgment respecting them. — Lorn; had this been lost sight of. For 700 or 800 years after the fall of the old Roman empire the Apocalyptic prophecy had been expounded, we have seen, as if little more than a repetition of mere general common-place enunciations respecting the world's wicked- ness, the Church's sufferings, and God's consequent judgments, un- der the form of a store-house of figures in which the expositor's fancy might luxuriate without check or limit:1 without any definite pre- diction of coming events, anything of chronological order and suc- cession in the predictions; any possibility of a gathering from them of the lessons of real prophecy as to the things which already had been, since St. John's seeing the visions in Patmos, or the things which were still to be thereafter.3 Pagan Empire. On this he has a battle with Malvenda; i. 429 — 131. — 3rdly, he has another battle with Malv.-nda on account of ln^ patronizing in any measure Kib.ia ■ad ll.-!l.irmin<-'s idea that the Babylon of Apoc. xvii. might mean Koine in the last days, becoming heathen again, ejecting the Pope, and persecuting Christians, lb. li-VM. Ali-.i-.ar makci the chunh's millennium of rest to date from tin- destruction of old Pagan Komi-, bil Apncalyptic Babylon. 1!. Alea-ar's oon temporary, the monk I'intu, made Daniel's 45 .days = !■"> y ranus. So M.iUi-uda ii. 244. 1 See p. US supra. * Compare Apoc. IT. 1. 1 Let my r- back to Tkhoniu-, l'lima-ius, Ambrose Aash it, illustration. 486 HISTORY OP APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. So, I say, it was through seven centuries of the middle age ; till at length, about A.D. 1200, Joachim Abbas opened the way, however im- perfectly, to its explanation, as a foreshadowing, distinctly and defin- itely, of the history of the Church and world from Apostolic times to the time then present, and still beyond it : — an opening followed up with more light, both spiritual and intellectual, and better advantage, though still very imperfectly, by the expositors of the sera of the Beformation. Very specially those parts of the prophecy had influ- entially been opened to them which seemed most immediately to re- gard themselves, and their cause and sera, in its foreshadowings : — I mean, 1st, the glorious sudden light-bearing descent of the covenant- Angel, with the opened gospel in his hand, Apoc. x., just in the deep- est and most hopeless state, as prophetically depicted, of Christendom under that 6th Trumpet of the judgment of horsemen from the Euphrates, which they could not but construe very generally of the Euphratean Turks ; [ a vision including the oath that but one more Trumpet remained to be sounded ere the consummation :2 2ndly, the predictions concerning the Eoman seven-headed Beast, or Papal Anti- christ, and Christ's true Church, and its destined persecutions and sufferings under him : 3rdly, concerning the sackcloth-robed Wit- nesses raised up to protest against it ; all for apparently the same mystic period, however and whencesoever to be measured, of 1260 days, 42 months, or 3^ times.3 It was just as Tertullian, in the time of the early Christians' persecution under Pagan Eome, had seized on the true intent of the 5th Seal's vision of the souls under the altar, with a kind of special instinct, as specially concerning them ; * and the Constantinian expositors of the 4th century had specially and instinctively seized on the prophecy of the Dragon's dejection in Apoc. xii., as meant of them and their sera.5 And this strongly of course helped to strengthen the conviction in the minds of the Eeformers of the whole prophecy being indeed, when rightly understood, a prophecy definitely historical ; and, with the master 1 So Bullingcr, Chytrseus, Foxe, very decidedly ; also, though less definitely, Bright- man, Pareus. See p. 445 supra. 2 See the extracts in my Vol. ii. p. 145. 3 The year-day measure of the 1260 days being most generally taken ; but the ter- minus a quo doubtfully suggested as either the date of Constantine's triumph, that of Alaric's destruction of Rome, or (what has always seemed to me a remarkable choice for Protestant expositors of a time, considering that it necessarily made the ending date as late as 1866) that of the Decree of Phocas. 4 See my "Vol. i. p. 232. 5 Sec my Vol. iii. p. 34. lMi;. n.] P10M A.n. ltlln to TBI KKi.Mir i;i\oii ikin. [Mode) 4-87 hand of divine philosophy, picturing in it the intermixed fortunes of tin" t'hurch :iiid tin* world from .St. John's time to the consummation. Urn ouiofa beyond this they progressed not. Ob the fundamental point pf tht> structure of the Apocalvpse. and order and relationship Of its several parts, they held the most diverse opinions. Did the u-sealed Book contain in itself the whole of the Apocalyptic pre- dictions, or but a part ? Were the Seals, Trumpets, and Vials chro- nologically continuous, the one set of BgUBBt ions chronologically fol- lowing t ho other in what they prefigured? or were they of range chronologically parallel ; each reaching to the consummation? Had the killing and resurrection of the Witnesses been yet fulfilled ; or were they e\ents still future? "Were the figurations always definite figuringa of the nn symbolized ; or sometimes, at least, mere general truths, whether aa regards the Church or the world? Were the L260 days to be taken always literally, or sometimes mystically; and, if so, whether on the year-day principle of measure, or what other; and whence moreover to be measured, and when terminated? Again, finally, what of the 1000 years of Satan's binding, told of in Apoc. \\ . -, and, if already fulfilled, or fulfilling, how to be reconciled with the other statements in the prophecy? On all these points opinions the most ditferent had been exprest by the Reformers; the Questions remained sub judice, the difficulties unsolved.1 They were problems, apparently, for the Protestant interpreters of the next : that of which I am now to speak. Our 6th Section of the History of Apocalyptic 1 nlerpretation OS naturally with Mode in England, Pareus' immediate successor, and from him passes to Jurieu the French Protestant : then (after brief notice of the anti-Protestant expositors, though themselves Protestant, Sesunofki and Qrotiwf) to Oreteener, Vitringa, and Dau- 1'i'z, as the next expositors of chief repute among Protestants, and B tenet among Roman Catholics; then next to 86r Isaac Newton, ll'liish,)), and Bishop Xrirhm ; the last-ment Ioned ■ summari/.er of the most generally received Protestant prophetic views at in epoch immediately prior to the French Revolution. 1. Mode -it was in 1027 that Mede Brat published his ('/aria Apocaliiptica. in L632 his I 'mi aim /an/ ; the formrr laying down from i On all these points it will be uaeioJ for the Reader to refer to the iki I dyptic explanations giroo in the Section preceding. 488 HISTORY OF apocalyptic interpretation, [app. PART I. internal evidence (independent of any particular historic system of ex- planation) the " synchronisms " and mutual relationships of the several parts of the prophecy ; the latter his historical explanation, conform- ably with those synchronisms. The reputation of these works, espe- cially in England, is well known. He was looked on, and written of, as a man almost inspired for the solution of the Apocalyptic mys- teries. And certainly of his general discernment and theological learning, as well as of that which he brought to bear on prophecy, there might well be entertained a high opinion. Yet, if it be per- mitted to express freely my judgment on so great a man, I must say that I think his success was at first over-estimated as an Apocalyptic Expositor. For if on various points he much advanced the science, especially as regards his principle of inferring the structure of the prophecy from its own internal evidence, prior to any historical ap- plication, and thence laying down of its synchronisms and the mutual relationship of its several parts, (the place of the millennium of Satan's binding inclusive,) and last (scarce least) his appending of a Ta- bular Scheme of the Prophecy, according to his view of arrangement and connexion of its parts, — an appendage attached by him to his Commentary first I believe of Apocalyptic Expositors, and with- out which, in my opinion, no Apocalyptic Commentary can be com- plete,— while, I say, on these points, and certain historical illustra- tions also of the prophecy, he advanced the science of Apocalyptic interpretation, on others I conceive him to have caused it very ma- terially to retrograde. So, above all, in regard of his idea, pro- minently marked in the Tabular Scheme, of the Apocalypse having been divided into two separate Parts, written respectively in two separate Books ; viz. 1st, the seven-sealed Boole given into the hand of the Lamb to open, Apoc. v. 7 ; 2ndly, the Little Book given opened into the hand of St. John by the Covenant Angel, Apoc. x. 9 — 11, each having a general parallelism of chronology with the other, and each its own proper synchronisms.1 On this more as I proceed. The Tabular Scheme of his views copied from his own Book on my 1 It may be •well to append a list of these his Apocalyptic synchronisms ; a notice being added where Mede seems to me to have been in error. 1. The Z\ times, 42 months, or 1260 days, of the woman's being in the wilderness, the ten-horned resuscitated Beast's reigning, the outer court of the temple being trod by Gentiles, and Christ's two witnesses witnessing in sackcloth. 2. The coincident duration of the ten-horned Beast and the two-horned of Apoc. xiii. (Qu. in Mede's sense?) 3. Ditto of the ten-horned Beast and mystic Babylon. PH. TI.l ' K"M L.D. 1610 TO TH» FBBMCH BBTOLUTION. M- next page, (itself, as I said, the first of its kind, and m of the more especial value. ) combined ami compared with the observations "n them scattered through the Eons, will do away « ith the necessity of entering into them so mnch in detail as might otherwise hare been desirable. In genera] he considered the •*> Brat SeaU to be a figuration of the SUOCessne fortunes ot' heathen Rome, after St. .John down to the overthrow of heathenism in it by Conatantine; then the Trumpet* to be the unfolding of the 7th Seal, and figuring of the subsequent history of the Roman world and Christian Church to the consumma- tion: a most important, and I doubt not true, view of the structure of that part of the prophecy. More particularly the 1st Seal is supposed by him to depict the early gospel victories; the 2nd, the wars of Trajan and Hadrian ; the 3rd, the severe justice, and procurations of corn, notable in the reigns of the two Severi j the 1th, the famine pesti- lence and murderous wars of the ;era of (Jallienus ; the ">th, Diocle- tian's persecution ; the 6th, the overthrow of Paganism and its em- pire by Conatantine. — Again of the IVumpets, the 1st is explained of Alaric : the 2nd of the Gothic and Vandal desolators of the Empire, that followed, down to Genseric; the 3rd of the extinction of the Hi Bperua, or Western Empire, by Odoacer ; the 1th, of the ravages of Totilas, whereby imperial Rome received its last desolations ; the 5th, of the Saracens ; the 6th, of the Turks. — In most of which par- ticulars I conceive Mede to have made advances to the true inter- pretation : adjusting the 5th and Gth Seals, as he did, to the times 4. Ditto of the 144,000 of Apoc. vii. and xiv. with the above. 6. Of the time of the inner temple-court's IIIOOMIlillg, Apoc. xi., and of the Dragon's W.ir with the travailing woman; Apoc. xii. (Qu. r) 6. Of the Seven Vials, and Babylon's and the Beast's vcrpinc to destruction. 7. Of the 7th Seal, and 7 Trumpets evolving it, with the ten-horned and two horned Beasts of Apoc. xiii. (Qu r) Mede date- the rise of the ten-homed Beast too early, I conceive, viz. from the time of Alaric' s capture of Rome, figured in Trumpet 1. 8. Of the measuring of the inner temple Court, (us also, according to synchronism 5, of the Dragon's war with the travailing Woman.) with the six first Seals. In order to this the Dragon's war with'Michacl and the woman must he regarded as ex- tending to the whole two centuries ot the \v;ir of Christianity and Heathenism in the m empire, b John's time and Constantine : not as that of the teat erin of the war- 9. Of the seven vials with Trumpet 6. — A manifest error, I conceive ; and in marked incoi.- R of the 7th Seal as unfolded in the 7 Trumpets; a vii w which - -;milar evolution of the 7th Trumpet in the 7 Vial*. 10. Of the millennium of Satan's binding, < hr,»t'» reign, and deo of the New Jcru salem, and i rt* ovation, with the 7'h Trump, t, after the Beatfl d • :t of the 7th Trumpet.) 11. The speedy sequen. • and in the tir«t Bee! on, or after, the time of the revelation of the visions to St. John in l'utmos. " I will show tine the tilings which must shortly come to pass." UNIVERSAL •p 3 8 0 0 1 C •> .2 2 rt •a c Q P. Z 0 P 3 0 £ £ ft, "^ a) O • w o 1-* S * = 5 H 2 fe S w £ a. o Ml radii Com P <2 M C5 °C ^"j ^5- A M | ae XH £ 1 •SXHQX P • ! uacuas.iOH w UBaiBjqdnjr p H H u' < ^ 5) ft 0 oo CO SJiaOVHTS A fe IQ JB H JBjsnaoi ■ "3 k-_ 0 r- 60 3 P 'S 0 0 50 'a -* •syiiiox 0 G 0 ! satiBuium-j 10 asdipa 3 0 Em H co 1 'aaoroao a a i a\;js Sum.B.jr "3 H co •omaBNuo o? M 'STTaNVA PUB 8HIO9 : utmunoj^ Sdfaing •oiaray P w ;UBH to •amiKTXsnoo '■ ajrenbqi.iBjj H CO* 1 1 ■n -NVIiaiOOId !J1!1IV 1 E S ■* 'sauamYO SqTBBfl Eh pg Em M •IH5IASS : BOUBJBg « 'jiTiaav SwjqfinBiB "1 •isihho !£ioi »IA BE8UBE2CTI0N. J U B 5 E g _ 1 1 | 0 1 — S, i a ? a E fi ■• 3 a 9 und, and Saint 1000 ye The Lamb New Jerc descends frc d the nations u w | c 0 ^ 1 H-i a CO - r 0 x* 1-1 > a c 2 © "^ a 33 _— § c 5 a d S a K B "* 2 m w 0 £ "O 2 «> « — *. . £ 1 J ? - p K PC CO is given to the Gentiles 4 sy 12G0 days in sackcloth rness ; there to be nouris d under last head, blasplie months. ercises all the power of F im. IK, tell of coming judgme Br last head, makes drunk on-cup. O asurec prophe 1 Wilde revive eers 42 )het, e: efore h new so st, und ler pois P S S £ S-S 2 2 % - a 8 0 g 3 Cm 5 «s •*% a 0 «■§ » ^"g^ H h 5 a « ^ -s a 3 0 I E fe 1 1 1— 1 ^ £ 2 — 0 3 c P irt (or He Christ's ven by D aded ten- ed Beast, e 144,000, Ion, on tt 0 t* F e^ O ■» A g H « 1- g S ja « 1 il J 2 0 9 B •; w 1 X 3 jfa> * «| ■a -a rr.K. vi.] raoM a.i>. 1610 to thk lui.Nrii iiiumi noN. (Made.) I'M iv>|Hrti\fly of Diocletian and Constantino, not of Claudius and Diocletian like Brightssanj while following Brightman mainly in the exposition (the luathcu lionir-n ft rriny exposition) of the fmir Seals previous : ' ftlflO in the tour earlier Trumpets, instead of Bright- man's " eanteexHam, ambition, heresy, and nor," liis applying the ern- blems to prefigure the successive epochs in the (loths' desolationi and overthrow of the Western Empire. In the evolution, however, of the particular details he seems to me unsuccessful: the one third of the tour first Trumpets having no definite explanation; ami the land, sea, and fin rs being expounded loosely and figuratively, so as 1 have stated in my Vol. i. pp. 864, ii55. The two prophetic period* in the fifth and sixth Trumpets are explained by him, as are all the other prophetic periods, consistently on the year-day principle : — the locusts' 150 days of the ravages of the Saracens on the Italian coast from A.D. B80 — (-N0 : (a solution certainly anything but happy ; foras- much as all the main strength of the Saracens had in 830 past away:-) the Euphratean horsemen's hour day month and year, more happily, of the 390 years' interval, from the Turkman's inves- titure with the sword by the Caliph at Bagdad, A.D. 1057, to the destruction of Constantinople, A.D. 1-153.3 In his reference of the smoke and sulphur of the sixth Trumpet to the Turkish cannon, he well, in my judgment, follows Brightman : explaining the figures de- fttiifrly, and according to the analogy of Scripture prophecies, from visildr appearance* i and he adds too, as confirmatiw of the meaning of the emblem in the fifth Trumpet, a notice from Pliny of the flow- ing hair of the Saracens, on the same interpretative principle ;4 a prin- ciple often greatly helpful towards the discovery and confirmation of the truth. But now comes what seems to me, as before observed, to have been a most unfortunate step of retrourruilat ion in Mode's Commentary;5 ' On the third Seal, I should observe, Mede, though explaining it to refer to the tisua "t" 8ererna, \>t makei it signify, not, ai Brightman, a scarcity then occurring, but the justice and procurations of corn by the Emperor. 1 So I haw shown in my Chapter on the subject. 1 B< '■ my Vol. i. p. 628, Note '-'. 4 A principle which I hare expended, end copiously illustrated, in ju-titication of my application of the Bfth Trumpet to thi 1 By the old expositors Yictorinus and Andn as, &c, the symbol ni explained to indicate St. John'- penonal prophesjing again, after hi-, temporary exile in Patmoa, by the publication of hi- Ooepel ami Book of Revelation on returning to l.j See pp. '2'J3, 360 supra. Thil was NIK P&BMOH UY0L1 PXOK. M >95 flood, the exhaust :nii of the Turkish Kmpire;1 by the which the WftJ of tiii* Jmo% from tin- EasJ. would bo prepared; the 7tli ami last, on tin- air, being one oa Satan's power, as the Prince of the powez of the air. Finally, SI all knOW, the millennium is construed l»\ Mede, like as by the oldest patristic expositors, Irciians, Justin .MarUr, Ac., as a binding of Satan «>n Christ's second ooming : - -e mighty step of change this tVinn the Long long-continued explanation of the symbol as meant of his 1000 years' binding from Christ's time, or Constan- tino's:1 the Jirst resurrect ion being the literal resurrection of the saints, fulfilled also on Christ's coming and Antichrist's destruction before it. As totheA"rccd, as he confest, to yield to the light and evidence of this (the Chiliastic hypothesis, lie w.i- Cored to it hy the irresistible law of synchronisms, according te which the millennium could not possibly be placed otherwhere than it is by him. . . iving of the world by M ihomiti-ni (a most vile and yet prevailing ii gan before leeathan half of the millennium from Constantine : in out, and strangely prospered is the world for 600 yean within that millen- nium: and not this only, but Antichristian idolatry and cruelty against the faith ,'ul servants of Christ fell out within tin ame millennium : wherein the Devil was so tar from being chained and shut up, that he never deceived the world more grossly nor I more furiously; and consequently was never more loose, and at liberty to do mischief. — So the Life prclixt to his Works by Dr. Worthington, p. 10. ' In reference to the New .Icrusaluu Mede notices with approbation Potter's argu- ment, showing the equal circuit of the Apocalyptic city with Btekiel'l city, deaoribl d \l\iii. 16. Of jthe latter " the north side, »c read, was 4300 measures, the south the east 4-500, and the west 4o00 ; " in all IS, 000. And tin ie measures appear to :>iti from Ezek. xliii. 13 ; where the cubit is also described as one larger than the common cubit, it being " a cubit and a hand-breadth I " which common cubit Potter, after YiUalpandus, makes to be '-'} fe< t. This admitted, and that the proportion of the cubit to the common |a k :, to i, then the length of each side of Bsekiel'a city will :\ feet= HHiiii, or 14,012 feet. On the other hand, as St. John's furlongs arc to be considered as giving the cubic dimensions of the Apocalyptic •.It m. " its length :iiid breadth and height Ixing equal," therefore the cubic f 13,000, whieb is 28 nearly, 28 12,167,) gives the length of oa . les : whirl. . : i t'.i-t, tliis measure will oidy by u M sjiii-s of the Apocalyptic City. s thus drawn out, is remarkable. It is uotcd'by Daubu/. Butt! objection, that the i-uun d -I/a- of the Jewish common cubit is by no me ins certain; it being generally deemed of mm dimensione. Calmet ; who computes it ut 1J feet instead of -'. 496 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. 2. Jurieu. It was in 1G85, just after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, that Jurieu, who was one of the exiled French Calvinist ministers, published his work on the Apocalypse :' a work mainly based on Mede's views ; but with various new particular applications to his own time and country.2 A brief notice of these will suffice. In the Seals Jurieu only differs from Mede by expounding the Jlrst Seal not of Christ, but of a Roman subject, and Roman emperors ;3 (viz. of Vespasian's and Titus's victories and general prosperity;) this consisting well with Mede's explanation, which Jurieu adopts, of the horses and horsemen of the three next Seals, as having reference to the times of the Roman emperors Hadrian, Severus, and G-allienus, respectively. The 5th and 6th Seals are explained by him of the times of Diocletiafl and Constantine. In the Trumpets, while otherwise following Mede, Jurieu improves on him by expounding the fallen star in the 3rd Trumpet that made bitter the third part of the rivers, not of the extinction of the West- ern Empire by Odoacer, but of a certain part of the Gothic ravages of Western Christendom : (viz. of those in the provinces, which were like the empire's rivers ; Rome and Italy being as the sea :) the ex- tinction of the Western Emperors being symbolized by the darken- ing of the heavenly lights in the 4th Trumpet.4 The 5th and 6th Trumpets he explains, after Mede, of the Saracens and Turks. The little book, in the hand of the iris-crowned Angel, Apoc. x., he interprets with Mede as a new prophecy : and adopts the idea 1 Jurieu's date is given at Vol. ii. p. 254 of my English edition : (London, 1687 :) at the latter page as the year of the revocation cf the Edict of Nantes. 4 Jurieu avowedly takes Mede as his master in Apocalyptic interpretation ; except in the parts of latest application. a P. 45. On this point Jurieu has the following just and important observations. I can't be of that opinion (viz. that the horseman of the 1st Seal is the Lord Jesus), 1st, because the equipage of this horseman is not magnificent enough to represent Jesus Christ. ... In all the places where the prophet makes Jesus Christ to appear. (Apoc. x. 1, xiv. 14, xix. 11,) he is extraordinarily magnificent : clothed with .fire, with the light, with the sun, with the rainbow, riding on the clouds, having not one Bimple crown but many diadems, and his eye casting out flames. Here there is nothing more plain and mean : 'tis a man sitting on a horse, with a bow and crown. That which hath deceived interpreters is the colour of the horse, white, which they have taken for an emblem of holiness. But white is the emblem of prosperity as well a? holiness." — Compare Foxe, p. 461 supra ; also my own objections as drawn out Vol. i. p. 124, Note 2. 4 The third part he makes the Roman Empire ; as mainly in Europe, the 3rd continent. rii;. \i." rBOM i .n. L610 rO THB ntlNOB UTOLUTZON. tJuririt.) I'.'T too thrown out by our English expositor, thai as the unmeasured state of the oourt,or Church, wai to !><• for •">.', times, i.<\ L260 rears, ■ te proportion of the Jewish temple proper to the oourl indicated the Church's previous better and mettttred state to be about .">i'>'» years; an indication agreeable with met.' The Beast moreover he explains like Meile : making its 7th head to be the Papal Anti- ohrist; and the possible tWO-fold division of the Gth or imperial head into Pagan and Christian emperors, to be the solution of the enigma of the last bead being both the Sth and the 7th. In his 12th Chapter, on the FPtouMM, Jurieu expresses his opinion that the last persecution of Christ's people had commenced in the year 1655, '" when the Duke of Savoy undertook to destroy the faith- ful of the valleys of Piedmont;" and which had, when he wrote, " already lasted 30 years." This was followed in 1G71 by "the per- secution of the Churches of Silesia, Moravia, Hungary," and then, in 1685, by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. In which last act he considers the death of the two Apocalyptic Witnesses to have begun al least to have fulfilment: their prefigured resurrection being anticipated by him either in 3£ years from that date, or 84 years from some further act of the same persecution, as extended perhaps to the Waldenses, or other Protestant Christians :s an act such as might furnish a kind of extended commencing date to the 3£ mystic days of the Witnesses lying ^dead in the street of the great Papal city, or empire ; i. e. as he judged, in France.3 — Further, he thought that the tenth of the f/rmt city destined to fall, on the Witnesses' ascent, meant also France; which would fall from the Popedom by embracing the Reformation. After this, some time might probably elapse in order to the full effect of the exposure of Antichrist: and thus the epoch of the fall of the Popedom might probably occur about A.D. 1710 or 171"» ; this being the end of the 1200 years, i computed from A.l>. 1">i> or 155.4 In the details of the Vials Jurieu altogether deserts Mede and 1 i. 78, 87. * Connected with this is an Interesting extract in Evelyn's Memoirs. In June 18, 1690, Mr. B. mentions ■ visit paid by him to the then Bishop of St. Asaph — Lloyd. Speaking of tin- death ami resurrection of the apocalyptic Witnesses, the Bishop mentioned how ha bed pomaded two exiled Vandoni ministers to retain home, win -n there was no apparent ground of hope lor them, lt i \ i i» lj them £20 towards the expenses, and which r< turn w,i- wonderfully accomplished. * ii. MS 4 This nbjeet occupies oh. 13 in Jurieu's 2nd volume. See pp. 276. VOL. IT. 498 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC. INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. other preceding expositors ; though agreeing with Mede in placing them mainly under the Gth Trumpet.1 "I am persuaded," he adds, " that God hath heard and answered the very ardent desire which I have had to pierce into these profound mysteries ; to the end that I might descry the deliverance of his Church." 2 So, the Vials generally being regarded by him as " the steps by which the Baby- lonish (or Papal) empire passes to come to its ruin," 3 the 1st Vial is explained by him as the gross corruption of Popery, and outbreak- ing of its open sores, in the 10th century : Vials 2 and 3 figured the bloodshedding in the earlier and later crusades : Vial 4 was the in- tolerable scorching of the Papal despotism, from the 11th to the 14th century : Vial 5, on the seat of the Beast, was the transference of the Pope's residence from Eome to Avignon : Vial 6 was the dry- ing up, as it were, of the Bosphorus, before the Turks, and their consequent overthrow of Constantinople and Eastern Christendom which Bosphorus had been previously the Eastern barrier to Greek Christendom, so as had been the Euphrates in old times to the Eoman Empire : Vial 7 was the earthquake of the Eeformation ; the great City, or Papal Christendom, being after it divided into the three divisions of Papists, Lutherans, and Eeformed ; for as to the English Church, since it was in communion with the Eeformed, it could not be considered a fourth division.4 — As to the time remain- ing after this, before the final judgment on Babylon, it could not, added Jurieu, be long. " The 7th Vial hath already lasted longer than any of the rest ; and it is probable that it must last about 200 years, [i. e. from 1517.] But the reason of this is that this 7th period is itself divided into three other periods, the harvest, the vint- age, and the time that is betwixt the harvest and the vintage. The harvest is already past ; 5 the time betwixt the harvest and the vint- age is almost expired. "VVe are approaching the vintage ; and at this day ought to say, Come, Lord Jesus, Come." 6 On the millennium Jurieu, like Mede, shows that it never yet had i i. 92. 2 ii. 67. 3 i- 92. 4 ii. 220. The Vials occupy the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th chapters, in Jurieu's 2nd volume. 5 Jurieu explains the harvest of the partial destruction of the Papal Empire at the Reformation. " Divide [the Beast's] 1260 into seven parts, and each 7th part is exactly 180 years. If now you reckon these 180 years from A.D. 1517, this h rings us to A.D. 1697." So " 1690 is about the time that I judge must he the beginning of the vintage:' ii. 229. 6 ii. 223, 224. rax. ti.j raoM A.n. L610 ro nn rawcH •asToumow. (Oreuen r.) 190 had fulfilmenl ; and anticipated from it :i reign of the Bainti on earth, the Jews' restoration, and fulfilmenl concurrently of the propbecieiof the hlnssfidnons of the hut it day in the Old Testament, lit- also de- cidedly incline* to think that \hcjirsf rrsurrrrfion is a literal lvsiir- rection of the departed saints; then at Length to take part iu the glory of the manifested kingdom of Christ. :}. I turn to Jurieu's English contemporary, Dr. Oruaener. During the reigns o\' Charles the 2nd and James the 2nd, now just ended, a mighty change had come over the spirit of the dream, at least among the ministers and adherents of the established Chureh of /and, from that which had rested on the minds, and dictated the . of the founders and chief ornaments of that Church in the cen- tury of the Reformation. The religion of Rome had become not only fashionable at court, but the religion covertly or avowedly of the reigning kings themselves. Moreover, the sufferings of the episcopal clergy during the 16 years' ascendancy of Cromwell and the Puritans had tended to make them look on the latter as their nearest and chiefest enemy ; and, by a consequence not unnatural, to regard Popery with less of disfavour, and sometimes even with the thought and desire for friendly approximation and union. This feeling coidd not but have its effect on the current view of the prophecies in Daniel and the Apocalypse, which had been hitherto by the Reform- dike German, Swiss, and English, applied undoubtingly to the Roman Popedom. By the celebrated Dutch scholar and politician Grotius, and by our English Dr. Hammond, a pneterist view was adopted of the Apocalyptic prophecy about the Beast and his great city Babylon, wry like Alcnmrs ; ' referring it all to the old Pagan Roman city and empire. Dr. Cressem-r himself, writing in the year I '. strongly speaks of the change : (I subjoin the passage,2 as well ' Bo Bossuct traces the parentage of this view : — " Lc savant Jesuite Louis d'Alca- ii a f.iit un grand oommentaire Mir L'Apocalypae, on Qrotnu a pris beanooup da 1 1 • speaks also of iti being the view of the leaned Romania! Qmebrard, A.D. 1580, (in his Chronographv, ~> S.ic. Ann. Ill,) as well at of Grotius and Ham- mond, l'ref. surl'Apoc. $ 11, 13. -' .'. • 41, Hammond, and some other " great names of late anions niir H d the Church 'if Eloaa from lay ("liecm in the judgments of this (Apocalyptic) prophecy." and the shift-- they had been obliged to • to, such "that the most skilful of the Etomiah interpreter! themaalvei had • tin in,*' he notes it as the rciult ie detc limitation -■> to [i era. " Their expedii at for 32 • 500 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. worth perusal :) and tells moreover how the very study of those pro- phecies had in consequence fallen into disfavour.1 His own Book, which was first published in 1690, and is dedicated to the Queen Mary, then reigning with her consort AVilliam of Orange, is entitled " A Demonstration of the first Principles of the Protestant Applications of the Apocalypse," and well answers to its title. Its one grand subject is the Apocalyptic Beast of Apoc. xiii. and xvii. And in a series of connected propositions he incontrovert- ibly establishes, against Alcasar and Bellarmine, that the Apocalyptic Babylon is not Rome Pagan, as it existed under the old Pagan Em- perors ; nor Rome Paganised at the end of the world, as Ribera and Malvenda would have it to be ; but Rome Papal, as existing from the 6th century. For, he argues, it is Rome idolatrous and anti- christian, as connected with the Beast or Roman Empire in its last form, and under its last head;2 which last head is the seventh head revived, after its deadly wound with a sword : with and under which the Beast exists all through the time of the Witnesses ; in other words, from the date of the breaking up of the old empire into ten kingdoms, until Christ's second coming to take the kingdom. The Catholic union of all Christian Churches by the compliance of the Roman, their assurance of the necessity of the conveyance of a right succession and ordination by a Church that was not formally idolatrous, &c, were altogether inconsistent with the Protestant sense of the Apocalypse." And then Dr. Cressener goes on to say ; " The present age is so generally prepossest with the interpretations of these learned men, that it is necessary to remind (the approvers) that these are great novelties in the doctrine of the Church of England. ... It is manifest by the Homilies approved of in our Articles as the faith of our Church, that the charge of Babylon upon the Church of Rome is the standing profession of the Church of England : * and it continued to be the current judgment of all the best learned members of it till the end of the reign of King James the 1st." Indeed, "in his time it was believed to be so clear and important a part of the faith, that both the Church and the Court did applaud the King in his public defence of it." But, adds Cressener, " after that time this doctrine of the Homilies came to be more out of fashion : either to be civil to the marriages of the succeeding reigns, or to take away all the advantage that the Separatists might have from thence against the necessity of an uninterrupted succession and ordination in every lawfully-constituted Church." Pref. pp. ii. — iv. 1 " The enquiry into these matters is so out of fashion, and lies under so general a pre- judice, that I found the Press everywhere affrighted from undertaking the charge of this publication." Epist. Dedicatory to Queen Mary. ■ This involves the entire identity, as is stated in his argument, p. 59, of the Beast in Apoc. xiii. and Beast in Apoc. xvii. * In the Homilies he refers to the 3rd Part of the Sermon against Idolatry, and 6th Part of the Sermon against Rebellion. Of other writers he specifies Bishop Jewel, p. 373 ; Bishop Abbot, Antichristi Dcmonstratio ; Archbishop Whitgift, Tract. 8 ; Bishop Andrewcs, Tortura torti ; Bishop Bilson, p. 527 ; Bishop Morton ; and Hooker's Treatise on Justification, § 10, 57. pi ib, \ i from A.n. L610 ro mi ii:imii utolution. (JBossuet.) 50] 6th, or imperial head ruling in St. John's time, must, he argues, \une Julian :ii the latest ;it the time of the Herulian ohief Odoaoer, and Oetrogothic king Theodoric, reigning in the 5th century.' And he concludes (though here, 1 conceive, exception mighl be taken against him) thai tin- 7th head was the Serulian and Oetrogothic, which continued hut a short time : the 8th being the revived secular imperial, confederated with a Roman ecclesiastical bead, somewhat ;:s under the old emperors ; a 1. e. the secular Western emperors com- bined with the Popes. And he suggests Justinian's Bra as that of the commencement of the last head.3 The image of the Beast he makes to he the Roman Church, the name AartivoG* The death of the tiro Witnesses, caused by the Beast, he explains, after Jurieu, as probably occurring at the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and the nearly contemporary expulsion of the Waldenses.5 Altogether Cressener's book must be regarded as an important ae- ■n to the Protestant cause, and Protestant argument, against the Romanists. 4. Bossuet, The Apocalyptic Comment of this Roman Catholic Prelate deserves the more attention from us, as being written by one who is, I believe, confessedly the ablest as well as the most eloquent of controvcrsial- on the Papal side; and written by him, deliberately and avow- edly, in order to wrest out of the bauds of Protestants a weapon used so often and so powerfully by them against his Church. And when in L685, just after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, .1/. Jurieu, one of the exiled French Calvinist Ministers, had published that work on the Apocalyptic prophecy, of which I have just given an abstract, the .Bishop of Meaux thought it well to take up the matter; and to apply his great talents to the drawiug up of an Exposition, such as might be conformable with the dogmas and re- quirements of the Romish faith, and sufficiently strong and solid (so he expected) to withstand the criticism of Protestants.0 — 1 now pro- ceed to give a sketch of it. It is framed very much more on Alca-.ir > plan, and that of Qrotius and Hammond who had followed Alcasar : 1 p. 160. * The Emperor being n well u Imperator. * p. 193. ' i>. -71, 376. irtle Dedicatory, and Prat p. srii * BoMoet'l exposition w.i-i tir^t published in i 502 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. not Ribera's : i. e.1 on that of the prceterists, not of the futurists. The grand subject of the prophecy he conceives to be the triumph of Christianity over Judaism and Paganism : — i. e. over Paganism as established in the Roman empire ; and, in the Jewish part, with reference only to the later calamities of the Jews, not to the de- struction of Jerusalem by Titus. For as Bossuet judged the Apo- calypse to have been written under Domitian, that destruction by Titus had happened, in his opinion, before the giving of the Apoca- lypse.— The details are as follows. The six first Seals exhibit the subject in the general. There is 1st Christ's moving forth as a conqueror ; then, in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Seals, his judgments of war, famine, and pestilence, on the enemies of Christianity ; then, in the 5th Seal, persecutions of Christians, and the reason of God's delay of judgments, viz. till the number of his martyrs be completed and his elect taken out from the infidels, wherever they might be hid : further, in the 6th, a picture of poli- tical convulsion and revolution ; applicable, first, to the overthrow of the Jewish people ; secondly, to that of the Roman empire ; thirdly, to what the others might be considered in a manner typical of, that is, the general judgment. Then to particulars. — After an illustration in the 7th chapter of what was said in Seal 5 of the cause of the delay of God's judgments, by a representation of the sealing of such as were elect unto salva- tion among the Jews, and also of the salvation of Gentile martyrs innumerable, from out of the empire of Pagan Rome,2 the first four 1 The date of Grotius' Treatise about Antichrist was A.D. 1640 : that of Ham- mond's on the New Testament, 1653 — 1656. 2 The incense-angel of Apoc. viii. 3, I should observe, Bossuet mi kes to mean a created angel; and speaks of the idea of its meaning Christ .is a mere Protestant interpretation. " Les Protestans, offenses de voir 1' intercession angeliquc si claire- ment etablie dans ce passage, voudraient que cet ange fut Jesus Christ meme : " and he says that there is nothing of the majesty that distinguishes Jesus Christ in the visions. (How then, we ask, make the rider of the 1st Seal's white horse to be Christ; though surely of no distinguished majesty ?) Now how little the interpreta- tion he objects to can be called a mere Protestant interpretation will appear from my remark, p. 349 supra. Bossuet, who frequently refers to Tichonius and Primasius, can hardly but have known that it was the almost universally received interpretation for above 1000 years before the Reformation. In order to discriminate where Christ is meant by an Angel, we must, I think, either look for marks of higher dignity than in a created angel ; or else for his having some function assigned him, such as is expressly assigned to Christ, and Christ alone, in Scripture. So here : since Jesus Christ is declared in the Hebrews to be the one great High Priest, to offer our offer- ings before God. And observe it is " the prayers of all saints " that the Apocalyptic rr.u. vi. prom \.n. 1610 T<> fhi raiNOH sbvoli pion. (Souuet.) 508 /'■ !■<■;.<, according to Bossoet, thus depicted the progvses of Ood'i judgments agains! the Jews. Trumpet 1 showed the primary victory o?er the Jews by Trajan; Trumpet 2, the victories over them by Adrian; Trumpel 3, and its following star, the impostor Barchoche- baa, (uson of a star,") declaring himself the Messiah, and so stirring up his countrymen to the war; Trumpet l. the obscuration of the Scriptures, especially of the prophetic Scriptures, (which were as luminaries to the Jews,) by the compilation of their Talmud: the subjects particularly obscured being Christ who is the sun, and the Church the moon. In all which Trumpets the third port, spoken of as affected, meant that not all the Jews would be killed, not all the light extinguished, Ac. — Then the subject passed from the dews ; the 5th Trumpet being one of transition from the Jews to Jewish heresies and errors. For in Trumpet 5 the scorpion-locusts were Judaizing heresies introduced into the Christian Church about 196 A.D., soon after Adrian's destruction of the Jews by Theodotus of Byzantium, and continued onwards to Artemon and Paul of Samosata; heresies concerning the Trinity and Christ's Divinity: the commission not to kill, but only to torment, showing that this plague was not one of invading warrior- foes.1 About A.D. 260 or 270 this woe passed away ; the Council of Antioch A.D. 261 ending it. Then, just at that time, Trumpet 6 exhibited the woe of an invading enemy of horsemen from the Euphrates : viz. the Persians ; who after a while overthrew, and took captive, the emperor Valerian. i n Apoe. i., Bossuet, like Mede, makes the little booh a prophecy ; but only as the remainder of that of the seven-sealed Book, after the 6th Trumpet: the contents being developed in the chapters follow- ing.— Thus in Apoc. xi., after the measuring of the temple, or Church, bv ^t. John, indicating that whatever the violence of persecution, there was a temple they could not destroy, — we have then first a •nil view of Christ's witnesses and martyrs, during the persecu- tions of Pagan Borne; some (for example that of the emperor Vale- rian) lasting near about 3A years:1 though that particular term of time, or its equivalent 1 li months, was used rather by borrowing from 1 off r> : not that of one particular saint, or one particular people : whereat all the functions Miigitfrrt to enat nite and limited. 1 In illu>tr.itiun of tii of the heretics he mentiODJ Tcrtullian's entitling of his work against bet ice. Kuscbius. 504 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. ilic.j history of the persecution of Antiochu's Epiphanes, or the drought uuder Elias ; besides signifying a certain limit of time, or- dained by God to one and all of them. Next, and when the "Wit- nesses should have finished their testimony under Pagan Rome, there is the prophecy of Diocletian's persecution of them, (Diocletian the Beast from the abyss,) and temporary suppression of the Christian worship, in the great city of Rome and the Roman empire ; ' followed, however, quickly by a figuration of the revival under Constantine : — the tenth of the great city falling, and 7000 slain, figurative of the overthrow of the Pagan emperors and forces ; and the song in hea- ven, on the 7th Trumpet's sounding, "The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ," having re- ference to the establishment of Christianity then effected in the Roman empire. A more particular figuration of which, and of its consequences, followed in the next chapter. For the male-child of the travailing Woman, or Church, was Constantine and other Christian emperors succeeding him : the war of the Dragon against the Woman before her child-birth being that of the Diocletianic persecution ; the war in heaven, immediately afterwards, that which ended in the fall of Paganism under Galerius and Maxentius ; the floods cast out of the Dragon's mouth, when the Woman was fleeing to the desert, that of Maximin ; and the Dragon's next war against the remnant of the Woman's seed that of Licinius against Constantine. Then, in Apoc. xiii., came the figuring of the revival as it were of Diocletian (the Beast that had killed the Witnesses) in the apostate Julian ; 2 though the 6th head wounded to death was Maximin; the second Beast, with two lamb-like horns, figuring Julian's Pagan priests and philosophers, pretending to miracles and moral maxims like those of Christianity ; the image of the Beast, images of Pagan gods made to 1 " C'est Rome, et l'empire Romain." So Bossuet on Apoc. xi. 8. Elsewhere, in a notice of Jurieu in his Preface to the Apocalyptic Comment, he strongly insists on this point. The Protestant expositors, says he, " ont bien vu que cela ne se pouvoit dire : " i. e. that Jerusalem could not be called the great city. And then he thus insists on the point ; " Pour dire quelque chose de plus fort, la grande cite est partout dans l'Apocalypse l'empire Romain." §8. I beg my readers to mark this. Christ, he adds, on Apoc. xi. 8, was literally crucified in the Roman empire, and by Roman authority : and he was also spiritually crucified in his persecuted members, during the Roman Pagan persecutions. 2 Bossuet, on verse 5, says that the Church is not stated to have now retired into the desert, [so as in former persecutions; " parceque du terns de Julien il n'y cut aucune interruption dans son service public." pml ti.] pbom \i». L610 to tiu nuwcH involution. [Bossuet.) 608 s[h:iK oracles, Ac., bj the Pagan priesthood i while the Beast's name ami number (here, we see, Bossuel refers to the original, not the re- vived Beasl ) was Dioelee duauttue. Then in Apoc. riv. the prophecy proceeds t.> announce the fall of Rome ami of tin- Roman empire, through the Gfothic invasion. The Aortttrt-judgment is that bjAlarie; the vintage thai by .l/tila. — The Vials trace oui the same subject more particularly, and as be- ginning from an earlier date. The sXjcoc of the 1st Vial was the great plague in the time of Valerian ami Qallienus; the 2nd Vial Bgured the bleeding empire, as it' (lead; the Brd, the civil wars and thirty tyrants ; the 1th. the drought and famine (if that period, com- memorated by Cyprian; the 5th. Valerian's defeat by the Persians; the 6th, the drying up of the Ruphratean barrier, and openimj; of a passage into the empire to the kings from the East, i. e. the Persians; the frogs, the magicians. &C., who urged on Valerian to his fated Armageddon, i. e. the field of battle where he was captured by the ~:ans; the 7th, on the air, with its earthquake and hail, the cap- ture of Rome by Alarie. Vet again, A.poc. xvii. reveals other important points in this sub- ject, more in detail. The Beast's seven heads were Diocletian, (Jale- rius. Maximian. Constantius ChlorUB, the four emperors in whose joint names the first Edict of persecution went forth ; together with Max- nt ins. afaximin, and Lirinius, three persecuting emperors after- wards added. At the precise time to which the vision related. A.D. 812, five of these had JaUen, vis. the first-mentioned four ami Ma\- entius : one too*, vis. Afaximin: I.icinius, the seventh, had not yet come; i. e. as a persecuting emperor. It was further said, "the eighth kini,' is of the seven, and goes into perdition." This was Maximian ; who was of the original four, but had abdicated ; and then became emperor again. — (Julian is not here brought forward by Bossuet.) Further, in this chapter, A| xvii. 16, 17, there was the striking prophecy about the ten horns on the Beast. They were to give their power to the Beast till the words of God were ful tilled ; yet tO hate the Harlot, and tear her. So were the Ghoths, Vandal 8, long admitted as soldiers into the Roman armies, and as allies into the Roman territory : (does not Bossuot here make the Beast to bt yet did they afterwards tear and desolate the Woman i 84)6 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. i. e. ravage Rome and its empire.1 — The millennium Bossuet explains as the period of the Church's supremacy2 until Antichrist's short reign, on Satan's loosing, near the end of the world : 3 the new heavens, new earth, and new Jerusalem, as figures of the saints' heaven- ly glory.4 3. Vitringa is the next Apocalyptic Expositor that calls for our notice. He was Theological Professor in the Academy of Franeker for many years, till his death in 1722 : and from that petty Dutch town, near the mouth of the Zuyder Zee, sent forth those masterly and learned works on Isaiah and the Apocalypse, which have always been regarded as placing him on a high rank among Biblical expo- sitors. His Apocalyptic Commentary, under the title of AvtiKpioig Apocalypseos, was first published at Franeker, A.D. 1705. My no- tices of it in the body of my work are frequent. Hence the less need of any extended sketch. Alike the seven Epistles, seven Seals, and seven Trumpets, (though not the seven Vials,) were deemed by him to be representations of the successive states and fortunes of the Christian Church, from St. John's time to the consummation : with reference however not to the same, but to very different seras, in the respective septenaries. The Scheme on the opposite page will best exhibit to the eye their mutual relations, in time and subject.5 It will be seen that though the main 1 Bossuet hints his opinion that Jerome, in naming ten Gothic invading peoples, had Apoc. xvii. 16 in his eye. Pref. to Apoc. § 22. See my p. 321 supra. 2 On the difference of this from Augustine's theory see my p. 137 supra. 3 I must transcribe Bossuet's short ideal sketch of the future Antichrist : " On doit attendre sous 1' Antichrist les signes les plus trompeurs qu'on ait jamais vus ; avec la malice la plus caehee, l'hypocrisie la plus fine, et lapeaude hup la mieux couverte de celle des brebis." (On Apoc. xx. 14.) How different from the Futurists' idea of a supposed future professedly infidel Antichrist ? 4 In his Abrege, or Brief Summary, appended to the Comment, Bossuet divides the Apocalyptic historic chronology into 3 periods : — 1. that of the Church's beginning, and early trials, from Jews and Gentiles : from Apoc. vi. to Apoc. xx. :— 2ndly, that of the Church's reign on earth, being the millennial period of Apoc. xx. : — ordly, that of Satan's loosing, and the future Antichrist.— Thus Bossuet, like Alcasar, makes the Apocalyptic Beast quite a different power from the Antichrist of prophecy. Only in some certain manner, he intimates in his Preface, $ 15, the whole Apocalypse might possibly have some secondary and mystical reference to the times of Antichrist. 5 In the Epistles it is to be observed that Vitringa explains the "ten days' tribula- tion," predicted to the Church of Smyrna, to mean the ten years of the Diocletian persecution. — In the Seals, the 3rd Seal's subject must be understood to run 100 years and more into the chronology of the 4 th; though I could not represent this in the Scheme. A D M'lir.Mr. or \ i I :mm. \ - UYBW IPI8TLB8, rBUMPBTS, \M> VIALS, BPI8TJ ' SEAL8. TRTJMPET8. 800 100 600 61 (• 700 BOO 900 1 00 1100 1200 1300 1400 1600 1G0<» I. EpAnnu, Prom John tn the Dacna Persecution, A.l>. II. S ■'!•». Daciaii P lion, Incluatve, A.D. 811 III. Pergamos. From the Diocletian Persecution to A.D. 700. IV. Thy at int. From a.d. 700, to the rise of the Wald A. D. 1190. V. Sardis. From P. Valdensis to the eve of the Great Reformation, A. I). 1617. VI Eirll'f <«-f'>rm»tloti. VII. [in-lit lukewarm St L' vlltS. 1. The 160 jean of partial DMi e t" the Church from Nero to Deeiui, a. ii. 96 260. II. I utions from I>< ciu- t" 1 liocletian. III. Chun-h diaaenaioiu ami oormptiona ; eapeoially D] the Arians, Pelagians, &o., to A.D. 800. IV. Desolations of the Church Visihlc, especially of Greek Chriatendom, by the Saracens and Turks. V Peraeoati and Martyrdoms of the Waldi Bohemians, &c. ; not ended in 1700. VI. Plans, .v. ,in u aapln II. Barbarian Invadera, L. D III. Arina, the (ailing st:ir. IV. Valena, Defeat and Death V. Gothic Invasion* of Roman Empire, A.D. 100 chiefly. VI. Desolations of the Roman Empire by the Saracens and the 'lurk,. VII. Judgment on Antichrist. 508 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [aPP. PART I. subject of the Seals is made by him the external state of the Church, that of the Trumpets the fortunes of the Roman world, connected with the Church, yet they sometimes essentially infringe, so as might have been anticipated, on each other. The third Seal, for example, has the Avian heresy for one main part of its subject ; and so also the third Trumpet. The fourth Seal refers to the desolations of Greek Christendom by the Saracens and Turks ; and so the sixth Trumpet. — Having elsewhere referred to his Epistles and Seals,1 let me here only add an observation or two on his Trumpets. It seems to me then, 1st, that his Gothic reference of the 5th Trumpet was that which very much fixed his general scheme of the Trumpets. Mede's chronological application of the five months, or 150 years' period of the emblematical locusts, to designate the Saracens'1 latest and feeblest ravages,2 justly appeared to Vitringa untenable: nor moreover had any satisfactory solution of the locusts' not touching the grass and trees appeared in Mede's Saracenic view. But the Gothic ravages, from Alaric to Totilas, did last nearly 150 years. And, if the grass and trees were figuratively construed to mean Christians, (professing Christians,) then Alaric's sparing the Christian Churches at Rome, and those who took refuge in them, might be supposed, Vitringa thought, a sufficient and obvious explanation, on the Gothic view, of that clause also. "Which being so, he evidently rests with much con- fidence on this solution of the 5th Trumpet ; more so than on almost any other part of his Trumpet Scheme.3 And, this point settled, what preceded the Gothic invasion must of course be ascribed to the Trumpets previous; what followed to those subsequent. So the Saracens, as well as Turks, were crowded necessarily into the sixth Trumpet. Yet not without obvious difficulties and inconsistency . For example, in this Gothic application of the 5th Trumpet Vitringa explains the locusts' hair being like women's hair, with reference to the personal appearance of the Goth's yellow hair ; (though certainly this was no feminine characteristic among JewTs, Greeks, or Romans ;) but " the faces as of men" he felt unable to explain of personal ap- pearance ; and so fell back on the moral characteristic, (one surely i On the Epistles in my Vol. i. p. 77 ; on the Seals in the Appendix to my Vol. i- pp. 549 — 553. - See p. 491 supra. 3 So at p. 485 Vitringa argues from the undoubted Gothic application of the 5th Trumpet, to the right meaning of the 4th : " Gothos enim esse illas locustas qua sequentis tubicinii viso depinguutur, si Deo placet, clarissirne e^incemus." And »o previously, p. 455. pie. yi.] pbom \.i>. L610 fo iii i i im m ii uyoli i roN. | VUrinya.) 509 scarce applicable to the Goths,) of humanity.1 — 2ndlr, as regards" the thin! part," six OT seven times noted in the first four Trumpets, he suggests that it tnighl perhaps be intended of one of the three ©on- tinents of tlie Etoman empire, and BO explains it of the "Bastem or Asiatic third in some of the Trumpets: yet in the ith Trumpet of the Western region, and sometimes too rather as meaning gome nota- ble part:* moreover, after throwing out an idea in the first Trumpet, that the uUmdn mighl be meant distinctly of the Roman empire, the " sea " of the barbarians, construes land, sea, and rivers all alike of B >mao Christendom ; mainly in a figurative sense, somewhat like tfede.' 1 d Lpoc. x. Vitringa so far follows Mode as to make the little book opened a Prophetic Seetion : not (so as the earlier Reformers) the opened Bible, or New Testament. The special subject however of the new prophecy (herein differing from Mede) being part, he thinks, of the seven-sealed book, he expounds of the increased cor- ruptions of the Church, and the rise, power, and persecuting acts of the Beast in Western Christendom, contemporarily with the Turkish woe of the 6th Trumpet:4 — the seven thunders being sig- nificani of the seven Crusades ; the charge, "Thou must prophesy a;/■')■'> : a passage referred to also by me at p. 191 snpriL * p. 668. s '• Qu.'im hoc doctc' et pit- OOgitatOH) ' " 0X4 laims Vitringa, ;it p. 620, in reporting thi> explanation of the 1260 dayi of the Witni Met prophesying in sackcloth, suggest) '1 by Sceliger. He add*, however, that he cannot think of any scriptural justification of it ; unless what i^ said in Gen, xv. 10 — 13 might be (Itemed such : where, the :ices having been divided into four parti to the four winds, the time prophesied Of is -' kted to be 400 years. — Vitringa seems not to have been aware of Tichonius' similar id. :.r.t. * p. 652. So Foxe. S pri. Vitringa, p. G-37, notices Cocccius as having 510 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [ArP. PART I. sacre of the Waldeusic remnant in the Valleys of Cabrieres and Mer- indol, A.D. 1515 : 3. in the anti-protestant Interim of Charles Vth, and Prince Maurice's quickly-following victory and consequent treaty of Passau : ' 4. in the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and the Edict of Toleration obtained from Henry III within four years after.2 Vitriuga notices Jurieu's views also ; 3 calculating the slaughter of the Witnesses from the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, or some other persecuting act following it up : which view, however, had not po far been verified by any such rising of the "Witnesses, or Protest- ant revolution in France, as Jurieu had expected. And, on the whole, Vitringa inclined to look to the prophecy as being one up to his own time still mainly unfulfilled. — I may observe that he con- sidered that the tenth part of the great city, which fell concurrently with the two witnesses' ascent, ought to be construed to mean one of the ten kingdoms of Papal Christendom. Which being so, how was it that the fall of Papal England did not fix itself more deeply in his mind, as an indication of the intent of the whole pro- phecy ?4 After this, and the Witnesses' political ascent, Vitringa ex- pected that the 6th Trumpet's or Turkish woe (in the which all about the rainbow-crowned angel's descent, and witnesses' death and resurrection, had been included) would cease ;5 and the sound- ing of the 7th Trumpet introduce God's judgment on the enemies of the Church, and the blessed times predicted by all the prophets. In Apoc. xii. the vision of the Dragon and Woman is expounded, 1. of Diocletian's persecution, followed by Constantine's establish- ment of Christianity ; the Dragon's seven heads (like those of the taken this view ; and, in connexion, explaining the tenth of the city falling of France under Henry IV. ; (when however, as Vitringa justly observes, Papal Gaul did not fall, but Henry became a Papist ;) and the 7000 slain of the 7 Belgian states and bishopricks : the latter like myself. See my Vol. ii. p. 481, Note3. 1 Like Brightman. See p. 470 supra. 2 p. 664. 3 p. 668. See p. 497 supra. * Vitringa, p. 647. The opinion is thus exprest. "Quid commodius quiim per to Sekutov tijs ttoXecos hie intelligere regnum aliquod illustre, quod inter decern regno, Europcea, religionis causa Romse subjecta, excellebat, ejusque hactenus supcr- stitioni fuerat patrocinatum ? Id hie casurum dicitur mystico sensu, quando per majores illos motus quibus concutiendum erat, avelleretur a corpore Imperii Anti- christiani. Caderet sic eorum respectu in quorum gratiam hactenus steterat et floruerat." I quote this, because, as Vitringa believed the event still future, it gives his un- biassed opinion on the real meaning of this prophetic clause : and strikingly confirms my application of it to the fall of Papal England at the Reformation. So too Jurieu, p. 497 supra. 5 p. 649. n ft, \ i. raoii \ i». L610 PO Tin. ru in in r.i.v.n.i noN. | VUringo.) 5 I I Beast) symbolising both Rome's seven lulls, and the seven perse- cuting emperors of that period, Diocletian, Ac : (such is bis view of the allusion in the clause, "and they are seven kings:") 2. of the Alien persecutions of orthodox Christians sfter the tall of Paganism: — both explanations very much as in my Sons. But the wildomeoe, into which the Woman then lied, Vitringa makes otherwise to mean the barbarous nations oi' the West ; ' and the voters eoet /»/ the Dra- after the Woman, the Saracen inundation, swallowed ap in France on occasion of the rietory of Charles MarteL — In A.poc. riii., after a somewhat elaborate notice and refutation of Bossuet's ex- planation of the Jirst Beast, agreeably with certain Protestants, as meaning Borne Pjogem, Vitringa interprets it of Rome Papal : its I hood* however not including heads of the old Eoman empire as well as of Koine Papal, so as had been generally thought by Protest- ant- ; but only heads of it in its last Papal form. So he makes the five first to be five most eminent Popes before the Eeformation ; (the Reformation asm being the point of time to which the Angel's words. "./'<''' have jtilU'ti" is to be referred;) viz. Gregory VII, Alexander III. (wounded to death by Fred. Barbarossa, but soon revived.) In- nocent III, Boniface V11I, (the Beast's middle bead,) and John XXII :2 the sixth and seventh being two Popes after the Eeforma- tion. vis. Paul III and Paul V; while the eighth and last was the one that would be ruling at Kome at the time, yet future, of the last persecution. The second Beast Vitringa explains, after man}' of the old as well as the then more recent expositors, to signify Papal preachers and doctors, especially the Franciscans and Domini, the Beoofe image as the tribunals of the Inquisition.' Of the Beast's name ami number Xotuvoq was deemed by him almost too simple a solution ; and he proposes some strange far-fetched Hebrew phrasi - from Scripture, which it is not worth while to repeat.4 I pass to Apoc. xiv. Here the 114,000 are explained of the "Wal- denses and Albi^enses : the harpers, next noted as sympathizing with the 111. (Miu, of the Wleliffites and Hussites: the firet jlying Angel, that had the everlasting GrOSpel, of Luther, Zuingle, and the other 1 p. 748. The 1260 days, ox r'.\ times, of thi "•'■ . - then he (!<»•■< not atti I plain on Scaliger*s measure, preyioualy praised by him, of one time — . l»»'» y< an : but only :i- ■ period borrowed from the 8] Bpiphanroa' i.rof.ination of the temple. 1 p;. • p. 833. * p. 848. 512 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. Fathers of the Reformation : the second, of the Reformers' voice of triumph over the Popedom at the time of the Treaty of Passau, in the second period of the Reformation, and the disruption of the English Church from Rome : l the third, of the Protestant doctors in the third period of the Reformation ; at a time of affliction to Christ's Church, such as even then partially existed, especially with reference to France and the French Reformed Churches. — In entering on the Vials in Apoc. xvi., Vitringa acknowledges the plausibility of Lau- neus' opinion, that these Vials were all contained in, and the devel- opment of, the 7th Trumpet: Launeus having noted, 1. that these were the last plagues, and the 7th Trumpet the last and finishing woe ; 2. the fact of the temple (the heavenly temple, says Launeus, in the same sense of heavenly as when applied to the heavenly Jeru- salem) appearing opened introductorily to their effusion, just as it was described in Apoc. xi. 19, as appearing at the sounding of the 7th Trumpet ; 3. their answering, on this view, to the type of the seven compassings of Jericho on the 7th day ; besides that, 4thly, Launeus thought the 5th Vial on the seat of the Beast looked very much like the blow on the Papacy at the Reformation.2 But Vitrin- ga could not make up his mind to suppose all these Vials future ; so as he felt sure the 7th Trumpet's sounding was. And consequently he explains all the five earlier Vials, if not six, as already fulfilled in certain judgments on the Popedom. ..Thus the 1st, that of the griev- ous sore's appearing, he traces in the Waldensian exposure 'of the deep corruption of the Papacy ; the 2nd, that of the sea becoming blood, in the bloody wars between the Emperors and Popes, more especially from the times of Frederic II and Lewis of Bavaria ; 3 the 3rd, that of the rivers being blood, in the Hussite and Bohemian wars under Zisca, &c; the 4th, on the sun, (the regal emblem,) in the great heat with which the two French kings Charles VIII and Louis XII had scorched Italy ; the 5th, on the seat of the Beast, in the darken- ing of the Popedom by the Reformation, and taking and sack of Rome by the constable Bourbon. In the 6th Vial Vitringa curiously explains the Euphrates' drying up of the exhaustion of the power of France, as. the chief bulwark of the Papal Roman empire ; 4 an event perhaps even then begun, by the banishment of its multitude of in- ' p. 876. - pp- 936—938. 3 p. 946. Frederic II. made emperor A.D. 1212; Lewis 1314. 4 p. 973. FIB. \ I.' PBOM L.D. 1610 i" lit > - n; i:\eu UYOL1 HON. | />tt: . ) 518 dustrious Protestanl citizens at tlu> Revocation of the Bdid Nantes. The three frogs, iaauing forth contemporaneously, lie rop- poeea to moan the Jesuits : and expounds the 7th Vial, on the air, as typifying the dissolution of both the political and the ecclesiastical Papal empire.1 i)n the Apocalyptic millennium Vitringa adopts the new thai bad just before for the firsl time been propounded by his contemporary Whitby, to whom indeed he refers;8 an alternative view to the two between which opinions had been hitherto divided, of the greatesl importance; \i/.. the old chiliastic of the earliest Fathers, and the Augnstinian: — a view which regarded it as a spiritual millennium, yet future; one in which tin- world would be thoroughly evangelized ; and the Church, the bride, assume a character over the whole earth answering to the description of the .New Jerusalem. On the whole, Yitringa seems to me by no means to have contri- buted directly to the solution of the many previously remaining diffi- culties of the Apocalypse, so much as from his ability and various lawning one might have anticipated. Indeed, his explanations are •i singularly arbitrary and unsatisfactory. Indirectly bowev< t the value of his Commentary has doubtless been considerable: illus- tratiiiLr each subject handled, as he has, by a wide-ranging erudition, alike in secular and ecclesiastical. Hebraic and Greek literature ; and often applying a just and acute criticism to show the untenableness of opinions, more or less plausible, adopted by expositors of note be- fore him. 1. \'i 1 H ifl chiefly in this indirect way also, if I mistake not, that Double's almost contemporary, and yet more copious, Comment, con- tributed to the advancement of the Apocalyptic science. For it is a C i omentary quite redundant with multifarious research and learn- ing.3— It is to be understood thai Daubuz was by birth a French Protestant; found refuge in England on the Revocation of the Edict of Nan: i orders in the Anglican Church; and, while • S< > opinion on this point quoted at p. '21 of the present Volume. i "Obscrvavi aliunde cum roluptatfl nupi r boo art,'uin>ntuin ac rural'- etse \>< rtracta- tum ab crudito quodam viro, («c. Daniele Whitby,) cu nihil . lent." Vitringa, p. till. ' Th> I at of DaubuS, I think, by a writer nam. .1 uter : but it can give no idea of the research and learning of the original, vol.. iv. 33 51-i HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. Vicar of Brotherton near Ferrybridge in Yorkshire, wrote bis " Per- petual Commentary on the Apocalypse," which was first published in a solid folio, A.D. 1720. The following may serve as an abstract in brief of his opinions. The reader of my Horse must already have formed a measure of acquaintance with him. The seven Epistles then he explains, not like Vitringa as prophe- tical ; but in the natural way, as depicting the actual state of the seven Asiatic Churches respectively : albeit with application to the Church Universal, in its earthly suffering state, to the end of time. In the Seals Daubuz, though admitting A.D. 95 or 96 to be the year of the Revelation's having been given to St. John, yet antedates the subject of the 1st Seal ; and makes its white horse and rider depict the victorious progress of Christ's gospel, even from his ascen- sion. Thus he is enabled to explain the red horse in the 2nd Seal of the wars by which Jerusalem and the Jews were destroyed, from A.D. 66 to A.D. 135 ; including as well the Jewish wars of Ves- pasian and Titus, as those of Trajan and Adrian. The 3rd Seal, beginning A.D. 202, he expounds of scarcities begun in the reign and aera of Severus,1 much as Brightman before him ; the 4th (like Brightman also) of the Decian and Valerian sera of war, famine, and pestilence ; the 5th (as Mede, &c.) of the Diocletian persecution ; the 6th of the Constantinian Revolution, and fall of Paganism from its supremacy in the B,oman empire. — Then comes the first consider- able peculiarity in Daubuz's Commentary. He explains both the Sealing Vision and the Palm-bearing Vision of the happy constitu- tion of the Church under God's sealing Angel, Constantine : a Church including both 'many converted Israelites, and multitudes innumerable of Gentiles ; now alike admitted, from out of times of great tribulation, to the peaceful enjoyment of Church-privileges : — a peace and liberty this, further indicated by the half-hour s silence, or stillness from hostility, at the opening of the 7th Seal ; and its accompanying representation of an act of peaceful public worship. The Trumpets, which Daubuz supposes to mark a new period, fol- lowing on, not contained in, the 7th Seal,2 are explained by him mainly as by Mede and Jurieu, of the desolations and fall, first of the AVestern empire, then the Eastern ; under the assaults success- 1 Kai to i\aiou kai tov oivov /utj afo/aja-r;;? he renders, like Mede, Heinrichs, and myself, " Thou shalt not do virong about the oil 'and wine." 2 p. 247. riu. \i.~ FROM I i>. L610T6 mi: ikiaiii ki:\ 0X1 tio\. < UuuLit;.) 515 ively of Uii- Goths. Suraeeiis, and 'Parks. "More part ieularly ho thus divides the four tirst : — 1. Alarie's ravages from A.D. '.',U~> lo 109: J. Alarie's capture rf Koine. A.l». 1 1>», and the ravages of Gaul and Spain by the Goths and Yandais : :{. Attib's ravages, •111' l"'_'. A.l». : b. the lall of the Western Kinpire under (leiisi lie ami OdoBCer, from 1"> 1 to -17t>. — In the 5th Trumpet he made an important step of ad\anee, as I eoneeive. in true Apoealyptie inter- pretation, bj explaining the locusts' Jive months, or 1")0 dai/s, of the 150 years from Mahomet's puhlie opening of his mission, A.D. G12, to the Saracen Caliph's removal to Bagdad, "the City of I'eaee," A 1>. 7<>l2. On the other hand, he seems to me to have retrograded by not adopting Mede's definite chronological view of the hour. Say, moii f It, and year, predicted of the Euphratean horsemen ; but ex- plaining it, like some before him, as if only meaning that the four angels were all ready at one mi'/ the tame hour, or time. The Vision in Apoe. x. lie applies, even more distinctly than the early Reforming Expositors themselves, to the great Lutherau Re- formation : with the peculiar notion added of its figured Angel signifying Luther, as the Angel of the sealing vision had figured Constantino; and the seven answering thunders to his voice being those of the seven States that received and established Protestantism within them: viz. 1. the German Protestant States; 2. the Swiss Cantons; 3. Sweden; i. Denmark; 5. England; G.Scotland; 7. the Dutch Netherlands: John's sealing up the thunders intimating /> to the progress of the Reformation, soon after the times of Luther, and the first sounding of those thunders. — "Thou must prophesy again," was a charge gi\en to Protestants at the time of the Reformation, as represented by St. John. And so too the •/ of the temple:** the outer court given to the Gentiles indicating that there would still exist paganized Christians, to tread the holy city: ami ''both the reformed and the corrupted Christians ing to their own lots (separately), till the'term df the 42 months is lap8ed since the GtentUSS began."8 The clause orav TiXtowair, "when they shall have finished, or completed their testimony," Daubnz construes, " whilet the;/ shall perform //.-"and so th days of their apparent death 88 equivalent to the 1260 days, or whole period of their prophesying in sackcloth. B :i illustration 1 p. 4 2 p. Ml. 33 • 516 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. Rom. viii. 36; " For thy sake we are killed all the day long ; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter." But the Greek of the original forbids the translation. Construing the passage as he does there is no special historical explanation needed, or offered by him, so as by Foxe, Brightman, or Jurieu, of the Witnesses' death and resurrection. — "And the same hour there was a great earthquake, &c," he interprets to mean the same hour as that of the measuring the temple ; in other words, that of the Lutheran Eeformation. And the predicted fall of a tenth of the great city in it is explained to be the fall of the Greek State under the Ottoman Turks ; this having been a part of the old Roman empire for some centuries, and one of the Beast's ten horns in Daubuz' view afterwards : ' a fall begun indeed A.D. 1453, but advancing to completion by the Turks' sub- jugation of Rhodes and Cyprus in the years 1522, 1570 ; not to note that of Candia much later, A.D. 1G69. The 7th Trumpet, yet future, Daubuz explains as the signal trumpet of the resurrection of the just ; that same that is spoken of by Paul in 1 Cor. xv. 51 : — that too which would introduce a time when God's Church would be freed from all idolatry and oppression, and a full accomplishment of all his designs made manifest ; the one being symbolized by the opening of the temple in heaven ; the other by the ark of the cove- nant appearing.2 All evidently with reference to the times of the millennium. In Apoc. xii. he interprets the vision of the travailing Woman and Dragon, much as others before him ; with reference to the crisis of the Diocletian persecution, and Constantine's immediately following elevation to a Christian throne, and casting down of Paganism from its supremacy in the Roman empire.3 Only of the Dragon's seven heads he offers a peculiar solution. These were the chief subjugated kingdoms, or rather their capital cities, which then constituted the Roman empire : the metropoles of Italy, of the Carthaginian empire, of the kingdom of Greece, of that of Mithridates, of that of Gaul and Britain, of Egypt, and finally Thrace ; this last Byzantium, or Constantinople. — The flood out of the Dragon's mouth he explains to be the Goths ; the two eagle's wings helping the Woman, the Roman Christianized Eastern and Western empires. Then in Apoc. 1 pp. 537, 538. ■ p. 554. 3 p. 520 on Apoc. xii. (N. B. on Apoc. xii. a wrong paging commences in Daubuz ; the first being 4S1, instead of 565.) FSB. n.J FROM \.n. L610 N) mi; PUNCH SEV0L1 PICK. \ Ihiulmz.) 517 xiii. tlu\///-.v/ B«uJ ia the Jeeem-regal Eepublioot Western Christen- dom.1 under Bo was Its heed; Rome the earliest headof the Dragon, sed 1') the Gothic invaders, but revived under the Popes. The Beast's 12 montkeof supremacy Daubuz reckons from the nil of thf Western Bmperor, A.l>. 17(J. and consequently as to end in 17:50.''' The second Beast is the Beast Ecclesiastical, or False Pro* phel : its two horns being the Roman Popes, and the Constantino* politan Patriarchs. The Pope himself is the Beasfs image? as re- presenting the Beast's power; the name and number f^r^y\ in the feminine ; i. a the Roman Church.4 In A.poc. xiw. as in Apoc. vii., Daubus interprets its primary vision of the 141,000 to mean the Con.stanfinian Church, especially ;is gathered together at Nice in Council : its bishops there gathered being to the exact number of 318, the number answering to HIT, the abbreviation for Jesus Christ crucified, or mark of the Lamb on the foreheads of the 1 14,000 in vision.5 Further he explains the 1st flying Angel of Viguantius' and Augustine's warnings against the increasing superstitions and coming judgments ;6 the 2nd of the cry on the actual destruction of old Rome (here meant by Babylon) by the Gfoths; the 3rd of warnings against the Beast, whose empire was now about to be established, especially that by Gregory 1 : 7 the harvest as meaning the reformation of the Church, which had separated the good corn from the earth ; and the vintage, of the wars and victories in Queen Anne's time over the Papists.8 — Then in the Vial* there was, he thought, a retrogression again to early times. The plague of Vial 1 was the noisome sore of outbreaking superstition in the image-worship that more and more established itself, from the seventh to the tenth century ; Vial 2 the earlier cross lea; I rial -i the later ; Vial i the wars of Popes and Emperors ; Vial 5 the taking of Constantinople by the Latins, and the Popes' removal from Rome to Avignon ; Vial (» the drying up of the power of the Eastern or Creek empire, which was, as it were, the Eu- phratean barrier to Christendom ; and thereby a preparation lor the kind's from the East, or Turks. Tin- three frogs, issuing forth coin- cidently, are explained of the secular Papal clergy, the monks, and 1 Here, p. 606, Daubuz not. s W'histori* list of the ten kings, as one that had pre- bk. J p. 620. • 611. 1 pp. BE A viry earioni application of the iia ! On which V in. p. 213. ' p. 630. '■ p. 637. • pi> BJ.fi HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. the religious orders of knights of the time. Vial 7 on the air, or power of the Devil, depicted the lleformation by Luther : the great city being tripartited about this time into the Greeks, the Latin Papists, and the Protestants.1 Finally, in Apoc. xix. Daubuz interprets the hallelujahs and thunderings heard on the fall of Babylon, (i. e. here of Papal Home,) to indicate the conversion of the Jews, and incoming of the fulness of the Gentiles : explains the first resurrection in Apoc. xx. literally, of the saints and martyrs rising from the dead, and millen- nial reign with Christ : also the New Jerusalem as the habitation and state of the Church after the resurrection of the saints, both during the millennium and afterwards ; the Church being in the saints' mortal state betrothed to Christ ; but after the resurrection his ywrj, or wife.2 5. Sir I. Neioton's brief Apocalyptic Comment, appended to his Treatise on Daniel, was not published, I believe, till the year 1733 ; six years after his death. It seems, however, to have been written some considerable time before ; his thoughts having been seriously directed to these prophecies as early as 1691.3 Brief as is the com- ment, being of not much more than seventy pages, it yet contains much valuable matter, and exhibits much careful and original thought ; so as might have been expected from such an author. Alike on the Seals and Trumpets he expresses his general agreement with Mede. But certain differences occur. 1st, as regards the Seals, he expounds the rider in the first Seal, as well as in the three next, not of Christ, but of Roman emperors : 4 (I presume with i p. 733. 2 p. 967. 3 In the biographical Notice of Sir I. Newton in the British Cyclopaedia, a letter of his is given, dated Cambridge, Feb. 7, 1690-1, containing the following extract: " I should be glad to have your judgment on some of my mystical fancies. The Son of Man, Dan. vii., I take to be the same with the Word of God upon the white horse in heaven, Apoc. xix. ; for both are to rule the nations with a rod of iron. But whence are you certain that the Ancient of Days is Christ ? " * He says indeed at p. 278 (of Edit. 1733) ; " The four horsemen, at the opening of the four first seals, have been well explained by Mr. Mede : " who made, we have seen, the first horseman to be Christ. But this was a mere lapse of the pen. For Sir I. expressly elsewhere gives to the first Seal, as well as to the other three, a Roman solution. So p. 256 ; " The visions at the opening of these (the first four) Seals relate only to the civil affairs of the heathen Roman empire." At p. 274 he speaks of " the wars of the Roman empire, during the reign of the four horsemen that appeared on the opening the first four Seals : " and at p. 277 ; " The Dragon's heads are seven suc- cessive kings ; four of them being the four horsemen, which appeared at the opening lM.i;. U.] L.B. LW:0 DO l&BKCfl itr.vou im\. | \/V /. Xiirfon.) 519 reference bo the triumphs of Vespasian and Titus, as 1 shall bane to observe again pneonnfily ) also he makes the limits of the 1th Seal to noge from Eteouu t>> Diooletuus'i loooesion. He ■greet with Mode is making' the scaling of the 111. otto synchronise with bheTiaioBa that followed ob opening she 7th Seal. Again, in regard of ftfede'i view of the seventh Seal, as comprehending the se\en Trumpets, Sir Isaac adds, and aba the hitr\s- previous 8tiIinfi$»Jtom the ihnui- outl finer wind* of faesjj N : (the same that were let loose afterwards under the tour tirst Trumpets: ) whieh stillness he explains his/or- iculhl of the respite during Theodosius's reign, from 380 A.D. to :f:»". : ' an imjmitruii approximation, I conceive, to the true mean- ing-— 12. Dissatisfied with Mede's particular and somewhat fan- ciful distribution of the Gothic ravages over the four first Trumpets, he makes the distinction of the four winds the principle of distinction in them ; 1st, as figuring Alaric's ravages on the Greek proviuces JBaei of Home; 2nd, as the Visigoths' and Vandals' 00 tiie Wetietn Gallic and Spanish provinces; 3rd, as the desola- tions of Southern Africa by the Vandal wars, from Genseric down to Belisarius ; 4th, as the Ostrogothic and Lombard wars in Nort/n mm Italy.3 — 3. In the 5th Trumpet he thinks the double mention of the locusts' ({uin B my V..1. i. ; M.'i. Only 1 judge the time of silence intended to have begun at 1 bi odoatuf death, not hLs OOOSM * Sir I. Newton, pp. 296- put rive months," be - IS, and five at Bsgdsd ; " altogether 300 v 186 inclusive, lb. * p. - 278 520 history or apocalyptic [NTEEPEETATION. [app. part i. t his Latin Papal decem-regal empire ; its name and number Aaretvot ;' the second Beast however (a singular explanation !) the Greek Church.2 — And then he imtimates peculiar structural views on the seven Epistles, seven Vials, and little Book. The Epistles he adjusts to the states and times of the Church indicated in the figurations of the Seals that followed : the particulars being as stated below.3 The Vials ought, he judges, to have been made synchronal with, and ex- planatory of, the Trumpets. The little Book he considers, like Mede, to be a new prophecy ; the Angel- Vision of Apoc. x. being an intro- duction to it : but that, as being sweet token first tasted, and ajh -r- wards bitter, its commencement should be considered as agreeing with Apoc. xii., and the glorious prefiguration there given of the fall of Paganism in the Roman empire ; the sequel of it being the bitter times of the Beast's 1260 years, and the Witnesses' prophesying in sackcloth.4 Besides all which, I wish to direct particular attention to two characteristic and important points in this Comment of Sir I. New- ton ; the one regarding the distant past, the other the then quickly coming future. 1. He, first of Expositors, if I mistake not, insti- tuted a careful and critical investigation into the evidence external and internal of the date of the Apocalypse ; 5 inferring it thence to be coincident with Nero's persecution, not Domitian's : incorrectly, 1 Pp. 282 — 284. — Sir I. Newton gives us in his connected Treatise on Daniel histor- ical abstracts illustrating the division of the ten kingdoms, and progress of the Papal power in respect of imperial law and historic fact, so careful and valuable, that no Apo- calyptic student should be without them. I have referred to them in my Vol. iii. at pp. 141, 160, and elsewhere. 2 " The second Beast, which rose up out of the earth, was the Church of the Greek empire." P. 283. In the distinction of -earth and sea, he elsewhere makes the earth the Greek empire. So p. 281. 3 The Epistle to Ephesus Sir I. Newton makes to depict the state of the Church previous to the fifth Seal, and before Diocletian's persecution ; when the only "some- what " of charge against it was, " Thou hast left thy first love : " — that to Smyrna, with its ten days' tribulation, had reference to Diocletian's persecution, depicted in the 5th Seal :— those to Pergamos, Thyatira, and Sardis, wherein mention is made of the heresies and evils of Balaam and the woman Jezebel, and of the Church's works not having been found perfect before God, figured the gradual apostasy under Constantine and Constantius :— that to Philadelphia, the faithful under Julian's persecution : — that to Laodicea, the Church's subsequent lukewarmness, so increased as that God would spue it out of his mouth ; a state answering to the development of the apostasy soon after the opening of the 7th Seal, or at the end of the 4th century. * Pp. 271, 272. 5 At the beginning of his Apocalyptic Treatise, pp. 236 — 246. Grotim, if I re- member right, took Epiphanius' Claudian date simply on Epiphanius' authority. Alcasar had taken the Domitianic. riK. \i \.i>. L610 to punch revolution. (Sir I. Newton.) 521 however, as 1 think I have proved.1 \\" h i»-!i being supposed, a Roman explanation was obvious of the 1st Seal, in harmony with sfede's Soman explanation <>f the 2nd; this latter having reference to the wars of Trajan ami Adrian. '2. He insists, with regard 1" the s.» Ear evident imperfection of the understanding of the A-pocalypse and of some nt' Daniel's prophecies, thai it was itself a thing foreseen and predicted; Daniel having been directed to seal up his last prophecy till the time of the end. And he adds that this time of the end was \ caljptically marked as that of the 7th Trumpet, at whose sound- ing the mystery of God should be finished: (the preaching of the everlasting Gospel to all nations being further marked, both in the Apocalypse and in Christ's prophecy, as a preliminary sign accom- panying it :) and that the measure of success, all nit imperfect, that had crowned the prophetic researches of the immediately preceding aire, seemed to him an evidence that the last " main revolution" pre- dieted. when all would be explained, was " near at hand."2 — I must add. not from his own published Comment, but from Winston's, the further remarkable fact, that Sir I .-aac expressed a strong persuasion, — with reference of course to the expected " main revolution " of the seventh Trumpet, wherein " they were to be destroyed that de- stroyed or corrupted the earth," — that the antichristian or perse- cuting power of the Popedom, which had so long corrupted Christi- anity, must be put a stop to, and broken to pieces, by the prevalence of infidelity, for some time before primitive Christianity could be restored.a Which anticipation, fulfilled as it was soon after in the facts and character of the expected great Kevolution, when it actu- ally broke out, must surely be deemed not a little remarkable. 1 Viz. in ray opening Treatise on the Date of the Apocalypse, Vol. i. p. 31, and the additional notice on it, p. 533, in the Appendix t<> that Volume. 1 " The time is not yet come for understanding the old prophets, (which he that would understand must begin with the Apocalypse.) because the main revolution pre- dicted in them is not yet coma t<> pa>s. In the dof/t of the voire of the scrinth Amir! the mystery of God shall be finished. . . . Among the interpreter! of the last age there is scarce one of note who hath nut made MOM diseovesj worth knowing ; W In nee I seem to gather that God is about opening theec mytfc rii i." Pp. 262, 2 3 " Sir I. Newton had a \. cture, whiefa he told Dr. Clarke, from whom I received it, that the overbearing tyranny and p< rsecuting DOWn of the Anti- christian party, which hath so long corrupted Christianity, and enslaved the Christian world, moat be put a stop to, and broken to pi i . -. by tin prevalence of infidelity, for some time ix-fire primitive Christianity oonld be restored :" — which, adds V7h writing A.I>. 1711. "seems to be the very moans th it b now working in Europe for the same good and great end of Providence." (2nd Ed. p. 821.) 522 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTKKPRETATION . [APP. PART 1. (J. The Apocalyptic " Essay " by Whist on (Newton's successor in the Mathematical Professorship at Cambridge) was first published, as appears from the date appended to Winston's original Preface, in the year 1706 : a second Edition followed in 1741, under Whiston's own eye, improved and corrected.1 — The following points in it appear to me deserving of notice. While strongly contending for the Domiti- anic date of the Apocalypse, he yet explains the 1st Seal retrospect- ively of Christ's triumphing in Vespasian and Titus' overthrow of Jerusalem ; the other Seals as Mede, Jurieu, and Newton. — In the Trumpets, dissatisfied like Newton with Mede's vague principle of distribution, he takes another, and I think better plan, for giving definiteness and precision to the several shares of the several Trump- ets in the Gothic ravages : bis principle being drawn from the third part said to be affected ; which he construes as the European part of the empire, (in contrast with the African and Asiatic,) and the land, sea, and rivers, literally taken, that are specified in it. Thus the sub- jects of Trumpets 1, 2, and 3 are made respectively to be the ravages of Alaric and llhadagaisus in the landward interior, those of the Van- dals and Goths on the maritime European parts, and those of Attila on the European rivers ; (the last a real advance, as I conceive, to the truth ; 2) the quenching of the third part of the sun, i. e. imperial sun, &c, being that of Odoacer. — In the 5th Trumpet, after other previously given solutions of the locusts' five months, he at length concludes on the reading being faulty, and St. John having written te urivaQ, not e ; i. e. 15, not 5 : 450 years measuring the whole dur- ation of the Saracens, till their entire supersession by the Turks. (Winston does not seem to have been acquainted with Daubuz' sim- ple and satisfactory solution of these five months.)4 — In his exposi- tion of the Turks' "hour, day, month, and year" the exactness of the astronomer appears. Asserting that Othman could not be properly recognized as Sultan till the Hutbe prayers had been put up for him in the mosques, and that this was first done for Othman May 19, 1 Whiston died A.D. 1752. — The title-page of his Essay's 2nd Edition hears date, London 1744 ; Whiston's own conclusion of its 3rd Part, at p. 324, Jan. 20, 1743-4. A little before his death he drew up a brief Addendum to his Second Edition, oc- cupying in my copy of that Edition from p. 325 to 332 ; and bearing date at the end, May 7,1750. - This view has been followed in the main by Bicheno and Keith. I have also my. self mainly adopted it. :t P. 196. 4 Whiston's 1st Edition, being published in 1706, was before Daubuz. l'K.i;. vi." HKM A.n. tft&Q M 1BI riti.M u i;i;\mi [TON. (Mangel.) 529 1W1. lit" calculates the prophetic period ill' an hour, day, i th, and \ear. Of :5!H; \rars lOrt da\ s. as poacfaiog to Sept. 1. I(i!i7. I >.S. : the very dale of Prince BugOBO'egieel \ iiturv o\ f. If, stu.irt (i. 169) i* thai incorrect in Mying that Whiston assign* A •:.■ \ ■ ;r 1768 ;i> th.it of < Ihrift'l M OOnd coming. 1 Bo Launscus. Seep 612 Mipr.'i ; alao p. 194. gel, A.I). 1740: died 1762 ) Biabop Newton, A.D. 1764. ' Ili> fnndamental principle, ona alt mjectnral, w:.^ thai the Bi number 666, construed of years, mu-t tqnaltl numeral period I-' mont 501. BI8TOBI OF APOCALYPTIC [NTEBPBETATION. [APP. PART I. can now think of attaching weight to it ; highly valued though Bengel himself must be for learning and piety. And, as for Bishop Newton's Treatise, it is too universally known to need description; besides that, however valuable as a compendium, (and I deem it eminently so.) it does yet scarcely put forth any original thoughts on the sub- ject handled. — Nor again will the Roman Catholic Comment of Bishop Walmsley, that soon after followed, need any more to detain us ; it being already pretty much forgotten by Romanists themselves.1 — But it does need, I think, that I call attention to the German Prce- terist School that was about this time rising more and more into no- tice and influence : a School characterized by considerable mental acuteness, research, and philological learning ; and at the same time by much of the hardihood and rashness of religious scepticism. I therefore at once proceed to it. 8. As early then as Bengel' s time, the celebrated Genevese writer, Firmin Abauzit,2 their precursor and harbinger, had published a work entitled Discours Historique sur V Apocalypse, written to show that the canonical authority of the Apocalypse was doubtful. On reading Dr. Twells' reply to it,3 however, he was satisfied; and honourably wrote (though in vain) to stop the reprinting of his in other words, that one prophetic month =_ = 15£ years. Hence, after various cal- culations, he inferred that the year 1836 would be the year of the final and great crisis ; an expectation, I need not observe, never realized. 1 It was published under the fictitious name of Signor Pastorini in the year 1771 : was in 1778 translated into French by a Benedictine of St. Maur, and into Latin and German soon after. Its principle is, that the Seals, Trumpets, and Vials all relate to the same seven ages of the Church : 1. the first 300 years of the Christian sera, to Constantine, the age of Christian purity ; 2. the next 100 years, marked by the Arian heresy; 3. from 406 to 6'20 A.D., marked by God's judgments on ancient Rome and the Western Empire ; 4. from 620 to 1.520 marked by three great events, — viz. the rise of Mahomet and Mahomedanism, the schism of the Greek Church, and the conse- quent judgments on it in the fall of Constantinople; whereon, however, the spared Greek remnant " did not penance to give God glory," but persisted in their schism ; 5. that begun A.D. 1520 in the Lutheran Reformation, which is to last " till the pouring out of the 6th Vial, twice 5 months, or about 300 years :" of which 300 years 2.50, says Pastorini, are now elapsed ; so that the pouring out of that vial seems soon approach- ing, and the cry heard, " Come out of her, my people." The 6th age is the last of the Church militant on earth ; probably till the end of the world's 6000 years: 7. the 7th age, that of eternity. 2 He was originally French, but became a refugee in Geneva on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. He was in earlier life a friend of Sir I. Newton ; in later liie the subject of the eulogies of both Voltaire and Rousseau. His Apocalyptic Discours was first published about 1730. * An Answer approved and translated into Latin by Wolf, and inserted in his " Curae Philologicae." ri'.K. vi.] r k i > m \.d. Kiln to riu.Ncii itr.voi.i rioN. (Eiehhom.) 588 work in Holland. Bui soon after the middle of the century the scep- tical spirit broke out more freely. A work bj Oeder, which Sender published after Oeder's death, about the year L765, entitled u \ Free [nvestigation into the so-called Revelation b) John," denied not only its apOfltolicity, bu1 oven its literary beauty; charged it with all the extravagances .and Khittel of Wolfenbuttel, A.D. 177:?; to which works he and his friends made vigorous answer. The con- troversy lasted tO the year L785.1 The celebrated Michnrlis was SO far influenced by what had been written by Abau/.it and Sender's partisans on the canonical question, that he concluded with Euse- bius on reckoning the Apocalypse not among the undisputed canon- ical books, but among the avTtktyo^Eva. The work of Herder, published 177!>. vindicated with great earnestness and ability the literary merits and beauty of the Apocalypse; indeed, with such ability and enthusiasm as to act strongly on the literary German mind ; yet vindicated it only as Herder might have vindicated a neglected beautiful Poem of classic origin; not as a work of divine inspiration.'2 In 17^t; Hernnschneider published his Com- ment on the Apocalypse; explaining it as a Poem describing the three things following; — viz. the overthrow of Judaism, the oxer- throw of Heathenism, and the final universal triumph of the Christian Church. This was the model, in respect of general plan, of the more celebrated work of Eichhom, published shortly after, viz. A.D. 17'.'1 j a work of which Professor MI. Stuart, to whom I am indebted for this rapid sketch of the German Apocalyptic Expositors of the last half of the last century, thus reports ; — that although not equal to II : r*i in respect of the perception or the development of Bathetic beauties, it is yet. in regard of philology, and real explana- tion of words and phrases, far Herder's superior: adding, moreover. Pro! - rtirui.iri/' - Corrodi and Market an Scmlcr's tide, against the genu. lirity ofthi S //' ami Batfwig iii defence of it. - ■■ Bntttib i •■ Moron Atha,ot Book of th* Comma of the Lord." Professor Stuart almost warms i 1 1 1 . > enthusiasm in Speaking of this book ; (i. 171 ;) and at the end of ; Volume grrea ■ large -i" eimi n of it. It teems to me calculated t" ■ fbelin y different kind in the devout Christian, lor the Raton stated ah 526 HISTORY OP APOCALYPTIC 1 N II. KI'K l/IATION. [APP. PART I. that it is substantially correct in its exegesis, i. e. in its view of the general tenor and meaning of the Apocalyptic Book ; a statement meaning that it is substantially in agreement with Professor Stuart's own views. As this scheme, had not only then preponderance in Germany, but is one of the grand rival schemes that still claim ac- ceptance, I think I cannot better conclude the present Section of my Sketch of Apocalyptic interpretation, than by placing it before the reader's eye, as drawn up by Professor Iluy, professedly from Hernnschncider and Eichhorn : its characteristic view being this, that the two cities, Home and Jerusalem, whose fate (as they would have it) constitutes the most considerable part of the Apocalypse, are only symbols of two reliyions whose fall is foretold ; and that the third, which appears at the end, viz. the heavenly Jerusalem, signifies Christ's religion and kingdom. The Prceterist Scheme of Hernnschneider and Eichhorn, as sketched by Prof Hug. " There are three cities in this book, on account of which all the terrible preparations above, and here below, and all the commotions of the earthly and heavenly powers, take place. One of them is Sodom, called also Egypt ; the other is Babylon ; and the third is the New Jerusalem, descending from heaven. "The whole affair of the seven Angels Avith the seven Trumpets, viii. — xii., refers to Sodom. But we soon see that this city, long since destroyed, only lends its name to denote another. For in this Sodom our Lord was crucified ; birov b tcvpiog l)fiu>v earavputdri' xi. 8. In this Sodom is the Temple ; the outer court of which is said to be abandoned to the Gentiles. Thus it is the Holy City itself, itoXiq ayia, of which foreign nations will take possession ; xi. 1. As two martyrs have perished in it, its destruction is decided ; xii. 1. (Jose- phus the Jew likewise compared Jerusalem to Sodom at the same epoch. Bell. Jud. v. 10.) " After a long episode, in which a matron appears in the pains of child-birth, persecuted by a monster, and after the description of two more monsters, which torment the adherents of this distinguished woman, Apoc. xii., xiii., xiv., the destruction of Babylon also is de- cided in heaven, xiv. 8. " The seven Angels with the seven Vials of wrath are appointed to MM. VI.] rttOM a. n. It", In K n;i.\rii UV0L1 HON. (sBiehhorn.) ■>-! execute the decision, xvi. 17 — i:>; although indeed Babylon had stood for cent ones before detect) and amidst l>ut half-distinguishable remaina of us inagnifioetaeB. Hut this Babylon is built ason seven lulls ; otrov opq timr t~ra- x\ii. !> I*. It is au Wtbs .*< pi ioolltS ; a mark of distinction renowned throughout tin* world, which renders it easy for 08 bo gUBBS tin- city which is peculiarly intended. Hut the other criterion that it possesses, the imporkm orbit tSrrarmm, fium- \.Mt nri raw jKiffiXfwi' rtjc yqc, perfectly assures us, xvii. l!S, that this Babylon on the rkrehratea is Soate<0H the TXber. 14 Consequently < Jerusalem and -Rome are the two cities whose de- struction is here seen in the Spirit. These cities, however, do not exist in reality as cities, in the poetical composition; but they are images of other ideas. Koine, or Babylon in particular, is by the author conceived to be opposed to the everlasting gospel, evayyeXiov auonov, xiv. 6 — 8. In this opposition to Christianity it could hardly Signify anything but Heathenism ; to represent which the capital of the heathen world is most eminently and peculiarly qualiiied. Hence John further also describes it with such phrases as were used by the Prophets to denote false gods and their worship. It is the huhita- tioH <>f (hci/tniis ; the seducer to infidelity from the true God, i. e. ■Kopviia : from the cup of whose fornication all nations and kings of the earth drink i xviii. 2. 8-j xvii. 1, 2, 5. '• If the capital of the heathen world symbolizes the religion of the bhens, we shall easily ascertain what the capital of the Jews ropre- d. What else but the Jewish religion? Therefore Heathen- ism and Judaism, the two prevailing religions of the ancient world, were destined to perish. '• And what should now succeed to them ? A New Ji trusal&m, the kingdom of the blessed, after this life I \\i. xxii. 6.) ? — The New Jeru- salem is certainly so described: and such is usually considered to be its meaning. Hut it' these cities be religions, and Home and Jeru- salem represent Heathenism and Judaism, the new Sion can only be Christianity; which has au endless dominion, and blesses mankind. This the unity of the whole demands; nor would it be consistent, if the idea of it was compounded ot* such an unequal representation bf its parts, as lleatheiii.Mii. Judaism, and Hternal BleSBedl •• For what pu mid this kingdom of the blessed afterwards bat long-beloved abode in tl, spheres, and in heaven ; 528 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. and descend among men, unless it were an earthly instil at ion ? (xxi. 23.) It could only descend upon earth as a religion ; for the sake of supplying the place of the two former religions. " The previous openings of the graves, and the return of the dead, is here only one of those awfully terrible images, which the prophets sometimes used to represent a total change of things ; the revival of the national state, and of the religious constitution of the Jews. (Ezek. xxxvii. ; Isa. xxvi. lrJ.) "And, if a last judgment also be connected with it, we well know that such also is figuratively convoked by the prophets, for the pur- pose of executing the punishment of those who have oppressed and ill-treated the people of God ; or for the purpose of expressing Je- hovah's designs of introducing a new epoch of glory for his religion and his people. (Joel iii. 2 ; Zeph. iii. 8.) This being admitted, the whole passage of the seven Seals is only an introduction to the three principal descriptions : — to the dissolution of Judaism, to the aboli- tion of Heathenism, and the occupation of the dominion of the world by the doctrines of Jesus, (v. — vii. 2.) For a prophecy, according to the ancient prophetical language, is a sealed book (Isa. xxix. 11) : of which the mysteries can only be developed by the Lamb, who is on the throne of God ; the co-Regent with Jehovah, in whose hands the events are. Terrible plagues, famine, pestilence, war, and an entire revolution of states are impending ; from which those however are exempted who belong to the chosen of the Lamb. " But the Epistles, which are preludes to the whole as far as chap, iv-, are Dedications or Addresses to those communities which were particularly connected with the author in the district of his ministry. "Then the Episode (xii., xiii.), which follows the judicial punish- ment of Jerusalem, the Episode relating to that noble Woman who struggles in the agonies of labour, and who is persecuted by the Dragon, (Isaiah's ancient metaphor of idolatry,) exhibits to us Judaism, which is still in the act of bringing forth Christianity : so as all the circumstances, and the individual traits in the description, prove. But the other monsters which ascend from land and sea, and which are in the service of the Dragon, signify, according to very recognizable criteria, the Boman land and sea forces which protect the dominion of Paganism (xiii. 1 — xiv. 6). " Opposed to this, after the punishment is executed on Borne (xvii. vn.] FRBNOH UYOLV 1 i"N \ in n;\. 1 — xviii.), Another Woman appears on a scarlet Beast. The former \\ man, after her new-born ohild had been taken up to the throne o( God, henceforth repaired to the deserts and pathless regions; which is an excellent metaphor of wandering Judaism. Bui the fate of the latter Woman is not so mild. Her destruction is sunn after celebrated in jubilees and triumphant songs. That this typifies idolatry, as the former the Jewish religion, ia evident from the repre- sentation." ration vir. — ruoM Tin: kkkmii REVOLUTION to tiie niimm T1MK. Such was the state pretty much of A pocalyptic interpretation among Protestants and Romanists, in England, Germany, and the Papal European States respectively, when the French Revolution hurst like a thunderclap upon a startled world. In everv way a mighty epoch, whether as regards the world of politics, of society, of religion, or vi' mind, it could scarcely hut constitute an important epoch also in prophetic interpretation. — Among Protestant expositors of the historic school, in England more especially, such as followed more or less in the track of their Protestant precursors, of Pareus, Foxe, Bfede, Vitringa, Daubuz, and the Xewtons, the impression was very strong and general that this was probably the commencement of that selfsame last revolution, or earthquake of the 7th Trumpet. which Sir I. Newton had so confidently anticipated as in his time near at hand: l and of which, among other grand results proclaimed by the heavenly voices at the sounding of the Trumpet, one was to be the establishment of Christ's reign on the earth.— As our review of Apocalyptic interpretation in this momentous a?ra is to be ex- tended in this my 5th Edition as far down as the present epoch of bii2, and, in England at least, very notable points of change and innovation occurred in the more or less current interpretation after tirst half had past away, it will be well, I think, to consider it under the division of two separate Sections; the 1st from the epoch of the outbreak of the Revolution in L789 to the peace of Paris, and it ion of the military upation of France by the Allies about 182 . . 1 from L820 to L8 1 Sec p. 621 rapra. . iv. M 530 HISTORY OF ATOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. § 1. FROM 1789 TO 1S20. I. And, before referring to the English Apocalyptic expositors of this period, I must beg to direct my reader's attention to two expositors of the Romish connexion, on whom, in other countries and under very different circumstances, the millennial question had forced itself near about the same time as pre-eminently the important one : not without new views (at least for Romanists) about the predicted apo- stasy, Antichrist, and Babylon, which made and still make their Treatises doubly remarkable. I allude to the French Pere Lambert, and the Spanish Jesuit Lacunza; the latter better known by his assumed Jewish appellative of Ben Ezra. 1. The Pere Lambert was, I believe, a native of Provence, in the south of France. He belonged to the Dominican Order, and died at Paris in 1813. His prophetic book which I refer to, entitled "Exposi- tion des Predictions et des Promesses faites a V Eglise pour les derniers temps de la Gentilite" appears to have been commenced before the end of the 18th century.1 But it was not completed till 1804, or a little later ;2 and was at length published in 1806 at Paris, in two small 12mo volumes. It has not, I believe, been reprinted. The title of the Treatise explains in a measure its main subject and object. Considering attentively what then was, and what had been previously, ever since the first formation of the Christian Church, — the then all general corruption and infidelity, even among profest Catholic Christians, so as to reduce it to a mere " phantom Christi- anity,"3 and manner in which in the ages previous Christianity had been almost ever exhibited in corrupted form by its professors, been conquered and triumphed* over moreover in many countries by Ma- 1 In Vol. i. p. 115 Lambert speaks of the passage there having been written " dans les dernicres annees du 18me siecle." 2 lb. p. 56, Lambert says, " J'ecris ceci en 1804." s On this point I have already cited Lambert's language, as singularly illustrative of the symbol of the 1st Vial, in my Vol. hi. p. 373, Note '. Besides the direct infi- delity and " practical atheism " of many, {avowed atheism had just then rather gone out of fashion,) he notices other principles of evil manifest in professing Christendom: the rationalistic Christianity of some, the adoption of it by others as a mere political engine of state, and the pharisaism and " fausse justice " of the more devout, i. 39 — 43. In the expression practical atheism, as applicable to their times, Lambert and Wllberforce agreed. See my Vol. hi. 477, Note -. MB. \ ii.] mil ii UTOL. i i;.v. j 1. L769 — 18W. (Lmkbmi.) ">31 honunedanism, and in regard of the number of its adherents been ever left by Heathenism in a comparatively small minority,- it was felt by Lambert thai B sceptic might well sneer at Christ's mission ■I | failure, and at the promises of liis Church's universal establish- ment on earth in all purity ami blessedness as little better than false- hood: ' i. e. supposing the Roman Catholics' generally received fieWS of propheej respecting the millennium, and the only yet remaining future to the Church and to the world, to be correct. - for, as to the miUciiii'hi! Apocalyptically figured rrii/n of the .sitintx it was, accord- ing to those views, nothing but the Church's or individual Christians' very partial successes such as had been accomplished since the apo- stles' first preaching of the gospel.3 And, as to the future, all that was anticipated was Antichrist's 8J years' manifestation and reign on Satan's loosing : and that then, for some very brief term after Anti- christ's destruction, just before the world's ending, (a term answering perhaps to Daniel's [") days,) the conversion of the Jews and whole Centile world have its fulfilment; but only to come and pass away, (together with the world's destruction and final judgment,) as rapid- ly almost as a flash of lightning.4 So the usual process of Scripture investigation was gone through by Lambert, and is in this Treatise set forth before his readers, by which so many both before and after him have been convinced that the Apocalyptic millennium of the saints' reign on earth, and corresponding Old Testament promised times of wedness, are yet to come : — how that they are to be introduced by Christ's second personal advent; the destruction of Antichrist with his apostate Church and Babylon, and resurrection of Christ's de- parted saints and martyrs accompanying: and that then, the Jews' conversion having taken place coincidently, the earthly Church now oded over the whole earth is to nourish under the rule of Christ and bis saints gloriously; Jerusalem being the new centre of I and unity, accordantly with the multitudinous prophecies of Jerusa- 1 Vol. i. I'ri f. ii. pp. 146, 219, 220, 242, &c Lambert rtrongly expresses hii new of the promises of indefecttbUity ami triumph being made to tin- t isi'il,- earthly Church, L 20, 11". "Enfuyanti ririble Ha fuyent Jeans Christ lui mime. " In this ndncriminatmg and ■! new of the Church visible «■»• see a wi.iiv point in Lam * P. 2~>~>, &v. 1. xiv. on the Millennium | Vol. ii. p. 89, fte. ■ - " " un eclair qui brille un instant, et qui disparoit auseitot." . L 245. 582 BI8T0E1 OP APOCALYPTIC I NTIOIIPRETATION. [APP. PART I. loin's destined future glory and blessedness: and this not for 1000 years only, but a much longer period; the Apocalyptic 1000 years being probably " prophetic years," perhaps sabbatic, perhaps Jubilean, each of 7 or 50 years.1 — The development of this argument occupies the greater part of Pere Lambert's book.2 But what the apostasy, Antichrist, and Babylon, so to be destroyed at Christ's second coming, introductory to the promised establish- ment of the Christian Church in its purity and glory over the earth ? Again, how the transference of its centre of unity from Rome, St. Peter's see, to Jerusalem ? On these points Father Lambert pro- pounded views new and strange for a Bomanist ; except in so far as Lacunza might have anticipated him. The Apocalyptic Babylon, he says, (confessedly the city of the seven hills,) did not symbolize, so as Bossuet would have it, Pagan Borne. In such case, besides other objections,3 what reason was there for St. John to wonder at it with so great amazement ? Nor again did it symbolize Borne as falling into some quite new and infidel apostasy, at the end of the world, and this after expelling the Pope, so as Bibera and Bellarmine would ex- plain the prophecy.4 The Apocalyptic symbols sufficiently indicated a professedly Christian body ; and history also told too plainly that Papal Borne and the Papal priesthood might well, by only further developing the corruptions which already in part had been, answer to the prophetic indications. It was the conviction on Lambert's mind that the mystery of iniquity spoken of by St. Paul was a princi- ple, or principles, of conniption and evil within the professing Church, sown even in the apostle's days : that thi3 had gone on ever working more and more influentially within it through the centuries that fol- lowed, being nourished by all the abuses, vices, errors, and impieties that were admitted into the Gentile Church, as those centuries went on ; and was at length to become the consummated " apostasy,'" by infecting the whole body of Gentile Christendom, headed by a per- sonal and Papal Antichrist.5 But not without a series of previous 1 ii. 67, 80, 139. 2 Out of its 20 Chapters it occupies from Ch. v. to Ch. xvi. inclusive. 3 The objections of Lambert I find to be some of those which I have myself made in my criticism on Bossuet, as published in my 2nd and 3rd Editions, before I was ac- quainted with this Dominican Father. In the criticism, as now republished in the 2nd part of this Appendix, 1 may note where Lambert had pi-eceded me in the criti- cal objections to Bossuet's theory. 1 I am not sure whether Lambert mentions Bellarmine anywhere specifically. 5 '' Lc mystere d'iniquite, dont parle St. Paul, est commc un abces qui comment oit iM u . \u pbxmch i;i.\oi. !u.\. § i. L789 — 1820. {Lambert.) /' m having preceded and prepared for aim, By exhibiting and act- ing n the boly mountain, (i. e. in the Ohureh,) anointed too with the holy ointment, and adorned with precious stones, like tin1 Jewish High Priest, this Prince was depicted as at length being seduced to say in heart. " 1 am God ; " to usurp God's honour, worship, and prerogatives; and then, abandoned to avarice, becoming a "marchand," and giving himself up to the amassing of gold and silver. Such precisely had been the ease in the Christian Church. •■ Le roi de Tyre n'eat ici qu'un personnage allegorique, l'embleme d'une suite de miniatres du Tres-Haut, qui succedent les ons au\ autres, mais que le Prophete reunit et re[)resente comme one Seule peraonne morale ; qui d'abord fidele a son ministere en viole enauite tous les devoirs; et dout l'iniquite. mont6e par degres a son comble, . . est enfin punie avec eclat aux yeux de toutesles nations."1 Lambert sketches thereupon the change in the Roman Pontiffs, from the piety of the earlier centuries to their manifold corruptions after- wards : — "the spirit of domination, the outrages often on the chiefest truths of Christianity, the avarice and traffic in holy tilings:" cor- ruptions that had already taken deep root in the time of St. Bernard;2 and which would assuredly bring down on the Papacy, as on the Prince of Tyre, God's terrible vengeance. At Length, in fine, it would be a Roman IJo/>r, at the head of the consummated apostasy of (ieu- tile Christendom; who, in heart an atheist, would as God, OT Cod's delegate, or God's Christ, sit in G id's temple, i. e. (so as Hilary has des son temps a se former dans le corps de l'Eglisc, mais d'une maniere pea sensible, qui derail ensuite reoeroir diver-' aocroiaaemena de cede en necle ; parvenir enfin 3 n don. . .d'une maniere effroyable, et couvrir et infecter de son murtel renin toute la (je:itilite ( Ihretienne." " Par L'apoataaie <>n 3."> Jerusalem ; (tor the loi\ili/;it i.m of the Church's centre of unity in BoHA was but for the (ientile interval ;) and in the converted and UeMed state of all that is now heathen, connectedly with converted Israel, the magnificent symboli/.at ions of Isaiah's and St. John's nevv licaven and new earth have their realization.1 Bueb is an abstraet of Lambert's main views of prophecv. as un- folded in his Treat ise. There are observable further a few individual points o( Apocalyptic explanation. In the Gth Seal, Apoe. vi., he would have the tigmtntal MHMwirioiM to betaken literally, as si^us in heaven and earth before the consummation : 2 in Apoc. viii. the hnlf- h>>tir'.< sih'iii-c is a brief respite before the last fearful Trumpet judg- ments : 3 in Apoo. x. the smell thunders mean the mysteries of Christ's judgments, now secret, but to be revealed during Christ's reigo on earth.4 Again it is to be observed that, thougb not of the historic school of interpretation, he yet more than once speaks agreeably with it, of the French Revolution as like a trumpet-voice alarm, "the last trumpet's alarm," to Christendom;5 also of Christians as at the time when he wrote participating in the song of the harpers by the fiery sea, introductory to the Vials outpour- ing in Apoc. xv. ;6 and, as elsewhere noted, of the then reigning infidelity as an ulcer in Christendom ;7 all exactly in agreement with the symbols of the 7th Trumpet's Vial-preparation song, and 1st Vial, as explained by me.8 But the main views are those which I have detailed above : — the terrible approaching destruction of the Gentile Church, as utterly, hopelessly apostate, under the headship of its Papal Antichrist ; '-' and its blessed renovation, under Christ's own headship and that of his risen saints, connectedly with converted Israel. My readers may well wonder with me how. with such views of the Papacy, the Pere Lambert could himself have continued in com- munion with it. It would seem as it' be dated its apostasy from the faith somewhat later than prophecy as well as history indicates. the prophetic clause, "Only he that letteth shall let until he betaken away," was a prophetic indication, as all the early Father! ' I I Lambert's last Chapter. * i. 10S, 117. 3 i. 100. ■ Ap.oo. x. 1. ' i. •"'. 11 ■• !.•■ t%m itnnnuit clout il *'.it*it est commc lc dernier eoap da trompetta qui appelle le taint prophete (Elie)." L 18, 11. 7 Vol iii. p. :;; I :ny Vol. iii. 33!t. 310; and ib. I'll 175. * Thiv - 1) - M), im tin- myaterj ma urt by 8t Paul la Bom. \i. 26; not the recovery of the Jews, but the utM destruction of the Gentile Christendom. 536 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. explain to us, that the removal and division into ten of the old Roman empire was to be the chronological sign and epoch of the development of the Man of Sin. But Lambert escapes from that chronological indication by a very curious different translation of the clause. Kai vvv to KaTi-^ov oiCare, eig to awoKuXv(j>dr)pai uvrov' . . . fiovov 6 tcaTexuv aprt ewc. ec jitaov yevjjrai. This, says Lambert of the lirst clause, means, " Vous savez a quoi il tient, ou, ce qui est neces- saire pour qu'il paroisse dans son temps : " and of the second ; " Que celui qui sait (6 Kare^f) maintenant en quoi consiste ce mystere, le retienne bien, jusqu'a que ce mystere sorte de son secret." l So the to kcitexov and o Kare-^v are taken in quite different senses ; and the tK fitoov yevrjTat in a sense the Greek phrase will not bear. It will be felt by my classical readers that Lambert has been but little successful in escaping from the difficulty of this clause.2 2. Lacunza. Lacunza, as I learn from the Preface to Mr. Irving's Translation of his Book, was born at Santiago in Chili in the year 1731 ; in 1747 became a member of the Jesuit college in that city ; and there con- tinued till the expulsion of the Jesuits from the Spanish South American States : whereupon he came to Europe ; settled finally at Imola, a little south of Bologna in Italy ; and there died suddenly in 1801, while on a solitary walk, according to his habit, by the river- side.3 His great work on The coining of Messiah in Glory and Majesty, (written under the assumed name of Ben Ezra, a Jewish convert to Christianity,4 in consequence probably of the then exist- ing prejudice against his Order,) was written as early as the first out- 1 ii. 313—318. 2 I should add that Lambert presses strongly on all the duty of reading and study- ing the Holy Scriptures. The Chanoine of the French Church, mentioned by me Vol. iii. pp. 347, 373, ex- presses a similar judgment to his contemporary Lambert's in reference to the nearness of Christ's second coming :— a judgment founded no' merely on the then signs of the times, as specified in my notices of him Vol. iii., but on other prophetic considerations also ; especially that of .Mahommedanism having the duration of 1260 years, attached to it in Dan. vii. and Apoc xiii., where, says he, it is figured under the symbol of the Little Horn, and of the Least from the Sea ; (he is here somewhat fanciful ;) and that those 1260 years, reckoned from the Saracens taking Jerusalem, A.D. 637, if counted as solar years, would expire in 1897 ; if as lunar years, in 1860. :' Then is to come the hist judgment ; and the kingdom in which Christ is to reign with his saints for ever." 3 From I'ref. p. xxiii., x\iv. 4 lb. xix. In his prayer of dedication to the Messiah Jesus Christ, Vol. i. p. 10, Lacunza says, "my own brethren the Jews." So too p. 29. i \m punch utol. bba. j l. L789 L880. {Loowiza) break of the greal French Revolution. For the Fra Tablo de la Con- ception, of the Carmelite Convent in Cadiz, writing a criticism on it in L812, Bpeakfl of having iir>t read the work in montucript aboul -I year* before, or aboul the war 1 7; > 1 . ' Before its completion imp< r- t copies, or parts of copies, gol abroad in manuscript, of which Lacunas complains.1 Judging from the admiration it at once ex- cited in his mind, Fra Pablo's cop) was probably a complete one. And both the fact of the laborious manuscript multiplication of these copies, and the Btrong statement by the Learned critic above referred t" as to the impression made by it on his own mind, unite to buow thai it excited very considerable interest as soon as attention was called to it. When however the Work was first printed and publish* nut appear. Lacunza's own observations in the Preface imply an expectation that in its then completed form it would soon come into genera] circulation ; * of course, I presume, through the medium of printing. Yet, according to the notices that I lind in Irving*s translation, it seems to have been lirst printed and published at Cadiz in lyil:4 i. e. eleven years after Lacunza's death. Subse- quently in 18TC another Edition of loUU copies in its original printed in London, in four 8vo Volumes, under the direction of the Agent for the Buenos Ayres Government : which Edition seems t<> have been wholly transhipped from England.8 — At the time of its presumed lirst printing, in lslli, Cadiz was under the rnment of the Cortez, and the press in a measure t'wv. But, on the dissolution of the Cortez, restoration of Ferdinand, and reiustitution of the Inquisition, intolerance returned : and La* cunza's book was classed among the Libri prohibits in the Roman Index, and the circulation as far as possible Bupprest.6 So the '• V6L L p. 3. Where it was written doe* not appear ; whether in South America, . <>r Italy. Mr. Irving, at p. xvii., say.-., " under the walls of the Vatican :" but I know not on what authority. — the reader will remember the comparative freedom oi mind among Roman Catholics iu the countries open to French influence from L790 to L813. - lb. 11. 3 " I did not venture to expose this '.Trcaiisu to the criticism <>f every sort of read- er* without making trial of it, . \m\ . a Spanish officer's notice to Mr. Irving is given, stating an abridgment u n in two UL 1 rap] subsequent to the complete Edition of 1812. i. pp. xvi., xxiv. • lb xv. ;. brief notice- "1 Bpsin, Vol. iii. pp. Ill, 416, 121. 538 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. book became rare. Surreptitiously, however, individual copies were obtained and read in Spain:1 and moreover an abridgment was Blade ;2 and whether in the original, or in a French translation, •was carried into and much read in France.3 At length in the year 182G a copy brought by an English Clergyman from Spain was com- municated to the well-known and eloquent minister of the Scotch Church in London, Mr. Irving ; and by him a translation made into English, which soon made the work extensively and very influentially known and read in England.4 Turning to the Treatise itself, its author's main strength and argu- ment is of course directed to the establishment of his professedly main great subject ; viz. Christ's premillennial advent,5 and subse- quent glorious universal reign on earth : the Jews having, he sup- posed, been previously converted, and brought to recognize the Messiah Jesus. And to the masterly and convincing manner in which he has done this, Ave have not the testimony of English critics only like Mr. Irving, but that of his learned Spanish critic, Fra Pablo : — " These two points," says he, notwithstanding all a Roman- ist's natural prejudices, " seem to me to be theologically demon- strated.''' 6 It was by resorting to Holy Scripture itself, when utterly disappointed and disgusted at the absurdities and incongruities of the best known Roman Catholic expositors of the millennial pro- 1 So Mr. Irving' s friend, the Spanish refugee officer. " When the inquiring mind of the Spanish youth Vas hindered from the food which it desired, and had ;been en- tertained with during the Cortez, they formed secret Societies, of which the object was to procure and read those books expressly which were prohibited by the Inquisi- tion. In the number of which, finding the work of Ben Ezra, the Society to which he belonged obtained it, and read it with delight." Ibid. - See p. 537 Note * supra. 3 Ibid. xvi. " Among certain of whom (the members of the Gallican Church) I am informed," says Mr. Irving, "it is a common thing under the term of the apostate Gentility to express the first of the three positions I have laid down." This phrase is the very one so common and prominent in Lambert ; and suggests the question. Had Lambert seen, and been led to his prophetic views by, an early MS. copy of Ben Ezra ? 4 While Mr. Irving was prosecuting his English translation, another Edition in Spanish was being printed in London. lb. xxi. Hence we may infer the large de- mand for it, and large circulation of it, among those who spoke the Spanish language" 5 Not a second intermediate advent, before the third and last to final judgment, so as Lambert: but, as Mcde, Christ's one second advent; continued to the final judg- ment. 6 i. 7. In the Section beginning at p. 88 Lacunza anatomizes, and exposes the ab- surdity of, the received idea of Satan having been bound ever since Christ's ascension. What, bound when Peter says that he goes about as a roaring lion ; and moreover when the Church had to exercise its exorcising power "ad ficgandos damones !" Surely the modern followers of this Augustinian solution of the millennial prophecy have not sufficiently weighed these obvious considerations. rr.u.vii." lKisnt BJTV0L. vi;.\. | 1. L789 L890. \ I.ncnnza.) phecy. that the view bfoke upon him in nil its grandeur and simplicity : and, like Lambert, be strongly urgea investigators, those i>t* the priesthood more especially, to reeorl u be bad bimaelf done to the Book <>f God, which had so long and so generally been will nigh consigned to oblivion.1 On this Ins greal subject however there is no need of my sketching his arguments, any more than in the case of Lambetti They arc the same that are now well known, and widely received. Hut what Ins viewi as to Antichrist ; a subject necessarily con- nected with the Milleiunum, as being he whose destruction by Christ's coining was to precede and introduce it? Here Lacunza makes reference to Daniel, as well as to the Apocalypse. And, in commenting on the former, he offers some original and curious views as to the symbols of the quadripartite image, and of the four wild 1 1 ists from the sea. The images golden head, he says, included both the Babylonish and the Persian empires, considered as one, because Babylon was retained as one of the Persian capitals: the tt of siher was the Macedonian em pi re : the brazen thighs figured that of the Romans, long since come to an end; the iron ten-toed leas the Romano-Gothic professedly Christian kingdoms of "Western Europe.2 At the ending time of these the stone without /muds, or em- pire of Christ and his saints, would utterly destroy the image in that its last form ; thenceforth itself becoming the universal empire on earth. How near to the generally received Protestant interpretation, and I doubt not the true one, is Lacunza's of the ten toes ! — As to the four Beauts his idea is as novel as unsatisfactory. They meant four religions; viz. Idolatry, Mahommedaniem, Pseudo-Christianity, (with four heads of heresy, schism, hypocrisy, worldly-mindcdness,) and the Antichrist ian Deism already then unfolding itself in ihe world. For Antichrist meant, not an individual, but that embodied principle, power, or moral body, which "solvit Christ amy (so the Vulgate of 1 John IV. 8,) dissolves Christ in the Church.3 — At this point Lacunza stops ■ while to dissect, and expose the absurdity of, 1 i. JO— 32. 2 i. Ml. — This prophery is ailed by Lacunza the l«-t I'lurnoim nan, i. c. vision, 1 i. 197. — Mr. ('. afeitland, p, 892, makei Laennaa, like- Mrmtlfj expect en infidfl, Antichrist This, a* his reeden must undented! him, is • miireprcwcn tattoo of La- m's Aiitichri-t h im t i men individual, not professedly infidel, but Papal, (like v Etomiah "pretre athee,") nor wholly fatnre. Mr. < . M. would b .-id study tlii- Chapb r in Lacnnxa. 540 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. those ideas of Antichrist which were usually received among Ro- manists ; as if he w;is to be an individual Jew, of the tribe of Dan, born in Babylon, received by the .lews as Messiah, thereupon establishing his kingdom at Jerusalem, and with 10 or 7 kings held subject, in fulfilment of the Beast's 7 heads and 10 horns : an argu- ment well worth perusal and consideration, by all such Protestant expositors as are inclined to adopt the same strange hypothesis. The Antichrist, or Apocalyptic Beast, he then traces from its first ex- istence in the germ, as the mystery of iniquity even in St. Paul's days.1 within the Church, and side by side with Christ's true servants ; and which had come down as a body more and more corrupt and apostate, century after century ; till now at length perfected in apostasy. The second Apocalyptic Beast has been with great reason, he says, explained as the false p7'op>het of Antichrist : with the mis- take however of supposing him one individual person, perhaps " an apostate bishop ; " 2 whereas it is the body of " our priesthood" that is meant by the emblem.3 His name and number Lacunza inclines to think apvovfie : 4 being evidently not so strong in Greek as in Latin. As to the Apocalyptic Harlot, ("I would wholly omit this," says he, " did I not fear to commit treason against truth,")' it is not Rome Pagan, but apostate Rome Christian and Papal ; drunken at length in vain carnal self-security, when on the very eve (so Lacunza judged) of her utter tremendous destruction. Is it objected that she is the spouse of Christ ? So too was old Jerusalem. But, on the consummation of its apostasy, though without a heathen idol in her, she fell, and fell remedilessly.5 In his general view of the Apocalypse Lacunza is a futurist. • He construes the seven-sealed Book opened by the Lamb as the Book of ' Compare Lambert's very similar views p. 532 supra. Only Lambert more correctly makes the Antichrist the suite, or series, of individual Pontiffs, that had successively headed the ever-growing apostasy. 2 " Seeming to see," says he, " in the Beast's two horns as of a lamb a proper sym- bol of the mitre." i. 218, 224. The question is thus suggested, What was the origin of the particular form of the episcopal mitre, with its two apices or horns ? and when lirst introduced ? See my Vol. iii. 209. J " Yes, my friend, it is our priesthood, and nothing else, which is here signified, and annouueed for the last times, under the metaphor of a beast with two horns like a iamb's." i. 220. He strengthens his position by reference to the Jewish priesthood ; who, though professing God's true religion, and with the Old Testament Scriptures in their hands, did yet reject and crucify Christ : also by reference to the actual corrup- tion of the professedly Christian priesthood, both in earlier times, (as that of the Ari- ans,) and more especially in Lacunza's own time. ib. 221. 1 ib. 232. 5 248-253. i'i.i;. \n runes niiMii.. i :iu. | I. L789 1880. {Lmtmaa.) 541 the Father's Covenant ; and the giving it into his hand as the. Met of investiture, whereby he is constitutetbKing and Lord of all.1 The visions of the Seala aezt following are therefore, I presume, under- I In him with reference to the times of the consummation. Jiut lie does not enter on them particularly. lie discusses however the vision ot" the sun-rlothed woman in Apoe. xii., in the same general Jewish and futurist point of \ iew ; with much that is ingenious and novel in his exposition. The woman is the Zion of Isaiah, (lod's ancient spouse, long east oft' and sorrowful, but now elothed in beautiful garments ; and at the pronto crisis described by Old Testa- ment prophets, w like a woman with child drawing near the time of her delivery." She has already in a figurative sense conceived Jesus Christ in her womb ; i.e. by believing on him. But something more is needed; \i/.. to bring him to light, or publicly to manifest this conception by declaring for him; for "with the heart men believe unto righteousness, and with the lips confession is made unto salva- tion."' But difficulties, embarrassments, and persecutions here occur. les the world and devil, two-thirds also of the Jews probably oppose the believing third. She "cries out in pain." Satan, the red Dragon, unable to prevent the conception, (which may probably have arisen from Elias' preaching.) tries to hinder her delivery: i. e. "to hinder her from publicly professing her faith in Jesus." 2 But in vain. The child is born; the confession is made. And then, so born in figure, he is caught up to God and his throne : a symbol answering to Daniel's symbol of the Son of Man coming to the Ancient of Days to receive investiture of his kingdom; and corre- sponding too with that of his receiving the seven-sealed book of his investiture from Him that •sate on the throne, in the earlier vision of the fifth chapter of the Apocalypse.' — Hut, if so, we mu.-t ask, what the sequel? And here in truth the weakness of Lacunza'a view of the vi.-ion appears. Messiah's investiture by the Amieiit of Days in Daniel is coincident with, or immediately consequent upon, the doom and destruction of the little horn Antichrist; not at an epoch preceding Antichrist's reign and blasphemies. But in the vision of 1 I pr> -uiii' Mr. Uurgh borrowed the view from Hon Ezra. 1 ii ire Mr. Biley'e explanation, noticed by me Vol. iii. pp.23— 26, but with reference to the Christian c lmrch of the ith Century, u the Church ami time inti mli d. ' Sec i». 540 just preceding. 542 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [A PP. PART I. Apoc. xii., after tlie man-child's being caught up to God's throne, there is described a war in keaven as occurring ; then the Woman's fleeing into the wilderness, being furiously pursued thither by the Dragon ; and then next, but not till then, the raising up by the Dragon of the Antichristian Beast against the remnant of the Wo- man's children that continue faithful. How can this order of events consist with Lacunza's Judseo-futurist interpretation of the Vision ? I see nothing in the details of his exposition to meet the difficulty. Eor he professedly makes all this persecution subsequent to Christ's receiving investiture of the earth's empire. And his identification of Michael's warring in Apoc. xii. with Michael's standing up for Daniel's people in Dan. xii. only adds to the. difficulty.1 — Proceeding with the vision Lacunza describes the Woman, or Jewish Church, as taken to a quiet and sweet solitude, Moses and Elias furnishing the two wings of her escort ; and being there taken care of by God, while the Dragon raises up the Beast against the faithful remnant of her children.2 These Lacunza seems to identify, like myself, with the witnesses of Apoc. xi. For the two sackcloth-robed witnesses are not Euoch and Elias ; but two religious bodies of faithful men pro- testing against the corruptions of the age,3 i. e. the latter age, just before the Jews' conversion. As to the place where the Antichristian Beast, after making war against them, kills them, i. e. the street of the great city, this is not meant of Jerusalem : (in fact Christ was crucified outside of, not within, the literal Jerusalem:) but of the whole world, and specially of professing Christendom.4 These, I believe, are the chief Apocalyptic explanations given by the soi-disant Ben Ezra, or Lacunza. I may add that, like myself, he considers Peter's conflagration to be one introductory to the millen- nium, and moreover not universal : also that he explains the new heaven and earth of St. Peter and the Apocalypse (like Lambert and myself) to be millennial in their date of commencement. 1 Michael's standing up in Dan. xii. is subsequent to Antichrist's rise ; in Apoc. xii prior to it. * See p. 541 supra. 3 ii. 117. So Lacunza of the two Witnesses. And so he seems to identify them with the faithful remnant of the Woman's seed : for they " can only mean the remains of true Christianity among the Gentiles." ib. 131. — But how could these faithful Gen- tiles be a remnant of the Jewish woman's children ? Moreover, it is only on her being in the wilderness that the Lord fully accomplishes her conversion, according to La- cunza; " speaking comfortably to her in the wilderness." And yet she will some time before not only have believed, according to him, but made public confession for Christ. * Ib. 118. MB. til] ronton ki\oi.. ami. § l. L788 — L80O. (Ooflbtcoy.) 548 Tims, in the Etonian Catholic countriei of France, Spain, Italy, there bad already begun to sound forth a roioe answering alike to that on the l'last of she 7th Trumpet in tin- Apocalypse, which proclaimed the commencement of the judgments of the consummation on "those that hail corrupted the earth,*1 and imminence of Christ's coming ami kingdom: as also to that <>f tin- first Angel teen s\ n- ehronicallj (as has been shown) Bying in mid heaven, with the ery3 • Peer God, for the hour of his judgments is come;" aud to that recorded in ApOO. xviii., "Come out of her (15ah) Ion), my people, that ye It not partakers of her plagues." ' II. I now turn \o Ei).*orth American Colonies, who was forced to flee that country on the rebel States successfully accomplishing their war of revolution and independence. Nor, probably, was he wholly uninfluenced by this his previous history in regard of the feeling most prominently exprest throughout his Apocalyptical Commentary; viz. that of in- tense abhorrence of the revolutionary ami infidel principles of Re- publican France, Hence his application to it of the symbol of the most hateful of all the enemies of the Church prefigured in the Apo- calypse; \i/.. that of ///'- Brast from the Abyt8t the slayer of Christ's two faithful sackcloth-robed witnesses. To bring out this result, he thus iii brief explains the structure of the prophecy and history hv 1 In Germany, throughout the whole of the 26* oi 80 ye in of which I am ipeaking in ttii- .Section, Kti hhom's Pneteriat tyetem continued to reign rapreate. So M. Stuart, i. 17-- * Bicheno's first publication v. Oolloway. But, as he continued to Write and publish after (ijlloway till 1808, I h.e. • BOtiei I Qalloway lir-t. Mr. leno was thus a connecting link between the earlier Apocalyptic itttd Berolutionaxy .era and the iater, such M Fail >', < 'aninjttamr, Sjc. ."» I I EI8T0B7 OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. tended by it ; herein at first following most of his Protestant pre- decessors. The seven-sealed book contains the history of the Church generally, in its various vicissitudes of fortune; from its first partial triumphs in Apostolic times to its final and complete triumph at the consummation ; the Gth seal symbolizing the overthrow of heathen- ism before it, in the Roman Empire, under the Constantinian Em- perors. The seven Trumpets, which are the development of the seventh Seal, represent God's judgments against the then already corrupt and apostatizing Church ; the four first depicting that of the Gothic invasions in the West ; the 5th and Gth, or two first Woe- Trumpets, those of the Saracens and Turks in the East; which last- mentioned woe3 originated, according to the prophecy, with the open- ing of the pit of the abyss. Then, presently, comes Mr. Galloway's peculiarity of historic application. The " little book " opened in the hand of the angel (Apoc. x.) being viewed by him, as in Mede's scheme, as a separate, supplementary prophecy descriptive, for its main subject, of the treading down of the holy city, and history of Christ's two witnesses during their days of sackcloth-robing, he no- tices the long-continued treading down for 1260 years of the holy city, or faithful Church of the Gentiles, as alike that by the long- dominant Mahometan power in the East, and the dominant Papal idolatrous power in the West ; dating these from the nearly synchro- nic times of Phocas and Mahomet respectively. But the slaying of the two witnesses, which he supposes to symbolize the Old and New Testaments, is, he observes, at a later time, viz. near the end of the Witnesses' 1260 years of sackcloth-robed witnessing ; and to be ac- complished by another new and more terrible enemy than any before, viz. the Beast from the Abyss. This, says he, is the infidel power of atheistic, revolutionary France. The street of the great city in which they were slain, he explains to be Paris ; the date of their death, about September 1792, when Christianity was abolished, the ignomini- ous expulsion of the Christian clergy from Prance well-nigh complet- ed, Christ declared an impostor, and atheism publicly profest by the Erench Government and nation. So for 3-fc years, answering to the 3-J days of the Apocalyptic prophecy; at the end of which there wras predicted the resuscitation of the two witnesses. And this was also fulfilled by the French Government decrees, passed in 1797, which declared free and full toleration thenceforward to all religions, true Protestant Christianity expressly included. ni; \n r&BNCfl aivoi bra.. § l. L789 L820. (Bieheno.) 548 It does not need thai 1 should say more of Mi-. Galloway's expo- sition; save only that, in conformity with tin- above explanation of the earlier Apocalyptic chapters, he explains the eeven-headed Dragon, thr Bout from the Sea, and limst from thr earth, in Apoc. \ii.. liii., as respectively the earlier Pagan persecuting power in the Etoman empire, the Papal power, and the Wrench infidel power ; the B from the Sea, or Popedom, being that which had assigned to ii the duration .if L260 yean, which would ho nearly covered by the U \al from Phocas to the French Etevolution. The name and number of the beast he makes Ludooieue, the mosl common title of EGnga of France; the Latin numeral letters in which make up 666. — I must just add thai Mr. (1. interprets the Millennium as in his days still future; and as in be introduced by, and to synchronize with, the persona] reign of Christ and his saints on earth. Very marked was the contrast of the feeling with which Mr. Bichtno marked the progress of the Revolution. His "Signs of the Times'' in three parts, first published in 1793, and which came to its 6th edition in 1808, was followed by his •■ Destiny of the German Empire" in 1800, and his - ^Restoration of the .lews" in 1806. The title-page on Part i. of "The Signs of the Times" itself tells this feeling: — "Signs of the Times; or, The over- ■ of thr Papal tyranny in TPrance, a prelude <>/' destruction to Poj)r/y and l> k but of peace to mankind." lie looked in with something like righteous complacency, from the very first, on the awful judgments that the Revolutionists seemed Q-od's ap- pointed agents for inflicting on that Papal power which bad been for ages the bloody persecutor id' Christ's saints, and enemy of Christ's truth: judgments inflicted more especially in France on the orders which had been its chief abettors; viz. the royalty, ity. and the clergy. The same was his feeling afterwards when, in the course of tin- next L4 or 15 years, he saw the vials of God's wrath poured out. through the same instrumentality, upon the Oer- I. pire which hail been for many OBnturiee as zealous a eo- rator with the Papal Ib:i>t in the persecution of Christ's truth and saints a- royal Papal France itself. So strongly did Mr. 15. feel the right God's judgments, through -the agency of [evolutionists, on those saint-persecuting nations of the I itinent, that he could not suppress his protest against what lie IV. li'j J 16 IIISTOIIY OF APOCALYPTIC I NTKKPUKTATION . [.V PP. PART 1. called "the ravings of Mr. Burke," and the energetic anti-revolu- tionary course of action of our British Government : the rather as the Papal Antichrist's removal was all that had to intervene before the .lews' conversion, and the establishment of Christ's kingdom on earth. As it was on these two great subjects, the Papal tyranny of past ages, and the judgments OB Popery then passing before the eyes of men, as preQgured in the Apocalypse, that he founded his earnest and heart-stirring appeal to British Christians, (subjects copiously illus- trated by him from time to time, alike the one and the other, from past and contemporaneous history,) it was not to be expected that his books would offer any very thoroughly digested scheme of Apo- calyptic interpretation. Nor, consequently, do I deem it needful to refer particularly to what we find in them on this head. Suffice it to say that the 1260 destined years of the Papal Beast, prefigured in Apoc. xi., xiii., xvii., he views as beginning from Justinian's decree, A.D. 529 ; and, consequently, as ending in 1789 at the French lie volution. The killing of Christ's sackcloth-robed witnesses, or faithful saints protesting against Popery, he refers chiefly to the revocation of the Toleration-Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV. in 16S5 ; especially accompanied, as it was, by the nearly contemporary ruin of the cause of Hungarian Protestantism through the persecutions of Papal Austria, and banishment also of the faithful Vaudois from their valleys in Papal Piedmont. But how, then, their resuscitation after 3| days ? On this point, as no answering event presented itself in "French history 3^ years after that Revocation-Edict, or, indeed, till 100 years later, he suggests the singular notion that, iustead of each day standing here for one year, it may stand for the thirty that make up a month ; and consequently altogether figure the interval of 3| x 30 = 105 years. Then the prophecy would have its ful- filment in the free and full toleration of Protestantism in France, A.D. 1797, of which we have before spoken. — ToIUr. B.'s interesting illustrations of the Trumpets, and specially of the 3rd Trumpet in the desolating progress of Attila along the Rhine and Danube, I have had occasit to allude in my 1st Volume.1 The 5th and 6th Trumpets he explains, like most other Protestant interpreters, of the Saracens and Turks. In the opened book of the light-bearing Angel, Apoc. x., he sees no new and separate book of prophecy ; but 1 Sec my Vol. i. 385. MB. vii. n;i.\cii ki.\ .u.. Ml. § 1. L7S9 — 18S0. i /■",./•< only a figuration of the dawning Ligbl "t" the Reformation, as beghv BBg with Wukliff. Finally, he applied our Lord's prophecy (M.ill. wiv.) In the t. r- rible commotions of those r<-\ t »1 n t lonan times; inferred from the mum prophecy, even in 17!)">, lutfbft Ki-a/n/rlir Msistfone* JrPM SW#- land had affectively begim} that there would speedil] follow the preaching of the Gospel throughout the world, even as with the MMMld o[ :i Tnim j>«'t . to gather together Christ's elect from the tour winds, and that then the conversion and restoration of the .lews would begin. By the concurrent fidtilment of all which Bigne of the latter day. and "all those things coming to pass," he judged that yet clearer and clearer light would accrue to show that the con- summation, and kingddDQ of Grod\ were indeed nigh at hand. Though, as 1 said, it was scarce to be expected that any well- sted general historical scheme of Apocalyptic interpretation would be famished by Bicheno or Galloway, comparatively absorbed as were their thought! and interest in that part of the prophecy which more immediately related to the events of the then present awful drama, as gradually unfolded more and more before their eyes, yet certainly it was not unreasonable to expect this (if the hiatOT view of the prophecy was the right one) from the three well-known ex- positors who. as before stated, were their most prominent successors on the tield of Apocalyptic interpretation, Messrs. JEbber, Ouning- hcuit- -considering, lit, that they entered on their lucubra- tions at a later a-ra in t:i" \l ••...lutionary wars, after the first fury of bad lulled, and the feelings consequently of English tvera were less fearfully excited than before: and Sndly, too, that they actually j ich one. after mature study, to give a com- prehensive view of the whole Apocalyptic prophecy, including both its internal structure, and its historic explanation; i.e. down to the 7 Trumpet, and its partial evolution in the earlier Vials, which they all. like Calloway and Bicheno, regarded as fulfilled in the tlution. But, if such his expectation, the pro- tident of • under rei doomed (o disappoint* it. In regard both of the fundamental etructureof the prophecy, and many important details .-i" its supposi I previ lusly accomplished fulfilment in were Been to diner n 1 Compa; rise of El Vol. iii. j>. 548 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. widely one from the other. Said Mr. Faher of the internal struc- ture of the prophecy : ' — " The seven Trumpets are the evolution of the 7th Seal, as the seven Vials are of the 7th Trumpet ; these three series constituting the main contents of the Seven-sealed Book, Apoc. iv., placed in the hand of the Lamb to open : while the Little opened Book, put into St. John's hand by the heaven-descended Angel of Apoc x., with the charge to prophesy again, is a distinct supple- mental prophecy, inclusive of chapters x. — xiv., and containing within it the predictions of the four several great events to which, all alike, was to attach the duration of the 1260 years' period ; viz. that of the sackcloth-prophesying of Christ's two witnesses, that of the Gentiles treading the Holy City, that of .the Woman (the Church) 's exile in the wilderness, and that of the reign of the ten- horned Beast:2 — a prophecy this chronologically parallel with the 5th and Gth or two first Woe Trumpets of the Seven-sealed Book, and which needed inscription in the new prophetic Book to show the parallelism.3 Then further, as regarded the historic fulfilment of the Apocalypse, said Mr. F., " The series of the six first Seals carried down the history of the Roman Empire to the Constantinian Re- volution, and overthrow of Heathenism in the 4th century ; the six first Trumpets (evolving the 7th Seal) figured its subsequent history under the successive desolations of Goths, Saracens, and Turks ; which last mentioned extended to the times of the 7th Trumpet, or Trench Revolution." Besides which, Mr. F., in his Sacred Calendar, insisted on another very important point in the prophecy, viz. that concerning the ten-horned Beast's two last heads, as historically 1 What follows, though within inverted commas, is of course only my abstract of Mr. F.'s opinions, as cxprest in his Calendar of Prophecy. And the same of what I say of Mr. Cuniughame and Mr. Frere. It should be observed that I give Mr. F.'s prophetic views, not as exprcst in his ear- liest Dissertation, but as exprest, after more mature reflection, in his Sacred Calendar of Prophecy. The former was published as early as 1806 ; the latter written, as he tells us in the Preface, in 1818, 1819, 1820, though not published till 1827. This he wished to be read as the substitute (a substitution which included many very material alter- ations of interpretation) for his original Dissertation on the Prophecies. 2 Indeed, as Mr. F. puts it,^ue, including what is said Apoc. xiv. of the 144,000 contemporarily with the Lamb on Mount Zion. Vol. i. p. 272, 273. 3 lb. pp. 271—273. Compare what is said of Mede, the first suggester of the view on this subject, p. 492 supra. Mr. F.'s proof of the 1260 years beginning with the 5th or first Woe Trumpet is anything but satisfactory. How awkwardly, on this view of the Little Book, come the last verses of Apoc. xi. in it, which tell of the 2nd Woe having past, and then, after a while, of the 3rd Woe's announcement by the sounding of the 7th Trumpet ! Ought not the Little Book to have ended with the ending of the 2nd Woe Trumpet ? pbi \n punch airoL. vi;\. | I. L789 -1820. {(hmmghame.) 540 elucidated by the eonclading events of the great Revolutionary \\':ir : i.e. the terminat ion of the sixth or Imperial Headship (which had been perpetuated, he judged, in the Byzantine, Prank, and Austrian dynastiee) by the Austrian Monarch's resignation of the Emperorship of the Holy Etonian Km pi re in lsiH; and Napoleon Buonaparte's institution into the Beast's 7th headship by his assump- tion of that Bmperorship, until struck down after a little space bj the sword at Waterloo. But. as the head thus struck down was pro- phetically figured as resuscitated, so would the Napoleonic dynasty revive, as a new head of the Beast, or Soman empire : ' (here Mr. V. indulged in prediction of the future: ) no longer however thence- forth as a Papal power, but as a professedly infidel or atheistic power, the same as the " Wilful King" of Dan. xi. 36, and as St. John's Antichrist, " denying the father and the Son ;" the destined head of the last antichrist ian confederacy, and opposer of the Jews' restoration in Palestine : who. as described in Apoc. xix., would be met and destroyed fearfully by Christ in the final war of Armageddon. 3 1/ ■. /•'//<>•/•. But by no means so, according to Mr. Ounmghatne. "The Seals and Trumpets," said he, "are chronologically parallel, each reaching from St. John's time to the great earthquake sym- bolized alike in the 0th Seal and 7th Trumpet, immediately before the consummation; the Seals prefiguring the history of the Church, the Trumpets of the secular Soman Empire, including both East and West. As to the Little Book of Apoc. x., it is no new and separate book of Apocalyptic prophecy, so as Faber affirms; but only the 7th part of the seven-sealed Book, which at the epoch just preceding tin- French devolution (the epoch of the rainbow- vested Angel's descent)' might bo considered "opened."3 More- over, as regards the Roman Beast's 7th and 8th heads, though at first advocating a Napoleonic view of them. .Mr. ('. had come on fuller reflection to discard it as altogether untenable ; and mainly to acquiesce in, and adopt, the earlier received Protestant view of the subject : regarding the old 6th Imperial Bead as wounded to death by ■ Mr. Frere. On the origination of tin* riew we Note1 p 660 infiA. 1 1 1 i - - i 1 1 lt tfa i 'I"- virion t<> the Reformation ! 1 See Cnninghame, pp.89, 90, itii Edition). To show how-all the rappoted con- • >f thf Little Book might 1m- arrangi 'I, and it* chronological parallelism! exhibited in one and the - ', Mr. C. prefixed a diagram of the -■*'"- ■ to tin-, hii view, lint certainly it ia a Book of eneh • form, with Ha L < pieyclee, ftc, a- avrex I »<»• »k. »rai form- ed in, either in ancient or in I . 550 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. the sword of the-lleruli, and revived in the decem-regal confederacy of the Roman Popedom.1 So Mr. Ciui'uujhame. But, " Not so," again replied Mr. Frere to both Faber and Cuninghame. " The Seals depict the history of the Western Secular Roman Empire, from St. John's time to the earth- quake before the consummation ; the Trumpets, in parallel chrono- logy, that of the Eastern Empire ; while the Little Booh of Apoc. x., which is a new and supplemental part of the Apocalyptic prophecy, (containing Chap. x. to xiv.,) depicts that of the Church, still in chronological parallelism'with the former. Once more, as to the Roman Beast's two last heads, Napoleon was the 7th head, cut down by tbe sword at Waterloo ; and destined to revive again in some revival of the Napoleonic dynasty ; only as a professedly infidel atheistio power, the last headship of the Roman Beast against the Church of Christ," 2 With such fundamental differences of view between these thrse expositors, (not to speak of those before them,) and others equally important might be added, (as e. g. concerning the two witnesses, and tbeir death and resurrection,3) who could wonder tbat con- 1 Cuninghame, p. 149. (4th Ed,) 2 Who was the first originator of this view I know not. Mr. Cuninghame, in the 1st Edition of his Dissertation on the Seals and Trumpets, which was published in 1813, after the great Russian campaign, but before the battle of Waterloo, went so far as to express his opinion that the Beast's 7th head was " the French Imj erial Government of Napoleon Bonaparte, the 8th being still future." lb. 148. Which opinion, as before said, he withdrew in his subsequent Editions as "manifestly errone- ous." He had been partially preceded, it has been seen, by Mr. Galloway ; who made the Beast of the Abyss, the slayer of Christ's two Witnesses, to be the French infidel democratic power. Mr. Frere's view was first published, I believe, in 1815 ; but with subsequent modifications. ' Said Mr. Faber, the two Witnesses are the Waldenses and the Albigenses ; and their death and resurrection accomplished in their banishment from the Piedmontese valleys in 1686, and glorious return 3£ years after. Said Mr. Cuninghame, they are the protesters generally against Papal superstition; and their death and resurrection accomplished in the defeat of the Protestants by Charles V., A.D. 1547, in the battle of Muhlburg, and the subsequent success of Prince Maurice, which led to the Peace of Passau. Said Mr. Frere, (following in the wake of Galloway,) they are the two Testaments ; and their death and resurrection fulfilled in the French renunciation of Christianity, 1793, and Toleration Edict, 1797. The comparatively narrow range of original research and learning in the English prophetic writings of this period, — comparatively I mean with reference eitber to the times previous or time following, — must, to a modern reader, competent to judge on such a subject, appear very striking. Always excepting Davison's noble Work on Prophecy, being the substance of his Warburton Lectures, first published soon after 1820; and in which tbe old Protestant view of the great predicted Apostasy and Antichristian Beast of Daniel and St. John were strongly upheld. The Apocalyptic part however of his Book (Disc. 10.) was but very brief and partial. it >t. v 1 1 . rui.M ii bxtol. i:i;.v. | -. L££0 — L86S. {OemeJution.) 551 riderate students of prophecy at the time should be sorely per- plevt ; atnl many PTOPeeed in mind iml onl\ for distrust of tbflM historic expositor*, but distrust too as to the general truth of the his- toric system of interpretation : and tliis, notwithstanding the agree- ment of these expositors alike with each other, and with most pre- vious Protestant historic expositon Of note, OB many most important points oi' accomplishment of the prophecy; especially as to the Gothic, Saracenic, ami Turkish invasions of Roman Christendom, the Papacy as the great Antichristian power prefigured in Apoc. xi.,xiii., xvii.,and the French Revolution. The universal reception hitherto given to the "historic system of Apocalyptic interpretation in England just kept back for a while the public development of such doubts. But. as the Continent was now open, and intercourse more and more cultivated with it, and its views in theological and prophetic as well as other literature better known, there could scarce but be soon a strengthening of them. Of all which more in the next Section. As to the millennium, I must not conclude this Section without observing that here too our expositors fundamentally differed: .Mr. Falter holding strongly to the truth of Whitby'? and Vitringa's view, which till the close cf the period now under . iview was all but universally believed in in England ; while Cuninghaine and Frere made themselves known as upholders of the newly revived Patristic view of its premillennial Advent. I have already elsewhere noted (and who can wonder at it r) that the wide-spread hopes and expectations of the world's speedy evangelization, which arose at this time out of the institution and progress of the various Bible and Missionary Societies shortly before formed in our own favoured country, contributed powerfully at the time I speak of to make Whitby's prr-ndrenl mii- lennary view more and more undoubtingly credited and popular.1 § 2. FREXcii nEvoi.n im\ \::v i •: \ ; 2nd part ; from 1820 to 1SG2. II --ION. On which new sera, extending from about 1S20 to the present time, aU now make a few observations; and with them conclude thii my History of Apocalyptic Interpretation. -Near about the same time then the two-fold battle began in Eng- l the cad of my I V. !. ., ;, 552 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. TART I. land, which, I said, a sagacious observer might have already prognos- ticated : — 1st, as to the truth on the great millennial question; 2ndly, as to the truth of the general Protestant historic principle of Apocalyptic Interpretation. 1. As to the former point, the Treatise of Lacunza had not a little to do in the matter. Mr. Irving, the able and eloquent translator of the Treatise already spoken of, tells us, in his Preface to the Trans- lation, of the circumstances under which he was brought to an acquaintance with it : — how in 182G, after he had been led to the recognition of Christ's premillennial advent, and consequent personal reign on earth, as a great Scriptural truth, and under that impression had been preaching it in Loudon with all earnestness, he found him- self painfully insulated thereby from most of his brethren in the ministry, even as if he had been advocating a doctrine not onl novel, but foolish, and almost heretical : and then, and in that painful state of insulation, had this elaborate Treatise by a writer of another Church and country brought before him ; showing that he was anything but alone in the view, and so confirming his mind in it, and cheering his heart. And very soon he found that in England too similar convictions had been about the same time wrought upon the minds of one, and another, and another, of the earnest investigators of prophetic Scripture.1 The then recent reconstruction of the Society for the Conversion of the Jews, upon a more propei Churcv basis,'2 and with new life and vigour infused into its operations, con- tributed in no little measure to the promotion of these opinions. For, in searching the Scriptures, with a view to the answering of Jewish arguments against Christianity as a purely spiritual system, and Jewish arguments for the Messiah's personal reign on earth and at Jerusalem, the evidence of Scripture was felt more and more by many to be in favour of the Jewish idea, rather than their own. And thus many of the earliest and warmest friends of the Jews' Society became known, as the next ten years ran on, as premillen- narians ; e. g. Marsh, M'Neil, Pym, G-. Noel, Lewis Way : more especially the last-mentioned noble-minded man, the munificent patron of the Jews' Society ; and whose often grand, though too discursive, Poem of the " Palingenesia" still remains a record of the devotion of his whole mind and heart to the anticipation of his 1 See Irving's Prcf. pp. i — xix. 2 It was founded originally in 1809 ; but on principles of mixt agency of Church- men and Dissenters, that rendered it so far little effective. riK.vii. rexNOB bbyol. ■&▲. \ 2. L820 L862, (Cbfteftmcm.) 553 Master's speedy personal advent, to assume the kingdom of s regen- erated world. Then too began Prophetic Journals, mainly on the premillennarian principle: first the Morning Watch; then, from is:;:;!,. L838, the [nvestigator. [ndividual Treatises moreover, on the same views, more or less influential, began also to multiply : 1 may specify particularly "Abdiel'a Letters," by the Bey. J. \V. Brooks, Bditor of the [nvestigator; and the Prophetic Treatises of the much-loved Edward Bickersteth. In fine, in the year L844, the date of the fust publication of my own Work on the ApocaUpse. 10 rapid had been the progress of these views in England, that, instead of its appearing a thing strange and halt-heretical to hold them, so as when [rving published his translation of Ben Ezra, the Leaven had evidently now deeply penetrated the religious mind; and, from he ineffectiveness of the opposition hitherto formally made to them, they seemed gradually advancing onward to triumph. So I aay in England, to which country I have a particular respect in these my closing remarks. But let me not forget to remind my readers that, while such was the progressof the question in England, and while in France and Spain the works of Pen- Lambert and Lacunza remained (except in so far as the Inquisition might have suppressed the latter) a testimony each one to the same millennial view, there was one remarkable expression to much the same effect even in ration- alistic "> rmany ; and from a quarter whence it mighl little perhaps have been expected. I allude to Frederic Vim SchlegeVs Lectures on the Philosophy of History, delivered in ls'Js at Vienna, and soon ■• published, and most rapidly and widely circulated ; the same of which an abstract has been given in the concluding Chapter of my alyptic Commentary. It may be remembered that I there noticed Schlegel's eloquently expressed opinion, as to the ira\iy- ynitrin. and new heavens and earth of Isaiah and the Apocahpse. figuring not any men' Church triumph already accomplished 0V6T B tan Paganism, so as the Eichhorn school, and many Humanists tOO, i the latter with a view to the Papal supremacy in the world,) ex- pounded the prophecy. QOT again any heavenly state of blessedness tor the stints, so as Bossuet : but a blessed personal reign of Chrisl on this our renewed earth ; a reign future indeed, but probably near at hand : with the completed triumph of good over e\ il attending it, ami to he introduced by his own personal advent.1 1 Bi 554 HISTORY OF AIM)! AI.YPTIC interpretation, [app. PART I. 2. Next, as to any change or progress of opinion on the general sub- ject (>/' Apocalyptic interpretation! more especially in England, in the course of the same 20 or 25 years, from about 1820 to 18 11. It was in 182G, the self-same year as that of Irving's Translation of Ben Ezra, that the first prophetic Pamphlet of the Rev. S. R. Maitland (now Dr. Maitland) issued from the press ; its subject, an "Enquiry" into the truth of the then generally received year-dm/ view of the 1200 days of Daniel and the Apocalypse : followed in 1829 and 1830 by "A Second Enquiry" into the same subject; a short Treatise on Antichrist ; and a Defence of his former Pam- phlets, in reply to the Morning Watch. In these, as is well known, he energetically assailed the whole Protestant application of the sym- bols of Daniel's 4th Beast's little horn, and the Apocalyptic Beast and Babylon, to the Roman Papacy, it being his idea that a quite different personal and avowedly infidel Antichrist was meant ; asserted that the prophetic days were to be construed simply and only as literal days : and advocated an Apocalyptic exegetic scheme even yet more futurist than Ribera's ; seeing that he supposed the Evangelist St. John to plunge in spirit even in the very first chapter into " the day of the Lord," or great epoch of judgment at Christ's second coming and the consummation. — Nearly contemporarily with Dr. S. B.. Mait- land's first Pamphlet Mr. Burgh published in Ireland on the Anti- christ, and the Apocalyptic Seals, much to the same general effect : Lacunza's idea being adopted by him of the seven-sealed book being the book of Christ's inheritance ; a book now at length opened, and about to have fulfilment. — To a thoughtful reader of Lacunza and Lam- bert on the one hand, and of Maitland and Burgh on the other, the Contrast of the views exprest about Popery must have appeared very strange : — the two Protestant writers excusing the Papacy from any concern with the predicted antichristian Apostasy, or Beast of Daniel and the Apocalypse ; the two Romanist writers, alike the Dominican Father and the Jesuit, deeming its resemblance to that Apostasy and Antichristian Beast, for many centuries previous, to have been so marked, that (although some yet further development might be ex- pected of its evil) yet it was manifestly to Papal Rome, as it long had been, and Papal Rome even as it would be to the last, that the appli- cation of the prophecies was due.1 — One strong point with the new 1 See pp. 532—535, and 539, 510 in my previous Section. im'.u.nii. ri:i.\i'n biyol. i: :i v . | 8. L830 L8A8. [Ckmthui English t'ut uri.-*t school WU the gntA ii some of thus.- pointS) as given alike bj one ami all. 11. re Miv Maitland dashed in. it has In » n said, like a falcon into a dovecote, and made havoc of them. Another influential argument for a while in its favour was (he asserted utter uovilti/ of the year-day principle, as if never dreamt of before Wldiff in reference to the pro- phetic periods ; ami moreover the asserted utterly unli-pat ristic cha- racter of the views held by the Protestants respecting Antichrist. — The progress of pre-inillennarian opinions, and great change of view- operated in many minds upon that great prophetic point, predisposed them doubtless to change in others ; and made not a few more ready to abandon the old Protestant theory ou the year~day question also, aud that of Antichrist. Another and quite different occurrence operated soon after, and with very great power, to spread and give fresh weight to these anti-Protestant opinions. In 1883 began the publication of the Oxford Tracts. One. chief object of the chief writers, Boon developed, was to unprotestantize the Church of Eng- land.1 How then could they overlook, or help availing themselves of, the assistance of these labourers in the futurist school: whose views se( aside all application to the Roman Papacy of the fearful prophecies respecting Antichrist; and left Protestantism conse- quently all open to the charge of unjustifiable schism ; and the Papacy all open to the Catholic desires, and aspirations, of the Tractators for re-union ? 3 So as regards the new Bngliah futurist school, and its gradual but rapid advance in England in the period spoken of. Nor must 1 omit t" add that in the course of the same Is or "_!() years the gradual in- flux of German literature into England, including its theology among other branches, began to familiarize the English mind more and more with the most popular German riews of Scripture prophecy : i.e. as 1 Bonn bringing the 7 1 1» Seal only down to tin- ('(inst.intiiiian revolution, and \l\\- ing the term Trumpets m to - erolation; othen making tin- Bonis, Tram- tnd VimIm parallel in chronology, mid tin- 7th '.1 nflh to renofl to ti.. tion, Vol. iii. ji S ." * See 1'art v. Ch. i\. in my 3rd Volume ' On son, 1' r i:i.iy p !neinl» r my notiee in the ('h:i|i,ii'r> will he noticed ill my ration ".' tiu_/«- turist theory in the Jnd and uevt 1'uit of tbil Appendix. 55fi HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. I'AKT I. Eichlioru's scheme in its main points still had sway,1 with that Prce- terist Apocalyptic Scheme of which a sketch was set before my readers in the preceding Section.2 Professor Lee at Cambridge adopted :i Praeterist view (one somewhat like Bossuet's, though with marked pe- culiarities) quite independently of German theorists, if I mistake not.3 But many more were directly influenced to the view by German theo- logians, alike among Germanizing English Churchmen and English Dissenters : until at length in 1815 there came forth the Anglo- American stereotype of the theory in the elaborate Apocalyptic com- ment of Professor Moses Stuart* It was after perusal of some of the publications of Messrs. Mait- land and Burgh that the question first pressed itself on the mind of the writer of the Hora>, as one too important to be lightly passed over, whether, in very truth, the long received Protestant anti-papal solutions of Daniel and the Apocalypse were mere total error, or whether the main error lay with the assailants. And this was the result. The fitting of the prophecies of Daniel's little horn and the Apocalyptic Beast to the Roman Papacy seemed to him (as to Lam- bert and Lacunza) on main points so striking, as to render it incredi- ble that the agreement could be a mere chance agreement, or anything but what was intended by the Divine Spirit, that indited the prophe- cies. But, if so, then he felt also persuaded that on sundry points on which the unsatisfactoriness of the Protestant solutions had been proved, (more especially on the Apocalyptic Seals, the Sealing Vision, that of the rainbow-crowned Angel of Apoc. x., and its notification about the two AVitnesses' death and resurrection, also on the Beast's 7th head, the image of the Beast, and the Apocalyptic structure itself,) some new and better solutions, accordant with the main Pro- testant view of the Beast and Babylon, must be [intended, and by diligent thought and research discoverable. Eor it is to be understood that on these points the modern Inter- preters of the Protestant Scheme had, up to the time of the publica- tion of the Horse, added nothing, at least nothing of importance, to 1 Eioald, Hcinrichs, and others, had meanwhile written in the same view. - See pp. -526 — 529 supra. 8 See my notice of Lee in the next Chapter of this Appendix. 4 I should add that in Germany a very peculiar futurist view of the Apocalypse has been advocated by Dr. Z'ullig. But, after toiling thi'ough half a volume of his crabbed German, I must beg to say that, what with its strange conceits, inconclusive conclu- sions, and neological absurdities, it seems scarce worth the while to present any abstract of it to my readers. And indeed I have not the book, or my notes on it, now by me. ri k. rn.] ntlMOl UTOIk Oi | I. L890 — 1^62. (Conclusion.) tlic lucubrations of their predecessors. It serins to DM to have been their chief office, ind QO unimportant one surely, to awaken at- tention to the fart o[' the seventh Trumpet's having Bounded at the French Revolution ; and to arouse and keep up an interest, often too reed} to Bag, in the greed inbject of Scripture Prophecy. So in tin- case of Messrs. Faber, Citninqhame, and Frrre. So too in that of Messrs. Bickersteth ami llirks, however fanciful, in my opinion, not a little of their originally joint-propounded Scheme of Apocalyptie Interpretation.1 More especially, as regards Mr. Birks, not only has lie by his masterly work on the First Elements of Prophecy advanced the cause of truth, and shown himself its martel, and hammer, against what 1 must beg permission anticipatively to call the reveries of the Futurists : but moreover, by his exquisite description of the City that is to be revealed at Christ's second advent, has done much to enlist each hallowed feeling of the heart on the side he advocates ; a de- scription such that one might almost suppose the golden reed to have been given him, with which to delineate it, by the Angel that showed to the beloved disciple the Lamb's bride, the New Jerusalem. So in lSii the " EEOBJI Apocaltptic.d " was first published; its four subsequent Editions being sent forth in 184G, 1847, 1851; its 5th now in 1SG2. The views and anticipations with which I began and prosecuted my researches were more particularly as follows. 1st, I was persuaded that, if the Apocalypse were indeed a Divine revelation of the things that were afterwards to come to pass, (i. e. from after the time of St. John* serin*/ the vision, or close of Domitiaii's ;•'/;/;/.-' to the consummation,) then the intervening eeras and event* prospectively teleeted for prefigure! ion must necessarily (just as in the case of any judicious historian's retrospective selection) have been those of most importance in the subsequent history of Christendom ; and that the prophetic picturing* in each case, especially if much in detail, must have been such as to bo applicable perfectly to those events and a?ras distinctively and alone. If applied, as I saw they had been in previous expositions, to the most different events, suns, and subjects, this must have arisen, I felt sure, from the expositors not having explored tho peculiarity and force of the prophetic figura- tions with sufficient research, care, and particularity : whether ou 1 Mr. ]?irk«, as I tucft had OOBlllOB I -Nowhere to state, has sinoo thou abandoned Um peculiarities of that scheme, (see my Vol. i. p. 519, and Vol. iii. p. 192,) and united himself very much with myself in the general view of Apocalyptic interpretation. * That this was the date of the Apocalypse I had already will a—un d mv-rlf. 558 HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [APP. PART I. principle, so as in the case of some,1 or indolence, ignorance, and want of discernment, so as in that of many others. This was a lesson to me of the necessity of noting most carefully every peculiarity of indi- cation in each of the sacred figurations, and of sparing no pains in the investigation of whatever might elucidate it. And certainly a success beyond all that I could have anticipated seemed to myself to result from these researches. First there presented itself to me, in the more perfect elucidation of each and every point of detail in the figuration of the four first Seals, — in part from medallic, in part from other previously unnoticed sources of illustration, — an anticipative prophetic sketch, singularly exact, of the fortunes and phases of the secular Boman empire from St. John's time to near the end of the third century : — then, by the light of similarly new and peculiar evidence, the fixing of the long previously suggested application of the 5th and 6th Trumpet symbolization to the Saracenic and Turkish invasions respectively ; and fixing too, as applicable to the times of the Eeformation, of the intent of the rainbow-crowned Angel's descent and doings, and of St. John's measuring of the Apocalyptic temple, and of Christ's two sackcloth-robed witnesses' death, resur- rection, and ascent in Apoc. x. and xi., in the sera of the same 6th Trumpet. After which again came up before me the admirable use of medallic monuments of the times in elucidation of the prophecy. In Apoc. xii. the long before supposed application of the symbol of the seven-headed Dragon, with diadems on his heads, seeking to devour the sun-clothed Woman's child when born, to Eoman Hea- thendom's last warring against the Christian Church, and Constantine the eldest kingly son of the Church, at the opening of the 4th cen- tury, received confirmation from the fact of the diadem having just at that very time been adopted as the chief imperial head-badge. Besides which in this my present Edition there will be found simi- larly illustrated, and confirmed, the truth of the application of the ten diademed horns of the Beast from the sea in Apoc. xiii. to the ten Eomano- Gothic kings of "Western Europe in the 6th century : they having just then adopted the diadem as their royal head-badge, as seen in the notable Plate of their barbaric coins of about that date given in my Vol. iii. p. 145. — 2ndly, as Scripture prophecy generally, instead of separating what it might have to say on the Church (Jew- 1 So e. g. by Cuninghame, Preface to 1st Edition, p. vi. " I do not attempt to explain every minute part of a symbol, but content myself with endeavouring to seize its great outlines. I consider the symbol of the Apocalypse in the light of prophetical parables." And so too Mr. Frere, and others. ra.] nsvov ki\oi.. ik v. 5 i. l BSO— L8§2. {CbuHuiion.) ish or Christian"), and the trorlrf's secular poims anv way connected with it. was apt to intermingle those sayings, so it BeSflBSd to me likolv that it would bfl in Apocah pt ie prophecy; however contrarv to the sitory principles acted on by other prophetic expositors, tuefa M 1 have lately been speaking of.1 The fact, which 1 soon nscer- taineil in my primarx Apocalypt ie researches. ol*a Temple <>r TUbt motiU ■ with its triple division into Altar- (hurt, Ilvli/ Place, ami meet Huh/, ever standing as the pespetosj fore-ground before the Apostle, throughout the revelation of the prophecy, with Mount Zl0H and the Holy City adjacent, aud all in connexion with the pictured world around. this,2 — BUggesting as it did the facility of turning at any time from one to the other, Strengthened my a priori expectation, and was in fact found by me afterwards to be so taken advantage of perpetually n the prophetic figurations. flrdly, the circumstance of the prophecy being written (as is expressly stated) on the seven-sealed scroll's two sides. •• within and u-ithout" offered, I saw, in the most obvious and simple manner, a form of the prophetic Book in which, side by side, there Bright be inscribed the chronological parallelisms of parts so par- allel, but separated in the prophecy from each cither ; and consequently that there was no need of seizing on the Little opened Book of Apoc x.. so as had been done by Meds, Faher. and many others, without any warrant in the prophecy itself, in order to supply that particular want : 3 — therewith cancelling, as I have more than once observed that I most true application of the inestimably important figurations iu Apoc. x. and \i., made by the Protestant Befbrming ersof the liJtli century, to the re-opening of the Gospel in tin n own times. And indeed in the very remarkable evidence of all contrast, draxvn by me from the history of the times of Leo X and Lather, the truth of the application of the whole prophecy of Apoc. x. to the outbur.-t. and subsequent progress, of the great Protestant rmation h century seemed, and still seems, to me t.. be made certain. It was to be expected that an exposition in many respects so new and important would be r, as and obj 1 ]'.. -j. tuber's declaration about the E the Roman Empire e ally. In re of the Wt >tern sreuhu if the Church, i :.irgcdon in my Preliminary Chapter, Vol. i. pp. OS — 104. my notice < f tin ; ■ . upiu. 500 BISTORT OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION. [a PP. PART I. And, accordingly, in the course of the three or four years in which the three first Editions of the Horse were published, many adverse strictures appeared : especially those written by the late Rev. T. K. Arnold, by the Rev. W. G. Barker, and by Dr. Keith; each followed, of course, by a reply from me. It does not need here to say more of these con- troversies than that, while furnishing occasion for the correction of certain smaller errors in detail, the satisfaction was left me by them of seeing, as the result, confirmation of the soundness of the main points in my exposition. In proof of which it may be mentioned that when called upon, after a few years' continuous controversy in the pages of the British Magazine, to sum up, so as it had been given me to expect, the result of the controversy, Mr. Arnold declined to do it :' and that Dr. Keith, after having advertised in 1848 the speedy publication of a refutation of my very elaborate reply to him in the " Vindicia? Horaria?," has never published it to the present day. Besides which, I am happy to say yet further, that as, in the earlier days of the Horse, it had to undergo the sifting of continuous criti- cisms, so, quite lately, it has had to meet the continuous criticisms of Dean Alford in his Commentary on the Apocalypse : criticisms more generally adverse than favourable ; but given for the most part as mere dicta ex cathedra, without any refutation, and very often with- out any notice, of the proof and evidence on which my opinions were founded. This too has called forth a reply from me,2 challenging from him a notice and confutation of that evidence, or else a retracta- tion of his adverse criticisms. As to the result of which challenge, it needs no very sanguine temperament on my part to assure me that the Dean will be found just as unable to justify his objections as even Dr. Keith. Let me add, that on the great Millennary question I had the real advantage, before publishing the 4th Edition of the "Horse," of seeing my own views contested, and the Whitbyite hypothesis advo- cated, by Dr. Brown, of Glasgow. And, certainly, he seems to me to have said all that can be most effectively said against the one, and in support of the other. After most careful consideration, however, of his book, my judgment on the question has remained unchanged. Eor the strength of his argument consists in the exhibition of the \ dilliculties in detail which encompass the idea of the millennium / 1 See Britisli Magazine for 1817. ■ The " Apocalypsis Alfordiana." ri:u. \n PBSNCB ELBVOL. !i;\. ) 9. L8SQ -1862. (Cinelusiun.) 56] such as I suppose prophecy to foretell, under Christ'*- persona] reign on earth ; difficultiea which (as in the case of the prediction of the Noacbic Flood of old), it" insoluble bj man now. may be left 1" c i * » • i in lu.s own time to answer-, ilie strength of my own in the many more or less express declarations asserting or implying it in Holy Scripture. \s might have been expected, various Apocalyptic commentaries have issued from the press since my first publication of the fforce: e. g., among those wholly or mainly dissentient from it, those of /' 1 1. If. Scoff, and, more lately, of the Rev. Frederick Muu- . on somewhat of the German wliulli/ I'ra -terist system; (includ- ing, of course, as one thing of the past, the Apocalyptic millennium ,-') o\' which the very basis, being the baseless presumption of a Neronic date attaching to the Revelation in Patmos, would of itself be de- cisive against them,'-' were other grounds of refutation wanting, such as in fact abound, as we shall see in my next Chapter : — those of Dr. II Isimeth. and of Hengstenberg in Germany, on more or less of the continuous historic system, admitting the Domitianic date, but regarding the millennium as a period of the past, or past and present, not of the future ; historic schemes that we may designate as mil- h ihn-ii>-pr the s »Ten Churches,)1 to relate to things even now future, \ is. the things concerning Christ's second Advent : a Scheme ttiis iir>i mi forth, we saw. by tho Jesuit Etibera, at the end of the l(>th century; and which in its main principle has been urged alike by Dr. S. EL Maitland, Mr. Burgh, the Oxford Tractatoron Antichrist, and others, in our own times and a-ra. not without considerable success: also other expositors of late, but with certain considerable modifications, which too ought not to be past over without notice. The 8rd is what we may call emphatically the Protectant continuous Historic Scheme of Interpretation ; that which regards the Apocalypse as a prefigur- ation in detail of the chief events affecting the Church and Christen- dom, whether secular or ecclesiatical, from St. John's time to the consummation: — a Scheme this which, in regard of its particular application of the symbols of Babylon and the Beast to Papal Korne and the Popedom, was early embraced, as we saw, by the Waldenses, Wickliffitee, and Hussites; then adopted with fuller light by the chief reformers, German". Swiss, French, and English, of the L6th century; and thence transmitted downwards uninterruptedly, even to the present time. It is this last which I embrace for my own part with a full and strengthening conviction of its truth. Of each of the other two counter-Schemes, in each of their two forms, the original un- modified and the modified, there will follow a critical review, and 1 hope decisive refutation, in my next Part. 1 Dr. S. It. Maitland, a- beftH mil alao the Rev. James Kelly and other-. would have even the lii-t I r t<> the distant and closing future. Uiliu- howen r begin the future only with (,'h. iv. A PPE N D IX. PAET II. CRITICAL EXAMINATION AND BEFUTATIOH OF THE CHIEF COUNTER-SCHEMES OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION; AM» ALSO OF DR. ARNOLD'S GENERAL PROPHETIC COUNTER- THEORY. It was stated at the conclusion of my Sketch of the History of Apocalyptic Interpretation, that there are at present too, and but two. grand general counter-Schemes to what may be called the historic Pro- testant view of the Apocalypse : that view which regards the prophecy as a profiguration of the great events that were to happen in the Church, and world connected with it. from St. John's time to the consummation ; including specially the establishment of the Popedom, and reign of Papal Pome, as in some way or other the fulfilment of the types of the Apocalyptic Beast and Babylon. TheJUrtt of these two counter-Schemes is the P>\eferists\ which would have the pro- phecy stop altogether short of the Popedom, explaining it of the catastrophes, oue or both, of the Jewish Nation and Pagan Pome ; and of which there are two sufficiently distinct varieties : the second the Futurists'' : which in its original form would have it all shoot over the head of the Popedom into times yet future ; and refer simply to the events that are immediately to precede, or to accompany, Christ's second Advent ; or. in its various modified forms, have them for its chief subject. 1 shall in this second Part of my Appendix proceed successively to examine these two, or rather four, anti-Protestant counter-Schemes ; and show, if I mistake not, the palpable unten- ableness alike of one and all. Which done.1 it may perhaps be well, 1 It would then be my next duty to consider the chief Protestant Apocalyptic Scheme, that run* counter in its errand outline of arrangement to the one given in the Ilorje . [to. that which, instead of regarding the seven Trumpets in a natural . pment of the 7th Seal, jnat as the seven Yials also of the 7th Trum- pet, in continuous evolution of the future, would regard the Seals and the Trumpets from respect to hit venerated name, to add an examination of the late Dr. Arnold" $ general prophetic counter-theory. Thia, together with a notice of certain recent counter- views on tbe Millennium will com* * of counter-prophetic Schemes. with regard to the Prarterut Scheme, on tbe reriew of which we are first t may be remembered that I stated it to hare had its origin with the Jesuit Aleasar : ' and that it waa subse- and after Grotiu* and Hammond" $ prior adoption of and ixnproTed by Boatuet, the great Papal champion, under one form and modification ; * then afterwards, under another modifi- cation, by Hemntehneider, Eichhorn, and others of the German -ai and generally infidel school of the last half- fol- lowed in our own aera by Heinriehs, and by Motet Stuart of the " rates of America.4 The two modifications appear to hare arisen mainly out of the differences of date armtgnrd to the Apoca- lypse ; whether about the end mitian's.5 I shall. I think, pretty well exhaust whatever can be thought to call for examination in the system, by considering separately, first the mk\ or favourite German form and modification of the Pneterist Scheme, as propounded by Eichhom, Hug, Heinriehs, and Mote* Stuart ; secondly Bottuef* Domitianic form, the one moat generally approved, I believe, by Boman Catholics. CHAPTER I. KXAMHT4J ■ MFCTATIOy OP THE GEKMA5 ~SZ- PE.ETEEI5T APOCaLTPTIC COU5TEE-5CHEXX. The reader has already been made acquainted with the main common features of this German form of the Pneterist Apocalyptic Scheme.' Differing on points of detail, yet (with the exception that f the ■■■■,■ ..Hi.;) hwt that, a* my review at it reacts ttainat wheOj to the Semti, I save flight k well o* that point to mrinpaV, and to pace ai critical artiee at it ia. the AppeawLx to the * v torn -e p. 484 awpri. ' See ibid. ? 501. ' D*. pp . See p. SSB. • I aay mmiaim ; beeaaae Eathherm, m wifl he aoted preaewtiy, adepts the Xereaae ielaatclatiaw letroepectrtelT, with the Diaiitiiair date. Ala© I taj, aim* the end •/ i reaaw, hecaeat tome at the Qawmmm fttmw to date it a year ar twe after » death. See Note p. 57*. 566 ^REFUTATION HI < lllll APOC. COUNTER-SCHEMES. [.\PP. PART II. llartwig and Herder pretty much confine themselves to the Jewish catastrophe, and Ewald, Bleek, and De Wette to that of heathen /iodic I ) it may generally he described as embracing both catastro- phes : the fall of Judaism being signified under that of Jerusalem, the fall of Heathenism under that of Home ; the one as drawn out in symbol from Apoc. vi. to xi. inclusive, the other from Apoc. xii. to xix. : whereupon comes thirdly, in Apoc. xx., a figuration of the triumph of Christianity. So, with certain differences, Hernnschnei- iter, Eichhorn, Hug, Hemrichs, &c, in Germany;2 M. Stuart in America ; and, in England, Dr. Davidson. ,3 — In my review of the Scheme each of these two historic catastrophes, as supposed Apoca- lyptically figured, will of course furnish matter for critical examina- tion ; not without reference to the Apocalyptic date also, as in fact essentially mixt up with the historic question. — But, before entering on them, I think it may be well to premise a notice, 1st, On THE GENERALLY VAGUE LOOSE PRINCIPLE OF PROPHETIC inteepretation professedly followed by the Praeterists. Considering the self-sufficient dogmatism which pre-eminently characterizes the School in question, even as if, a priori to examina- tion ; all other schemes were to be deemed totally wrong, and the Prseterist Scheme alone conformable to the discoveries and require- ments of " modern exegesis," 4 (a dogmatism the more remarkable, when exhibited by a man of calm temperament and unimpassioned style, like Professor Stuart,5 and which to certain weaker minds ■ So M. Stuart, i. 161. " Eichhorn makes his Judaic division of the Apocalypse to extend into Apoc. xi.; and the Roman division only to hegin with the Dragon's going to persecute the remnant of the woman's children, Apoc. xii. 18. And so too Henrichs. * i. e. until the publication of Hengstenberg's Apocalyptic Commentary in 1851, in- sisting on Domitianic date : my readers must bear this in mind when reading my notices of Dr. Davidson in this paper. What the evidence of common sense and clear historic testimony, as fully set forth by me, could not effect, the fact of a German Professor's advocating the Domitianic date sufficed, as by magical effect, to accomplish in Dr. Davidson. 4 A favourite phrase and almost argument with many of this class of interpreters. 5 i. e. in the body of his Work. His Preface is in the undogmatic style that one might expect from such a man as Professor Stuart. Elsewhere, however, not only does he dogmatic illy puss sentence of condemnation \ipon expositions on the usual Protestant exegetic principle, (e. g. i. 161,) " It is time, high time, fox principle to take the place of fancy, for exegetical proof to thrust out assumption," but even warms into such u burst as the following: — " In the name of all that is pertinent and congruous in prophecy, what have these (viz. a history of civil commotions, and de- (HM'.l.H MUUIS \ii;o\n MUBT1B181 < u \ I i.::->< n i.M r.. M'>7 may seem imposing.) the tpiestion is surr In arise. What the inda of this strange preeamptuonsnesa of bone P What the ww and oteBpanrering evidence in bww of the modern. Prateris! What tlu' iiaooverj of such niithou^ht of coincidence between the prophecy OS the one hand, and ceitattU tacts ot* their chosen Xeronic :rra on tlic other. U t<> settle the Apocalyptic eoiit roversy in their favour, at once and for ever? And then the surprise is increased l.v finding that not onlv has bo »"'•// discovery been made, not only no such discovery been even pretended to, but that in fact they put it forward, as the very boast of the l'ratcrist system, that coincide!* e\ i t and particular are not to be sought or thought of: that the three main ideas about the three cities, or three antagonist religions represented by them, so as abo\e mentioned, are pretty much all that there is of fact to be unfolded; and that, with certain excep- tions, (oi which exceptions more in a later part of this review,) all else is to be regarded as but the poetic drapery and ornament.1 — ■eriptaon <>f literal famines, pestilences, &c.) to do with the ohject John had before him ? Are we . . to regard him A in .1 state pfhallocinatioa when he wrote the Apoca- lypse : . . . Away with all Mich surmises: and away too with all the expositions that are built upon them ! " i. 208, 209. In Dr. Davidson, with whom of English expounders of the system I am best acquaint- ed, the same characteristic is prominent. So when he sneak-- of Protectant Expositors generally, in the Eclectic Review for Dae. Is! 1, p. 640 " That the Revelation ex- hibits a prophetic view of the Church from the close of the Apostolic age to the end of time, is a position that can never he rendered probable. All who have attempted to expound it on this principle have totally failed." And, again, of myself and the a, ibid. p. <>lt; " Aa an eipoailion of the Apocalypse it is a total failure; it is •iallv and fundamentally erroneous : " yet without the slightest attempt at en- countering the evidence and arguments in the Horae. All which is repeated at the of his article on the •• /;■ ■ mtitm," p. 623, &e., in Kitto's Cyclopedia. — On tin nther hand, on his own German PlBBtBliat view he says, ibid, (itt ; " The recent German works-en the Apoaalypse hive lerved to point out the tnu path of intcr- pretition" and p. bis; " Eor the right interpretation of the mystical number 666, or 616, see Ew aid's Commentary ." Ami M too in the Artich in Kitto this German Pneterist Scheme is given in consieV rahle detail ; not as a suggested interpretation, but authoritatively, and ex cathedra, a- beyond a doubt the true interpretation. -ru.irt, i. 179:—" Substanti.il : I the Apocalypse. . . Rut what the drapery or . All symbol is of coarse drapery. It is the thiiii: signified which is person; but the way and manner of Signifying it . . is merely the fashion ttf the costume." Then at p. 200 he proceeds to state, with . to the Apocalypse •• ,,s a hook of p, „ try," that " Oriental I'm try, especially the Hebrew, follows .,ut t. lymbol and sUegory, for the nke oil rerisimflrtade, and to pve \iv.n-ity to the rcpn-«' utation, mnch In yond what we are ;, (customed to do in the Western world:" and, a' p, . itsi fheee Interpreters who " for historical events ; c , .ilment of the >• s,,-c..ll. -il pie- l "T •• what deal d i .'1. for convi rting • piaode into the m uo ol the work ; or til il the Least v, .1, I into pietui. • . ;* ? " 508 REFUTATION OF CHIEF APOC. COUNTER-SCHEMES. [APP. PART II. Now iii mere rationalists of the School, like Eichhorn and many others, men professedly disbelieving the inspiration of the Apo- calypse, all this is quite natural and consistent: seeing that its author wrote, they take for granted, as a mere dramatist and poet; and, as to details, what the limit ever assigned to a poet's fancy, except as his own taste or critical judgment might impose one ? But that Christian expositors, like Professor Stuart and Dr. Davidson, men professing to believe in St. John's inspiration as a prophet, (and to these I here chiefly refer,) should deliberately so pronounce on the matter, so resolve even what seems most specific into generaliza- tions,1 and what seems stated as fact into mere poetic drapery, will appear probably to my readers, as to myself, most astonishing. It is of course due to these writers to mark by what process of thought they arrive at this conclusion ; and on what principle, or by what reasons, they have justified it to themselves. And, passing by the negative argument from the discrepancy and unsatisfactoriness of the historic detailed interpretations given by expositors who seek in the Apocalypse a prophetic " epitome of the civil and ecclesiastical history of Christendom," (as to which, wherever justly objected to, the remark was obvious that further research might very possibly supply what was wanting, and rectify what was unsatisfactory, so as I hope has been done on various points in the present Commentary,2) Similarly Dr. Davidson in Kitto, p. 627, adopts Hug's remark ; " The particular traits and images in the Apocalypse are by no means all significant : many being in- troduced only to enliven the representation, and for the purpose of ornament." 1 " Scarcely inferior in importance . . is the plain and obvious principle that generic and not specific and individual, representations are to be sought for in the Apoca- lypse." So Professor S. at p. 203, after the extract given in my Note preceding. —As a striking example of the extent to which this is carried by him, I may refer to his, Vol. ii. p. 146 : where, after setting forth the destruction of Jerusalem and Judaism as the first grand theme of the Apocalypse, from Apoc. vi. to xi. he says ; " If no history by Joscphus was in existence, the arch of Titus at Rome would tell the story that Apoc. vi. — xi. had been fulfilled." Nay! " Equally would it have been fulfilled, . . had the Jewish persecuting power been crushed in any other way, or by any other means," So too in his Vol. i. p. 205. - My Commentary does not seem to have met Professor Stuart's eye before the publication of his own. At Vol. i. p. 204, after mention of the Gothic invasions of the empire, &c, as sub- jects supposed to be figured by the Protestant interpreters, he adds ; " The misfortune is that what applies to this particular battle, &c, would apply equally well to every battle that has been fought." If this Edition of the Horae fall into his hands, and tht. Professor test my explanations, he will, if I mistake not, soon find how little the above statement can apply to them. I think I may say, with regard to all the chief and detailed interpretations, that they are shown to be applicable to nothing else whatsoever, with at all the same exactitude, as to that which they are applied to by me. (Ml IP. 1. | 1 ." <,!KM\\ HBBONIO i'i; 1 i i i;i^r i mi \ ii i:-m in m i . 569 passing this, I say. the intended use and object of the Apoealypee, at the presumed time of its writing, will be round to have been thai which mainly guided the Learned American Professor to the feme principle of exegesis, (as he designates it.) whereby to interpret the Book.1 For, argues he, during a persecution like Nero's, (this being his supposed date of the Apocalypse,) when the Church was "Weed- ing at every pore,"1 how could it take interest in information us to what was t . » happen in distant ages, (excepting of course the linal triumph of Christianity,) or indeed as to anything but what concern- ed their own immediate age and pressure, whether in Judea or at Koine r Ilenee then to this the subject-matter of the Anocalypse must be regarded as confined.' And whereas, on ikie exegetic hypo* (In six. scarce anything appears in the actual historic facts of the par- ticular period or catastrophe in question, which can he considered as answering to the prophetic figurations in detail, therefore all idea of any such detailed and particular intent and meaning in these pro- phetic figurations must be set aside; and they must be regarded as the nure drapery and ornament of a poetic Epopee, albeit by one inspired. As a Scriptural precedent and justification for this gener- alizing view of the Apocalyptic imagery, Psalm win., which was Davids song after his deliverance from Saul, and Isaiah xiii., xiv., on the fall of Babylon, (the former more especially.) are referred to, and insisted on, by the learned Professor.4 But (reserving the subject of the Apocalyptic date for a remark or two presently under my next head of argument) let me Iklj here to ask, with reference to the very limited use and object so assigned to the Apocalyptic prophecy,- -as if only or chiefly meant tor the Chris- tians then living, by them to he understood, and by them applied in , So in tin l'r f ice p. 4 ; "I take it for granted that the writer had a present and immidiate object in view when he wrote the book : and mi must regard him as having spoken intclliijibhj to those whom lie addressed." And so again and again, i. 126, ii. 810, 172, dfce, • ;!:•• i sprcasion ot the American Professor. So i. 159, 207, 209, &e. — But how do. s this idea square with what is intimated of the then state of the I.aodieean Chureh ; " Thou - ... -•. 1 Aui rieh, and increased with goods," &C ! Bee my Vol. i. p. 11, M * L)r 1). ap. Kitto, i it apparently quite agree with this. Li it he -m-s the just observation . " I he Apoealj pae w.is d, signed to promote the inatmc- tioii [| oot belong to tiie elaas of ephemeral writii • merely a local or partial one " Adding how.\ , r ; "Ibis genera] characteristic is perfectly consistent with the l.i.t that it arose out of specific eiicu.u- : was primarily meant I > definite end." 1 bo .Stuart, i. 171 570 REFUTATION OF CHIEF APOC. COUNTER-SCHEMES. [APP. PART II. the way of encouragement and comfort, as announcing the issue of the trials in which they uviv thin personally engaged, — what right has Professor Stuart thus to limit it ? AVas it not accordant with the character of God's revelations, as communicated previously in Scripture, (especially in Daniel's prophecies, which are of all others the most nearly parallel with the Apocalypse,) to foreshow the future in its continuity from the time when the prophecy was given, even to the consummation : and this, not with the mere present object of comforting his servants then living, but for a perpetual witness to his truth ; to be understood only partially, it might be, for generations, but fully in God's own appointed time ? So, for ex- ample, in the Old Testament prophecies concerning Christ's first advent ; prophecies which not only the Old Testament Jews, but even the disciples of Christ, understood most imperfectly, till Christ himself, after he had actually come, explained them : and so again in Daniel's prophecies extending to the time of the end; which, until that time of the end, were expressly ordered to be sealed up.1 — And then, next, what historic evidence have we of Christians of Nero's time having so understood the Apocalypse, as the American Pro- fessor would have it that they must have done ? 2 Not a vestige of testimony exists to the fact of such an understanding ; albeit quite general, according to him, among the more intelligent in the Chris- tian body. On the contrary, the early testimony of Irenaeus, disci- ple to Polycarp, who was himself disciple to St. John, indicates a then totally different view of the Apocalyptic Beast from Professor Stuart's, as if the only one ever known to have been received : a view referring it, not to any previous persecution by Nero and the Roman Empire under him, but to an Antichrist even then future ; one that was to arise and persecute the Church not till the breaking up, and reconstruction in another form, of the old Empire. — Moreover the whole that our Professor would have to be shown by the Apocalypse, viz. the assured triumph of Christianity over both Judaism and Paganism, — I say this, instead of being any new revelation specially suited to cheer the Christians of the time, had been communicated 1 Dan. xii. 9. The sealing was evidently with reference to that part of the pro- phecy which concerned the distant future. 8 See the extract from his Preface, Note1, p. 569 supra. So again i. 126 ; " John wrote in order to he read and understood ; and therefore intelligent persons of his day might understand him." Also ii. 3*25, &c. CHAP. I. § l.J i.mimw NMtONN PH I n:i;i> r < poo. It. 1. ")7~ REFUTATION OF CHIEF APOC. COUNTEK-SCIIEMES. [APP. PART II. figured relative only to Daniel's own time ; and all else mere poetic ornament and drapery? So much on the general exegetic principles of the German Praeterist School. Let me now proceed, II ndly, to consider these Pra?terists' Historical Solution, in- cluding especially the two grand catastrophes laid down by them, as the two main particulars unfolded in the Apocalypse ; and show, as I trust, both in respect of the one and the other, the many and in- dubitable marks of error stamped upon it. Of course the Neronic date is an essential preliminary to this Scheme, in the minds of all Praeterist expositors who, like M. Stuart and Dr. Davidson, admit the apostolicity and inspiration of the Book. And, as I venture to think that I have in my 1st Volume completely proved that the true date is Domitianic, agreeably with Iremeus' testimony, not Neronic or Galbaic,1 that single fact may in such case be of itself deemed conclusive against the theory. — Nor, let me add, in case of non-infidel Praeterists only. Por the very strong opinion as to the sublimity and surpassing aesthetic beauty of the Apocalypse admitted by the German Neologians, Eichhorn in- clusive, as the result of the Semlerian controversy, compared with the utter inferiority of all Church writers of the nearest later date, does even on rationalistic principles almost involve the inference of St. John's authorship ; especially as coupled with the fact of the Apo- calyptic writer's assumption of authority over the Asiatic Bishops he addrest, and the air of truth, holiness, and honesty that all through mark his character. Which admitted, and also, as by Eichhorn, the Domitianic as the true date, even a rationalist like him must, I think, be prepared to admit the high improbability of such a writer making pretence to prophesy a certain catastrophe about Nero and Koine, and another certain catastrophe about Jerusalem, as if things then future, when in fact the one had happened 30, the other 25 years before. Whence the baselessness, even on rationalistic principles, of the whole Neronic Praeterist Scheme. — But we will now proceed more in detail to the examination of the two catastrophes separately. ' Liicke advocating a Galbaic date, just after Nero; (see my Vol. i. Appendix ;) Ileinrichs a Fespasianic, but before the fall of Jerusalem. They are all one as re- gards my argument. CHAP I. § 1." r.r.KMAN N1BONX0 PBJBTBBI8T OOUNTIB-SOHJtMX, 578 1. And. l.sV. as to the catastrophe of Judaism and Jerusalem^ do* picted in the figurations from Apoc. \i. to xi. inclusive. Argues Professor Stuart, as Abstracted in brief, thus: ' "It is for some considerable time not unfolded who the enemy is against whom the rider of the white horse in the first Sea] lias gone forth conquer- ing, followed by his agencies of war. famine,2 and pestilence; him airain^t whom the Cry is raised of the Christian martyrs slain under the 5th Seal, and the revolution of whoso political state is evidently the Bubject of Seal the sixth. Bu1 in A poc. vii. the enemy meant is intimated. For when it is stated that 141.000 are sealed, by way of protection, out of all the tribes of Israel, meaning evidently those that have been converted from among the Jews to Christianity, it follows clearly that it is the unsealed ones of those tribes, or uncon- verted Jew*, forming the ^reat body of Terael, that are the destined objects of destruction. A view this quite confirmed in Apoc. xi. ; where the inner temple is measured, as thai which is not to be ejected: this meaning, that whatever was spiritual in the Jewish religion was to be preserved in Christianity ;* while the rest, or mere external parts of the system, as well as the Holy City Jerusalem itself, was to be abandoned and trodden down." So substantially Professor Stuart : and so too his prototype Eichhorn, and his English follower Dr. Davidson. This is the strength of their first Part ; the details of Seals and Trumpets being of course little more in this system than intimations of something awful attending or impending, al- together general; or indeed, perhaps, mere "poetic drapery and costume." Let us then try its strength where it professes to be strongest. The enemy to be destroyed, it is said, was shown to be the Jews because it was the Jewish tribee (all but the sealed few from out of them) that were to have the tempests of the four winds let loose OH them ; and because it was the Jewish temple fall but the inner and measured part of it) that was to be abandoned to the (lentiles. Let us test this conclusion by the threefold test of what is shown, first. 1 s. . Hk< Pi t hot*! Introduction to the tir-t Catastrophe, Vol. ii. pp. 138 — 146. me not omit to remind the reader, in [Hiring, of the proof given and trd Seal Vol. i. pp. LI lymbolaofthat Beal mnnof-have been n Indeed what i- — : i. i < 1 abont the imm and oil makea Prof. Stuart him- self half udmit it. '1 1. oe to the same effect abont the price of baritg he baa, like all other t xpoaiton, ojiite overlooked. * Bee the extra* I te -'. .",;i u 1 I 1 I \NO\ or (III KF APOC. COUNTER-SCHEMES. [APP. PART II. as to the in trnl of the 'Jewish .symbolic scenery elsewhere in the Apo- calypse ; secondly, as to the religious profession of the people actually destroyed in the Trumpet -judgments ; thirdly, as to the intended people's previous murder of Christ's two Witnesses, Ml their thereupon doomed city. As to the first, already in the opening vision a chamber as of the Jewish temple had been revealed ; with seven candlesticks like those in the old Jewish temple,1 and one in the High Priest's robing that walked among them. Was its signification then Jewish or Christian ; of Judaism or Christianity ? We are not left to conjecture. The High Priest was distinctively the Christian High Priest, Christ Jesus ; the seven candlesticks the seven Christian Churches. This explanation at the outset is most important to mark ; being the fit- test key surely to the intent of all that occurs on the scene after- wards of similar imagery. — Further, in Seal 5 a temple like the Jewish, at least the temple-court with its great brazen altar, is again noted as figured on the scene. Now Ave might anticipate pretty confidently, from the previously given key just alluded to, that the temple was here too symbolic of the Christian worship and religion, not the Jewish. But there is, over and above this, independent internal evidence to affix to it the same meaning. For the souls under the altar, who confessedly depict Christian martyrs, appear there of course as sacrifices offered on that altar ; their place being where the ashes of the Jewish altar-sacrifices were gathered. Which being so, could the altar mean that of the literal Judaism ; and the vision signify that the Jews, zealous for their law, and thinking to do God service, had there slain the Christian martyrs, as if heretics ? Cer- tainly not ; because on their altar the Jews never offered human sacrifices, and would indeed have esteemed it a pollution. Therefore Ave have independent internal evidence that the Jewish temple and altar, figured on the Apocalyptic scene, had here too a Christian meaning ; depicting (as both St. Paul,' and Polycarp after him, so beautifully applied the figure) the Christian's willing sacrifice of himself and his life for Christ.2 — Further in Apoc. viii. the temple is 1 So Stuart allows, ii. 46: saying that " the writer had doubtless iu his mind the passage in Zech. iv. 2, where the prophet sees a candelabra of gold, with seven lamps thereon ;" with reference to the " light of the (Jewish) temple, its ritual, and Ber vices." '■< See my Vol. i. pp. 206—208, and 222, 223. CHAP. I § 1 i.ikmw NBK0KIC ri;Mii;i-i < "i \ i i i:-m n i. m i.. ■gain spoken .>f .is apparent ; with its bra/en s:n-rili.-ial allar in the altar-court, its gulden iueense-altar within the temple proper, and our too. habited as a IVieM. who received and offered incii-o. ac- ting to the Ceremony of the Jewish ritual. Was this meant literally of J< visit jaoanaa and Jewish worship: Assuredly not. For the incense of the offering priest is declared to |lr " t he prayers of ail th<- saints;" i.e. as all admit.1 of Chris/inns dis- tinctively from literal Jews. ■-- Again, with reference even to the temple figuration in Apne. xi. -. which furnishes his chief tk proof-text, our Professor himself admits, nay argues, that tiie inner and most characteristic part of it (the same that was measured by St. John) signified that spiritual part of Ju- daism which MM to he preserved in Cliristianiti/, as contrasted with the mere externals of Jewish ritualism:2 thus construing it, not literally, with reference to the worship of the national Israel, hut symbolically, with reference to that of the Christian Israel :3 albeit with no little mixture of what is erroneous, and consequently con- fused and inconsistent in his reasoning.4 — All which being so, what, 1 Bo M. Stuart ii. 182 ; " It ?oes up before God, bearing along with it on its fra- grant cloud ik, the prayers of persecuted Christians." So too Eichhorn, fte. Tin- design h .in- plainly this, viz. to prefigure the preservation of ail thai fundamental and essential in the a yion, notwithstanding the destruction of all that w • to the temple, the city, and tin- aneient people of la not the preservation of the sanctum of the temple an appropriate and sig- i.t emblem of tin- ! " Stuart ii. 21 t. " Christians," he adds, p. 218, " are kings and priests unto God ; and to them the inmost recesses of the temple are opened." So I 9 1 . 1 Prof 3. 1 Df inclined to view the altar here spoken of as the in* ruse altar : the priest's court in the part measured ; which court was the one that had • tltai in it. And I believe that the altar, when thus simply de- ■• Testament the braxen altar of sacrifice. Sec my Paper on the subject in the Appendix to Vol. ii. — I believe, too, then- w< te Qerer said -iiippers, irpoanvvouirrii, at the incuse altar. Compare Luke i. 10, 11 ; where the people are spoken of as praying, while the priest at the incense altar offered wiii. 22. E Vol. ii. pp. 1S3— 185. • For lie mikes the Jewish temple proper, to figure Christianity, limply as being the inner part ; at the same time that its outer court, as tin- outer, figured .In laism. -•■ mboliae two prof u rent and opposed ■■,... i that part of it which contained. all t: .!y and by D . (the sacrificial altar, the la\er, the incense- lew-bread, I abolisc the unritualiftic religion of rt. which had none of the ritualistic material, was t<> sym- bolic • ; of ritualism ' Paul might hare taught) rery d fierent and more consist- mode of interpreting the symbol. A.i bing the J< :>tic scene figured .a risible worshipping Church 576 REFUTATION OF CHIEF APOC. COUNTER-SCHEMES. [APP. PART II. I ask, must by the plainest requirements of consistency and common sense follow, but that as the offerers of Jewish worship in the Jewish temple, depicted on the Apocalyptic scene, meant in fact Christians, so they that are called Jews or Israelites in the Apocalyptic context must mean Christians also, at least by profession ? A conclusion clenched by the fact which I have elsewhere urged, that the twelve tribes of God's Israel in the New Jerusalem of Apoc. xxi. are on all hands admitted to designate Christians, mainly Gentile Christians ; and so surely, in all fair reasoning, the twelve tribes of Israel men- tioned in Apoc. vii. also. Next, as to the religious profession or character of those that were to suffer through the plagues of the first great act of the Drama, (or rather Epopee, as Stuart would prefer to call it,)1 their character is most distinctly laid down in Apoc. ix. 20, as actual idolaters. For it is there said, " that the rest of the men, which were not killed by these plagues, yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship daemons, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and wood : " — a description so diametrically op- posed to the character of the Jews in Nero's time, and ever after- wards, that one would have thought with Bossitet,2 and indeed Ewald too,3 that it settled the point, if anything could settle it, that Jews were not the parties meant. And how then do the German Pra?terists, that take the Judaic view, overcome the difficulty ? Few and brief its worship, on the principle of construing the old Jewish types to mean their answer- ing spiritual antitypes. Which being so, the Gentile outer court figured naturally the professing proselytes of the same Christian worship and religion : whether prose- lytes consistent in life and doctrine, and who thus worshipped in the altar-worship ; or proselytes false at heart, and false to the altar, and so to be at length cast out as apostates and hypocrites. I must again refer the reader to my Paper on the Apoca- lyptic altar. Dr. Davidson is as brief here, and shuns the difficulty as much, as in the case of the witness-slaying ; of which more under the next head. He only says : " After this the interior of the temple is measured by the prophet ; while the outer court is excepted, and given over 42 months to the Gentiles."- — I suppose however that he means this in Stuart's sense ; as I can divine no other. 1 See Stuart i. 151—155, controverting Eichhorn's view of it as a Drama. He dwells on it himself, i. 190, &c, as an Epopee. It really seems to me a controversy on matter of little worth, on their theory. In either case there would be the resource of " drapery." 2 " Cela fait voir que le Prophete a passe des Juifs aux idolatres : car on ne pert assez remarquer, que comme les afflictions des Ch. vii. et viii. regardaient les Juifs, il n'y est point parle d'idolatrie." Bossuet ad loc. 3 I learn this from Professor Stuart. " Ewald considers this as decisive in respect of those Mho are the objects of attack by the horsemen." ii. 201. ill. i. H.' i.ikmw NBJtONIC FXJETIBIS1 I 01 N ti !B-8< ii i m 1, .".77 ■re the words of Eiehhom's paraphrase: — " It means bhat fchey per- levered id that same obstinate mind, which onoe showed itself in the worship of W*/"1 says M. Stuart:* " In the Old Testamenl Jews that acted in a heathenish way were called heathens: and more- over in the New testament oovetousness is called idolatrj : and moreover in the time of Herod theatres, and other such like heathen customs, had become oommon in Judea."' But surely such observa- tions, when [int forward in explanation of tin* descriptive clause thai spoke of men u worshipping idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and wood" must be felt to be rather an appeal ad misericordiam in the Expositor's difficulty, than an argument for the fitness of the descriptive clause, to suit the Jews of the times of Nero and Ves- pasian : especially when coming from one who is led elsewhere in his comment t>> state (and state most truly) that the Jews were ready, one and all. rather to submit their necks to the Eoman soldiers' swords, than to admit an image that was to be worshipped within their city.4 Indeed it is notorious that they regarded images alto- gether as abominations ; and that the Roman attempts at erecting them mure than once nearly caused desperate rebellions. — As for Dr. Davidson, he here exhibits more at least of discretion than the American Professor. He passes over the difficulty, as if re desperatd, in dead silence. Try we, thirdly, the Judaic theory of our German Praterists by the test of the Witness-slaying prophecy, including the place, time, and author of their slaughter. — This is put forth as one of the strongest points in the Judaic part of their view : it being stated to occur in the city "where their Lord was crucified; " i.e.. say the Praterists. in Jerusalem. But first, we ask, what witnesses ? " The Jewish chief priests Ananus and Jesus," answer Herder and Wich- horn ; " mercilessly massacred, as Josephus tells us, by the Zealots."8 But h<»w bo ? Must they not rather be Christ's witnesses, exclaims Stwirt ;''• (since it is said, "I will give power to my witnesses ; *') i " Hoc eat, perseverarunt in n .|ua> olim in Hebrseia antiquis in cultu idolornm . . oernebator." Eichhorn, ii. p. II. Bo too Beinriehs. i.irt, ibid. 201, 202. I oompreae hi to in brief ' Enough this, says li tj rt>» AammnAm nf f rrffttis" illiil. ' Wbi Pilate undertook to hoiat the standard of Tiberrai in tb ilem, the Jews, knowing the obligation that would follow to pay homage to it. one and all i . . 1 offen d th< ir neeka to the swords of his aoldiers, rather than submit to its erection." Stuurt ii. 27fi, from Jo- phne. Btnan ■ I! ■ Heinrioha, iv. 37 578 REPUTATION OP CHIEF -U'OC. COUNTER-SCHEMES. [APP. PART II. and therefore Christians ? Of course they must. Which heing so, the next question is, Who then the notahle Christians that Stuart considers to have been slain in Jerusalem, in the witness character, at this epoch; i. e. during the Komans' invasion of Judea? Does he not himself repeat to us the well-known story on record, that the Christians forthwith lied to Pella, agreeably with their Lord's warning and direction, so soon as they saw the Romans approach to beleaguer Jerusalem ? " But," says he in reply, " can we imagine that all would be able to make their escape ? Would there not be sick and aged and paupers to delay the flight ; and faithful teachers too of Christianity, that would choose to remain, to preach repent- ance and faith to their countrymen ? These I regard as symbolized by the two Witnesses : " » and these therefore as answering in their history at this crisis to St. John's extraordinary and circumstantial prediction about the Witnesses' testimony, miracles, death, resur- rection, ascension. But what the historic testimony to support his view ? ' Alas ! none ! absolutely none ! In apology for this total and most unfortunate silence of history he exclaims ; - The Jew Josephus is not the historian of Christians ; and early ecclesiastical historians have perished:" adding however, as if sufficient to justify his hypothesis ; " But Christ intimates, in his prophecy of the destruc- tion of Jerusalem, that there would be persecution of Christians at the period in question." A statement quite unjustified (if he means persecution to death in Jerusalem, and at the time of the siege) by the passages he refers to.2 Does not Christ say, " Not a hair of you- heads shall perish ? " At last he condescends to this : " At all event it is clear that the Zealots, and other Jews, did not lose their dispos: Hon to persecute at this period ! ! " 3 Such is the impotent concl sion of Professor Moses Stuart: such the best explanation he e devise, on his hypothesis, of the wonderful Apocalyptic prophec respecting the Witnesses.— Nor is his need supplied by Dr. Davit son. "Notwithstanding God's long-suffering mercy," says thi latter, " the Jews continue to persecute the faithful loitnessesr This, I can assure the Header, is the sum total of his observations on the point before us.4— Nor h it here only that the Judaic part of the ' Stuart ii. 227. So, let me say Miriam, and her Christian friend, in Milman's noble Drama of the Vail of Jerusalem. « Matt x\iv. 9-13, Mark xiii. 9—13, Luke xxi. 12—16. s Stuart ibid. I have used this language above, but slightly comprest. * Ap. Kitto, p. 621. KM lA M.K..M, PB , ,,l \ II i;-m iiimi 579 l'radri-t Scheme, applied 1.) llu* WltneSS-story in the Apocalypse, breaks down. For, further, the «ty where the Win, pees were to be exposed is declared to be the oity the great tme ;' that which is the emphatic title of the Beren-hilled Babylon or Borne, in \; tcalypse; never of Jermalen.* (Howil migbl be fiotw.and yel the city where the Lord Jesns had been crucified, the Reader has Long since seen!*)— Nor this alone. For the Beasl thai was to slay them was ro Bnptov re avafiawov tt: ri]c afivamv, the Beast that vm the abyss;* s Beast which (especially with the dis- tinctiTe artiele prefixed so as here to it) cannot bui mean one and the same with thai which is mentioned under precisely the same designation in Apoc, srii. B;« and there, as all the Prarterists them- selyes allow, designates a power associated some way with Rome. \ ! what Stuart's explanation? Why, that it mean's in Apoc. rf] simply Satan ."'-Indeed alike the declared fad of the loitnees-slaging, and of the great city as the place of their slaughter, and of the Beast m as their slayer, fas also, let me add, the period of the 1260 dags, assigned alike to the Witnesses' sackcloth-prophesying first, and to the Beast's reign afterwards,) do so interweave the first half of the Apocalyptic prophecy, from Apoc. ri. to \i., with the part subsequent, that, as to any such total separation, in respect to subject, of the on«> fn.m the other, as the Praterists urge, on their hypotl of a double catastrophe, it is, J am well persuaded, and will be so found by one and all who attempt to work it out, an absolute impos- sibility.7 1 tn ghl add yet a word as to the ill agreeing times of the supposed Jewish catastrophe and the Roman ; the former being in the Prajter- ■ E» t;, Trkarjuf riff wokun nn M»y«Xq«. This is given „ the best reading by i tnc cnticaJ Edition*. b 3 '* ■*«" » J" P|ir-" »- ■•' "' the Apoc ilypee, and always with reference Ion. See Apoc. xiv. s, Xvi. 19, xvii. is, Xviii. lo, n; ,s l9 2] old; remarking moreover that Jerusalem ii never called Egypl ' indeo to0 b pp. 320, 504 tupri. Dr. Davidson, on Apoc. d • which „,,. t(,lth rt fi „ M th7. Aud Jerusalem was taken and destroyed in August A.D. uirt ii. 2.30. : [hid. h. 290, i. lS*i. At p. 187, after observing that before John wrote the Apoca- lypse the greet body of Christians had probably fled in safety to Pella, he adds; " That he pn - nta then here on Mount Zion [the earthly Mount Zion] belongs to the tact of the !/■/ * lor the Christians only came to resettle at Jerusalem by degrees, and in small numbers, after its destruction. Several yean had past, 1 believe, before Simeon lixt his Episcopate th 4 lb. ii. 261. * The figurations between Apoc. xiii. and xvii. are thus in brief explained by Stuart. In Apoc. xiv. the visions of the 144,000 on Mount Zion, of the three Hying Angels, and of the Harvest and Vintage, are mere general tmticipativt intimations, or " pledges and toki ii»." (ii. 304,) byway of encouragement, of results of triumph to the I hurch, that would be depicted more fully aft< rwards. Also in tin Vials outpouring! Apoc. xvi., where one might surely hare i sp< ct< d to find specific prophecy of fact, all is still • m . notwithstanding tin' Professor's singular preliminary remark, that St. John do. • mly by "the variety in Ids composition," satisfy "the de- mand of atsthctica," (p. 309,) but, what is better, communicate also " a sketch [qu. his- toric sketch ?] corresponding with a go t . uuttness to tin- State ol i .tint the- seventh rial that onder which the air is affected, ami a third - construed to signify that " tin- power of the I is paralyzed ; i. e. that persecution is arrested when Nero dies." (ibid.) 582 REPUTATION OF CHIEF APOC. COUNTER-SCHEMES. [APP. PART II. eeven-hilled imperial city Home, so that the Beast ridden must be the persecuting Roman Empire; but the time intended is also fixed. For it is said that the Beast's seven heads, besides figuring seven hills, figured also seven Icings, or rather eight : of whom. five had/alien at the time of the vision ; which must mean the five first emperors, Julius, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius ; and one, the sixth, teas ; which of course must be the next after Claudius, i. e. Nero. Nay, to make the thing clearer, the Beast's name and number GOG are specified ; or, as some copies read, 616. And^so it is that in Hebrew -^D \1TQ> Neron Ccesar, has the value in numbers of 666, which is one frequent Rabbinical way of writing Nero's name ; or, "if the Hebrew be that of Nero Ccesar, without the final n, then it gives the number GIG."1 No doubt the numeral coincidence is worthy of note, and the whole case, so put, quite plausible enough to call for examination. It is indeed obvious to say, as to the name and numeral, that a Greek solution would be preferable to one in Hebrew ; and a single name to a double one : principles these recognized, as we have seen, by Irenseus, and all the other early Fathers that commented on the topic.2 But in this there is of course nothing decisive. A graver objection seems to me however to lie against the suggested numeral solution, in that a part of the name being official, — I mean the word Ccesar, — this agnomen, though fitly applicable to Nero while the reigning emperor, would hardly be applicable to him when resuscitated after his death-wound, aud so become the Beast of Apoc. xiii. of whom the name was predicated. But this involves inquiry into the Beast's heads; to which inquiry, as the decisive one, let us now therefore at once pass on. The heads then, as they assert, mean certain individual kings. This is not surely according to the precedent of Daniel vii. 6, where the third Beast's four heads would seem from Dan. viii. 8 to have signi- fied the monarchical successions that governed the four kingdoms into which Alexander's empire was divided at his death. — But, not to stop at this, the decisive question next recurs, What the eighth head of the Beast, on this h^ pothesis of the Praeterists : Nero being the sixth ; and, as they generally say, Galba, who reigned but a short 1 So Moses Stuart and Dr. Davidson, after Benary. See the Excursus iv. p. 457 in Professor Stuart's 2nd Volume. — Eichhorn, ii. 134, gives Irenaeus' old solution, Aa-rtivos. * See my Vol. iii. pp. 245 — 248. CH. I. § 1.] i.ikmw IfXBONIC ri: 1 i i.::i>r 00UXTIB-8CHIXX. 589 time, the seventh t It is admitted (and common boom itself forces tin- admission) that this eighth head is the same which is said in A.poc. riii. •'>, 1-. 1 l, uto have hud a wound with <> sword and to have revived:*1 and it is this revived head, or Beast under it, (let my Readers well mark this,1) that is the Bubjeci of all the prophecy concerning the first Beast in Apoc. xiii., and all concerning the Beast ridden by the Woman in A.poc. wii. What then, we ask, this eighth head of the Beast ? And, in reply, first Eichhorn, and then his copyists llfinrichs. Stuart, Davidson, all four refer us to a rumour prevalent in Nero's time, ami believed by many, that after Buffering some reverse he would return again to power: a rumour Which after his death took the form that he would revive again, and reappear, and retake the empire- Sueh is their explanation. The eighth head of the Beast is the imaginary revived Xero. — But do they not explain the Beast (the revived Beast) in Apoe. xiii., and bis blasphemies, and persecution of the saints, and predicated continu- ance VI months, o\' the real original Nero, and his blasphemies and his three or four years' persecution of the Christians, begun No- vember, lit. A.l). and ended with Nero's death, June 9, A.I). G8 ? Sueli indeed is the case; and by this palpable self-contradiction, which however they cannot do without,) they give to their own solution its death-wound: as much its death-wound, 1 may say, as that given to the Beast itself to which the solution relates. So that really, as regards the truth of the solution concerned, it is needless to go further. Nor shall I stop to expose sundry other ab- surdities that might easily be shown to attach to it: e. g. the sup- posed figuration of the fall of the Pagan Roman empire in the fall of the individual emperor Nero, albeit succeeded by Pagan emperors like himself.3 — But I cannot feel it right to conclude my critical e\- 1 For it is said in xvii. 8, " tho Beast thou sawest (i. c. ridden l>y the Woman) was, and is not, ami i> to riae from the abyss : " and in rone 11, " The Beast which was, und i- Dot, he ii the eighth, and i.- of the h k b." Professor Stuart in hi> Excursus iii. (Vol ii. ]). 131 admits the identity of the Sth load in Apoc. \\i\., anil revived head ^, and renewed the contest till Constantino. ML A- !'• _■ ...i- (b / n', with the tomb-Skin ri.r.-rln;/, made by tin-. as well Stuart, ii. 283, and Davidson in Kill", p. 834, BI Bit I " the l„ a- 58 1 Kill TATION OF CHIEF APOC COUNTER-SCIIEMES. [aPP. PART II. animation of the system without a remark as to something on this head far graver, and more to be reprobated, than any mere expository error, however gross or obvious. The reader will have observed that as well Prof. Stuart and Dr. Davidson, as the German Eichhorn, ex- plain the repeated direct statements, " The Beast had a wound with the sword, and lived" " The Beast that thou sawest is not, and shall be, and is to ascend from the abyss," &c. &c, to be simply allusions to a rumour current in Nero's time, but which in fact was an al- together false rumour. That is, they make St. John tell a direct lie : and tell it, with all the most flagrant aggravation that fancy itself can suppose to attach to a lie ; viz. under the form of a solemn pro- phecy received from heaven ! Now of Eichhorn, and others of the same German rationalistic school of theology, we must admit that they are here at least open and consistent. Tlieir declared view of the Apocalypse is as of a mere uninspired poem by an uninspired poet. So it was but a recognized poetical license in St. John to tell the falsehood. But that men professing belief in the Christian faith, and in the divine inspiration as well as apostolic origin of this Book, should so represent the matter, is surely as surprising as lamentable. It is but in fact the topstone-crowning to that explaining away of the prophetic symbols and statements, as mere epopee, of which I spoke before,1 as characteristic of the system. And how does it show the danger of Christian men indulging in long and friendly familiarity with infidel writings ! Eor not only are the Scriptural expository principles and views of Christian men and Neologists so essentially different, that it is impossible for their new wine to be put into our old bottles, without the bottles bursting ; but the receiver himself is led too often heedlessly to sip of the poison, and bethinks him not that death is in the cup.2 then idolatrous priesthood," the unscripturalness of the interpretation is noted at p. 592 infra, in my review of Bossuet. > P. 569. 2 Let me beg the reader to observe that I have in my examination of the German Prneterist Scheme, here concluded, tested it simply by Apocalyjrtic evidence, and shown how little it will bear that testing. The proof is only the stronger against it, if we add the additional tests -of the cognate prophecy in Daniel. For the identity of the little horn of the fourth of Daniel's four Beasts, with the last head of the Apoca- lyptic Beast, is a point clear and irrefragable. And it is on its destruction that Mes- siah's universal and everlasting kingdom is declared to be established ; and that " the kingdom and dominion and greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven is given to the people of the saints of the Most High," even " for ever and ever." A prophetic declaration this which is indeed repeated in the Apocalyptic figurations : but which, cii. I. I 2.] BOBBTTST's DOMITIANIO PRJCTBBI8T COUKTEB-8CHBME. ■"> s"> § 2. i:\AMiN\rin\ 01 B0B8TrBT'B DOMITXAKIO, OB 0HXB1 SOMAS I \ i B01 [0 l'K l n:i;i- r, LPO( i L"J i'i tO B< m:\ii..1 It may probably at onoe strike the reflective reader thai if the chronology of Bossuet's scheme, extending as it decs from Domitian'fl time to the fall of tin- Etonian empire in the 5th century, do in regard of tin- supposed Roman catastrophe abundantly better suit with historic fact than the German .Neronic or Galbaic Prssterist Sehetne, it is on the other hand quite as much at disadvantage in respect of the other, or Jeiouik catastrophe. For surely thai catas- trophe was effected in the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, above 20 yean before Bossuet's Domitiauic date of the Apocalypse : and all that past afterwards under Hadrian was a mere rider to the great catastrophe. But to details. And here at the outset Bossuet's vague general- izing views of the live first Seals meet lis; as if really little more than the preliminary introduction on the sceue of the chief dramatis -nice, or agent*, afterwards to appear in action; viz. Christ the pieror, War, Famine, Pest He nee, Christian Martyr* : followed in the Oth by a preliminary representation, still as general, of the impending double, or rather treble catastrophe, that would involve C'hriM's enemies; whether Jews, Romans, or those that would be destroyed at the last day. A view this that even Bossuet's most ardent disciples will, I am sure, admit to be one not worth detaining us even a moment: seeing that, from its professedly generalizing character, the whole figuration might jusl as well he explained by Protestants with reference to the overthrow of one kind of enemy, as by Romanists of another. — Nor indeed is there anything more distinctive in his Trumpets : with which, however, he tells us, there i> to begin the particular development of events. For, having settled that the Israelitish Tribes mentioned in Apoc. vii. mean the on their own mode of reasoning, tin Pratt ristl must, I think, find it more difficult to ..11 from those to tin- same effect in tin' Apocalypse. I hare not spoken in this Section of tin- dag-day principle of explaining tin Apo- calyptic chronological periods; a principle of count Bspoused by, and essential to, thjs class of interpreters. In my Chapter on the year-day (Vol. iii. Perl i\- Chap. is.) 1 have, I hope, sufficiently vindicated that principle. An additional remark or two with referee of it, may he given in a Section fol* lowing. 1 See generally, in illustration of the wnfag oriticiam, my sketch of Bossuet's Apocalyptic Interpretation, beginning p. 601 supri. 586 REFUTATION OF CHIEF APOC. COUNTER-SCHEMES. [APP. PART II. •lews literally, (the 141.000 being the Christian converts out of them,) and so furnish indication that they are parties concerned in ■what follows in the figurations, (though the temple, all the while prominent in vision, is both in the 5th Seal before, and in the figura- tion of the "Witnesses afterwards, construed by Bossuet, not of the literal Jewish temple, but of the Christian Church,) he coops up these Jews, and all that is to' be developed respecting them, within the four first Trumpets : — the hail-storm of Trumpet 1 being Trajan's victory over them ; the burning mountain of Trumpet 2 Adrian's victories ; (why the one or the other, or the one more than the other, does not appear ;) the falling star of Trumpet 3 figuring their false prophet Barchochebas, " Son of a star" who stirred up the Jews to war ; (of course however before the war with Adrian, signi- fied in the preceding vision, not after it ;) and the obscuration of the third part of sun, moon, and stars, in Trumpet 4, indicating not any national catastrophe or extinction, but the partial obscuration of the scriptural light before enjoyed by the Jews, through Akiba's Bab- binic School then instituted, and the publication of the Talmud. As if forsooth the light of Scripture had shone full upon them previously : and not been long before quenched by their own un- belief ; even as St. Paul tells us that the veil was upon their hearts. Bid Bossuet really believe in the absurdity that he has thus given us for an Apocalyptic explanation ? — In concluding however at this point with the Jews, and turning to Rome Pagan as the subject of the following symbolizations, he acts at any rate as a reasonable man ; giving this very sufficient reason for the transition, that they who were to suffer under the plagues of the 5th and 6th Trumpets are marked in Apoc. ix. 20 as iciol-icorsliippers, which certainly the Jews were not. A palpable distinctive this which, but for stubborn fact contradicting our supposition,1 one might surely have thought that no interpreter of this, or of any other Apocalyptic School, would have had the hardihood even to attempt to set aside. Only does not the statement about the unslain remnant's non-repenting of them imply that the slain part had previously been guilty of the selfsame sins of idolatry ? So, passing now to the heathen Romans, with reference to their his- 1 See my notice on this point, in the critical examination of the German Pra;terists, juat preceding. ill. l. § 2.] B08S1 ri '> DOMITXANIC Ml I rXBIBT < "i n. i i ft-SCHJ mi , ~'v7 toryin tin- times following on Barchochebas and tin- Talmud, the tion-loeusts of Trumpet 5 arc made l>.\ our Expositor t<> mean poisonoufl Judaising heresies, which then infected tin' Christian Church: (Was it notMa piece of waggery" in Bossuet, exclaims Moses Stuart,1 s.i t<> explain it ':) Trumpei 6, somewhal better, the loosing "i" the ESuphratean Persians onder Sapor, that defeated ami took prisoner the emperor Valerian ; though it is to be remarked that Valerian was the aggressor in the war. no1 Sapor, ami In- defeat in Mesopotamia some way beyond the Euphrates. — All which of course fS no more pretensions to real evidence than what went before: indeed, its total want of anything like even the semblance of evidence makes it wearisome to notice it. Yet it is by no means unimportant with reference to the point in hand; for it shows, even to demon- stration, the utter impossibility of making anything of the Seals and Trumpets on Bossuet's Scheme. — Let us then hasten to what both hi' ami his disciples consider to constitute the real strength of his Apocalyptic Exposition : viz. bis interpretation of the "Beast from the abyss, with its seven heads and ten horns, and of the Woman riding on it : as svmbolizations respectively of the Pagan lloman Emperors, and Payaii Rome. The notices of this Beast occur successively in Apoc. \i., \iii-, and xvii. First, in Apoc. xi. the Beast is mentioned passingly and an- tieipatively, as the Beast from the abyss, the slayer of Christ's two witnesses. Next, in Apoc. xiii. it appears figured oil the scene as the Dragon's successor, bearing seven beads ami ten horns ; (one head excised, with the BWOrd, but healed:) another Brest, tini-horm i/, mpanying it, as its associate and minister; and its name and number being further noted as 666. Once more, in Apoc. xvii. it appears with a Woman, declared to be Boinr, seated on it: and sundry mysteries are then expounded by the Angel, about its seven bea. Is and tell horns. Now then tor Dossuet's explanation. This Beasl . sa\ s he, is the /,' /' /.' ,///v. at the time of the great Diocletian persecu- tion ; its seven heads being the S6V6U emperors engaged in that persecution, or in the I.icinian persecution, its speedy sequel: viz. . Diocletian, Valerius, Maximian, Constant ins ;. then, Maxeiitius. Bfaximin, and Licinius. Of which seven "five had fallen " at the 1 Vol i. p. 487. 588 REFUTATION OF CHIEF APOC. COUNTER-SCHEMES. [APP. PART II. time of the vision ; " one was" viz. Maximin ; another " had not yet come,''' viz. Licinius ; and the eighth, "which was of the seven," was Maximian resuming the emperorship after he had abdicated. As to the name and number, it was Diodes Augustus; which in Latin gives precisely the number GGO. Further, the revived Beast of Apoc. xiii. (revived after the fatal sword-wound of the head that was) figured the emperor Julian ; and the second Beast, with two lamb- like horns, the Pagan Platonic priests of the time, that supported him : the stated time of whose reign, 42 months, was simply a term of time borrowed from the duration of the reign of the persecutor Antiochus Epiphanes ; signifying that it would, like his, have fixed limits, and be short. — With regard to the ten horns that gave their power to the Beast, these signified the Gothic neighbouring powers ; which for a while ministered to Imperial Eome, by furnishing soldiers and joining alliance ; but which were soon destined to tear and deso- late the Woman Eome ; as they did in the great Gothic invasions, beginning with Alaric, ending with Totilas. At the time of which last Gothic ravager, Eome's desolation answered strikingly to the picture of desolated Babylon in Apoc. xviii. — As to the Woman riding the Beast, the very fact of her being called a harlot, not an adulteress, showed that it must mean heathen, not Christian Eome. Such is in brief Bossuet's explanation. Now as regards both the first Beast, and the second Beast, and the Woman too, let it be marked how utterly it fails ; and this is not in one particular only, but in multitudes. Thus as to the first Beast. — 1. The seven heads, he says, were the seven persecutors of the Diocletianic a^ra. But the emperor Severus, Galerius' colleague and co-persecutor, as Bossuet admits, is arbitrarily omitted by him, simply in order not to exceed the seven. 2. The Beast from the abyss, being the Beast that kills the Witnesses, is made in Apoc. xi. to be the Empire under- Diocletian : whereas in Apoc. xvii. the Beast from the abyss (and the distinctive article pre- cludes the idea of two such Beasts) is explained of a head that was to come after the head that then was ; this latter being Maximin, himself posterior to Diocletian. 3. The head that was wounded with the sword being, according to Bossuet, the sixth head "that was," or Max- imin, its healing ought to have been in the next head in order, that is Licinius. But, this not suiting, he oversteps Licinius; and ex- OB. l. § B.] BOS8X i r*> DOMITZANXC n: I I I BUST OOXJKT u;-m iii.mk. 589 plains the healed head of one much later, Julian. 1. The Beael with t!u> healed head being Julian, the subject of the description in Ajinc. xiii., the Beaat'a name and number ought of course to be the name and number of Julian. Hut no Bolution suitable to this striking hiin, Boaeuet makes it Dioolea /Luguatua; Hie name of the Beast Under a head lon^ previous. 5. As to this name, Diodes Augustus, it is not only in Latin numerals, which ou every account are objection- able, and which no early patristic expositor ever thought of;1 but, in point o( tact, is a conjunction of two such titles as never co-existed ; Diocletian being never called Diodes when emperor, i. e. when Au- gustus.2 6. The Beast " that was, and is not, and is to go into per- dition," being u the eighth, yet one of the seven," Bossuet makes to be Maximum resuming the empire after his abdication. But the prophetic statement requires that this eighth should rise up after that "which was," viz. Maximin; whereas ^Maxirnian's resumption of the empire was before Maximin. — 7. As to the idea of Julian's hatred of, and disfavour to Christianity, answering to what is said in Apoc, xiii. of the Beast under his revived head making war on the saints, and conquering them, it seems almost too absurd to notice. In proof I need only refer to Julian's own tolerating Decree about Christians;3 and the behaviour of Bossuet's saints, i. e. of the pro- ng Christians of the time, at Antioch towards^Julian.4 — 8. The i See my Vol. iii. p. 246, Note": and compare the Greek patri-tric explanations of the Beast's name and number there given ; and also at pp. 278, •■'., :; 12, 346 supra. — The earliest Latin solution that I remember to have seen is that of Die Lux, by Ambrose Ansbert in the viiith Century. See p. 351 supra. : So Rasche on Diocletianus : " Donee imperium sumeret Diodes appdlatas : ubi orbis Romani potentiam eepit Gra:cum nomen in Romanum morem convertit, dic- tnsque est Diocletianus." Even after his abdication he still retained the latter name. Ibid. s Ouctva yovv avTwv UKoirra irpos fiwuovs twfxii/ IXntodai. It was almost an Edict of toleration. So Gieseler, Second Period, *> 71 (Vol. i. p. 184) : " He took away the privileges of Christians, [i. e. privileges granted them by former Emperon above Pa- gans,] and forbade their teaching publicly in the schools ; but in all other respects he promised to leave them unmolested." Bossuet indeed (on Apoc. xiii. 5) very much allows this. " Du temps de Julien il n'y cut aw mm interruption dant public de VEglise ;" adding however ; " Au reste il n'y a rien eu de plus dur a I'Eglisi let iiuiultes de Julien;" &c. — Gie-ekr tome repTCMntl the wont that Julian did. • A!', rwvdl he was guilty of some acts of injustice towards the Christiana ; though often, no doubt, provoked hj th nil iiimiaaoiisMii zeal. They suffered matt however from the heathen governor- and populace." But how little to their destruction, or subjugation, see in the du \t N 4 " At Antioch he bon I f the Christian populace with philosophical in- difference.' I ■ amount in Gibbon; who however on aab- j' BtS connected with Christianity is always to be read with caution. 590 REFUTATION OP CHIEF APOC. COUNTER-SCHEMES, [A PP. PAST II. contrast of the Beast's time of reigning, viz. 3| years, with Diocle- 1 inn's ID years and Julian's 1 '., might lie also strongly argued from. But I pass it over cursorily ; as Bossuet confesses to have no ex- planation to offer of it, except that it is an allusion to the duration of the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes ! ' So as to the Beast's heads : and still a similar incongruity strikes one ahout the Beast's horns. Take but two points. First, these horns, " having received no kingdom as yet," i. e. at the time of the Revelation, were to receive authority as kings p.iav upav fitra tov Qiipiov, " at one time with the Beast.'1'' So the doubtless true reading, and true rendering, as Bossuet allows. But how then applicable to the kings of the ten Gothic kingdoms ? — kingdoms founded long subsequent to both Diocletian and Julian ; and when the Roman empire under their headships, (which is Bossuet's Beast,) had become a thing of the past. To solve the difficulty, Bossuet waves the ma- gician's rod ; and, without a word of warning, suddenly makes the Beast to mean something quite different from what it was before : viz. to be Home, or the Roman empire, of a later headship than the 8th, or latest specified. Says he "their kingdoms will synchronize with the Beast, that is with Home : because Borne will not all at once [i. e. not immediately on the Goths' first attacks, begun about A.D. 400] have lost its existence, or all its power ! " 2 — Yet, again, second!)/, these horns were with one accord to impart their power and authority to the Beast ; of course after themselves receiving this authority : i. e. as the context of the verse demonstrates, after re- ceiving their kingdoms. But how so ? Says Bossuet, because of their giving their men to be soldiers of the Roman armies, and of their settling as cultivators in the empire, and making alliances with the Boman emperors. But, as to time, could this be said of the reigns of Diocletian or Julian, when the Gothic ten kings had re- ceived no authority as kings, in the Apocalyptic sense of the word ? 3 And, as to the character of the thing, could it be said of the Gothic 1 Sec ]>. 689 supra. 2 Mr. Milcy overcomes the difficulty by silently adopting the reading /xiTa to diipiov, after the. Beast ; though a reading unauthorized by Greek MSS. and refuted by the very symbol of the horns being upon the Beast's head. See, says he, (ii. 122,) the marvellous fulfilment ! " The destroyers of the Western Empire of Rome were all adventurer kings, daring chiefs from the wilds of the North and North-East ; who all succeeded in erecting certain fabrics of power upon the ruins of the Empire." 3 They were rather as yet undiademed horns. Apoc. xii. 3. en. i. § -J/ B0881 i C'8 n.>Mi I I \\K PB i m.uim 001 NT] tt-8( in mi;. 59] settlements in the empire, when sometimes terrible :tiul destructive, (like that of the Yisi-t ; i >t lis under \ siens) that it was a giving their pOWtr iri/li onr accord to the Unmans / Then turn we to tiieseeond Bead. And lei me here simply ask, How could Bossuetfs Pagan Philosophers, sealots thai blasphemed Chrisl as the Galilean, answer to the symbol of a Beast with a lamb- skin covering: the recognized scriptural emblem under the Old Testament of false prophets who yet professed to be prophets of the true God;1 under the Neu> Testament of such as would hypocriti- cally pretend to be Christians?2 Once more, as to the Woman. And here, 1. instead of the word -n.ii-i;. harlot, fixing her to he Borne Pagan, so as Bossuet asserts, not Christian Koine apostatized, it most fitly suits the latter; being applied in the Septuagint to apostatizing Judah,8 in Matthew to an unfaithful wife.1 2. What the mystery to make St. John so marvel with a mighty astonishment, if the emblem meant Rome Pagan F8 Did he not know Borne Pagan to be a persecutor ; know it alike by bis own experience, and that of all bis brotherhood? 3. What of the total and eternal destruction predicated of the Apocalyptic Babylon. " the smoke of it going up even ac roue awvaa rwc cuuvmv, for ever add for ever"* if there was meant merely the brief tem- porary desolation of Borne Pagan, in transitu to Borne Papal? 4. What of its being afterwards the abode of all unclean beasts and demons? Would Bossuet, observes Vitringa, have these to be the Popes and Cardinals of Papal Borne ? 5. Was it really S /' m that was desolated by the Goths; so as Bossuet and his fol- lowers would have it ? Surely, if there be a fact clear in history, it is this, that it was Some Christianized in profession, I might almost say. Uomt /'''j't'I, that was the subject of these desolations.7 is last point is one which, if proved, utterly overthrows the whole Bo8Suetan or Boman-Catholic Apocalyptic Praeterisl Scheme, Romanists have be n ai great pains to represent the fact other- wise. So Bossuet in his Chap. iii. 12 10; and Mr. Mile} too, just ntly, in his Home Pagan and Papal. " It is well nigh a century 1 Compare Zcch. xiii I. ' Compare Matt. vii. 15, 22. . 1. 21, &c. ' Matt v. 82, six. 9. ■■ Apoc. »> ;\. 3. : Of tl theory] find 1 , 2, 3 are urge 1 by Lambert, ii. • Lacunas, i. 241—244. 592 REFUTATION OF CHIEF APOC. COUNTER-SCHEMES. [APP. PART II. since the triumph of the labarum," says the latter writer in one of his vivid sketches, with reference to the epoch of Alaric's first attack on Eome, " and Borne still wears the aspect of a Pagan city : — one hundred and fifty-two temples, and one hundred and eighty smaller shrines, are still sacred to the heathen gods, and used for their public worship.'" l On what authority Mr. M. makes such an assertion I know not. Bossuet takes care not quite so far to commit himself. The facts of the case are, I believe, as follows. Constantine did not authoritatively abolish Paganism : but he so showed disfavour to it that it rapidly sunk into discredit in the empire ; less however at Bome than elsewhere. With Julian came a partial and short-lived revival of Paganism; followed on his death by a reaction in favour of Christianity. But "from that period up to the fall of the empire a hostile sect, which regarded itself as unjustly stripped of its ancient honours, invoked the vengeance of the gods on the heads of the Government, exulted in the public calamities, and probably hast- ened them by its intrigues." So Sismondi, with his usual accuracy, as quoted by Mr. Miley.2 Of this sect were various members of the Boman senate. On Theodosius' becoming sole emperor, i. e. emperor of the West as well as East, one of his first measures, A.D. 392, was to forbid the worship of idols on pain of death? At Bome, however, by a certain tacit license, or connivance, heathen worship was still in a measure permitted : until in 394 himself visiting Bome, and finding a reluctance to abolish what remained of Pagan rites on the part "of many of the senators, Theodosius withdrew the public funds by which they had been supported. On this the old Pagan worship was discontinued : 4 and, the Pagan temples having in many places soon after been destroyed by the zeal of Christians, the very fact of Pagan worship having been discontinued was given by Honorius, the Western Emperor, as a reason for not destroying 1 Rome Pagan and Papal, Vol. ii. p. 103. 2 Ibid. p. 108. 3 So Gicselcr, Vol. i. p. 187 ; to whose account, pp. 186 — 191, I here refer gener- ally. * So Zosimus v. 38 : Tiji/ Sri/noa-iav £airavi)v tois lipois ~xppiyyi.iv apvi) DOMITZANIO Hi 1 1 T.KIST COUNTKK-scii KM I'.. 593 the temple aV'/vVa-.1 — Such was the state of things when Alaric first invaded Italy. And it was only in W9, after he bad begun the siege of Borne, and Gofa judgment began tobejeli, that the Pagan /befton or sect, spoken of by Sismondi, stirred itaelf up: and raising the cry that the calainin came in consequence of the gods of oil Rome hoping been neglectea? prevailed on the authorities, including Pope Innocent himself, to sacrifice to them in the capitol and other temples.3 But this was a comparatively solitary act. As the judg- ment of the Gothic desolations went on, it was only in secret that the worship of the heathen gods was kept up; and this in refer- ence to such more trivial Pagan rites, as taking auguries.4 The dominant religion, that which was alone legalized in Eome, as well as elsewhere throughout the empire, and whose worship was alone celebrated openly and with pomp, was the Christian religion with the Pope as its head. Insomuch that in 450, just at the epoch of Genseric and Attala, Pope Leo, in an address to the people of Pome on St. Peter and St. Paul's day, thus characterized Pome and the Roman people : — " These are they that have advanced you to the glory of being a holy nation, a chosen people, a priestly and royal city : so as that thou shouldest be, through the seat of Peter, the head of the world ; and with wider rule through religion than by mere earthly domination." 5 Was it then Borne Pagan, or Home incipicnthj Papal, that was the subject of Alaric's first attack, and of the subsequent ravages of ] ''Ut profanos rilusjam salubri lege submorimus, ita festos conventus civium . . non patimur submoveri : " and again ; " JEdes, illicitis rebus vacuas, nostrarum bencficio sanctionum, nc quis conetur cvcrtcrc." * So ZonmOl IT. O'J : Tou \Oviyiro\inou OtcTfiou \»|£ai/Tos, teat, tidv aWusv ocra Ttj? trtnpiov Trapaooatwi i]V iv ap.i\tia Ktipivwu, ?'; 'Vwfiatwv nriKpartui . . jiapftapwv otKi)T>ipioi> yiyovt. So too Augustine in his C. D. v. 23. 3 Avayaaiov icomt toii *\\i|«/i£ou K«7riT(o\i(o »oi tois o.Woit vaoi*. So Su/onu n ix.fi. To which Zo-dmus adds; 6 Si Ivvokiv- Ttov, Tt)i> tijs iruXiwi auiTijpiav ifxirpooQtv tms oikiws irotfjo-u^n/os Go£i|S, XaOpu upT\Kiv au-roit iroiiiv uirip lo-ao-i. v. 11. Where mark the i\\i)wJoi»T£t, as cha- racterizing those of tin- Senator! who were most bent on sacrificing to the ancient . and the i$qrar, as marking the Pope'a authority even at that time in Home. fl . uked ior, uid indeed Lrivcn. B uVian, A I), no : ■' Xumquid non oonenlibni et pulli adhuc gentilium sacri- legiorum more paacontor, et volantis pennaa auguria quaeruntur I " ' •• [ati >unt qui te ad banc gloriam provexemnt; ut gens nncta, populus elcctus, civitas $aa /"//'/, Pi \ n i;--m n i.m r.. 598 CHAPTEH ll. 1 \ WIIN \ Ni>>' OF THE FUTUJUSTs' A l'i iriM I' I I 0 SCII KMT. Tin' Fi/fitrixfs' is tin' tecontJ, or rathor third, grand ant i- Protestant Apocalyptic Schema. 1 might perhaps have thought it sufficient to four :— in the tir>t 7 w« ks .ii rusalem to l>c rebuilt ; within the next 62 Meariah to in- cut otr; in the midst of the List 70th week the Jewish city ;iml temple to be destroy- ed ; end with its end the power of " the deeolator" (i. a. the desolating Etonian hea- then power) to end. So Daniel. Also Christ ; " When ye sec the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet, &0., then know that the rd. tile dearths preceding the siege, and during the siege of Jerusalem : the 4th, as including the 1th day of Daniel's 70th week, must consequently include and refer to the faU of Jerusalem, which was to place in the middle of the last week: the 5th, tells of further persecutions and martyrdoms of the taints, chiefly from the h< • eutors : the 6th, figures all 1 '-to the end of the 70th » meats alike <>n Jews and Gentiles. Within this 6th Seal there is included the palmbearing vision of the elect out of all US, singing the song of salvation. This howi n r is an anticipation of the 7th Seal, figuring the sabbath of rest; and of which tin half-hour's silence marks the closing end. — As regards the Trumpets, without entering into full detail, the three first depict ■lea until thl ■ poch and c\i ut of the fall of Jerusalem; while the 1th Trumpet, with its 3rd of the sun smitten, marks the beginning of the distress ofna- the J< trs included among the rest. The locusts of the 6th Trumpet are a kind of commencement of the plague of the 6th in which 6th Satan, let loose in the post- mi'.lenni al loosing, his binding having been from the commencement of the apostles' hing to the fall of Jerusalem,] gathers his powers against Christ's cause and '-nut of the Jews into the onto r- trne tempi tch of Christ's witness* from the time of the 1st Bead, and for all the tirst r..J days of tin 7oth week, b Bring lony for him in sackcloth and trial, until assailed in the latf of it by the Beast from tl heathen Etoman power; and then being killed, but pre- sently after revived and mist d t'l i Leration, under Constantine. — Which retrogn salve and supplementary sketch being concluded, the 6th is followed by the 7th Trumpet, and it.s closing song of triumph. 38 • 59G BEFUTATION OF CHIEF APOC. COUNTER-SCHEMES. [APP. PART II. refer the reader to Mr. Birks' masterly Work in refutation of it,1 but for the consideration that my own Work would he incomplete without some such examination of this futurist Scheme, as of the Schemes preceding : moreover that on more than one point (chiefly as regards the Gth Seal and the Apocalyptic Beast) Mr. Birks' own views, of some of which I have spoken elsewhere,2 must necessarily, in my mind, have prevented his doing full justice to the argument. In the sketch thus given the reader sees pretty much the peculiarities and main points of Dr. Lee's Apocalyptic theory. But it may be well to add a notice of one or two other matters as explained by him ; more especially in Apoc. xii., xiii., and xx. In Apoc. xii. then, the travailing woman is the true Zion ; the man child, Christ, in his character as the Head of the Church : while the war in heaven symbolizes Satan's wrath and power, as put forth in all its energy against both Christ and Christ's apostles, even to the eud of the apostles' lives : a power met however by a still greater power in Christ and his apostles ; (as it was said, " I give you power to tread on all the power of the enemy ; ") until at length in the destruction of the reprobate Jerusalem, till then Satan's high and sacred seat, he was cast as it were to the earth ; and forced to make use of the lower heathen agency against the Christian Church. So in Apoc. xiii. he raises up the Beast against the holy remnant of the woman's seed ; in other words, the persecuting Roman heathen power, from Domitian down to Diocletian inclusive : the which synchronizes with the latter half of the 70th week ; as his war against Christians through the Jeics did with the former half of it. — But now turn to Apoc. xx. According to the Professor's millennial view we find that it is during the same first half of the week, and so during all his energetic warring aforesaid against the Church through Jewish agency, from the beginning of the apostles' preaching even to the fall of Jerusalem, that the Devil has been all along bound and sealed up in the abyss, so that he might no more deceive the nations ! ! As to the Devil's loosing after this, for a little season, it is the time of his opposing and persecuting the Church through the agency of heathen Roman emperors : that same persecution that is meant by the symbols of the Gth Trumpet, as well as by the symbol also of the Beast in Apoc. xiii. For the hour, day, month, and year of the one = the 3j times, the time, times, and half a time, of the other : = also Ezekiel's 7 years, = the same prophet's 7 months. (Ezek. xxxix. 9, 12.)* Finally, the destruc- tion of Satan and his hosts, on their compassing the beloved city, signifies the fall of the Pagan Roman power : and the Apocalyptic new heaven and new earth, the Christian Church as established after Coustantine. Dr. Lee has great confidence in these views. " It is as clear," says he, " as words can make it that the thousand years (or millennium) must have constituted the apostolic period ; and have continued to the fall of the temple, and commencement of the (heathen Roman) persecutions : also that the general encompassing of the camp of the saints, the beloved city, must signify the persecutions generally under the reign of the little horn ; and that the fire which consumed the besiegers can be no other than the burning flame of Daniel, to which the body of the Beast was to be con- signed : and, lastly, that this destruction by fire should close this warfare, and deliver •up the universal and everlasting empire de facto to the Son of Man." f My respect for Dr. Lee has induced me not to pass over his Apocalyptic theory without notice. The same respect makes mc glad to think that there is no such probability of its ever making way with the public, as to render necessary my criticising it. 1 The Work referred to at p. 557 supra. 2 Viz. in my Critique in the Appendix to Vol. i. * See Lee's Chart, facing p. 231. f Ibid. p. 472. CHAP. n.~ n n kists' APOCALYPTIC 0OUNTXS-80HB1CL 597 — Besides which, there is otherwise abundantly rufficienl difference be- tween us to prevent all appearance of my trenching on bis ground.1 The futurist Scheme, at I Have elsewhere stated,1 was first, or nearly fust, propounded about the year l"»s"> by the Jesuit Kibera ; ns the fittest one whereby to turn aside the Protestant application <>t' the Apocalyptic prophecy from the Church of Rome. In England ami Ireland o{' late years it has been brought into vogue chiefly by Mr. (now Dr.) B. K. Maitland and Mr. Burgh; followed by the writer of four of the Oxford Tracts on Antichrist.3 Its general characteristic is to view the whole Apocalypse, at least from after the Epistles to the Seven Cburebes, as a representation of the events of the consummation and second advent, all still future : the Israel depicted in it being the literal Israel ; the temple, Apoe. xi., a literal rebuilt Jewish temple at Jerusalem; and the Anticbrist, or Apo- calyptic Beast under bis last bead, a personal infidel Antichrist * fated to reign and triumph over the saints for B^ years, (the days in the chro- nological periods being all literal days,) until Christ's coming shall destroy him. Of which advent of Christ, and events immediately procursive to it. the symbols of the six first Seals are supposed to ex- hibit a prefiguration singularly like what is given in Matt. xxiv. ; and therefore strongly corroborative of the futurist view of the Seals and the Apocalypse. — Thus, while agreeing fully with the Prreterista on the day-day principle, and partly with them as to the literal Israel's place in the prophecy, they are the direct antipodes of the Prateriats in their view of the time to which the main part of the Apocalypse relates, and the person or power answering to the symbol of the Apocalyptic Beast : the one assigning all to the long distant past, the other to the yet distant future. And here is in fact a great advantage that they have over the Pneterists, that, instead of being M any measure chained down by the facts of history, they can draw on the unlimited powers of fancy, wherewith to devise in the dreamy future whatever may seem to them to fit the sacred prophecy. 1 It may be right to add that the main part of the present Section formed the con- clusion of my Chapter on the Year-day in tin- first Edition : (from p. 882 to 1007 :) ■which Edition, though ptMuktd after Mr. liirks' work, was, up to the end of Part V., including tin- Chapter -poki n of, jirin'ni tome eontidenble time before it ; and 1, in that incomplete state, was in Mr. Ilirk-.' hands, as well as Mr. Bickcr- ■ ngiigcd in writing his hook. Mr. I;irk> howerec made a point, as he DM told me, of not reading that partirular Chapter; in order that hi-. | ti i..< nt might I" altogether indepi Liie. * See p. 180ntpriL a Sit p, .",.").") nipriL 4 Mr. Burgh's peculiar way of stating this will be noted presently. 59S REFUTATION OP CHIEF APOC. COUNTER-SCHEMES. [aPP. PART II. -Notwithstanding this we shall, I doubt not, find abundantly suf- ficient evidence in the sacred prophecy to repel and refute the crude theory ; whether in its more direct and .simple form, or in any such modified form as some writers of late have preferred to advocate. The consideration of the latter I reserve for another Section. That of the former will be the subject of the Section on which we are now entering. § 1. ORTOINAL UNMODIFIED FUTURIST SCHEME. I purpose to discuss it with reference separately to each of the four points just noticed as its most marked characteristics: — viz. the supposed instant plunge of the prophecy into the far distant future of Christ's coming and the consummation ; — the supposed parallelism of the subjects of the Apocalyptic Seals with the successive signs specified by Christ in his prophecy on Mount Olivet as what would precede and usher in his coming ; — the supposed literal intent of the Israel men- tioned in the Apocalyptic prophecy ; — and the supposed time, place, and character of its intended Antichrist. I. The supposed instant plunge of the Apocalyptic pro- phecy INTO THE DISTANT FUTURE OF THE CONSUMMATION. Now, to begin, there seems here in the very idea of the thing a> something so directly contrary to all God's previous dealings with his people, and to all that He has himself led us to expect of Him, as to make it all but incredible, unless some clear and direct evidence be producible in proof of it. We read in Amos (iii. 7), " Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his serv- ants the prophets." And of this God's principle of action all Scrip- ture history is but a continued exemplification : his mode having been to give the grand facts of prophecy in the first instance, and then, as time went on, to furnish more and more of particulars and detail : so, gradually but slowly, filling up prophetically that part of the original prophetic outline in which the Church for the time being might have a special interest ; but always with the grand main point kept also in view. Thus to Adam, after the fall, there was revealed God's mighty purpose of the redemption of our fallen world through the seed of the woman : to Noah, together with declaration that this original covenanted promise was renewed to him, the prediction of CHAT. II. § 1.] Or.ll.lN.M. \ NM(H)HH.l) IIUKI-I si ill. Ml.. (91 the OOmil&g judgment of the Hood: to Jhniham, together With siini- Ur renewal of the grind covenant respecting Him in whom all the funilies of the earth should be blessed, the more particular prediction and promise, also, as to his natural seed becoming a nation, and oc- QOpying Canaan : to Moses, when loading Abraham's family, now become ■ nation, from Egypt, together with reminiscence of the great Prophet like him, that was to eome, sundry prediction! also shout the several tribes; and further, respecting Israel nationally, the pre- diction of its apostasy from God in the course of time, and conse- quent temporary easting oil', captivity, and return. So too Again, 1 ing after, when the time of their first captivity drew near, together with repetition of the same great promise, which in the interim had been ever more and more particularly dwelt on, e. g. especially by David and Isaiah, — I say as the time of Israel's first captivity drew near, then there was predicted by Jeremiah its appointed term, 70 years ; and then again, just at the close of the 70 years of that cap* tivity, DanieFx memorable prophecy of there being appointed yet 70 weeks, or 400 years, until Messiah should come, and be cut off though not for himself, and the Jewish city and sanctuary be destroyed by a Prince that should arise : a prophecy this last which Christ himself, after coming at the time so defined, expanded, when speaking to his disciples on Mount Olivet, into the full and detailed prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem. Such, I say, had been the method pur- sued by God for above 4000 years, in the prophetic communications to his people, through all the Old Testament history. And now then when the prophetic Spirit spoke again, and for the last time, by the mouth of his apostles, more especially of the apostle St. John, what do the Futurists contend for, but that God's whole system is to be supposed reversed ; that in regard, not of smaller events, or events in which the Church was but slightly concerned, but of events in which it was essentially and most intimately concerned, and of magnitude such as to blazon the page of each history of Christendom, the whole ]mm) years that have passed subsequently are to be viewed as a blank in prophecy ; the period having been purposely skipped over by the Divine Spirit, in order at once to plunge the reader into the events and times of the consummation. The case is made stronger against them by comparing more par- ticularly the nearest existing parallels to the Apocalvptie prophecy GOO REFUTATION OF CHIEF APOC. COUNTER-SCHEMES. [APP. PART II. in respect of orderly arrangement, I mean the prophecies of Daniel. For we see that they, one and all, prefigured events that were to commence immediately, or very nearly, from the date of the vision. So in that of the symbolic image, Dan. ii. ; which hegan its figurations with the head of gold, or Nebuchadnezzar. So in that of the four Beasts, Dan. vii. ; which also began from the Babylonian Empire then regnant. So in that of the ram and the goat, Dan. viii., which began from the Persian Empire's greatness ; the vision having been given just immediately before the establishment of the Persian king- dom in power. So, once more, in Dan. xi. : where the commencement is made so regularly from the Persian Prince " Darius the Mede," then reigning, that it is said, " There shall stand up yet three kings in Persia ; and the fourth shall be richer than they all, and shall stir up all against Greece ;" i. e. Xerxes. Strange indeed were there in the Apocalypse such a contrast and contrariety, as the Futurists suppose, to all these Danielic precedents ! — Moreover, the fact of its following those precedents seems expressly declared by the revealing Angel, at the opening of the vision in Apoc. iv., " Come up, and I will (now) show thee what must happen pera ravra, after these things." A statement evidently referring to Christ's own original division of the subjects of the revelation into " the things which St. John had first seen," (in the primary vision,) " the things that then were," (viz. the then existing state of the'seven Churches,) and " the things which were to happen after them." — Thus ourinference as to the speedy sequence of the future first figured in the Apocalypse upon the time when the Apocalypse was actually exhibited, seems to me not only natural, and accordant with all the nearest Scripture precedents, but necessary. And it both agrees with, and is confirmed by, the other divine de- clarations, made alike at the first commencement and final close of the Apocalypse ; to the effect that the things predicted were quickly to come to pass, the time of their fulfilment near at hand} 1 Apoc. i. 1 ; " The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him, to show to his servants what must shortly come to pass : " Apoc. xxii. 10; " Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this Book, for the time is at hand." Let me quote the famous critic Michaelis on this point. " If it be objected that the prophecies in the Apocalypse are not yet fulfilled, that they are therefore not fully understood, and that hence arises the difference of opinion in respect to their meaning, I answer, that if these prophecies are not yet fulfilled, it is wholly impos- sible that the Apocalypse should be a divine work ; since the author expressly declares, Chap, i., that it contains ' things which must shortly come to pass.' Consequently either a great part of them, I will not say all, must have been fulfilled ; or the ruvi\ n. §1.] >'i;u.i\ \\. i NMnDini D FUTUKiaT miiimi: 601 And \\h:it then the Futurists' escape fSfOID such arguments ? \\ lint the autliorit \ tor their unnatural Apocalyptic hypotheaiaf On the argument from the analogy of Beriptnre, and specially of Daniel, no answer that I know of lias heen given.1 With regard however to those statements, "To show to his servants what must shortly comr to <." and again, u Seal not the savings o( this Book, for the time is at han in these two prophecies no prophetic gap whatsoever. — As to the longer dwelling on the fourth Empire in Daniel, there is just the same in the Apocalypse . I mean on the usual Protestant explanation of its symbol of the ten-horned Beast figuring that empire in its last and Papal form. • Aj.oc. iii. 11, xxii. 7, 12, 20. 3 Dr. M.'s references are to Isa. xiii. 6, Obad. 15, Joel i. 15, ii. 1, Zeph. i. 7, 14. In all these cases " the day of Jehovah " is the phrase used. ♦ Answer to Digby, pp. 40, 47- 1 In illustration of the former of the two phrases being sometimes used in the nearer and lesser sense of Christ's coming to execute some particular act of judgment, during the world's present existence, I may refer to Apoc. ii. 6 : where Christ in his address to the Church at Ephesus says, " Repent, and do thy first works; or else I trill come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of its place." So again Luke xx. 16 ; "The Lord of the vineyard shall come, and shall destroy those husbandmen, and will give the vineyard to others." Also in Matt, xxiv , and the parallel passages in Mark and Luke, Christ's coming seems to be used, primarily at of his coming to destroy Jerusalem : (see my next head :) and sometimes too, subordinate!;/, of Christ's coming to take his - tints to himself at death. So (compar- in_' l'hil. i. 23) we may perhaps primarily construe it in the passage, " Heboid I come quickly ; " " Amen ! Even so ! Come, Lord Jesus ; come quickly ! " Similarly, as I need hardly remind the reader, the day of the Lord is al-o fre- quently used in the Old Test iment of God's interposition to inflict some particular temporal judgment on a guilty nation : e.g. that of the locusts, noted in Joel i. 1"), which is one of the passages cited by Maitland. 602 REFUTATION OF CHIEF APOC. COUNTER-SCHEMES. [APP. PART II. this latter avowedly veiled in mystery, in order to its being ever looked for by the Church, — that because these have the word quickly attached iu dubious sense to them, therefore events of a quite differ- ent character, and that are altogether most distant in time, nay and a long concatenated series of events too, may be also so spoken of: — a principle this on which all direct meaning of such words as quickly, or at hand, in sacred Scripture might, I conceive, be gainsayed. — Nor indeed is it from these adverbial expressions, insulated and alone, that the whole difficulty arises. For we have further to observe that the events Apocalyptically prefigured to St. John as first and next to happen in the coming future, are connected and linked on in a very marked manner with the then actually existing state of the seven Asiatic Churches, as the terminus a quo of all that was to fol- low : it being said by the Angel, forthwith after the long and detail- ed description of them in Christ's seven dictated Epistles, to the Churches, " Come up, and I will show thee what events are to happen after these things ;" a $ei ytveoQcu fxera tclvto.' — just like the defined present terminus a, quo in Dan. xi. 2, " There shall stand up yet three kings in Persia." But stop! Are we quite sure of our terminus? Behold the futurist critic and expositor, as if by sleight of hand, shifts the scene itself on the seven Asiatic Churches, which I spoke of as constituting the terminus a quo of all that followed in the prophecy, some two thousand years, or nearly so, forward in the world's history. " I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day" (Apoc. i. 10), he explains to mean, " I was rapt by the Spirit into the great day of the Lord." l And so, instead of merely contesting the direct sequence of what 1 " In reply to this," (viz. the objection against Dr. M. of making things still future of which it was declared that they should shortly come to pass,) " I must say that I believe the great subject of the Apocalypse to be the events of that period which is called in various parts of the Scripture the day of the Lord , and by St. John the Lonts day ; and that the Apostle was carried forward ' in spirit ' to that dajr, and enabled and directed to describe what shall then come to pass." — " Must he not have been carried forward in spirit into the day of the Lord," says Dr. M. elsewhere ; " when in the verses preceding he exclaimed, Behold he comcth with clouds ? " Jewish Expos. Aug. 1823. So too Todd, p. 59. R. D., a correspondent of the Dublin Christian Examiner, of this same school, has urged very much the same translation, and same explanation of the Apocalyptic text. See the number for February, 18i5, p. 381. — Mr. Burgh, too, p. 18, speaks of it ap- provingly, though doubtfully. — And Mr. Kelly, a writer on the Apocalypse subse- quent to my 1st Edition, adopts the same view even more strongly ; and advertises his Book as an exposition, " not on Mr. Elliott's principle, but in the light of the day of the Lord." nivi*. XI. | 1.] 0BI6INAI i n m < >i> m i i n PTJTU11B1 BOHBMB. 608 was prefigured in the Apocalyptic visions of the fixture, beginning Apoe. i\. 1. from the definite commencing epoch "t' St. John end his sc\<'ii Asiatic Churchee, — instead of this, I nj, he takes the bolder ground of making the great day of Christ's coming to judgment to be the avowed subject of all that followed St. John's announcement o\' being in the Spirit ; including fini amdfbrvmott, of eouree, the deeoription in the Beven Epistles of the seven Churches themaelvefl. But how so ? Is this the first mention of these Churches; so as to leave open the idea oi' their being Churches non-existent until the supposed prefigured time of the end P Assuredly not. The Apostle's salutation is presented to them in Apoc. i. 4, five verses prior to his announcement of being in the Spirit, in terms just like St. Paul's to the then existing Churches of Thessalonica or Philippi ; "John to the seven Churches in Asia, Grace be unto you ! " — Besides which who can help being struck with the violence done by Dr. M. to the Greek original, in construing its simple verb substantive, with the preposition in and ablative following, " i" was in the Spirit on (or in) the Lord's '/ Kvptajcn lifjepa.3 But this will be found on examination to be a statement altogether incorrect.4 1 "Eytvop.r]v iv JlvtvfxaTi tv tt| Kuptanri hp-tpa. ApOC. i. 10. 2 Compare Matt. iv. 1; " Then was Jesus led up by the Spirit into the wfldemi - avriypi) "to tov Ylvtvp.a.To': t is ti\v tpi\pov or the parallel passage Luke iv. 1, ijytTo tv toj I1ku^«ti us x»ji» ipij/iov — also 2 Cor. xii. 4; " He was caught up to l'ura- SJn ; " Tjpirayt) til tov Ylaaactirrov. Apoc. xvii. 3 ; AirijviyKt pt &xs tpijpov tv Tlvivp-aTi' Apoc. xxi. 10; AirijvtyKt p.t tv Tlvtvpari tir' opov ptya- &c. — Strange that this palpable grammatical difficulty should never have occurred to Dr. M., Todd, or Buri;h !-■ In - \j)'ic. x\ii. '.',. argu< s I)r. M. (ap. Todd, p. 297,) might not John have laid, " I teas in t/n spirit in tin urilderm if" lea! but only after telling by a verb of motion, and the preposition into, how he got there. 1 " A principal, and, as it appears to me, tufficient reason for this opinion is, that thi> title Uu LortPt day, v Kvpuurn ti/u™) ii >">t need fin the Hr*t day of the week in the New Testament, or in any writer that I can find before the time of Constan- tint- : and U that it was he who directed that the day which the J' red the But day of the week, and which the Greeks dedicated to the sun, should be called the Lord's day." Answer to Digby, p. 46. • r, on the word Kvpuurq, after quoting the passage from Niccphorus to which Dr. M. refi rs, 'H» 'Eft pan i wpmrqw n\nv ft/upav, EXXqvts o' tjKuf avtOtm-o, Kupta- Ki}v KaTwvouaai, (sc. o Kwvo-tuvtuvos,) observes; " Hoc fahiun MM < nn 01 tinioni.i l'atrum Constantino anticjuiorum." And he add-, a luggestion that Nice- phonis may perl) ily meant that Constantine brought the appellation into G(H REFUTATION OF CHIEF APOC. COUNTER-SCIIEMES. [APP. PART II. Rather it will appear that the great day of the Lord, or judgment day, to which Dr. M. would apply it, has never, either in the Septuagint or the New Testament, the peculiar appellation Kupmkjj attached to public use, and set it apart as a holiday ; a fact noted by Sozomen in his Ecclesiastical History, Book I. 8. — Further, in proof of Fathers older than Constantine applying the Apocalyptic appellative to the Sunday, or Christian sabbath, Suicer cites Igna- tius, calling it in his Epistle to the Magnesians tiji/ KvuiaKi)v, Tt)i< avaa-racrifiov, tiji/ fiacrtXtda, tiji/ viraTov iraawv tuiv v/xtpwv and also an inscription of the age of Alex- ander Severus ; Etm AXf.^avSpov YLaiaapos To> A Apx'f 'At KupiaKai tov IIo(7)(a Kara £Tos. To which I may add, that Ignatius, in his Epistle to the Philadelphians, speaks against fasting on the Lord's day, Et tis KvpiaKov »j )KocrTijs- also Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth, Tiji> '; pryaXtj, but I with the adj< I I • . «, < >i the early Father* I can only ■ay that, in my limited reading of them, I hare not met the phi - A;.]., p. CU'J. 606 REFUTATION OF CHIEF APOC. COUNTER-SCHEMES. [APP. PART II. contravention of the other more natural interpretation, so given by the best expositors, I must confess myself 'wholly incredulous. But, at any rate, they insist on the 6th Seal prefiguring the con- summation ; as what may help (though certainly, unless the previous Seals have that reference too, with most insufficient help)1 the Futurist view. — Says Dr. S. 3J. Maitland ; " Can any unbiassed reader doubt that this passage refers to the day of judgment?"2 And Mr. Burgh : " This Seal so obviously refers to the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, . . . that I must say there is no room for difference of opinion."* So again R. D. in the Dublin Christian Examiner, for December, 1844 ; (a writer of whom more in my next Section ;) " If there be a day yet future, it is the day of the wrath of the Lamb, [i. e. as in the 6th Seal,] when he shall be revealed from heaven in flaming fire : " with declaration added of the impossibility of rightly expounding the imagery of the 6th Seal, where his wrath is spoken of, except with reference to that day. And so too Dr. Todd,4 and most other Ex- positors of the School. — Now, in order to understand here the real value of the Futurists' argument, it is essential to inquire at once, . very distinctly, whether by Chrisfs coming they really mean his per- sonal visible coming to judgment ; and, if so, on what construction of the imagery of the 6th Seal, literal or figurative ? E. D., we saw, declares plainly that it is indeed his personal coming, " when he shall be revealed from heaven in flaming fire." And I presume he would have the elemental convulsions of the Seal construed literally, as that which is to attend it. But, if so, does it not seem passing strange that we should have no representation whatsoever of the flaming fire that is to accompany Christ's second coming ; nothing shown, or said, even of his own glorious epiphany ; nothing of the rapture of the saints to meet him ? So as to the evidence from omission. Besides which may we not say that there seems to be that stated which absolutely forbids the supposition of any literal construction of the figures ? For were the stars literally to fall to the earth, so as in the Apoca- lyptic vision they appeared to do, then the earth would not only ree\ to and fro like a drunkard, but be struck from its orbit into frag- ments : 5 whereas from the Sealing vision in the second part of the 1 It only brings the subject soon on the tapis. 2 On Antichrist, p. 21. 3 P. 157, 4th ed. 4 P. 106. b I am glad to see that this argument for the figurative intent of what appeared in fii vr. 11. | 1. (m;u.i\ U i I mi >iu n I D ii ii i;im 80HBMB. <><)7 same 8th Seal, next following, and which depicts the Angela of the four winds as preparing to blow upon it, it appears that the earth still existed iflea wards, and with men still inhabiting it. just as be- fore. What then remains (unless, with Dr. Todd, we boldly eject the Sealing vision from its place in the Apocalyptic Hook)1 but to DOnstrue the BYSttboIs JSam'Mtweljf : aiul with this, ami the consequent reference in them only to some mighty revolution, religious or politi- cal, to abandon all argument for the Seal's signifying Christ's per- sonal coming to judgmeut? — Indeed by some of the best-known advocates oi' the School (contradictorily to R. D.) this seems to me pretty much admitted. As l)r. Maitland has maintained silence on the point inquired into, we cannot do better, I think, than to look tor explanation to Mr. Burgh, the next most popular writer probably on the same side. And, strange as it may seem to my readers, they will find that if the passage quoted a little while since in part from him be completed, and the hiatus represented by the dots filled up, it will read thus : — " This Seal so obviously refers to the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, containing as it does the very signs an hen of stars falling to the earth, a- i- -aid ..i. 10, [and vi. 13,] in sijm- bolica ' i i "If 1 . he a jin diction, as undoubtedly it is, of the day of judgment, it is impossible that tin- qi uo be a oontinaanoe <>f it." Todd, p. 109. Sound would rather hare argued thus: " The sealing risioa is, and must '><■, a continu* therefore the prior figuration cannot tie one of tin' daj of judg- ment." says be, those n< xt . .in Matt x\iv. 29, 80. lie means, I presum xxix ' Man him.' ' of which thi Is nothing. 608 RE1TTATI0N OF CHIEF APOC. COUNTER-SCHEMES. TaPP. PART II. coming black as sackcloth, the moon like blood, the stars of heaven falling to the earth, and heaven itself removing like a scroll rolled up ? Is the description to be taken literally or figuratively, of phy- sical and elemental, or only of political change ? For a direct, straight- forward answer to this question I look into Mr. Burgh in vain. In one place he seems to assign a literal meaning to the 6th Seal.1 But, judging from the sequel, this can hardly be. For he considers the Sealing Vision, 7th Seal, Trumpets, &c, all chronologically to carry on the subject? And as he makes the Sealing Vision depict the sealing of a Jewish remnant, to be saved from the judgments threat- ened by the tempest-angels on the godless of the nation, and the other visions similarly to refer to the earth as still existing, and men dwelling on it, I infer that he cannot suppose any physical changes to have been intended by the sixth Seal's vision, such as to have de- stroyed earth, and sky, and earth's inhabitants. The rather since I observe that he explains the palm-bearing vision next following, as only, at that point of advance in the sacred drama, an anticipative, prospective representation of the heavenly blessedness of the saints ; and infer consequently that their translation, and therefore Christ's second coming, will not, in Mr. Burgh's opinion, even at this epoch (an epoch subsequent to the sixth Seal), have yet taken place: nay that at a much later epoch, that of Apoc. x. 7, the consummation will not have occurred ; "judgment having followed on judgment, but the end not being yet" 3 Hence it seems evident that Mr. Burgh, like myself, must construe the symbols of the sixth Seal figuratively ; and if figuratively, then, according as the figure is elsewhere used in Scripture prophecy, of mare political or politico-religious change and revolution. In which case all argument for having anything to do with Christ's second advent vanishes ; and together therewith all aid from it, (if aid it could give,) as well as from the Seals preceding it, to the Futurists' Apocalyptic Scheme. 1 At p. 186, reprobating all figurative interpretation of the Trumpets, he refers to similar expositions of the 6th Seal as "still more needing confirmation." 2 He says, p. 164 ; " The remainder of the book must be . . subsequent in order of fulfilment, to the opening of the Seals." So too p. 170, &c. He is here at issue with Dr. Todd. 3 P. 203. — I may add, as an inference from Mr. Burgh's explanation of Apoc. xxi. 1, that the passing away of the heaven as a scroll, and other contemporary elemental changes figured in the 6th Seal, will in his judgment have nothing whatever to do with that passing away of the old earth and heaven which is described Apoc. xxi. 1, as the event that is to be succeeded by a new heaven and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. OHAP. 11.(1.] OBZOIKAI i \ M<>m n u> PUTUBIS1 B0HBK1. 609 ill. Lb ra mi Futubibts' umimi OOKSTBUOTIOS Ol Mil: A POCAL1 PTIO lsi; vil.. A point this quite essential to their system, just as much as to the Preterists'; fori! is thereby that the\ identify, and link on, much Of this propheCJ with those in the Old Testament respecting the ultimate restoration and conversion of the .lews: insomuch, 1 believe, that if the Apocali/ptie Israel were proved not to be the literal Israel, there is not B Futurist but would admit that their cause was lost. " '/' Bays Mr. Burgh, emphatically, (p. 432,) u w the key to prophecy." And again (p. 105) ou the same Apoc. vii. ; " I can understand (though I do not think an undoubted instance of it exists) how the name Israel may be supposed to be figuratively ap- plied to the (ientile Church in Scripture: but to suppose that not merely the name of Israel is so applied, but that the names of every one of the twelve tribe* have also a spiritual meaning, and apply to the (Jentile Church," this be would have to be incredible indeed. Again, on Apoc. xi. 1, " Eise and measure ///'■ temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein, but the court without, measure not, for it is given to the Gentiles, and they shall tread under foot the holy city forty and two months," he remarks to the effect that every word marks to an unprejudiced reader that the concerns the Jewish nation ; and that it is matter for Bstonishmenl that it should have been so allegorized by most of the English Protestant expositors, as to exclude all reference to the •Jewish people.1 And so too Maitland, Todd,2 and, I believe, all the chief writers of this school. Now in my Chapter on the Praterieto* 1 showed, 1st, that ajigvrative explanation of the Jewish Apocalyptic symbols was not only accordant with St. Paul's application of them To the Christian Church, but accordant also with our Lord's own resa explanation of the Apocalyptic figure of seven candlestick-, in what seemed like the huh/ place of the Jewish temple, to signit\ the seven Asiatic Christian charclns .- L'ndly. and Ml objection to their litt of explanation of these Jewish symbols, that the forced by it into inconsistency ; explaining the temple bol, as they do, and its adjuncts elsewhere in the Apocalyptic > ia, to signify things Chrittian, dust so it is also with the ' V\, * Todd, p. 112. » Se IV. 610 It 1. 1 I CATION OF CHIEF APOC. COUNTER-SCHEMES. [APP. PART II. Futurist*. — Let me turn to Mr. Burgh, as before, for illustration. And as regards the Jewish temple, and temple-worshippers on the Apocalyptic scene, I observe, first, that he makes " all the saints " that offered incense there in Apoc. viii. 3 to be " the Lord's people : " not unconverted Jews at all ; nor even converted Jews alone, but only in part.1 Next in Apoc. xi. 1 he explains the temple, and altar, and them that worship in it, to designate a " converted " remnant of the Jewish nation ; 2 that is, mark, a Christianized remnant ; and whose worship consequently will not be Jewish? but Christian. Farther, with regard to the twelve tribes of Israel, be makes the New Jerusalem of Apoc. xxi., — that same city " which had twelve gates, and the names written thereon of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel," viz. of Judah, Eeuben, Gad, &c, the very same that were noted in Apoc. vii. originally, and that are here re-mentioned just as fully and as specifically, — he makes it mean — what ? " No doubt," thinks the reader perhaps, " the blessed and glorious state of the Jewish nation in the millennium." Nothing of the kind : (Mr. Burgh well knew certain stringent reasons, of various kinds, against this : 4) but the polity of the Christian Church, completed and beatified: " that same," he observes, " which St. Paul meant in that magnificent passage addressed to the Hebrew Christians, ' Te are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to the general assembly, and church of the first- born, which are written in heaven.' I view it," says he,5 "as identical with the final consummated blessedness of the whole Church." I doubt not he is here perfectly correct. But what an astounding exemplification of the inconsistency of the Futurists! Of course, if under the names of the twelve tribes of Israel, written respectively on the gates of the New Jerusalem, there be meant the true Christian Church in its heavenly completeness and beatification, then the 144,000 sealed ones on earth out of all the tribes of Israel must surely mean the completeness at any particular period of 1 Burgh, 183. Dr. Todd, p. 131, blames Mr. B. for even assigning any prominence to converted Jews in this incense-offering body. " It is the prayers of the universal Church." 2 lb. 208. 8 Mr. Burgh indeed, at p. 183, strangely calls it " a Jewish service ; " and, still more strangely, on Apoc. xi., makes Antichris^ to be sitting in this temple. But this only the more illustrates the difficulties of his theory. 4 Specially that the Philadelphian Gentile Christians were spoken of as forming part of this Israel and its twelve tribes. Apoc. iii. 12. 5 Burgh, p. 380. < II \l\ li. § 1.] nKihisu. iNMuiuini rUTUBISl B0H1MX. till Grod'l own Israel. 01 true Church on earth ; and the holy City and tin" temple still tin- same my stieal body, in regard of its jn.lit \ and of its worship, respectively.1 — Bach is the genera] Protectant view. And on it all seems harmonious ; as well as all BOCOrdanl with Christ's own most illustrative explanation of the Jewish symbol of the candlesticks, at the beginning of the Apocalypse. Whereas, on the other hand, enough, 1 think, has been said to show that in the Futurists' Bystem, lot the advocate be able as lie may, this its •itial characteristic will prove ou reoZ examination to involve con- fusion, inconsistency, and self-coutradiction. IV. As to the FUTUBISTS' SUPPOSED YET FUTURE AUTlCIl HIST. Under this head I shall have to remark ou the difficulties which beset their theory, and the contrast between it and the Scriptural statements, with reference, 1st, to Antichrist's time of reign and local seat of empire : 2ndly, to his religious profession. 1. Now then, as to the time of Antichrist's rising,2 it was defined as following speedily after the breaking up of the old Soman empire. For, forasmuch as the let, or hindrance, which in St. Paul's time prevented, and was stdl for some certain time after to continue to prevent. Antichrist's manifestation, was understood by the early Church to be the then regnant Soman empire and emperors,3 (and for the correctness of this its understanding of the point, as of one avowedly revealed, there was almost apostolic voucher,4) the inference might seem sure, and to be depended on, that Antichrist would be a power elevated on their fulling. — Again, next, as to Antichrist's local <>n<1 political relations, his Roman political origin and local connex- ion is a fact, as 1 have elsewhere more than once had occasion to observe, strongly and in various ways set forth in prophecy. First, if elevated on the old empire's dissolution, as of that which before hindered his rising, then surely the probability might seem to be that he would rise in its place, as well as on its fill. Secondly, the fourth Beast of Daniel, from whose head in its last or ten-horned state the little horn of Antichrist was seen to sprout, could only • ncly. * I assume in ;ill th.it follows, as a point long -in ■•• proved, the identity of '■'■■■ v ' christ with tin- Little Horn of the fourth <>t' Daniel'l foni 1'" utl, the eighth <■: dyptic Beast, anil St. Paul'i Man oi mv Vni. ,.;,',. 228—281 - ' 2 'lh -. ii. <'>. 39 • 012 REFUTATION OF CHIEF APOC. COUNTER-SCHEMES. [APP. PART II. (according either to the facts of history, or the declared judgment alike of the best classical writers and chief of the early Fathers) be construed of the Roman empire} Thirdly, the city of Antichrist, Apocalyptically called the great city and Babylon, and which he was depicted as supporting and upbearing, was by the indubitable marks of a seven-hilled locality, and a supremacy in St. John's time over the kings of the earth, signified to be Rome; and moreover its transfer marked as all but immediate, from being the seat or capital of Paganism, to being that of Antichrist.2 Such, I say, was the triple Scriptural foreshadowing of Antichrist's political relations and local connexion with Rome, from his first rise on the old Roman empire's falling. But what when the theory of a still future Antichrist (in opposi- tion to that of the Papal Antichrist) is held at the present time ? There is nothing, I think, that can more strikingly show the extent and insuperability of the difficulties with which these various pro- phecies encompass it, than the multiplied inconsistencies and self- contradictions which mark the attempt of him who, of all others of the literalist school, has set himself most fully and elaborately to meet them ; and to whom Mr. Burgh refers with satisfaction, as furnishing important corroboration to his Scheme;3 — I mean the Oxford Tractator of the Pour Sermons on Antichrist.4 It may be well to exhibit this at some little length. To begin then with the Thessalonian prophecy, and the difficulty from the fact of its let (which with the Fathers he feels constrained to interpret of the Roman empire)5 having full 13 centuries ago past away, and so too the time for Antichrist's manifestation,6 our Tractator's confident answer in his first Sermon is this, — that, what- ever the apparent historic fact, in the eye of prophecy the Soman empire is regarded as not past away, but still existing, and the let with it ; viz. in its predicted ten horns or kingdoms, the Romano- Gothic constituency of modern Western Christendom.7 But scarce 1 See my Vol. i. ibid. 2 See my Vol. iii. pp. 115, 129, 130. 3 P. 447. 4 No. 83. b " I grant that he that withholdeth, or letteth, means the power of Home ; for all the ancient writers so speak of it. I grant that as Rome, according to the prophet Daniel's vision, succeeded Greece, so Antichrist succeeds Rome, and our Saviour Christ succeeds Antichrist." p. 5. c " He that letteth shall let until he be taken away : and then shall that Wicked One be revealed," &c. 2 Thess. ii. 7, 8. 1 " But it does not hence follow that Antichrist is come : " [this extract follows til viv ii. I ] . ORIGINAL i NMoiui iu> PUTUEI8T BOB 818 baa he made the answer than he oontradiota it, forced by the itrong i*a«-ts of history : confessing in his third Sermon that the self-saine breaking an of the Roman empire thai was foretold did take place, at the time of the Gothic irruptions.1 Which however being admitted by himj and the admission also made, as we have seen, and must well remark, of the ten Romano- Grothic kingdoms oi' modern Western Christendom answering to the ten horns of Daniel's and the Apocalyptic prophecy, — not only does the iirst difficulty from the Thessalonian Epistle remain unanswered, but a new one rises on1 ofkthese other prophecies before him. For nothing can be clearer from them than that Antichrist was to be a power contemporary with the ten home of the symbolic Beast: — like a little horn (of rapid enlargement) ruffling it, as Mede says, among the ten ; or a common head supporting, and furnishing a centre of union to them : — that is, according to these admissions, a power con- temporary with the Western kingdoms of the middle and the modern aire. Our author seems to feel the difficulty ; and, reckless of the new contradictions that it involves, casts away both the one and the other of these previously-made admissions : asserts, — on the ground of the Romano-Gothic kingdoms of the 5th and 6th centuries not having been clearly and exactly ten,2 — that the real decuple division intended by prophecy did not then take place, but is yet future;3 continuously, it must be observed, on the one preceding:] "for I do not grant that the Roman empire is gone. Far from it. The Roman empire remains even to this day." — Then, speaking of the ten horns of the prophetic symbol, he adds : " As the ten horn? belonged to the Beast, and were not separate from it, so are the kingdoms into which the Roman empire has been divided part of that empire itself; — a con- tinuation of that empire in the view of prophecy, however we decide the historical •jueition. And as the horns or kingdom-- still exist) we have not vet seen the end of the Roman empire. That which withholdcth still exists, though in its ten horns." pp. 5, 6. 1 " The Roman empire did break up, as foretold." p. 30. See my Note 3 below, . ;.. 77. "God promoti-d in the way of Providence, and He cast down by t/i- /.tie- Roman empire. .. The Soman power ceased to be when the barbarians overthrew it : for it ro-e by the sword, and it therefore perished by the sword." : So Maitland earlier. Abo Burgh, p. 219. — Let me suggest to these Futurists whether it might not be worth their while to t.ike op the question of the phi -. ajtontU-s, a.s used by st. John Apoo. wi. 11; and expose it- incorrectness, in co quence of St, Paul having before that been (ailed to be an apostle, besides the original . and having so made the body thirteen. Besides that, after Jndas fell, there : - world," it has not been fulfilled in the seven-hill -nee the division of the empire or the Gothic invasion : and at p. \6 that Rome has not, since that time, been a persecutor of the Church ; for he spunks of "the Church daring been ■haltered from persecution for loOO years." Again, at p. 37, after rtating the guilt of old Pagan Borne in persecuting the saints, and the consequent u'uilt and doom of the city, he asserts thai the only assignable reason why Rome lias not thus suffered the fulness of God's wrath, is because " a Christian Church is still in that tifyuig it, interceding for it, earing it." — In ■ Note at p. 88, he intimates that "no opinion, one tray or tin- Other, i- tu f 1 lis to the- question how far, I Church has saved Romi n Roma has corrupted we local Church or whether the local Church in consequence, or, again, whether other Churehet elsewhere, may or D of Antichrist." But the first olaUM in italics (and we ■ iy ihn erdly racpe -t too the last elanse about other Churehet italicised n ill show that tie but little of qualification to the writer's ].pm- ooarj - in favour of Papal Home. 1 " Another expectation of the early Church was that the Roman monster, after 616 REFUTATION OF CHIEF APOC. COUNTER-SCHEMES. [APP. PART II. by Scripture ? And where moreover the early patristic authority to any such effect ? Instead of patristic opinion on the matter being such as he has represented, the reader may sufficiently see, by refer- ence to notices on the subject in other and earlier parts of this work,1 that, although the primitive Fathers slightly differed among them- selves as to the nearness of Antichrist and the consummation, — some few thinking it a century distant, or perhaps two centuries, the rest much closer and even at the doors, — yet that, as to the idea of any long interval occurring, between the expected breaking up of the old Roman Empire and Antichrist's revelation, during which the Roman Beast was to be torpid, — the thought seems never to have entered their imagination.2 And certainly just as little did they anticipate two breakings up of the Roman Empire before Antichrist's coming : the first of their own imperial Rome into something very like ten kingdoms ; the other, ages afterwards, of those long-established decem-regal kingdoms into ten other kingdoms still more exactly de- fined.— As to Scripture prophecy, forasmuch as in Daniel the bestial remaining torpid for centuries, would wake up at the end of the world, and be restored in all its laws and forms." p. 24. He gives, I observe, no patristic authority for this statement. Perhaps he had reference to the idea of Nero's revival mentioned pp. 277, 296, 570 supra : which however implied Nero's dormancy, not the Roman empire's; and moreover was an idea that gained but little hold on the Christian Church. Our Tractator's own next quotation is from Hippolytus, (the same that I have given in my Vol. i. p. 229,) which says nothing either of the torpor of the Roman Beast for centuries, or of its restoration in all its (i. e. according to the Oxford writer's meaning old Rome's) laics and forms. The purport of Hippolytus' observa- tion is to the effect that Antichrist would be a reviver and restorer of the Roman Empire as notably as Augustus was : not, however, by Augustus' or the old Roman laws ; but by his own new laws : Sta tov vtt' avrov bpi^ofxivov vojxov. 1 See my Vol. i. ibid. ; where the expectations to this effect are set forth of Justin Martyr, Judas, TertuUian, Cyprian, &c. Hippolytus too (after Irenaeus) thus exprest the same expectations: " What more remains ? what, but the passing of the iron legs of thfe image into the ten toes; or Roman Empire into ten kingdoms? " They who, like Lactantius and Hilarion, regarded the consummation as at the distance of a century or two, (induced very much to that opinion by the expectation of the world's seventh millennary beiug its sabbatism, and with notions about the mundane chronology such as to admit of their nevertheless supposing the consumma- tion not very distant,) I say these Fathers seem to have expected that whatever interval of time remained, it would be mainly before, not after, the breaking up of the old Roman empire. — I reserve for a later Chapter in this Appendix a more direct com- parison and contrast between the Patristic views and the Futurists'. 2 Even Augustine, though an innovator to a considerable extent in Apocalyptic interpretation, at the epoch of the Gothic invasion, so as I have shown in an earlier part of my Book, Vol. hi. p. 277, and introducer of the idea of the Beast being (secondarily at least) a symbol of the icorld and its city, in opposition to the City of God, and likely to last some uncertain time longer, yet never, so far as I know, sug- gested the probability of any long interval of torpor affecting the Roman Beast, before the last paroxysm of persecution and wickedness under Antichrist. CHAP. II. § 1.] OBIGINAJ (7NMODIPIXD FUTUHI81 m in mi (i 1 7 character of the fourth Wild Beast, or Roman Bmpire,ia represented symbolically as continuing uninterrupted even to the time of its de- struction, anil in the Apocalypse the transition-period between the empire in its Paaandraoomcjormaad the empire in its anti-chrittian a,i,l bestial, (i. e. between tin- Beast as it "wot," and tin- Beasi as it '•/.v.") is both declared to be brief,1 and also described aa ail filled up In tin- Pagan Dragon's still persecuting the woman the Church, (albeit that he was then fallen,) in active hostility, and so driving her into the wilderness,*— it is evident that the Tractator's hypothesis meets from if a negative altogether decisive, and one from which there can be no appeal \ el "nee more the difficulty meets him of Bitli/hm the Great, the city of the seven hills, being the predicted seat of Antichrist :• — which local connexion of Antichrist with Rome, as his capital, constitutes of course a most Btrong ami palpable corroboration of the Protestant view of the lionmn Pole's being Antichrist. And what then our Tractator's escape from it ? Overlooking altogether the decisive fact of the woman sitting on the Ueasl when in its last and antichrietian form,3 he first alludes to the circumstance of the Angel's describing the woman-city symbolized to be one that was then in existence and power, as it' probable evidence that it was simply Rome "Pagan to which the guilt attached of the harlotry spoken of, and of being drunk with the blood of the saints,4 — albeit declared a bloody harlot 1 S. e Apoc. xii. 12. Apoc. xii. ; and my* Commentary on it in Chapters I and 2 of Part iv. ■ Compare verses 3, 8, and 11 of Apoc. xvii. ; " I saw a woman sit upon a w coloured Beast, having seven heads and ten horns: " — "The Beast that t/iou ,v<; was and is not : " — " The Beast that was and is not, cv. n be is the eighth* and goeth into perdition." ♦ "This great city (Rome) is described under the image of a woman cruel, profli- ind impious ; . . . and is called hy the name of Babylon the Gnat, to signify In r r, wealth, profaneness, pride, sensuality, Bad persecuting spirit. I need not bow all this answered ti> the- character and history of Rome at the time St. John *]X)ke of it." p. 29.— With regard to the Beatt ridden by tin woman, hfl says; " The li«ast on which the woman m» is the Romem Bmpin. And this agreei rery accurately with the actual position ot thing! in history : for Home, the misttUM of the world, in:. ■ mid to sit upon, and be carried about triumphantly on, that world which -he had subdued, and made- her cnature." Ibid. Of the monster figured being the Beast, not under its sixth load, -that which ruled in St. John's time, — but under it* eighth and last head, according to the Angel's explanation, our ' ator says not a word. Mr. Burch, I may obeerrc, expressly makes the Borne depicted rn vision, and riddi n by tl me ridden by the Beast under its sixth bead ; in direct eon> traduction to thi laration, that " tl awett . . . i- 8U1 King." li, pp. 823, 618 REPUTATION OF CHIEF APOC. COUNTER-SCHEMES. [aPP. PART II. continuously from St. John's time even to the very end of her career ; l and then passes to the Angel's other statement about the ten kings hating and burning her with fire,2 as direct evidence that Rome could not be the city of Antichrist : the order of things being this, (so he states the prophecy,) that the ten kings were fated to rise first, and, after rising, to destroy Rome ; then Antichrist to appear, and supersede or subdue the ten kings ; and so Rome to have fallen before Antichrist's manifestation.3— But how could Anti- christ be altogether posterior to the ten kings, when they are declared, as the Tractator admits,4 to receive their power at one and the same time with the Beast Antichrist ; and indeed depicted as rising together in the symbolization of Apoc. xiii. 1 r Again, how could Antichrist be the restorer of the Roman empire, which the Trac- tator also confesses him to be, and bearer too of the Roman appella- tive Latinos? if locally altogether unconnected with Rome, and only rising after Rome's final destruction ? In fact he admits, a little after, both that Rome was to be his local seat ; 6 and, as to its final and total destruction, that it would not be by the ten kings' agency, but according both to Scripture prophecy and the expectation of the Fathers, through the agency of earthquakes, lightnings, and the i Apoc. xviii. 24 ; "In her was found the blood of the prophets and saints, and of all that had been slain on the earth." 2 Apoc. xvii. 16 ; " The ten horns which thou sawest on the Beast,* these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire." 3 " Rome is to fall before Antichrist rises : for the ten kings are to destroy Rome ; and Antichrist is then to appear, and supersede the ten kings. As far as we dare judge from the words, this seems clear." p. 20. So again p. 39. 4 " We are expressly told that the ten kings and Antichrist's empire shall rise toge- ther ; the kings appearing at the time of the monster's resurrection, not in its languid and torpid state." p. 32. Let me remind my readers, with regard to Dan. vii. 24, (" The ten horns are ten kings that shall arise, and another shall rise after them,") that the Septuagint trans- lation, in correct rendering of the Hebrew "^fis (see Gesenius) reads ottktco avTuiv, behind, or locally after, the ten. (So in my Vol. iii. p. 91, Note1.) Thus Daniel's statement needs not be considered at all inconsistent with that of the Apocalypse, xvii. 12, " The ten Horns are ten Kings that receive power as kings at one time with the Beast : " i. e. according to the Angel's explanation, the Beast under its last head. 5 This is admitted to have been the patristic expectation, p. 25. The writer adds, p. 26, " He will knit the Roman empire into one." 6 " He will earn the title of the Latin or Roman King, as best expressive of his place and character." p. 26. * The Tractator reads tin. to tiiipiov, as in the English authorized version. See his p. 30. OHA.P. II. § 1.] OUTOXNAI DHKODIFTBI riniM-r BOHHC1. 619 fury of the elements:1 — id admission based on prophetic truth;' and in which he furnishes his own refutation of hii own argument. Thus, look where he may to escape from the difficulties of his pro- phetic theory, ami substitution of a personal Antichrist yei future for the Papal Antichrist of the old Protestant interpreters, the prophecy meets, and stops, and proves too strong for him. At last, in the spirit of the tmcimt Academy, he takes refuge in doubl ami ■iticism. Perhaps, he says, after all it maybe thai nol Rome literally is intended in the prophecy, but rather the world, or some oth and tricked city:3 — or perhaps, if Rome be the city intended, her sufferings from the Goths, &c., in time past may be considered sufficient punishment; or the Church within her may prove her preservative, and so the final threatened judgments be averted.4 Again, as regards Antichrist, and Antichrist's persecution of the saints, Perhaps wo may have been wrong in supposing sucb things to have been foretold ; and they may, after all, never arise.5 — Such I say is the conclusion of the writer ; — a not unfit conclusion to a Treatise so marked by inconsistency and self-contradiction. N<>w it is mainly doubtless to the insuperable difficulties of the 1 He cites Gregory in particular: "Rome shall not be destroyed by the (barbaric) nations. ; but shall consume away internally, worn out by storms of lightning, whirl- winds, and earthquakes." p. 85. He might have cited further, to the lame effect, Tertullian, Lactantius, and others. - All thi- will be found explained and illustrated in the last Part of my Commen- tary. See on the one point of the ten horns tearing and burning the harlot-city in the earlier a>ra of her imperial history, pp. 31, 32; and on her final and everlasting destruction by volcanic earthquake and fire p. 201 supra. \» Habylon is a type of Rome, and of the world of sin and vanity, so Rome in her turn may be a type also, whether of some other city [yet to come], or of a proud and deceiving world." p. 38. — See on this point my examination of Dr. Arnold's prophetic theory, in a later Chapter in this Appendix. 1 •• Rome's judgments have come on her in great measure, when bet empire was taken from her; her persecutions of the Church hare been in great measure judged; and the Scripture predictions concerning her fulfilled. Whether or not ihe shill be further judged depends on two circumstances: — first, whether the righteous men in tin city, who tared bet whin her judgment first came, [that executed by the Goths,] may not through God's great mercy i» allowed to save her still; next, whether the prophecy in it- fnhu m oi to nme other object, or objects, of which B >me is ■ type." p. 89, " Perchance, through God'i mercy, it [Ilium's destruction] may be procr.istin.itid ivcn to the end, and DCTer be fulfilled. Of this we can know nothing, one way or the other." p ■■ /; mob i | that of Antichrist] has been foretold, it has not yet come, and therefore is to eome. We may be wrong in thinking that Scripture ••IK it, though it has been the common belief of all ages : but if there b . il future." p. 40 ; and so too p. "J. (520 Kill TVI'ION OF CHIEF APOC. COUNTER-SCHEMES. [APP. PART II. Tractator's anti-protestaut futurist theory about Antichrist, that these inconsistencies and self-contradictions with reference to Anti- christ's predicted time of rise after the old Roman Empire's breaking up, and local Roman connexion afterwards, are to be attributed : ' — a fact evidenced by the similar or equal inconsistencies, and self-con- tradictions, of all other expositors of the same school on the same point.2 And it is in this point of view that I have felt it my 1 Perhaps in part too from intentional obscurity : — for such is avowed by some of the Tractarians. Though surely on important theological questions, if on any other, obscurity is above all things to be deprecated, and light sought : Ei/ <5t tly absurd, which Dr. M. and Dr. Todd propound, with I pre- HUM the same object, of the four Beasts of Dan. vii. being four contemporary empires of tlie latter day, the 4th and most terrible that of Autichrist.# Besides which the argument bom St. Paul's predicated hindrance or let, (viz. of the old Roman empire,t) M the hindrance whoso removal was to make way for Antichrist's manifestation, and that still stronger one from the Apocalyptic designation of Rom 't -hilled city -as Antichrist's own imperial seat, still remain in full force against tlu in. ontirmation of uninterrupted continuity being intended in the symbol n in the 3rd and uh. * On Antichrist, p. 9. In this view Dr. Maitland is followed only by Todd; and opposed, I believe, to nearly all the day-day, as well as the year-day prophetic inter- preters.— Ds untenableness is evident. In Dan. vii. 7 the other Beasts are spoken of tore it," i. e. prior in time. And how indeed could these other Beasts have had " dominion." as the third, or leopard, is said to have had, if contemporary with the I, which brake all other powers in pieces ? Dr. M. in his Reply to Mr. Cnning- hame (p. 64) says ; " Three other kingdoms may be contemporary with a fourth which Diverse! sovereignty, . . as easily a_s the kingdoms of Saxony. Wurtemburg, and Holland were contemporary with the French Empire under Napoleon. " — Unfor- tunate parallel ! Had those petty dependencies of France dotfunion ' Or did they answer to the character of " great beasts," so as the three first empires, as well as the 4th. in Daniel ? Besides which the correspondence of the 4th Beast's ten horns with the ten toes of the Image seems obvious, and suggests a similar correspondence beta » u the ; i in other points. t At p. 18 of the same treatise on Antichrist, Dr. If. acknowledge! that the ..n% of this bt was revealed to the early Church : and, as I have often said, the bnrch understood it of the old Roman empire or emperors. Dr. Todd at pp. 335—338 of his Treatise on Antichrist thus tries to get rid of the ment against his theory henoe arising. "But this opinion, notwithstanding its antiquity, and the great names that have given it their .-auction, must now be con- sidered as having long ago been refuted by time. The Roman empire is now extinct ; and no potentate possessing the character and marks of Antiehri-t has as yet been manifested in the i arth." An instance of the petitio principii sufficiently amusing ! The Protestant cxpo-itors whom he proposes to refute say that there has appeared jnst such i and this commencing from the very epoch of the old Roman empire's extinction, agreeably with the Fathers' vi u - of the let. " Hut /sat/ such an one has not appeared," is substantially Dr. T.'s argument; '-and therefore the Fathers' view of the let was an error! " Malvenda, i. 40J. ad . . ,,. UgJ^mus on Antichrist, argues differ- thus — "The Fathers rightly judged the let to be the old Roman empire ; and that Antichri-t would follow on it- removal. Bat Antichrist has not yet OOme. I b : . man ampin n removed bat continued to exist -till, after the be, in the Prank or German emperors, eel n qui alii ! " (122 REFUTATION OF CHIEF APOC. COUNTER-SCHEMES. [APP. PART II. the logic, this the theology, that half Oxford of late has been wonder- ing after ? ' 2ndly, as to the Antichrist's prof est religion. The triple Scriptural evidence in proof of the predicted Anti- christ being a great professor of Christianity , — viz. that of his un- righteous system being defined as the deceivableness of unrighteous- ness, that of his chief agent and minister being figured as a lamb-like false prophet, and that of his designation by name as a Vice-Christ, (in his own profession, of course, as if of Christ's appointment,) — is what my readers must now be familiar with. But the Futurists' representations on this head are altogether different from what we might thus have inferred from Scripture. According to them Antichrist's profession is to be that of a down- right open atheist : — a theory this all but necessary indeed to their system ; for why, except on account of some such different and more horrid kind of irreligion, overlook the Papacy, and judge Anti- christ ? So Maitlaud ; " The blasphemy of the Little Horn seems . . to be downright barefaced infidelity : something more like what was exhibited in France during the Revolution, than like anything ever seen in the Church of Koine." 2 Also Dr. Todd ; " We are to look for an individual Antichrist ; . . a power openly and avotcedly professing atheism ; and blaspheming the very name and semblance of Christianity." 3 And so too others.4 But then what explanation do they give of the passages just referred to, as indicating something so different in the Antichrist's religious profession ? In Dr. Mait- land I observe no reference to them. As regards Dr. Todd, while 1 This was written in my first Edition ; I think in 1843. What has past since only furnishes reason for my letting it stand as it was. (2nd Ed.) 2 Second Enquiry, p. 105. So again in his Answer to Cuninghame, p. 57 : " I must repeat over and over again, that the spiritual common sense of the Church of God in every age, from the days of Daniel to those of Wicliff, is set in array against the fundamental point of Mr. Cuninghame's system : for it . . . knew nothing, and looked for nothing in the character of Antichrist, but an individual infidel persecutor." — On the Fathers' opinions, see my next Section. 3 On Antichrist, p. 37. Compare his p. 153. 4 Mr. Burgh, p. 265, says ; " Infidel indeed it will be in one sense ; from its marked hostility to the Saviour, and open denial of his having come in the flesh." — So too the Oxford Tractarian on Antichrist, p. 16 ; " Both St. Paul and St. John describe the enemy as characterized by open infidelity, . . . and the blasphemous denied of God: and St. Paul adds that he will oppose all existing religion, true or false." He illustrates at p. 21 by reference to the atheism professed at the French Revolution. CUM', ii. § 1,] okk. i n vi. DMKODIFUD PUTVBIS1 muimi. overlooking that moei striking ijrmbol of the UmMike two-horned Boott, that was prophetioally set forth as Antichrist's attendant and prime minister,1 and this down even to Antiohriat'i last war againat the gospel, ami consequent destruction by Christ.- be however notices, and seeks t«> set aside, the other two. St. Paul's expression about the Jceeivahleness of unrii/J/tcoiisin ss he explains awav, as if meaning merely the deceivableness of false miracles, externally sup- porting the iniquitous moral system; 3 though surely the expression seems to imply a deceivablcness by great pretensions to religion in the moral system itself. Again, as to the designative term Anti- chrisf, though quoting a criticism of Mr. Gresswell which explains the force of the word almost exactly as I have done, viz. as meaning " another Christ, a I'iee-Christ, a pretender to the name of Chris/, who in every circumstance or characteristic of personal distinction . . appears to be, and sets himself up as, the counterpart of the true."' — I say, though he thus quotes Mr. Gresswell,4 defining the term so as to set aside, by the very force of it, all idea of the pre- dicted Antichrist's being an avowed atheist, yea, and confesses that '• this it indeed the strictly etymological meaning of the word," yet does he discard it by simply Baying, " It is plain that John applied the name in the looser sense of enemies to Clirist by falsi-, doctrine." But how so ? The statement in 1 John ii. 22, u He is Antichrist that denieth the Father and the Son," is the one grand New Testa- ment passage on which his atheist counter-theory rests. But mark- how the next verse, " He that denieth the Son hath not the Father," shows that the denial of God the Father meant by St. John was only by denying Christ. And how denying Christ ? Surely in Paul's language, " While professing to know God, in forks denying him." The Gnostic application fixes this meaning on it. And so in truth the Oxford Tractator confesses ;• and gives it as an alternative 1 How could he have been so short-sighted as to overlook its force and ngnificancy, when he had Lacunza in his hand, pointing it out so strikingly, though himself a Ro- man.-' 3 "'10 supra. See too my Vol. iii. pp. L96, 204, &c. •c. xix. 20. 1 Todd on Antichrist, p. 228. — Mr. Burgh adds strangely that it will be a religious from Antichrist's requiring the WOrMp of /muse//, and from the Trinity of the Dragon, Beast, and A/7, ibid. * p. 92. 1 At p. 1') hi- thus ut of the idea just noticed of the predicted prohibition being one of universal application. Hut, to show the utter incorrectness of this idea, notwithstanding the learned Dublin Doctor's declaration of its indubitahleness. two considerations will, I believe, suffice: the one Sl probable argument drawn from the context of the prediction: the other an ex-abs-unlo proof drawn from the supposed thing predicted. First then, and as regards the context which immediately precedes the verse in question,3 what find we to have been there St. Paul's subject and argument? We find nearly the whole preceding Chapter occupied with the Apostle's directions to Timothy as to what would be fitting, and should be required, in bishops and deacons : — includ- ing the remarkable particular, respecting both bishop and deacon, that each should be the husband of one wife;4 and also a reference to wine as that which neither bishop nor deacon should use to was God manifest in the flesh : and this the rather because the Spirit told expressly of a coming apostasy from the faith, in which there would be another rule of life and godliness; with for- bidding to marry, and enjoining of abstinence from meats, though Grod had given them as his good creatures for man's use. This noted he then resumes the thread of his general directions at verse 6 ; " Suggesting these things to the brethren, (viz. all that he had pre- viously enjoined,) thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ." — Such, I say, is the connexion and context of this brief but memor- able prophecy; and thus does it intervene parenthetically in the course of St. Paul's instructions to Timothy about ministers of the Church ; including that of their being husbands of one wife, and not using wine in excess. All which being so, would it be reasonable to suppose that St. Paul digressed to a prophecy in no wise specially connected with his ministerial subject, but concerning alike all men ; or, rather, to one closely connected with it, and having regard specially to ministers and functionaries in the visible Church ? Surely the latter. In which case, and considering the far-famed Papal in- junction of celibacy on the priesthood, (not to add also on the mo- nastic orders,) and that of the forbidding of meats also, wine inclus- ive, to multitudinous ascetic orders, the prophecy becomes, just as Mede in the main expounded it,1 a prophecy that had most signal fulfilment in the Popedom ; and so, instead of an argument for Fu- turists, furnishes an argument strong against them.2 Secondly, I should be glad to know, were there truth in Drs. M ait- land and Todd's universal anti-marriage theory respecting Antichrist, ' I do not insist on Mede's exposition of oiSaa-KaXiai oaip.oviwv. I have elsewhere spoken on this point. See my Vol. iii. p. 103, and also Vol. ii. pp. 9 and 497. But it does not affect the question we are now discussing. 8 Let me observe, with reference to Dr. Todd's illustration from Antichristian sects existing in St. Paul's time, or that arose soon after, to wThom the description in the prophecy might primarily or partially apply,* (save only that they were rejected as heretics by the majority of the Church, and so the characteristic of an apostasy, in St. Paul's sense, would hardly attach to them,) I say that in regard of those Encratite Gnostics, and the Manichaeans afterwards, it was not upon all members of the sect that the injunction was laid of abstinence from marriage and meats. By no means. A person must be but ill informed on the subject if unaware that those Sects had members perfect and imperfect : and that it was only on the 2}e>fect, including * Todd, p. 306. — I observe that Chrysostom too on this passage illustrates from the Manichces. Iltpi Mamx«i)T(av, /ecu MapKiavivTaov, Kai ttuvtos awrusv tov zpyaijctii/. OHAP. n. § 1.] OBXQXNAL I N HOB] I 1 1 ID nil IX8I bX in mi.. bow it could consiM with Christ's own prophet ie deelarat LOD in Mall. wiv. :>s? \\ See my Vol. iii. p. 206. 2 See the historical illustrations given by me, Vol. ii. pp. 12, 28. — When Czersky was hesitating about entering the Romish orders from repugnancy to its law of celibacy, he tells us the reply was made to him, " Non unam (mulierem) habebis, sed mille pro una habebis." * lb. 269. f lb. 267. X On this see Vol. iii. pp. 279—282, and p. 481 supra. CHAP. II. § 1.] OBXGXNAJ DNMODIFIXD PTJTTJBX81 SOHXMB. 689 families in the seven] Western kingdoms, and absorbing in their domains do small proportion of the iiaiinn.il territory, the aceumulat- ed result, it was said, of the piety, or ratlin- of the superstition cA successive generations, — I say in these monasteries, thus as on act <>f religion endowed, and thus a.* an net of religion peopled with devotees, it was found that he had formed, and held in his grasp, BO many almost inexpugnable Portresses, filled with hostages for its fidelity, in the heart of each kingdom of Western Christendom.1 Was there ever such s "forbidding to skwry," in any other Church, or Sect, that Dr. M. has put forward for comparison on this head? — Nor musl I omit to except strongly against what Dr. M. says of the ab- stinence from meats and fastings in the Romish Church, as if, like those in our own Church, good and praiseworthy.* By the English Church the doctrine of justification through faith in Christ alone is laid down as its very foundation-stone. With the Romish Church the rule of fasting, as of celibacy, is laid down as a principle of merit and self-justification, in opposition to the gospel of Christ. N<\t. and with reference to Dr. Todd3 and other Futurists' view of Antichrist's religious or rather anti-religious profession, as that of an oprnly avowed atheist, anti-religionist, and anti-moralist, let me express my deep conviction, that it is not merely unaccordant with the Apocalyptic and the other cognate prophecies of Antichrist, but appears, even intellectually speaking, a mere rude and common-place conception of Satan's predicted master-piece of opposition to Christ, compared with what has been actually realized and exhibited in the Papacy. My opinion of the Pope's being Antichrist is not indeed founded on any such a priori notion of the thing; but on the com- plete identification of the one and the other, after a rigid comparison of the Papal history, seat, character, doctrine, and doings with those of the Antichrist of prophecy. Having however shown this, let me now explain and justify the superadded sentiment just exprest re- specting the Papal system; as being, beyond anything that the Futurists have imagined, or ever can imagine, the very perfection of anti-christianism. And 1 will do it by simply putting a case in point. Which then, I ask, Reader, would you view with the deeper .■ r. ipeik y Vlllth's dissolution of mOTU " Thinking the work ii"t roificiently done, wlong m Abbeyi and Prioriei kept their ■5." Quoted by Daubua, p. 7 •So- l Antichrist, p 140, fte. - ibid. p. 87. 030 REFUTATION OF CHIEF Al'OC. COUNTER-SCHEMES. [APP. PART II. amazement and abhorrence: — an avowed open desperate enemy, sworn against your life, family, friends, property : — or one that, while pro- fessing the utmost friendship, were by some strange impersonation of you, in your absence, to insinuate himself into your place in the family ; seize your estate, seduce your wife to be as his wife,1 your children to look to him as their father ; and, if yours be a king's dignity, to seize your kingdom for himself; then to make use of his opportunities to train them (wife, children, and subjects) into un- faithfulness and rebellion against all your most solemn and cherished wishes and commands ; falsifying your letters and forging your hand- writing, in order the more effectually to carry out his plan ; and even at length framing an image, and breathing voice into it, and by magic art and strong delusion making men believe that it was your own self speaking, in expression of perfect approval of his proceed- ings, as those of your chief friend, plenipotentiary, and chosen sub- stitute ? — Such is somewhat of the view of Antichrist, sketched in Scripture prophecy : such, what has been realized in the Popes and Popedom. And, horrid as was the atheism of the French revolution- ists, yet must I beg leave to doubt whether in God's view it was as horrid an abomination, even at its worst, as the blasphemous hypo- crisies and betrayal of Christ in the polished Court and Church Councils of his usurping Vicar and impersonator at Home. Sharp as were the thorns and nails and spear of the Pagan soldiery, they were surely less painful to the Saviour than the kiss of Judas.2 § 2. ON CERTAIN MODIFIED FUTURIST COUNTER-SCHEMES. There is something so monstrous in the Futurists' primary and fundamental idea, as described in my preceding Section, of the Apo- calyptic prophecy overleaping at once near 2000 years from St. John's time, and plunging instantly, and without notice, into the distant future of the consummation, — something so contrary alike to the general rule of God's prophetic revelations, and to the natural meaning of the revealing Angel's own words to St. John about the commencing chronology of those of the Apocalypse, — that it could hardly be but that some at least among them should seek out for a 1 See my Vol. ii. pp. 79, 80, and Vol. iii. p. 179. ' I have in this Paragraph quoted from my Reply to Mr. Arnold. CHAP. II. $ 2.] C1BTAIH KODIFISB PI COUMTIS-SOHBMX8. I way of softening the monstrosity, Moreover, if themselves really of Protestant Peeling, the idea of its total overleaping of the great Papal apostasy, without forewarning against or notice "t' the divine wrath andjndgmenl impending <»n it, has been s part of the theory painful even to themselves; and from which, if possible, the) would fain set it free. Bo here and there the attempt 1ms been made. Some ten or twelve years ago an imperfectly developed Scheme, partially to that effect, appeared in the Christian Examiner, written by \\. l>.. a well-known ami mueh-respeeted correspondent of the Journal J which, however, as being but partially developed, it may I unfair to criticise.' Besides this T ma) mention the scheme of 1 The proposed Scheme is developed in a Series of Letters in the Christian Ex- aminer for 1 B It opt :■» b] .i statement of the opinion that the little book in the hand of the rainbow- c rowned Angel, in Apoc. \., includes in it all the remainder of the Apocalypse, and that it hat fur its subject the ultimate restoration of the Jewish people. For in Apoc. \i. John's temple-measuring answers to the prefiguratire measuring of Jerusalem, as in tile latter day, in Xcch. ii. J; and the two witnesses for Christ, whom II. D. mate specifically, (witnesses however sent more particularly to the . are killed, after completing their testimony, in the plane where Christ Crucified, i. e. the literal Jerusalem, by the Beast from the abyss, or Antichrist. So Antichrist's seat is fixed to that holy city : a local designation previously intimated by the statement as to the Gentiles treading the holy city for 42 months. This \a with the Beast of Apoc. xiii. and xvii. ; also with Daniel's little horn of the 4th gn at Beast ; also with St. Paul's Man of Bin. Ee unites the Roman power with all that may remain of that of the other three prophetic monarchies, in a great (ientile confederacy against the restoration of God's Israel : so m. iking war with :tit>. i. e. with the holy nation of Israel, -is l"r '■'<'. year- he treads their city ; of whom however It. D. supposes the great mass, indeed all but the 144,000, or remnant of the election of grace, to be as yet unconverted. The second Beast, attending the ue expounds to be a priesthood supporting him, from out of the apostate Church of Home. And what then of the woman Babylon who rides the Beast ? It is the idolatrous Church of Rome, then in intimate alliance with the " infidel" Beast Antichrist, against the restoration of Israel : for which cause specially, (though not without some Ue alsn to her former sins, for the Bomish Church is the apostasy of St. Paul's prophecy, though its Popes are not the Man of Bin, or Antichrist.' then is denounced against her. and pn sently executed, the doom of utter destruction by kings from the East. As to tie ren heads, It. I), professes to have no distinct idea; and moreover about the Boost's ten hoi ' Borne is destroyed : then in the Jewish battle-field of Armageddon the Antichrist and his associate powers. And then the millennial raign with Christ of the faithful Jnoith martyrs, killed in Anti- christ :on, will begin: a new hi S.YI n and earth DAVing been created, lit for the risen saints to inhabit; and the New Jerusalem descending from heaven glorious city for the inhabitation, not of fi* D saints, but of the restored and now COU- I Jews, [n fact, this is the same as the city of glory described in [sa. liv. ; while, as be and the Neu Jerusalem of the Apocalypse there ii • nee, that Ezekiel's temple is to be that of the restored Jews before their pon- rarsion; the Apocalyptic Jerusalem, where then is no temple, the habitation ol the 'i Iter. Of course, in reference to this, such questions a* the following will su- 633 KEFUTATION OF CHIEF APOC. 0OTJNTEB-SCHEME8. [.UP. TAUT II. modification propounded by the Rev. W. G. Barker, in a Letter printed in 1850 in the Quarterly Journal of Prophecy ; ' and another, with its own marked peculiarities, published quite recently by Mr. W. Kelly, of Guernsey.'2 Of each of these 1 now proceed to offer a brief notice. 1. Mr. Barker. Mr. B.'s Paper, which is written in a kindly spirits entitled, "An Apology for Moderate Futurism." After stating at the outset his persuasion that the number of prophetic students who held moderate Futurist views is greatly on the increase, (a persuasion in which I suspect him to be mistaken,) he proceeds to express a hope that they who hold the " Protestant view will be constrained to admit that solves to the intelligent reader. 1. How could the Apocalyptic temple-measuring, in which the outer part was cast out as given to the Gentiles, and moreover the holy city given to be trod by the Gentiles for 42 weeks, correspond with the measuring of the city in Zechariah, to the intent and effect of Jerusalem being inhabited as towns without walls by the restored Jetvs ; of the which it is said, " for I, saith the Lord, will be unto her a wall of fire round about r " — 2. How could the Beast' be a Roman power, as R. D. admits it to be, and with a local fixation to the Roman site, by reason of its seven heads signifying the seven hills of Rome, and yet have its seat at Jerusa- lem ? — 3. How, if the ajiostasy of 2 Thess. ii. be the Roman Papacy, such as for ages it has been developed, can the official heads of this apostasy, i. e. the Roman Popes, after manifestation before the world in that character, fail of answering to St. Paul's Man of Sin ; or how this Man of Sin be meant of a chief not directly heading the apostasy, but only closely allied with its head ? — 4. How, as regards Ezckiel's temple and city, could that appertain to the Jews when restored but not converted, and when indeed (according to R. D.) Antichrist is to occupy Jerusalem and its temple as his seat, and yet have for its name and title, " the Lord is there? " — 5. How can the New Jerusalem of Apoc. xxi. be the city simply of the restored Jewish nation, when its name is declared to be written on the faithful of Gentile Asiatic Churches, such as that of Philadelphia, Apoc. iii. 12 ? But, as before said, the Scheme is evidently not digested. — I observe with pleasure, as well as surprise, one point of agreement between us ; viz. in that R. D. has antici- pated me in making the great white throne of Apoc. xx. 11 synchronize, at its first setting up, with the commencement, not the end, of the millennium. When I drew out my argument on that point (see pp. 215, 216, supra) I was not aware that the idea had been entertained by any previous expositor. R. D. only states the idea. He does not argue it. ' No. VII. for April, 1850. * In my 4th Edition of the Horae, I took Mr. C. Maitland's " Apocalyptical School of Prophetic Interpretation," for my second example of modified Futuristic exposition. And, if any of my readers wish to see it fully examined into and criticised, they may there find what they wish. As it is, considering that the Book and its suggested views have now probably past into oblivion, and moreover that I have had occasion again and again to show up Mr. C. M.'s inaccuracies in my History of Apocalyptic Interpretation, (see supra pp. 275, 276, 278, 279, 281, 282, 281, 285, 286, 302, 305, 306, 307, 308, 313, 319, 320, 344, 351, 362, 368, 379, 380, 423, 424, 441, 539.) I think it better to take Mr. W. Kelly's more recent book as my second specimen of modified Futurism ; especially as I imagine it to give the views of a large Section of " the Brethren " (originally called " Plymouth Brethren ") on the Apocalyptic prophecy. CHAP. U. J 8.] is \i;ki ft'fl mi m> 1 1 ii IS ii ii U81 001 MTBB-81 in. mi mnjrrutr Fn/i'rist view may In- maintained together with the most eonaiatenl Protettontitm : and may even lie reconciled with a modi- Bed admiaaion of the eheriahed views of the hittorioal interpreters." \ i then, and in evidence of thia, he lays down the following several points on which, in a certain way, the Protestant Kuturial and hia- toricaJ expoaiton have agreemenl : \i/.. l. in supposing that we are now near the time of the conanuunation ;— 2. in supposing the Apo- calyptic Babylon to mean the Papacy; — ;>>. iii holding Daniel's i'"iir great empires to be those of Babylon, Persia. Greece, and Borne; — 4. in expecting a national restoration of the .lews to their own land; — besides that, in the 5th place, Moderate Futurists are inclined to admit that the Apocalyptic figures may have been so ordered as to have a resemblance to the various historic realities that historic in- terpreters have variously applied to them; insomuch that these realities may have been in a manner shadows of a more perfect ful- filment yet to come. — Together with the notices of which .several points of agreement, there is insinuated on each topic a notice of the superior strength of the Futurists, where the two schools differ. — It is with the 2nd and 5th of these notices that I am alone directly concerned in this present Paper. On the others however, in conse- quence of the above-mentioned insinuation, I think it right to add a few remarks in the Xote subjoined.1 > A* n gards Mr. 15.'- 1st supposed point of agreement between the historical inter- . the moderate Futurists, viz. as to the present nearneai of the eonswnma- the following extract from Mr. ('. M aitland's book (p. 104), who is to among the latter, may suffice to show Mr. 1!.'- error : — " Of the yet remaining length of Rome's career we know nothing certain from prophecy: it may be thai the sor- M nai —till before her long ages of iniquity ; or it may be that we are now n sitt- ing her latest arts. "—And certainly, on Futurist principles, Mr. C, M. app an to me re all the reason on his side, as against Mr. Barker. For putting aside, as Mr. tea, all evidence derivable from the near expiration of n rtain long chronological period-, commencing from known historic epoch-, and reaching to the consummation, from what can he draw hi- conclusion but from the now exi-ting signs of the t iin- - And arc those signs so decisive and distinctive of themselves, especially when com- . with what have been in past ages, as tO furnish a sufficient warrant lor it ''. For example, one marked sign of the approaching consummation that the Futurists' tnd division of the Roman empire (hitherto o marvellously supp d by them to be unbroken and undivided) into ten contemporary kingdoms. Compare then the evidence on this head now presented to Mr. Bar sritfa the roi responding evidence about it, that presented it-elf to the affrighted me, at tkt opt "■>"/ of tht ■'>■■> then i hen the Soman ampin inundated I I barbarous nations, anions; whom he marked and enami i and most eminent, • Ood'a prepared inatrnjnanti apparently foi breaking supra. 634 REFUTATION OF CHIEF APOC. COUNTER-SCHEMES. [APP. PART II. 1. Now on Mr. B.'s attempt at Protestantizing, in a manner, the Futurist views of the Apocalyptic prophecy, there needs but very up and then dividing the empire among them : and with every circumstance attend- ant that could make men's hearts fail for fear, and from looking on the things that were coming on the earth. Which, I ask, from the mere evidence of the signs of the times had the greater reason for affirming the nearness of the consummation, Jerome or Mr. Barker? Surely the former. And yet we know that near it certainly then was not.* 2. " Both parties," says Mr. B., " agree that the vision of Daniel's great image has its fulfilment in the four great empires of Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome : " adding, with reference to the fact of some Futurists (e. g. Drs. Maitland and Todd) disputing the last, that Moderate Futurists do not dispute it; "neither is it at all necessary to the consistency of Futurism that they should." Is it not necessary ? Let us consider the case as between these moderates of the school, and what Mr. B. would designate as the extreme Futurists. It is of course essential to the Futurist system to regard its expected, and still future, Antichrist's empire as the last of the great mundane empires, and to assign it a place in Daniel's image ac- cordingly. Shall it be then the whole of the iron legs and feet, or only the feet and toes ? Say Drs. M. and T., the whole of the iron legs. But then Mr. B. and his moderates shrink back (and no wonder) from the idea of that long vacant unrepre- sented interval which this involves ; and of the legs of the image dangling corre- spondingly by a long thread, as I stated in my Chapter on the year-day, Vol. iii. p. 298. It is only the feet and toes, exclaim the Moderates ; or, as Mr. B. himself seems to prefer, the toes themselves only : all the rest, legs and feet, being that Roman em- pire which began long before Christ's first coming, and is still (they say) not yet ended. But how ? The iron legs represent alike the old Roman empire of Augustus, and the Papal empire of the middle age and modern times, as if all one and the same empire, continued uninterruptedly and in undivided form, even until now ? Surely, observes Dr. S. R. Maitland, f it is clear that the old Roman empire, " the empire ruled by Augustus and Constantine," has long ceased to exist : and that nothing but the "exigency of system" can make writers on Prophecy gravely affirm the contrary. Besides which Mr. B.'s system makes Antichrist's empire, which he would have to be the strongest as well as most universal that the world has ever seen, to be repre- sented, not by iron feet wrought into greater density and strength than the common iron of the legs above, but by feet or toes part of iron and part of clay, partly strong and partly brittle, and thus less strong and united than the iron legs of the Roman empire above them ! Mr. Barker passes over these obvious and fatal objections without notice. But, by way of compensation, he calls in the doctrine of arithmetical proportion, as allied with him against the historical expositors. " What disproportionate toes," he argues, "that have to symbolize in their length some 1300 years, while the joint legs and feet of the image have but to symbolize some 700 or less ? J On the other hand, how just the proportion and scale, if we suppose the ten kings that are to be the future Antichrist's contemporaries and subjects, during the destined 3£ years of * Compare my remarks in Vol. iii. pp. 264—267, on the almost absolute necessity of long chronological periods (albeit with certain ambiguities attendant) in order, concurrently with the signs of the times, to give the warning intended of the near approach of the consummation; and moreover the fact of this being accordant with the precedent of the evidence given by God of the near approach of Christ's first coming : which last point will be found illustrated very fully in my concluding Chap- ter in this Appendix. -f On Antichrist, p. 6. j Mr. B. dates Rome's supremacy from B.C. 197, when Macedon yielded to the ascendant of Rome ; whence to the breaking up of the Roman empire on the Gothic invasion, A.D. 476, would be near 700 years. There seems some misprint in Mr. B.'s own numerals. CHAP. u. § -.] iiAi;ivi;i;'s modi run i i 1 1 BI8T 001 NTBb>8CHBMX. 685 brief reply to show its futility. Says he; " Both parties admit tli:it the Apocalyptic Babylon signifies the Papacy. Lfthej (the 1 1 ist <>ri- Oab) think the Woman jfcvM mounted the Beast, we helie\e the W'o- man will mount the Beaat : so we oaa both agree that the curse of God rests on that false system of religion." But no! Not so. Ac- cording to the futurists (albeit in most manifest emit rmliet ion to his reign, to be figured by she statue's ten toeal " * — Now chronological proportion was evidently n>> objeol in the prophetic figuration, as appean from eomparing the chronological lengths of the three first empires with the parts of the image symbolii- ing them ; bnl only ■ representation of the mcoettion of the great empires. But, a» Mr. H. will oonatmel an argnment from it, let us sec how the argument really stands. We may perhaps reckon live toe-lengths for the foot, and between two and three foot-lengths from the foot upward to the knee. Tims the proportionate length of the toe to the conjoined leg and foot may be roughly reckoned at a twelfth. So that if, chronologically applied, the toe represent 3J years, so as Mr. B. makes it do, then the leg and foot together ought proportionally to represent 3J X 12 = 42 years. Instead Of which, however, they arc, according to Mr. Barker's scheme, to represent the period from B. C. 19" to A. D. 1850, at the very least ; or about 2050 years, i. e. just 50 times U yearn! — Bat this in fact is an understatement. For it is clear from Dan. ii. 33, 41, that not the tOBt of the [mage only, bnt Hie feet, part iron, part clay, in which the toe- centred, were the intended symbol of the tth or Roman empire ^after its division ; just as, in the parallel Apocalyptic figuration of Antichrist's decern- empire the Beast's head ma apart id' the figuring symbol, as well as the ten horns that grew out of the head. A vie w tail which is further illustrated by the statement that the stone -mote the image on the feet, not on the toes, at the epoch of it- final destruction. Which being so, the disproportion on Mr. B.'s futuri-t view is vastly greater : being that of the foot to figure the 3} years, and scarce 2^ foot-length-, or from the knee-joint of the image t<> the ankle, to figure the 2050 years ! On the other hand, on the historic principle, we hare bom the knee to the ankle to cor- :ul with the 700 years of the old Roman empire ; and from the ankle to the end of the toe to correspond with the 1300 years of the Romano-Gothic Papal e:npire. A chronological disproportion, no doubt ; ,in a figuration however, as before said, in ■which chronological proportion was not the object. But in this case it would be a disproportion, comparing figure and fact, of only 1 to 4, or 5 ; whereas in Mr Barker's scheme it is as 1 to above 200 ! ! 3. Says Mr. B., " Both parties agree in expecting a national restoration of the Jews to their own land. But the historical interpreters, while admitting the [srael of the Old Testament prophecy to be the literal Israel, and it- participation in the glories of the reign of the ooming Ifnssinh. d" y< t in tie Apocalypse find no place for the Jew. They - ly, 1 1 phecy." t In this Statement, and the idea of the Jew being " utterly and entirely past over" by historical expositors of tin Apocalypse, Mr. B. is incorrect. At the precise epoch, to which he makes special reference, of Messiah's assumption of the kingdom, and bridal. I have my- If only followed in the wake of many previous expositors of the same school, in supposing the converted Jew-' participation and prominency in the song of welcome and joy to be probably indicated bj tie Sebraic terminology for the sons?. H : l^i' irith regard to Mr. B.'s requirement of the twelve tribes oi . mentioned in Apoc viL being r» c '--in/' d >- " the restored tribes of the literal Israel," Mr 1!.. i- very well aware of, though he does not notice, the argument • lha ttpn It, and altered with a view to compre--ion. Mr. B.'s words, t Again I slightly alter Mr. B.*S phraseology, with a view to brevity. 636 REFUTATION OP CHIEF APOC. COUNTEll-SCIIEMES. [APP. PART II. Scripture prophecy)1 the Beast Antichrist's religion (if I may use such a misnomer) is to be open avowed infidelity. And, while in such close alliance with Antichrist as the Apocalyptic figure of the Wo- man sitting on the Beast implies, we cannot suppose her avowed religion different: especially since Antichrist, according to all the Futurists, will allow no alternative but that of receiving his mark and worshipping his image, or death. Which being so, Babylon, on the Futurist view, must at the time depicted be professedly infidel : and tli is indeed not of compulsion, but heartily, and as herself a prime agent in the matter ; since, whatever the false religion, she is herself the one to drug the nations with its philtre cup, and this even to the last.2 Now it is specially for Babylon's sins committed during the time depicted in the Apocalyptic vision, of her riding the Beast, that God's judgment is pronounced on her : 3 — i. e. (still on the Fu- turist hypothesis) for her final avowed infidelity, not for any other previously cherished sins. Whence it results that for Rome's Papal errors there is no special judgment from God. And if so, and that there is not even a note of Apocalyptic protest or warning on God's* part against Rome's previous Papal religion, simply and distinctively, what can be the inference but that, after all, in God's eye, Popery is not a thing so very bad ? — Thus I find myself forced to regard Mr. Barker's attempt at Protestantizing the Futurist Apocalyptic Scheme as an utter failure. And let me further add on this head, that I think it ought to be viewed as a little suspicious in that system by (the decisive argument, I may say) against any such allowance ; viz. from the Christian meaning, as primarily declared by Christ himself, and to a considerable extent admitted by the Futurists themselves, of the chief Jewish types and figures in the Apocalypse. On this point I have entered fully in my previous Section.* And it is an argument which I am persuaded not all the ingenuity of all the Futurists that exist now, or hereafter may exist, will ever be able to overcome. And its effect, even were it by itself, is to leave the whole scheme of Futui'ism (alike that of the Moderates and the Extremists) a hopeless ruin. 1 See my p. 623 et seq. supra. Let my readers well mark that up to the moment of his final destruction, instead of being depicted as an avowed infidel power, the Apo- calyptic Beast, Antichrist, has the lamb-like two-horned Beast, the symbol of a false- professing Christian Hierarchy and priesthood, with him, as his attendant and prime minister. 2 I beg my readers to mark this; and how in Apoc. xvii., xviii., at the epoch im- mediately before her destruction, she is depicted, not as a subordinate, but an all- dominant queen. * Her judgment is in Apoc. xviii. 2, 3 declared to be because of her having com- mitted fornication with the kings of the earth, (evidently those associated with the Beast,) as well as having with her philtre cup made drunk all the nations. * See pp. 610—612 supra. CHAP. II. | -V BARKER'S Mi'Dirn i> i i n un 00! % i i a-s< ii I m i . 687 every really Protestant eye, thai three of its chief peculiarities, \i/ thai of making the Antichrist :i single individual infidel man of 8 literal years' duration, thai oi' regarding Rome's primary empire as still onended,and thai of making the city of the two witnesses' death to be Jerusalem, — are all points lion-owed (however vainly, thank (ioil! and ineffectively) from some of the chief Romish antagonists of Protestant prophetic interpretations; from Ribera, Bellarmine, Malvendai 2. Lb to ^Ir. H.'s plan for mitigating the monstrosity of the Fu- turists' imagined Apocalyptic instant phmge into the distant future oj the consummation, \i/.. by supposing that the prophetic imagery may have btvn purposely so ordered as to bear a resemblance, though but imperfect, to the various historic tacts to which historic expositors have variously applied them, and so, and by these imperfect t'ore- shadowings, not to leave wholly unrepresented the long interval be- tween St. John and the consummation, it must surely be obvious to all intelligent persons that with such particularity in the prophecy* % multitudinous details, and order too in their arrangement, it is nothing Less than impossible for the scheme to be true. What ! the mosl opposite and different events to be all alike foreshadowed by these various and peculiar symbols ! There is evidently satire in the very suggestion. No! there can only be one true fulfilment; and that one reaching from John's time to the consummation. — As to what that fulfilment is, is another question. But until I see it overthrown I must believe the one given in the Horae to be the true one. 31 r. B. himself has already tried to break it down ; but with what result ? What, for example, has come of his attempted refutation of my ex- position of the Seals t I have made a point of exhibiting whatever has appeared to me of force in Mr. B.'s as well as in other critics' objections: and the reader has before him in this present edition a notification of them, and of the answers. Let him judge for him- self. But. if onrefuted, can those various and most particular coin- acea of met and symbol shown by me, in regard of the horse, crown, (contradistinguished from diadem.) bow, sword-bearing, bal- ance, notification about wheat, barley, wine, oil. and the price of the two former, with the horse's significant successive colours of the white, red, black, and livid, and yet much more following, I - can all this be the mere effect of chance? Or, again, ran there be 63S REFUTATION" OF CHIEF APOC. COUNTER-SCHEMES. [APP. PART II. any human probability of such and so particular a fulfilment ever again occurring ; and this in some small fraction of the Futurists' imagined 3£ years of the last crisis, or a little more, just before Christ's coming ? ' So much as to the two points now before us. — I observe in his Paper that Mr. B. sagaciously deprecates Futurists conjecturing too particularly about things future ; and so exposing themselves to the charge of discrepancies between members of their own body, and other pointed attacks, from " the skilful arrows of their prophetic antagonists." But is it only in regard of conjectures about the future that there have been manifested such discrepancies among Futurists ? Is the question whether the Roman empire, once ruled by Augustus and Constantine, has yet come to an ending, or not, a question of the coming future, or of the past ? Or, -again, whether the 70 weeks of Daniel are to be taken as weeks of years or days : and, further, whether the 70 were all fulfilled about the time of Christ's first coming, or with the 70th (as Mr. B. in fact supposes) still left for fulfilment ? And so too of sundry other questions. — "While however thus deprecating conjectures about fulfilments of prophecies that are yet future, Mr. B. tells that there is one thing that he seems to himself really " to know." Well ! let us test our Futurist on this his own chosen ground. " All I know about the Seals is that they seem to foretell God's four sore judgments, with persecution of his people, and 7iis coming to judgment." But bow (as I asked in my preceding Section) the 3rd Seal figure famine with barley at 7id per 5 lb, and wine and oil in abundance, so as is intimated in the Seal ? Again, if the 6th Seal be Christ's coming to judgment, where is there a single clear sign of it, supposing the elemental convulsions to be taken otherwise then literally ? And, if they be taken literally, and the earth have been literally struck by stars falling from heaven, how in the very next following scene, under the same Seal, comes the earth to have its inhabitants upon it, just as before ? — Mr. B. must have been perfectly aware of these objec- tions when he wrote his Paper ; for I have urged both the one and the other upon him myself2 And what his reply ? On the former point he has only replied by dead silence. On the latter his reply is 1 This will be found illustrated in my Review of Mr. "W. Kelly, next following. '-' I have urged these points alike in my Yiudickc Horariae, in my published Letters in the British Magazine, and in discussions printed, or private, with Mr. Barker. i u. li. j I.] W. OUT'S BI8TOBI4 0-FUTUBI8 NT1B-S0H1M that, though consecutive in arrangement, vet the second ]>art of the (>th Seal must be considered prior in point of time to what precedes it ; albeit without a single not iticat i« >n. 01 si^n of any kind, that such is the cue. Thus in regard of the former point he virtually allows judgment to go againal him by default. In regard of the other he virtually confesses that, unless downright violence be permitted him in dealing with the Apocalyptic context, the Futurist Scheme in his own. as in other hands, must fall. A /'■'.'■■ 8 ■'•■ ;' ■'/' is added on the following page, in illustration of his Scheme, so tar as 1 have been able to make it out ; he him- self Inning declined to make one. For indeed such Schedides are most illustrative, and most necessary, in ease of Futuristic Schemes, as well as of Historical. 2. W. K, By. As regards Mr. Barker, in 1S51, the manner in which he would apply his modifications to the older Maitlsndic and Bnrghite Scheme of Futurism "pure et simple," is altogether vague and indefinite. But not so, 2ndly, with his modern successor, Mr. W. Kelly, of Guernsey. Dis- tinctly and expressly, and moreover in a certain way authoritatively, as if speaking as the organ of a not unimportant party in the Christian * Church,1 he declares his belief that the protracted Protestant scheme has in it a certain measure of truth : 2 that, in this scheme the seven Trumpets are the evolution of the 7th Seal, though he is not so sure of the Vials being the evolution of the 7th Trumpet : 3 that in the general outline of the prophecy, so considered, God intended that his people should gather light from it in regard of the then future destinies of the "Western and Eastern Roman Empire, first in its hostile Pagan state, next in its outwardly Christian profession and revolt against God in opposing Christ in his priestly character : 4 — more particularly, that he does not identify the meaning of the earlier Seals with the details of Christ's prophecy in Matt. I but would rather explain them of some successive providential judg- ments, such as the conquests of some hostile conqueror, then a time 1 He uses the word " we " (e. p. Intr. p. ix.) sufficiently often, as before obn m d, ■lis impression. If >o ■' ■ .■ >n of the body calling tin in- - •• 'I :. Bi thx n," once the Plymouth Brethren. rod. p. viii. » Ibid, viii., ix. * Ibid. 610 REFUTATION OF CHIEF APOC. COUNTER-SCHEMES. |"APP. PART II. 9 g a o CO o H CL( ?H P j C3 j i3 1 -*< .3 to" - c. ■5 as O 3 &S 33 P 5 » £^5 Qu. War in heaven, and persecu- tion of sun-clothed Woman, by seven-headed Dragon, here ? Dra- gon then transfers power to 2nd Beast from sea. IK o» ° •330 3 *- c — O F :T 7-3^ 2 = 0 •3-3.3 2 bo33 SI'S 5 2 fa g H ->l CO H H a p n O GO is s g 4 < aT _ O K H 3^ Ee « 3 = 3 His a-- B ** £? ED th Seal, he entirely repudiates the idea of its figuring the coming of Christ in judgment, or greal ilay of the Lord, at the end of the presenl dispensation ;2 but rat her views it as some grea1 political revolution, involving the overthrow of exist- ing governmental authorities, such as in fact thatof the overthrow of Heathenism in the Soman Empire, at thegreai ConstantiniaD Revolu- tion :3 and that, as regards the tour lirst Trumpets, be judges them to refer first to the Gothic invasions of Ahiric and ItluiJat/aisus; secondly, to the depredations of Ghnserie lsixi yean ; .in I. .1- in the next visioi . ir LmiMdlati ru.aboai ■ •) Umh mint* In heaven, under symbol of crowned. Fall of Roman Pagan 1 knp / ~ I. Do, I!. Do. III. Do. IV. Do, Jewish Martyrs. !Pari iitlntu al fymlinfi ('■•ion. Qod*l I !. ,:Lint, DOW in .iiul.ia daring ring I Trumpet Jndgl Divine Judgment mi all Human Prosperity. II. Damage of dum riling on them of great voloano-lika iVielinjlim power. III. River-like sources of pros- perity [rirltffn^ bj agency rilen dignitary. The T Epistles, taken historically, represent tlio stnto of tho 7 Asiatic Churches in the year A D ... -i T.u'iii begin the rabjcoWol i tiu shown, a. I > I st. John in Patmos. I I. Conqneet II. Mutual Slaughter. ill. Famine. IV. Four Sor. V. Martyrs. VI. Fall of Hoinan Umpire, mg Futon. i,,,,i , pro I \ Islon lor Hunts (luriiiir , coming Trumpet Judg I meats ' I. Alario, World's chief authorities temporarily eelipi I)ivine judgment. j Antiehri»t f=": ■ Is « itll r. r j Juda a f - r = V. ss, opened by a Propnet,emerge looost-like Satanic agents under a King tbi End Apocalyptic Spirltoal Anticliri-t. II. Qenaeric. III. Attila, IV. Odoaoar. BoUpse hi Soman Empire, v. Abyss opened. ■ ritometan lam Invade and darken i n Rmpba, VI. Judrea's first ii: Assyrian from Euphrates tnited !(•- man Empire King "I North Dan. \i. Apo- oat] ptii i or secular Antichrist. VII Destniction of the two BejMka. lium. Great white Throne. 1IMH) days. VI. Turks from Euphrates Roman Empire, a i' Kainl>ow-crowned angel of Reformation Apoc. x. I... g& ' 3 £ i Beast rises from - Christ', 2 • i robed in Mckoloth •j prophesy 13) r. vTHaeaassj slain by i from Abyss. 4} Resurrection of wit- j 646 REFUTATION OF CHIEF APOC. COUNTER-SCHEMES. [.VPP. PAKT II. tion, as animadverted upon by Mr. Kelly ; each having an important bearing on the interpretation, the two last specified most especially. 1. "In Apoc. xi. 8, Mr. E. repeatedly, but incorrectly, of course through oversight, represents the reading in the critical editions as tin rr)£ wXareiag t r) g ToXewc t -q g ^tyaXTjc" (contradistinct- ively, I presume, to irk. wo\. tt\q jxty., without the r^g). So Mr. K., p. 198 ; referring specially to the H. A. Vol. ii. p. 39G, and Vol. iv. p. 543.1 He seems (if I rightly understand him) to regard this as unduly adding weight to the idea of Rome being pointed at as the fated city of the Witnesses' death, not Jerusalem. In reply, I have simply to state that the text is as I give it in four out of the six critical Editions which I possess : viz. in Heinrichs, Tregelles (Ed. 1841), "Wordsworth, and Alford. In Griesbach (Ed. 1818) and Scholz, the ttjq is wanting before ttoXewq. Bishop Middle- ton, as I have observed Vol. ii. p. 433, speaks of the Greek as grammatically requiring the ttjq prefix. 2. At page 203 Mr. K. animadverts on my preferring the reading, Tjvoiyr] u vaog ru Qeu ev ru apavf, in Apoc. xi. 19, to i]voiyj) 6 vaog th 0. 6 ev Tio up., which he regards as that of best MS- authority. In reply to which charge I have to say that what I prefer is the reading of Griesbach, Scholz, Heinrichs, Tregelles, Alford ; Wordsworth alone of the critical editors by me preferring the other reading. The importance of this reading, which arises primarily from the fact that the absence of the article precludes the idea of a second and heavenly temple being here indicated, different from that spoken of xi. 1, 2, and elsewhere previously, is doubled by its parallelism (as 80 given) with the clause in Apoc. xv. 5 ; icai r)voiyr) 6 vaog rrfg (TKrjrrig th /uaprvptu tv ru> spaP(o : where the text, as I have just written it, is given in all the critical editions ; alike by Griesbach, Heinrichs, Tregelles, Scholz, Wordsworth, Alford. Mr. Kelly, indeed, would here too read 6 ev rw npavu> ; for he gives, as the English, " the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony in heaven was opened ; " not " was opened in heaven." But altogether, so far as I know, without authority. And why ? It seems to be only because of its suiting his peculiar interpretation of the passage, 1 H. A. 4th Ed.— In my present Edition the references will be to Vol. ii. p. 433, and Vol. iv. p. 580. In my citations from Mr. K. I here and there a little ab- breviate. cil. ll. I -.j w. El LLY'l HI8T0EICO-F1 11 BIST 001 vi i.k-scii i.m i:. 647 ■ad idea of the cYpooalyptio scenery; she ?erj bull be has so often, ami wrongly, ascribed to me. 8rdly, comes my adoption in the fourth Seal ill. \.. VclL i. p. L89, Ith Bd., or, in this 5th Ed., p. 201) of a reading correspondent with Jerome's well-known Latin translation in the Vulgate, nper ijmifiior partes forrce,uon the,/bttr peris of the earth;" instead of that found in OUT Greek MSS. all hut univt!-sall\ , be my weighty in favour of tin i/un." — In fart, it would be us absurd, as it would ull but unpre- cedented, for any jodieJone expositor to oi e. 1 K. g. Ajuberfe. Bee i>. 849 sujira. * Take e. g. W, K t tbii and the two or rather three (as he would have it px ceding Boole* judgments. " \\'<- know (i. e. from thil prophecy) that there is a r '/ue.it coming ;— then of bloody warfare ,— then of dearth: end lastly of the outpouring of God's four sore platjues." p. 108. Not one word, ••! on the fourth part. s •• How iiuuh more when I send my four sore judgments on Jerusalem ; " or, vv. V), 17, 19, on " the la. 648 REFUTATION OF CHIEF APOC COUNTER-SCHEMES. [aPP. PA11T II the Seal ; seeing that in the 4th, just as in the three preceding Seals, the colour of the ichole horse is seen to he that of the livid pallor of death. And against the strength of the evidence for the truth of this symbolization Mr. K.'s assertions and richauffee of objections, borrowed from other and earlier critics, is really worthless. — 3rdly, there is the evidence, from comparison of history and prophecy, that the indication in Jerome's reading, when superadded to the 12 or 13 of the preceding Seals, completes, in respect of a very remarkable particular, a most exact and philosophic picturing of the successive phases and fortunes of the Roman Empire in the two centuries intervening between St. John and Diocletian : — and this, 4thly, in perfect consistency with what goes after, as well as with that which goes before, inclusive of that notice of a subsequent tripartition of the Empire which is set forth so prominently in the Trumpets; springing as that which was meant by the latter did, (in Mr. K.'s judgment as well as my own,) out of the previous cpuadripartition under Diocletian. In fine, with Jerome's reading all is, on my historic system of inter- pretation, explicable, consistent, harmonious : while, on the other hand, with the usual Greek reading all is inexplicable on any system of interpretation. Have I not then sufficient warrant for adopting it ? 4. There is noticed by Mr. K. " the flagrant proof of my prone- ness to prefer a manifestly spurious reading where my hypothesis requires," in my preference of tin to Qripiov to /ecu to Qr]p. in Apoc. xvii. 16. So "W. K., p. 304. And no doubt the evidence of Greek MSS. is very strong in favour of the wit. Moreover, I have, in the course of this last revision of my book, found that I was mistaken in suppos- ing that the early Greek Eather Hippolytus read t-rt n kist roi \ n:k-sui i:\lE. 649 tlu- vivid ind prolonged pictorial vision of A.poo. xviii., thai bhe ultimate deatructioi] of the Apocalyptic Babylon, or (as Mr. EL and I both agree) Boms, is to he by direct judgment from Heaven: — a judgment like that of Sodom and Gomorrah, tho smoke nt* which is to go np tor ever and ever. This being so, it is equally evidenl that her destruction and desolation by the buman agency specified in Apoc wii. li!. must have been only temporary ; whether that of the Beast's ten horns alone, as the en-i might rather seem to imply, or that too of the Beast or Beast's last ruling bead, so as the koi would imply, as an ally and co-operator. Mr. K. himself virtually admits this.1 Now, then, let us, agreeably with Mr. K.'s judgment, suppose the wi to be the reading adopted; in other words, that the Beast, or its last ruling head, that is, as we are also agreed, the great Anti- christ, (whether the Roman Pope who long has been, or a personal Antichrist yet to come,) is to be an assisting party in the desolation of Rome, predicted in Apoc. xvii. 16. Then it is necessary that, in order to have become the flourishing city wbicb is described as the object of God's final judgment in Apoc. xviii., Rome must have been in a marvellous manner resuscitated, and restored to her ancient power and glory, in the interval between the said Antichrist's rise, with his supposed still future ten subject kings, and the final judg- ment from God. But, on Mr. K.'s and the Futurists' system, this interval can be only about 3J years. And really the idea of such a resuscitation in such an interval of time seems to me nothing less than an immense absurdity. On the other hand, even though receiving the reading mu, let me beg my readers to understand that it is by no means, so as Mr. Iv. and the Futurists argue, inconsistent with that historical explanation which refers back the judgment of xvii. 1(5, to the times of the Gothic and Vandal desolations in the 5th and Oth centuries. In so far as the old heathen religion and political rule of ancient Imperial Rome were concerned, the Papal Antichrist, who in the 5th and Gth centuries gradually rose up as the city's * So p. 309. " The case of Bativlon strikingly illustrates how a judgment said to ho may \> t be executed i>y nun. In Chap. x\ii. we mc that God will make use of the t».n homs, . .and the Beast, or power that hinds together those otherwise broken for inflicting his judgment! on Babylon. . . But in Cha] . xviii. not ■ word of this occurs. And the difference is so obvious and groat at lirst sitrht that tome bare l lid it down with decision that the judgment in Chap. .wii. is previous to that in chap, xviii ; and the destruction of Babylon En the former manly a human one : t } » . Latfa r subsequent, and directly from God. I would not dogmatize as to that explanation,1 650 REPUTATION OF CHIEF APOC. COUNTEU-SCIIEMES. [APP. PART II. residentiary governor, did take his part in its desolation.1 After which, in the long 12GO years, assigned in Daniel and the Apo- calypse, on the historic year-day system, Borne had abundant time for resuscitation : and, in fact, became again mother and mistress of the kingdoms and Churches of the Bomano- Gothic world in its proud character of the seat of God's Vice-gerent on earth'; Antichrist being, as Hippolytus so strikingly anticipated, its great restorer.2 To which character it still raises its pretensions, even at this present time ; albeit after the primary though imperfect ending of the 1260 years in 1790, and consequent passing away of much of its actual power : and doubtless will continue so to do, not without the ten horns' continued recognition of itj in these its spiritual preten- sions,3 even to the consummation. So with the reading kcu. With the reading e-m the prophecy was of course yet more exactly suited to the history. In fine, with either reading the historic explanation is justified, consistently with the prefiguration in Apoc. xviii. : with neither reading does the Futurists' seem possible. II. My asserted errors in certain renderings of the Greek, and historical applications of the prophecy. 1. Says Mr. Kelly, " Mr. E. contends for the strangest possible version of tig, as = after, or at the expiration of, the aggregated period of the hour, day, month, and year in Apoc. ix. 15." So p. 150. — When Mr. K. has shown that the same Greek preposition placed before a time, times, and half a time in Dan. xii., as well as before the 1335 days in a verse immediately following, does not mean before, or at the expiration of those aggregated periods,3 he will be in a better position for so expressing himself about my rendering of the clause in Apoc. ix. 15. But, though he had these parallel passages before his eyes in my Commentary, as very mainly my justification in the rendering of Apoc. ix. 15, Mr. K. makes no allusion to them. Nor does he make the slightest allusion to the extraordinary historical fact of the period heDce resulting, when measured from the well-marked epoch of the Turks being loosed 1 So Irenscus, as to Imperial Rome's idolatrous religion, " idola seponens." Other of the early Fathers' declared expectations referred more to the way in which Anti- christ would exalt himself over every atfiaafia, the Emperors specially. 2 Compare on all this my copious illustration of the whole subject, Vol. iii. 3 See my Vol. i. pp. 517—527. ill. li. I -V \\. ULLT'S BI8TOBX00-F1 1 1 BIST I 101 \ i i.k-m n i. \! i:. 65] from Bagdad on the Euphrates, l<> make Invasion of the G* Empire, ending precisely at that fortieth day of the siege of Con- stantinople by Mahomet, on which Gibbon says that all hope of n\ bog either city or empire was abandoned. This is just one speci- men, out of innumerable others, of the unfairness with which objectors hare been too apt to dwell on the supposed objectionable point in a question of l>iiyr evidence j suppressing all notice of the evidence in favour, however remarkable. A plan of proceeding so directly contrary to that of the summing up of evidence by an Bng- liah Judge, which ought in every such case to be the model remem- bered and followed by Christian critics. 2. •' 1 utterly reject Mr. E.'s statement that ' at one and the same time' is the true rendering of the Greek phrase in Apoe. xvii., of /i jar wpav pera tu 0>;ojow." It should be, he says, for the same time ; marlring duration, not epoch or occasion. — So Mr. K., p. 300. But, as in the preceding ease, so here let me say, when Mr. K. has succeeded in setting aside the parallels of John iv. 52, Acts x. 3, and Rev. iii. 3, adduced by me in loo., where the aecusatiw of time is unquestionably in the sense of epoch at which, it will be time enough to reply to him further on this point. 3. " In Apoc x., it is a monstrous proposition that the thunders, which spoke in St. John's ear. and which he was forbidden to write, should be explained as the voice of the Papal Antichrist from Rome's seven hills, not as the voice of Christ." So Mr. k\, p. 171. Yet does he expressly shrink from denying that the whole vision of the rainbow-vested Angel in Apoc. x. has an historic reference to the \-i i 1 1 i; i - i . 651 lion of it/) they answered In llie apostates of the l : i - 1 da\ s described 1 • \ St. Paul, and showed thcmseUes to lie of the spirit of A utirhrist} 1 find Ckjprian speaking of separatists that protest tin- Ohristkm iuim<\ and appeared minister* <>/' righteousness, as on Antiehrisfs tide, though under tlw name of Christ.* I find Ck/ril inaiating on the less palpable heresy of viosrarput, or Sabellionism* as well as on the more palpable one of Ari that while thtu discrediting marriage, under profession of continence, these heretics allowed " promiacuos ooncubitus."* The reader will contrast Clement's exposition of the text " Forbidding to marry " with ' md Todd's given pp. 625, 628 supra. — Tatian't austi rity of life, and rule i ii and celibacy, are notul by Bfoehi im ii. 'J. 5. 9, 1 have referred to him p. 301 supra. * De Unit. Keel. " Sub ipso Christiani nominis titulo fnllit incautos Diabolus, et ministros subornat suos velut mini.-tros justitue ; Antxchrittvm asscrentcs sub vocabulo Christi." 3 Suicer on Y'towaTwo and YloiraToota thus observes : " Hoeretici quidam in Scripturarum Trinitate Patrem, l-'ilium, et Spiritum Sanctum non trea person is, led unam duiitaxat trinominem, eBM dooebant. [Ilia l'iliu> er.it vloiraTatp. Sic Cyril indr. Lib. ii. in JohuAiii. ; ^pnwTiou Art kut' liiatl viroaTa oxnrip tCo£f tkti toiv uiraiCtvTwv alpaTMCCSV, vioiruTwp uatf>ipi rai." In the 7th Canon of Constantinople, lie adds, they were called Eo/SsXXiomm. 1 Noted also by Athanaaini and Hilary as the apostasy that was to pi ehrist. See pp. 312 — 315anpi Ambrose in Luo. rri. 4 Cat. Cyril's conclusion follows on the enumeration of these various kinds of apostasy, all in the profutina Church: Kiwi r't kttik >) tnrtmTumu- airiaTi\i7uv yap 01 av&pwiroi T»)« uptbjv irtaTituv. Autjj toivvv kttiv >'/ utottikthi' \ii irjioacoKatrdat 6 i^Opo?. ' rakfe notice of the encouragi a •• man. when in\ir 1 tli. Cluireh of Rome, and make his vow of conti Nun unam scd mille pro una habebis." — Ck rski'l Justification, p. 77- . IV. \1 60S REFUTATION OF CHIEF APOC. COUNTER-SCHEMES. [AFP. PART II. speaking of false teachers, and bad livers, as of Antichrist's spirit, while professing to be servants of Christ : ' and Chrysostom (or a near contemporary who wrote under his name 2) speaking of false teachers, such as he then discerned in the Church, (teachers with hidden deceit in their doctrine,) as forerunners of Antichrist : adding moreover these remarkable warning words ; " When thou seest the Holy Scriptures regarded as an abomination by men that outwardly profess to be Christians, and them that teach God's word hated, — when the people rush to hear fable-mongers, and genealogies, and teaching of daemons, then bethink thee of the saying, ' In the last days there shall be an apostasy from the faith.' " 3 — In addition to all which I may remind the reader also even of Pope Gregory s intima- tion, two centuries later, that in the ambitious pride and rapacity of the established Christian Clergy of his day there were discernible signs of that apostasy which was to be the immediate forerunner of Antichrist.4 2. As to Antichrist' 's own religion, after his manifestation, — besides the general fact of his adopting and heading the previously existing apostasy to which I before alluded,5 I find the following ideas thrown out by the Fathers : — that the would not at first unfold the true dia- bolical iniquity of his character, but for a while keep up a show of temperance and humility ; 6 coming as a lamb, though within a wolf;7 yea, with semblance of an angel of light;8 being, said 1 Jerome in Matt. xxiv. after mention of Simon Magus, and of St. John's prophecy of Antichrist, proceeds thus ; " Ego reor omnes haeresiarchas Antichristos esse ; et ■ sub nomine Christi ea docere qua? contraria sunt Christo." — Augustine writes in Epist. Joh. Tract 3 ; " Invenimus multos Antichristos esse qui confitentur Christum." Both he and Jerome must here mean preparatory Antichrists ; as they expected the chief Antichrist at the end of the world. 2 So the Benedictine Editor of Chrysostom judges. 3 'Otuu iojjs t\]V ayiav ypa(pi\v (ioeXv^d^iaav vtco Ttov ttvai doKovvTwv\pLUTtavwv, kui Tons \a\ovvTas rov Xoyov tov Qtov pucnidevTas, tote virofjivriadijTt tov J£.vpiov EITTOVTOS, Et 6 KOO-/XO? U/xaS /LUCTEl yiVUMTKETE OTl EfXE TTfitoTOV flEfJH)S iriarTtws, &C Homily Tltpi \\n.vo'oirpoi)Twv. 4 See my Vol. i. pp. 401, 402. 5 See Note 2 p. G56. 6 So Cyril ib. xv. 12 : " At first he will put on a show of mildness, as though he were a learned and discreet person (\oyios tis kui ctuvstos), and of soberness and benevolence." Oxford Translation. See too Victorinus, as quoted Note 6, p. 659. 7 Hippolytus de Antichristo, § 6 ; quoted p. 284 supra.. * 8 Cyril xv. 4 : " Satan is transformed into an Angel of light. Therefore put us on our guard, that we may not worship another instead of thee." This is said intro- ductory to the notice of Antichrist. CH.II.S.] PATRISTIC VIEWS OF PB0PHXC1 MMM.V NON-FUTUBTBT. 659 Hilary, in profession a Christian ; ' said Hippolytus, in even thing affecting a likeness to our Lord Jesus Christ : • and would be pro- fessedly an enemy,1 not friend, (so as the Oxford Tractator would hare it.1) to Pagomm and avowed Pagan idolatry. And then, some thought that, attaching himself rather to Judaism, he would appear as a zealous vindicator o( the Jewish law; would thus conciliate the .lews; and thereupon, showing himself as THE ChbIBT, (a title the very assumption of which implied a recognition of the Old Testa- ment as inspired Scripture.) would in that character sit in the recon- structed Jewish temple, and exact the divine worship due to the Christ : s — or else (as Jerome, Chrysostom, and others preferred to interpret the prophecies) that his sitting and arrogating divine worship would be in the Christian Church : '' wherein he would claim the -oououa. or highest rank;7 and wherein he would show his Christ -superseding authority, hy asserting his own voice to be the Word and the Truth,8 and by changing, too, and adding to the 1 Sec p. 313 supra. 2 Hippolytus, ibid, s " Idola quidem seponens." Irenaus, ibid., on whicb sec the Note of Feuurden- tius: also Cyril, ttO, * On Antichrist, p. 22. — He illustrates the (so represented) patristic idea of Anti- christ restoring Paganism, from the institution of something very like it at the Preach Revolution ; Liberty being then worshipped as a goddess, and a temple dedicated, and incense offered, " Atix grands homines." Let me observe in passing, that in my Vol. ill . 23-5, Note f, the Reader will see how singularly the Pope and his BBaociatea in the apostasy, while solemnly sanc- tioning what was virtually a revival of Paganism in the worship of the images of saints, made profession as solemnly, at the very time, of detestation of Pagan idols. 1 So Irenanu, Hippolytus, Victorinus, Cyril, and other early Fathers. "Ipse est iniquus judex," says Irenxus, "ad quern fugit vidua terrena Jerusalem, &c : " an application to Antichrist and the Jews of the parable of the unjust judge, and the widow calling on him for vengeance, that was mule by Hippolytus, £ ,j~ , also. Again the expositor Victorinus, expecting Xero to be the Antichrist, thus writes : " llunc I itum Deus mittct, regem dignum dignis, el < 'liristum qnalem meruerunt Jud.i i; et, quoniam aliud nomen allaturus tst, aliam etiam vitam iiistituturus, ut sic cum i in Christum ixcipiant Juda-i. Ait enim Daniel, Dtoideria mulitrnm non cognoscet, cum prius fuerit impurissimus ; • et Xiillum Deum jiatra/a cognosce/. f Non enim m dun-re populum potent circumcisionis nisi legis vindicator. Deniqne et sanctos non ail idola colenda rcvocaturus est, sed ad ein umeisioncm eohndam, si qnoe Ita demum iaeiet ut ChrtttUt ah (is appellctur." B. P. M. iii. 120. * Sec my Vol. i. pp. 380, 390, 410, 411 ; also Vol. iii. pp. 98, 96 ; B aay Vol. i. p, * So Origt n. on Bt, John, ^ oL ii. p. 63. Bra* I " i viroKpivomvo? uvai \oyoi, ou Aoyo* "WvtVfiaTt tov arTOfutTos aitT'U, Kai Kiirmiyn Tr; nrnjiitvuii Tt|s ■trapovata* uvtuv. (Ed. Ilutt.) Cited a lit) \ [i 287 ntpra. • Thii explanation of a eontroverted paaaage di a i tion. t That is, none of the godl of Pagan Rome. GGO REFUTATION OF CHIEF APOC. COUNTER-SCHEMES. [APP. PART II. number of, the sacraments : ' — that then at length 2 (on either hypothesis of the temple of his "enthronization) he would begin to display his real spirit of cruelty, as well as blasphemy ; and com- mence that terrible persecution of the 1200 days against Christ's two witnesses and the saints, which prophecy had so fearfully depicted, and which would be marked with the very energy of Satan. Such, I believe, is a tolerably correct abstract of the general patristic expectations in regard of the religion of Antichrist : — ex- pectations how different from the views of those of the Futurist school who, with Dr. Maitland, would represent it as the openly- avowed and legalized atheism and rejection of Christianity, and the as openly-avowed and legalized licentiousness of the French Revo- lution. Further, — after one important and evidently necessary correc- tion,— how consistent both with Scripture prophecy as predicting, and with the Roman Papacy as fulfilling. The point on which I conceive correction necessary has reference to the by some expected connexion of Antichrist with Judaism and the Jews ; — his origin out of, and re -establishment of, it and them. And, considering its importance, it may perhaps be permitted me to deviate a few moments from my immediate controversy with the Futurists, (if indeed it be a deviation,) in order to its explanation. — It is justly observed by the Oxford Tractator, that there seems little in Scripture prophecy to sanction such an idea.3 In truth the whole tendency of the prophecies concerning Antichrist is to show that he was to be an enemy both springing out of, and reigning within, the pale of the professing Christian Church. For how could he be an apostate, and head of the apostasy, and antitype of the apostle Judas, (not to say how the Latin man also, and horn out of the old Roman 1 So Jerome; " Mutabit, et augere tentabit (Antichrist us), sacramenta ecclesioc." * 2 Let me remind my readers that this idea of Antichrist's concealment for a while of his real character descended to a later generation. So e. g. Bede, writing on Apoc. xiii., says ; " Ante tres semis annos non aperto ore blasphemat, sed in mi/sterio facinoris ; quod, facta, discessione, et revelato homine peccati, nudabitur. Tunc enim dicet, Ee of A' :i. being Nen raised from the dead ; and that his connexion with lid follow afterwards. * Se. Bishop Newton in illustration. I eannot help suspecting, after much oon- 'ini. that " the abomination " maj have been intended of the Jnot' cotuum- ini jiiity, leithin the city, rather than of the Roman