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 PRINCETON, N. J. \>*: 
 
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 Section ' .,. C. . /jZ:>rJ. A^ 
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APO C AL YPSIS ALFORDIANA ; 
 
 DEAN OF CANTERBURY, 
 
 IN REFUTATION OF HIS APOCALYPTIC EXPOSITION, AND 
 
 VINDICATION FROM HIS CRITICISMS OF THAT 
 
 GIVEN IN THE "HOR.E APOCALYPTIC^:" 
 
 TOGETHER WITH 
 
 A BRIEF CRITICAL INQUIRY INTO THE LITERARY 
 
 CHARACTER, AND TRUSTWORTHINESS, OF HIS GENERAL 
 
 GREEK NEW TESTAMENT COMMENTARY. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. E. B.' ELLIOTT, M.A., 
 
 INCUMBENT OF ST. IIAEK'S, KEMPTOWN, AND LATE EELLOW OF TRINITY 
 COLLEGE, CAMBEIDGE. 
 
 SEELEY, JACKSON, AND HALLIDAY, 54, FLEET STREET, 
 LONDON. MDCCCLXH. 
 
'^y P K X li \J iu A ■ 
 
 -/ 
 
 '■"..-■ <~^-' ^-t 
 
 ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 It is not unlikely that to readers hitherto altogether unacquainted with 
 Apocalyptic exposition, the subject, as set forth in the first two Letters of this 
 Pamphlet, may appear intricate and obscure. If so, the fault will soon be 
 seen to lie with the ExjDosition reviewed, not with the Reviewer. In the 
 case of such persons it will probably very much tend to dissipate the 
 obscurity, and both open before their minds the general subject of the con- 
 troversj', and enable them to appreciate rightly the argument in those two 
 primary Letters which make up Part L, if they begin by first reading the 
 third and fourth Letters which make up Part II. 
 
 The Reader is particularly requested to correct the three following errors 
 of the press, as they materially affect the sense : — 
 
 Page 44, line 10, read, . . . Greek, or heathen Roman, . . . 
 „ 74, last line, read, . . . land (the cultivated land, you say,) . . . 
 „ 91, line 6, read, bar me out, instead of bear me out. 
 
TABLE or CONTENTS. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 LETTER 1. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 On the Substantive Revelations of the Future, and Prophetic 
 Plan of Arrangement, in Dean Alford's AjDocaljrptic 
 Commentary . . . . . .1 
 
 LETTER 2. 
 
 Critical Examination in detail of certain Cliief Explanations in 
 
 Dean Alford's Apocalyptic Commentary . . .20 
 
 PART IL 
 LETTER 1. 
 
 Dean Alford's Objections against my Exposition of the Seals and 
 Trumpets, given in the Horse Apocalypticse, examined and 
 refuted . . . . . . .51 
 
 LETTER 2. 
 
 Dean Alford's Objections against my Explanation of the Pro- 
 phecies concerning the Dragon, the Seven-headed Beast, and 
 the Two Witnesses, examined and refuted . . .93 
 
 PART IIL 
 
 Summary of the Apocalyptic Argument ; and Critical Inquiry 
 into the Literary Chai'acter, and Trustworthiness, of Dean 
 Alford's general Greek New Testament Commentary . 141 
 
APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 LETTERS I. AND II. 
 
 ON DEAN ALFORD'S OWN APOCALYPTIC EXPOSITION- 
 
 LETTER I. 
 
 on the substantive revelations, and prophetic plan 
 of arrangement, in the aleordia-n apocaiiypse. 
 
 Dear Mr. Dean, 
 
 The last half volume of your Greek New Testament 
 Commentary, which you were so kind as to send me, duly 
 reached its destination : and I took an early opportunity of 
 glancing at the part devoted to the Apocalypse ; and so 
 acquainting myself both with your own views of the 
 Prophecy, and with the opinions expressed by you respect- 
 ing mine. On doing this I saw that it would be clearly 
 my duty not to let your Exposition, or critiques, pass 
 without some public notice and examination on my part. 
 This you will probably yourself have anticipated ; and 
 many also of your readers who take an interest in the great 
 subjects of the Apocalypse. 
 
 I proceed, now that the necessary leisure is afforded me 
 for it by the completion of my revisal and reprinting of the 
 5th Edition of the Horse Apocalypticse, to discharge the 
 
 B 
 
2 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART I.. 
 
 duty which I have thus felt to be incumbent on me. And 
 I propose in the two first Letters that I am now addressing 
 to you to make your own Jpocali/ptic Eiposition the 
 subject of my critical examination ; in the next two to 
 notice your criticisms (criticisms for the most part of the 
 nature of objections) on mine. Gladly would I have been 
 spared the task of entering on the subject of my two first 
 Letters, could it have been omitted with propriety. But 
 you would have had cause to complain were I to pass over 
 your Exposition st(b silentio. Moreover, it is important to 
 show the defect in respect of strength of evidence and con- 
 sistency of yours, in order the more effectively by force of 
 contrast to show the strength and consistency of my own ; 
 the rather since you have thought well, while condemning 
 them, to pass over in silence almost entirely the strong 
 evidence on which the various interpretations so condemned 
 rest. A concluding Letter will wind up the subject. 
 
 Let me just premise that it is a matter of satisfaction to 
 me that we are altogether agreed on three points concerning 
 the Apocalypse : — viz. 1st, that it is a Prophecy dictated 
 by divine supernatural inspiration ; ' 2dly, that it was 
 communicated to St. John towards the close of the reign 
 of Domitian ; ^ 3dly, that the true view of the Apocalyptic 
 INIillennium is that of the Pre-j\Iillennial Advent, held by all 
 the earliest Christian Fathers.^ ]\Iore especially the two 
 first of these points must be remembered, as having an 
 important bearing on the correct interpretation of the 
 general Prophecy. 
 
 ♦ Prolegom. pp. 242, 243. 
 
 "^ At J). 233 of your Prolegomena, when alluding to my answer to the 
 arguments of Llicke and M. Stuart for the Neronic date, you express your 
 opinion that I have there satisfactorily disposed of them all ; and thus 
 unhesitatingly (p. 236) speak of the (picstion as settled in favour of the 
 Domitianic date. ' Frolegom. p. 252. 
 
LETT. 1.] ALFORDIAN AMOUNT OF REVELATIONS OF FUTURE. 3 
 
 Now, before entering more particularly, and in detail, on 
 the examination and criticism of such parts of your Apoca- 
 lyptic exposition as may seem most characteristic and im- 
 portant, it will be well, I think, preliminarily (and I 
 therefore purpose making this the subject of my present 
 Letter) to take a general survey of its contents as a loliole : 
 more especially, 1st, in regard of the revelations of the 
 future, which it sets forth as here made to St. John ; 
 2dly, of the order and connexion of the several parts of the 
 prophecy, in which these revelations were contained. Just 
 such, in fact, was my proceeding when first your Com- 
 mentary came into my hands. And I must beg you to 
 forgive my saying that this general survey was abundantly 
 sufficient to convince me of the Exposition bearing on its 
 very front its own stamp of self-condemnation ; as not only 
 fundamentally erroneous, ewQW 2Jrimd facie, but absurd. 
 
 I. For what, first, is the view presented by it of the 
 revelations of the future disclosed in this Book? As near 
 as may be, Ave shall see, notwithstanding your reprobation 
 of any such idea of the prophecy on the part of others as 
 strange and preposterous, ^ it is really made by your own self 
 to have been almost no revelation at all. An argument this 
 decisive alone, if established, yourself being the judge, 
 against the truth of the Alfordian Exposition : and of 
 which the force will only appear to be yet stronger, and 
 more decisive, from consideration of the circumstances 
 introductory to, and attendant on, its communication. 
 
 Eor consider for a moment, I pray you, the definiteness 
 of the promise made by the revealing Spirit to St. John 
 
 ' So Prolegom. p. 24L " Strange," you say, " that the enquiry should 
 hq,ve to be made in this day, Is the book strictly speaking, any revelation 
 at all ? Rather, is not its future bounded by the age and circumstances 
 then existing ; {i.e. at the time of St. John's being in Patmos ;) and are not 
 all those mistaken who have attempted to deduce from it indications 
 respecting our own, or any subsequent age of the Chm'ch I " 
 
 B 2 
 
4 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART I. 
 
 just before the commencement of the symbolizations of the 
 coming future, " Come up, and I will (now) shew thee the 
 things which are to happen hereafter " : — a revelation 
 needed, it is evident, in order to his fulfilment of the third 
 part of the threefold charge previously laid on him by the 
 Lord Jesus ; " Write the things which thou hast seen, — 
 and the things which are, — and the things which arc to 
 happoi after them " : ' and in regard of which, let me 
 observe, the definiteness and particularity of the revelations 
 given him respecting " the things lohich tvere," or state of 
 things characteristic at the time then present of the seven 
 Asiatic Churches respectively, as seen by the eye of 
 Omniscience, might well strengthen the Evangelist's assured 
 expectation of the next coming revelation of things future 
 being (in so far at least as the mysteriousness of the future, 
 only to be shadowed forth in symbols, might admit) some- 
 what similarly distinctive and particular also. — Further 
 consider the august assembly of glorified saints and angels 
 in heaven which gathered round the Divine throne, con- 
 jointly with St. John on the occasion ; and the intent 
 anxiety of one and all to see and hear the promised revela- 
 tions : these being revelations, they knew, wdicther as 
 regarded the future of the Church or of the world, in 
 which not only were the purposes of their God to be 
 
 ' Ou the verse Apoc. i. 19, " Write the things wliieh thou hast seen, 
 and tlie things that are, and the things which must happen hereafter," 
 (d eiSfj, Kai a (icnv, Kai a fitXXei yivea-Oai fieTa ravra,) you vary from the 
 above rendering in our E. V., and explain it thus ; " Write the things 
 ■which thou sawest (just now); and what things they signify; and the 
 visions which are to succeed after them." An expUination this in which I 
 cannot concur. But, as to the fact of the revehitions here given being 
 such as concerned the coming future, you fully admit it. So in your Com- 
 ments both on i. 1, and iv. 1. Also Prolegom. p. 241 : — " The Apocalypse, 
 i. 1, declares its own object to be mainly proj^hetic ; — the exhibition to 
 God's servants of things which must shortly come to pass. To this by far 
 the larger portion of the book is devoted. From chap. iv. 1, to cha]). 
 xxii. 5 is a series of visions prophetic of things to come." 
 
LETT.l.] AL^OIlDIA^' AMOUNT OF REVELATIONS OF FUTURE. 5 
 
 unfolded, but his attributes illustrated, and the final 
 triumph of his grace foreshown over all the opposing 
 powers of the world, sin, and Satan. Let this be con- 
 sidered, I say ; and surely the result with each candid and 
 sensible inquirer will be a conviction that there was reason 
 given for expecting an intelligible significancy, as well as 
 momentous importance, in the revelations of the future 
 about to be made : so as to intensify the objectionableness 
 of any Exposition which might explain the subsequent 
 Apocalyptic revelations, thereupon to be unfolded, as 
 vague, indistinctive, unimportant ; or the mere repetition 
 of revelations of the future already made before. 
 
 Such being the case, turn w^e now to see the substance 
 of the disclosures respecting the future made, according to 
 your Exposition, to that august assembly ; as the Lamb, 
 who alone was declared worthy of the privilege, opened the 
 successive seals of God's seven-sealed book of fate in which 
 they were written,' on its being given into his hands by 
 Him who sat upon the throne. First then, under the 
 symbols of the horses and horsemen of the four primary 
 Seals it was foreshewn, you say, (and you here speak with 
 absolute positiveness as to the obvious truth of this inter- 
 pretation,) ^ that Christ's gospel-preaching would ever go 
 forward in successful progress through the world, albeit 
 amidst wars, famines, and pestilences ; just so as Jesus 
 Christ had previously foretold in his prophecy, Matt, xxiv., 
 
 ' " Tlie book of Divine Providence, codex fatidicus, sen cousilionim 
 Dei," — such, after Alcasar, Mede, Vitriaga, and others, you exi^lain to 
 be the natiire and general contents of the seven-sealed Book. A wider 
 sense this, you add, than that which would make it to be the book of the 
 ApocalyjDse itself. So Comment, p. 603. 
 
 On certain peculiar ideas expressed by you about this book, both as 
 regards the result, or rather non-result, of the opening of its successive 
 seals, and a.s regards its relationship to the little opened Book of Apoc. x., 
 I shall have to observe at the beginning of my third Letter. See, too, my 
 Note, p. 18 infra. They seem to me notions very strange and inconsistent. 
 But with them I am not concerned at present. 
 
 * Prolegom. p. 249. 
 
6 APOCALYPSIS ALPORDIANA. [PART I. 
 
 on the IMount of Olives : — further, under the symbols of 
 the 5th Seal, that there was foreshewn, as in Matt. xxiv. 9, 
 the continuous persecution and martyrdoms of his saints ; 
 the cry of whose blood would call from the earth for 
 vengeance from God against the world's inhabitants, their 
 persecutors : and, under those of the 6th Sea], certain 
 2)ortents and convulsions indicative, like those in ]\Iatt. 
 xxiv. 29, of the imminence of Christ's second coming : — 
 moreover, under the sealing and palm-bearing visions, 
 thereupon next following, the completion of the (jatUcring 
 of his elect from the four winds, — another necessary pre- 
 requisite to it also noted in Christ's previous prophecy on 
 the Mount of Olives ; then, finally, (his coming itself, 
 intermediately, having been most strangely passed over in 
 the Apocalyptic revelations unsymbolized and unnoticed,') 
 at the opening of the 7th Seal, imder figure of a half- 
 hour's silence in heaven, the " initium quictis seternae," or 
 beginning of the Saints' everlasting rest. 
 
 So under the Seals. Besides all which, you say, " there 
 was still much more to be revealed."^ (A naive remark ; at 
 which the admiring reader may surely well think, Had any 
 one single thing previously unrevealed respecting the future 
 been as yet disclosed in this prophecy, according to Dean 
 Alford's explanation of it?^) First, you say, came six of 
 the seven ^r?^?w/je/ judgments ; — judgments distinctively on 
 the earth and its inhabitants, (not on God's people,) in 
 answer especially to the martyred saints' cries against them 
 
 ' See Note ', p. 17. * Prolegom., p. 255. 
 
 * At page 628 of your Commentary, you thus somewhat curiously state 
 your view of the grand disclosures of the future made, according to your 
 own view of them, under the Seals : — " In the seven Seals we had revealed, 
 as was fitting, the opening of the great Revelation ; — the progi-ess and 
 fortunes of God's Church and people in relation to the world, and of the 
 world in relation to tlie Church." If you would just write out for youi-self, 
 in detail, what, ami how nuich, you re])resent to have been disclosed under 
 the Seals of the fortunes of the one and the other, I think you would be a 
 little sur^jrised at your own haste, or simplifity, in making such a statement. 
 
LETT. 1.] ALFORDTAN AMOUNT OF REVELATIONS OF FUTURE. 7 
 
 from under the altar in the 5th Seal.^ Under the four first 
 of these there were symbohzed judgments on earth, sea, 
 rivers, and the hghts of heaven ; that is, upon the " acces- 
 sories of hfe," perhaps in the sense of " the vitiating and 
 destroying of the ordinary means of subsistence, comfort, 
 and knowledge : " ^ and then, under the 5th and 6th 
 Trumpets, two " veritable plagues," — plagues " affecting 
 life itself," — which were symbolized respectively as irrup- 
 tions of locusts, and of horses and horsemen from the 
 Euphrates : though what,'' and how to fulfil their destined 
 objects, was a mystery only to be cleared up when the time 
 of fulfilment should arrive, immediately before the Lord's 
 second advent.* (Certainly but little yet of the promised 
 " much more to be revealed ! ") — And so too in regard of 
 the episodic vision in Apoc. x., next following, of the rain- 
 bow-vested Angel's descent, with the little opened book in 
 his hand that he gave to St. John ; (a book which you 
 suppose to have been that of a new prophecy, comprehend- 
 ing all that remained of the Apocalypse ; ^) followed by St. 
 John's commanded measurement of the temple, or " Church 
 in her innermost hold," and the Angel's narrative about 
 Christ's two sackcloth-robed Witnesses. Which latter figura- 
 tions, you confess, appear inexplicable to you, save only to 
 
 ' Prolegom., p. 255 ; also Comment., pp. 618, 629, &c. The supjDosed 
 connexiou of these Trum2:)et judgments with the martyrs' cry from under 
 the altai- in the 5th Seal, for retributive justice against the earth's inhabit- 
 ants, is much dwelt on by you ; there being joined with it, you say at 
 p. 631, on Ajjoc. viii. 3, the prayers of other saints also, ofiered up by 
 the incense-bearing Angel, introductorily to the Trumpet-soundings. 
 Hence, as will be noted under my 2d head, an important index to your 
 chronology of the Trumpets. 
 
 * Comment., p. 633. 
 
 ^ In yoxiY Prolegom., p. 256, you speak of " the strict correspondence " of 
 these two latter plagues " with the foregoing vision of the Seals." But what 
 you mean by this I am quite at a loss to understand. 
 
 ■• Prolegom., p. 256 ; Comment., p. 641. 
 
 * Comment., p. 651 : including, as I shall have to note under my second 
 head in this Letter, the latter half of the 6th Trum})et. 
 
8 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART I. 
 
 the effect of their bemg an anticipative compendium, or 
 summary, of the subsequent revelations given in Apoc. xii., 
 xiii., xvii., concerning the Beast from the abyss, the slayer 
 of the Witnesses : ^ though what their use, or why their 
 place here, if such alone their meaning, is a question natu- 
 rally asked, but to which you give no answer. However, it 
 is to your explanation of those subsequent Apocalyptic 
 revelations that we are thus directed to go, (for again you 
 say, " there is more yet to be revealed," ^) in order to our 
 understanding, not of the visions of those three chapters 
 only, but also of what you conceive to have been the pur- 
 port of the Apocalyptic revelations of the future made in 
 Apoc. xi. to St. John. And so to them we go. 
 
 But, having done this as directed by you, it must surely 
 seem strange and disappointing to your expectant readers 
 (if at this point of your exposition any such expectancy 
 remains of real disclosures respecting the then coming 
 future) to find that the whole introductory series of visions 
 in Apoc. xii., with its various symbolizations of the sun- 
 clothed travailing Woman's persecution by the seven-headed 
 Dragon, at first in the heavenly region, then on the earth, 
 are expounded by you to mean nothing future wdiatsoever; 
 but only the long-before accomplished historic facts of 
 Jesus Christ's birth, his persecution through human 
 agencies by Satan, and then, in fine, (the necessarily pre- 
 vious facts of his death and resurrection being here ignored) 
 his ascension to heaven ! And this as followed next by a 
 figuring of the same enemy's persecutions of Christ's 
 primitive Church in the earlier part of the now closing first 
 century : whether through the Jews in the first instance ; or, 
 somewhat later, through the Roman armies that gathered 
 to the siege of Jerusalem, and caused the Church's flight to 
 Bella, — a flight like that of the symbolic Woman into the 
 wilderness: — all being events, not oiihQ future, but of the 
 
 ' Comineut., p. G53 ; Prolegom., p. 256. * Prolegom., p. 257. 
 
LETT. 1. J ALrORDIAN AMOUNT OF REVELATIONS OF FUTURE. 9 
 
 long-before accomplislied past. It is intimated, indeed, by 
 you that a secondary reference might be intended also in 
 the latter part of the symbolizations of Apoc. xii. to the 
 insulation of the Christian Church through heathen Rome's 
 persecutions, subsequently to the giving of the Apocalypse ; 
 or trials through the heresies that somewhat later crept 
 into it from the philosophies of heathenism. This, how- 
 ever, you suggest doubtfully.^ And, were it even set forth 
 by you distinctly as the intended meaning, it would be no- 
 thing more than had been told of previously respecting the 
 professing Church by Christ and his Apostle Paul.^ — Fur- 
 ther, as regards the sequel of " this great prophetic course 
 of visions," as you call them, just commenced, " respecting 
 the Church," ^ or figuration in Apoc. xiii., next following, 
 of that chiefest of the Church's enemies, the seven-headed 
 ten-horned wild Beast, to which, on its rising from the sea, 
 the Dragon of Apoc. xii. was spoken of as transferring his 
 throne, and power, and great authority, — I say, even as 
 regards it, you explain it as likewise in part a thing of the 
 2)ast, and the then present, at the time of the delivery of the 
 Apocalyptic prophecy. I do not refer, in thus speaking, 
 to yoiu- exposition of this Beast as the representative 
 generally of the world-powers, opposed to Christ and his 
 kingdom, pastas weh as, future ; it being the aggregate, 
 you say, of the heathen persecuting powers of Egypt, 
 Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, as well as heathen Rome.'* 
 In regard of this you may say that the past was only 
 implied by the Beast's six primary heads apparent in the 
 vision, without any prophetic notice about it. But, more- 
 over, you explain the second or two-horned lambskin- 
 covered wild Beast, which was associated inseparably with 
 the seven-headed Beast in this particular vision, as a 
 
 ' Comment., p. 669. 
 
 * Matt. xxiv. 5, 10, 11, 12 ; A.cts xx, 30 ; Col. ii. 8 ; 2 Thess. ii. 3 ; &e. 
 
 ^ Prolegom., p. 257. ■• Ibid. ; Commeut., p. 672. 
 
10 APOCALYPSTS ALFORDIANA. [pART I. 
 
 type of the persecuting Priesthood of Borne Pat^an, as well 
 as of Rome Papal, the latter yet to come ; and also the 
 Beast's image as distinctively the image of Pagan Roman 
 Emperors, such as Domitian, already in St. John's time 
 set up for worship : ^ so necessitating a view of that seven- 
 headed Beast itself as also, in part, the then existing 
 Roman heathen power. — No doubt, albeit inconsistently, 
 you speak of the Beast's recovery from a deadly wound 
 inflicted on it, the scar of which appeared on its rishig 
 from the sea at the opening of the vision of Apoc. xiii., as 
 realized in the fall of heathen Rome, two centiu-ies after 
 St. John, and its resuscitation as a power professedly 
 Christian ; ^ which explanation implies that both itself, and 
 all afterwards predicated of it, was referable to a time 
 subsequent to that healing of its deadly wound, and its 
 resuscitation in the form of the Roman Popedom.^ More- 
 over, in expounding the later supplemental figuration of 
 the seven-headed Beast in Apoc. xvii., as in the phase 
 there first depicted, viz., as ridden by the Roman Harlot, 
 (which Beast is wholly identified by you with the seven- 
 headed Beast from the sea of Apoc. xiii,*) it is similarly 
 the Roman P(7/;f// Empire, in John's time altogether future, 
 that you make to have been there figured. And future too 
 you make what is predicated of the same Beast from the 
 abyss, in its post-Papal phase of existence described, you 
 fancy, in the latter part of Apoc. xvii. ; as well as what is 
 anticipatively told of it by the rainbow-crowned Angel 
 in Apoc. xi., as the slayer of Christ's two sackcloth-robed 
 Witnesses in " the great city," Rome.^ All which, in so 
 
 ' See Proleg., p. 257 ; Comment., pp. 675, 677. ' lb., p. 673. 
 
 * At least mainly so ; the previous rule and era of Christian Roman 
 Emperors being also included by you under this phase and 7th headship of 
 the Beast. — Let me here observe that what must needs seem to my general 
 readers strange, and hard to understand, in my jiresent allusions to your 
 peculiar views about the Beast, will be found cle;ired uj) in my critical 
 exposure of those views at the close of my second Letter. 
 
 * Ibid., p. 701. * So in your Comment., p. 658. 
 
LETT.l.] ALFORDIAN AMOUNT OF REVELATIONS or FUTURE. 11 
 
 far as regards your deduction of it from the prophetic 
 symbols, will be a subject for critical examination in my 
 second Letter. At present what 1 have to say is that your 
 partial explanation of the Beast from the sea as a thing of 
 the past in St. John's time, and explicit reference of its two 
 adjuncts of the lambskin-covered Beast and the Beast's 
 image to the times then past and present, detract of 
 course so much from the indications of what was future in 
 the symbolization of Apoc. xiii. ; and indeed eliminate 
 from it almost every particularity of revelation respecting 
 the Roman Beast in its latest form, beyond what had been 
 long previously foreshown in Daniel's vision of the Little 
 Horn of the fourth of the four wild Beasts of Prophecy. 
 
 Besides this there was figured in the Apocalypse, you 
 say, but quite vaguely, certain preliminary judgments on the 
 Beast's worshippers under its seven Vials ; all still, it would 
 seem, as a part of the e/cSt/cj^o-i?, or avenging justice, called 
 for by the martyrs of Seals from under the altar : ^ and 
 then the destruction by fire and the sword of both the 
 Harlot and the Beast ; just accordantly with Daniel's long- 
 previous prophecy of the final destruction of the Beast and 
 its Little Horn by fire : — events these followed in the Apoca- 
 lyptic visions by Christ's second coming and the Millennium. 
 
 Such Mr. Dean is, 1 believe, a fair abstract of the sub- 
 stance of the revelations made to St. John of the thencefor- 
 ward coming fortunes of the Chiu-ch and world, as explained 
 in your Apocalyptic Commentary. And, after deducting 
 what had long before been predicted concerning them 
 either by Daniel, or by Christ himself, or by St. Paul, 
 I pray you to consider, not the vagueness only, but really 
 the nothingness, according to that explanation, of the 
 residuum of Apocalyptic revelations of the future. Con- 
 sider this in contrast, first, with the direct or implied pro- 
 mise to St. John of new and distinct revelations of the 
 
 ' See Prolegom., pp. 255, 258; aud Commeut.. p. 694. 
 
12 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART I. 
 
 great coming future ; next in contrast with the grand, 
 various, and very extraordinary events and changes in the 
 subsequent history of the Roman World and professing 
 Christian Church, as time has since actually unfolded them : 
 and then say whether I have not had reason for my early 
 assertion in this Letter, that, judged by this one criterion 
 alone, your Apocalyptic Exposition bears on its very fore- 
 front its own stamp of self-condemnation, as fundamentally 
 erroneous and absurd. Truly, had such been in real fact the 
 only revelations of the future made on the Lamb's opening 
 of the Book of Divine Providence, St. John might well have 
 wept after them, just as much as before them, from disap- 
 pointment of the hope held out to him. And well too, in 
 such case, might the modern Lifidel smile triumphantly 
 at the confirmation thus furnished of the truth of one of 
 the most cherished of the dogmas of modern Infidelity ; 
 viz., that there are no such things as real bona fide predic- 
 tions of the future in Scripture prophecy. 
 
 IL And now I proceed, as proposed, in what remains of 
 this Letter, to take a general view of ike structure of the 
 Jpocal>/pse, or arrari(/ement order and connegcion of the 
 several parts and prophecies contained in it, as laid down 
 in your Commentary. Very essential one might feel sure, 
 even a jjriori, w^ould be certain retrogressions, recapitula- 
 tions, and explanatory amplifications, in order to any effec- 
 tive prefiguration of so large and varied a subject as that 
 claimed to itself in the Apocalyptic book ; viz. that of the 
 coming destinies, from St. -John's time to the consummation, 
 of the Church and of the world : just, indeed, as in the 
 retrospective sketching of the same great and varied subject 
 in a book of history. And, supposing that there are such 
 retrogressions, &c., in it (a fact which every expositor 
 almost admits, yourself included), then nuist the necessity 
 be equally obvious, with a vicw^ to a correct understanding 
 
LETT.l .] ALFORDIAN APOCALYPTIC PLAN OF ARRANGEMENT. 13 
 
 of the prophecy, of a right arrangement of them ; and of 
 the chronological synchronisms, or successional sequences, 
 of its several parts. Not surely without reason has Mede 
 been famed as an Apocalyptic expositor very mainly from 
 the fact of his having been the first carefully to infer such 
 synchronisms from the internal evidence of the prophecy 
 itself; prior to, and irrespective of, any particular scheme of 
 historic interpretation. — Now, the internal data seemingly 
 prominent in the Apocalypse for such a correlative arrange- 
 ment, whether successional or synchronic, of its various 
 parts, are, 1st, the three septenary Apocalyptic successions of 
 Seals, Trumpets, and, in fine. Vials ; 2dly, the twofold or 
 threefold figurations in difFent parts of the prophecy of the 
 same seven-headed, ten-horned Wild Beast, and the 3^ 
 times, 42 months, or 1260 days (whether literally or 
 mystically to be understood) of his destined continuance 
 in power, and oppression of Christ's faithful saints and 
 witnesses ; (for, since Daniel, in his parallel prophecy of 
 the 4th Wild Beast's Little Horn, mentions but one such 
 period of 3^ times = 1260 days, there can be little 
 doubt, I think, as to the identity of the several Apoca- 
 lyptically-noted periods of that duration ; ' whether that of 
 the Woman or faithful Church's invisibility in its wilder- 
 ness exile, that of Christ's witnesses prophesying in sack- 
 cloth, or that of the holy city being trodden under foot of 
 Gentiles, — these being events not only consistent with, but 
 almost implied in, the fact of the Beast's having during 
 that period paramount power and authority) ; 3dly, that of 
 the notices in various parts of the prophecy of one or 
 another figured event occurring alike under the same Seal, 
 Trumpet, or Vial, or other notable Apocalyptic era ; {e.(/. 
 very specially that of the epoch of Christ's coming, and the 
 consummation ;) as well as being all alike (at least if accord- 
 ant with the revealing Angel's words) subsequent to the date 
 
 ' So you too incline to think, 
 
14 AFOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PAllT I. 
 
 of the giving of the Apocakpse to St. John in Patmos. — 
 Besides which internal data for Apocalyptic arrangement, 
 snpposing a Commentator to have decided on the fact of 
 any part of the prophecy having had its fulfihnent in the 
 historic jy(25/, there then follows, of course, 4thly, an 
 historic datum for the right chronological placing of con- 
 nected events correspondently therewith, whether as hap- 
 pening before or after it. And since, notwithstanding your 
 various and strong protests against " a continuous historic 
 interpretation," you yet fully and distinctly assign an 
 historic sense, with a prolonged historic period of the past 
 thereto attaching, to one of the most largely-unfolded, as 
 well as most important, of the Apocalyptic symbolizations, 
 viz., that of the Roman Dragon of Apoc. xii. and Roman 
 seven-headed ten-horned Beast from the sea and the abyss 
 of Apoc. xiii., xvii., xi., you thereby furnish the help of just 
 such an historic datum towards an Apocalyptic chronolo- 
 gical arrangement correspondently with your theory ; at 
 the same time that it furnishes also a criterion and testin":- 
 point of the truth, or untruth, of the general Apocalyptic 
 exposition connected with it.' 
 
 Aware of course of the desirableness in every case of a 
 synoptic view of the Apocalyptic contents, according to the 
 structural arrangement recognized by an Expositor, you 
 present your readers, at p. 259 of your Prolegomena, with 
 your own Tabular Scheme of it : a scheme of arrangement 
 in nine parallel columns, the main principle of which seems 
 to be the common ending (whatever and whenever their 
 beginning) of each and every one of these nine divisions of 
 the prophecy in what (though by the way but once spoken 
 of in the Apocalypse, viz., Apoc. vi. 17) you perpetually 
 
 ' Had the Bcnst been simply explained by you as a symbol of the vorld- 
 power generally, so as it is by certain German and Anglo-German exposi- 
 tors, and all else of the Apoculyptic prophecy been construed vaguely, so as 
 in yom- Commentary, the subjecting of the comment to a chronological 
 arrangement, and ao a chronological testing, might have been avoided. 
 
LETT.l.] ALFOE.DIAN APOCALYPTIC PLAN OF ARRANGEMENT. 15 
 
 refer to as " the great clay of the Lord." ^ Fair, no doubt, 
 'prima facie may seem this your schedule of arrangement ; 
 with its notice in red ink of the introductory vision of the 
 throne set in heaven, and the Lamb's receiving the seven- 
 sealed book of fate or Providence out of the hand of Him 
 who sat thereon, running all along above the nine columns, 
 as their common heading ; followed similarly by a parallel 
 notice in red ink of the vision of the new Jerusalem, 
 running all along at the bottom, as their common ending. 
 But when, after carefully considering this Tabular Scheme, 
 and comparing it with the views expressed on the subject 
 matter of its several columns respectively in your Com- 
 mentary, an intelligent reader looks to see how it may 
 consist with an arrangement on that principle of chrono- 
 logical parallelisms which can alone present to the eye a 
 correct view of the Commentator's idea of the structure of 
 the prophecy, how does the symmetry of your Tabular 
 Scheme forthwith disappear, a rude dislocation ensue of its 
 before apparently well-united parallel or adjacent parts, 
 and Chaos seem to take seat over against it as the presiding 
 genius loci! Eor, however the bottom of the several 
 columns may, according to your exposition of their con- 
 tents, alike synchronically terminate in the consummation, 
 the position of that which stands at the top, and inter- 
 mediately between the top and bottom of one and another 
 of those columns, is found to be anything but chrono- 
 logically parallel with that which stands beside it in the 
 column adjacent : nor indeed in the same column are its 
 successive constituent notices found to be in any order of 
 chronological sequence, such as their placings there might 
 seem to imply ; according, as before said, to your own inter- 
 pretation of the Prophecy. 
 
 ' Proleg., pp. 255, 249, 260 ; Comm., pp. 616, 620, 621, 692, &c. On the 
 indistinctness of your views about tliis " day of the Lord," see my Note, 
 p. 30, 
 
10 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART 1. 
 
 Thus in the 1st column the frst four Seals, notwith- 
 standing their markedly successive openings in the heavenly 
 vision, are expressly declared by you to be not consecutive 
 in point of time, but only " co-ordinate and correlative ; " ^ 
 i.e., I presume, that the gospel-preaching, wars, famines, and 
 pestilences, which you suppose them respectively to symbo- 
 lize, were prefigured as what would all run on synchronically 
 and intermixed, (with some mutual relationship perhaps, such 
 as of cause and effect,) from St. John's time to the consum- 
 mation. And so, too, in a measure, the 5tli Seal's subject 
 of the saints' martyrdoms from age to age ; save only that 
 the collective cry of their at length completed number from 
 under the altar against earth's inhabitants, their murderers, 
 is regarded by you as chiefly the subject of the prophetic 
 figuration, when w'axing louder toward the time of the end.^ 
 But then, as regards the 6th Seal (which surely in all con- 
 sistency ought to come under the same law of " co-ordinate 
 and correlative " arrangement as the Seals preceding), you 
 assign to the elemental convulsions therein figured, whether 
 to be construed literally or figuratively, a chronological 
 place distinctly and only at " the period of the Lord's 
 coming : " ^ that is, as you elsewhere somewhat incon- 
 sistently explain your meaning, " not that of Christ's 
 coming itself," but that " of the very eve and threshold of 
 the day of the Lord."'* — And such too is chronologically 
 the place, as you explain it, of what was figured in the 
 sealing vision, — though not in that of the pahn-hearinfj, — 
 which conjointly fill up the 2d colunni of your Tabular 
 Scheme : the latter, just as the 7th Seal's symbolic half- 
 hour's silence in heaven that followed next afterwards, having 
 
 " Proleg., p. 255. Also Comment., p. G12 ; "These four seals are 
 strictly correlative, not consecutive on one another." 
 
 ^ Comment., p. 618. Also Proleg., p. 255. ' Comment., p. 019. 
 
 * Prolegom., p. 255. See again my Note at p. 30, on the doubtfulness 
 and mistiness of your views on this subject of " the day of the Lord." 
 
LETT.l.] ALFORDIAN APOCALYPTIC PLAN 0¥ ARRANGEMENT. 17 
 
 its place subsequently to Christ's actual (though unrepre- 
 sented) coming/ at the commencement of the saints' admis- 
 sion to their heavenly and everlasting rest. — Thence, turn- 
 ing to the Trumpets in your 3d column, the judgments 
 figured in them, you tell us, " were in answer to the whole 
 (sic) prayers of God's Church;" i.e., to the saints' and 
 martyrs' cry for their avenging, after their number should 
 have been completed. Consequently the chronological 
 place of all the Trumpet-judgments, whether successional, 
 or (like your Seals) " co-ordinate and correlative," is fixed 
 by you as subsequent not only to the 5th Seal, but to the 6th 
 Seal ; in other words, " to the very eve of the great day of 
 Christ's second coming."^ — And this involves the chronology 
 of what the 4th column in your Tabular Scheme presents to 
 us ; viz., the episodical figurations of the rainbow-crowned 
 Angel's descent, St. John's measuring of the Apocalyptic 
 temple, and the Angel's narrative of Christ's sackcloth- 
 robed Witnesses' 1260 days of witnessing, their murder in 
 Rome's great city, and subsequent resurrection and ascen- 
 sion. For, instead of this being an episode " between the 
 Qth and Itli Trumpets^' as you state at the head of that 
 
 ' "The time for Christ's coming is not yet ({. e., not under the 6th Seal). 
 First his elect must be gathered from the four winds, the complete number 
 sealed [i.e., as ia the sealing vision], befoi'e the judgments invoked by the 
 martyred souls descend on the earth, the sea, and the trees. First the 
 seer must be vouchsafed a vision of the great multitude whom none can 
 number in everlasting glory. The day of the Lord's coming is then gone hy ; 
 and the vision reaches forward, beyond it, into the blissful eternity." 
 Proleg. 255. 
 
 - So Proleg., p. 255. Also Comment, pp.618, 629,631,635,661. At]). 249 
 of the Proleg. indeed you write ; " As the seven Seals, so the seven 
 Trumpets and the seven Vials run on to the time close upon the end." 
 From which expression a hasty reader might be led to suppose that the 
 commencing terminus d, quo of the Trimipets "running on" might, as in 
 the case of the Seals, be from an early date. But the references given 
 above show that such is not your view in regard of the Trumpets ; and of 
 course not in regard of the Vials. 
 
 C 
 
18 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART 1. 
 
 4tli column/ in really flagrant contradiction to the Apoca- 
 lyptic representation, it is most markedly placed in the 
 Apocalypse itself 2mder the hdter half of the Qth Trumpet ; 
 the judgments of that Trumpet being expressly noted as 
 ending not until after certain notable results and conse- 
 quences of the Witnesses' ascent to heaven, subsequently to 
 their death and resurrection.^ And, since this falls under 
 the 6th Trumpet, if the 12 CO days of the two Witnesses' 
 witnessing in sackcloth, and the 42 months of the Gentiles 
 treading the Holy City, told of in Apoc. xi., be identical 
 alike with each other, with the Woman or faithful profes- 
 sing Church's 3^ times' exile in the wilderness, and with 
 the 12G0 days of the supremacy of the Beast from the sea, 
 or abyss, the Witnesses' persecutor, (= Daniel's little horn/) 
 as you seem inclined (not without reason) to suppose them,* 
 then must the chronological place of these last-mentioned 
 events and eras, which constitute the subject-matter of your 
 5th colunm, be fixed, hke that of the 6th Trumpet, under 
 which they are Apocalyptically placed, to the very "eve 
 and threshold of the day of the Lord's second coming." 
 Yet, with marvellous inconsistency, you refer certain very 
 important parts of these figurations to the times of the 
 primitive Church's persecutions, previous to John's exile 
 in Patmos ; and times too when, as in Domitian's reign, the 
 
 ' And so, too, Prolegom., p. 256 ; " the two episodes between the 6th and 
 7th Trumpets." 
 
 ^ Another strange incongraity in your Apocalyptical arrangement here 
 becomes notable. You make the little book given by the angel of Apoc. x, 
 to St. John to contain in it " the remainder of the Apocalyptic prophecies ;" 
 inclusive, it would seem, of the latter half of the 6th Trumpet, and thus 
 bisecting it. So Comment., p. 651. What you would have to be the re- 
 lation of the seven-sealed book to the septenary of visions revealed on the 
 opening of its seven seals, respectively, is a mystery quite beyond my 
 comprehension. To this point I shall have to advert somewhat fidly at the 
 opening of my third Letter. 
 
 " Comm. p. 706. Why I note thi.s will appear hereafter. 
 
 * I say inclined, not decided. See Comment., pp. 655, 656, 670. 
 

 \ 
 
 lett.1.]alfordian apocalyptic plan of arrangement. 19 
 
 Roman Pagan Emperor's images were set up for worship : 
 for here at length, as before said/ notwithstanding your 
 protest against all continuous historical systems of inter- 
 pretation, historic explanations of the prophecy, of long 
 range in respect of time, are given by you; and con- 
 sequently historic data furnished such as call for a chrono- 
 logical arrangement consistent therewith. Moreover, you \ 
 make the Beast's reign, after that his deadly wound was / 
 healed, to be either that of Rome Fapal, the culminating I V 
 acme of which is absolutely fixed by history to the long- 
 since past era of the middle age ; or else that of some 
 supposed jyo5^'-P(2/;rt/ empire, yet future.^ 
 
 As to the figurations of Apoc. xiv., Apoc. xv. and xvi., 
 Apoc. xvii., xviii., and part of xix., and Apoc. xix. 10 — xx., 
 which are the subjects respectively of the four last of the nine 
 columns of your Table, it is evident that the chronological 
 place of one and all is immediately before the consumma- 
 tion : these being figurations severally of Angels declaring 
 the time to have arrived for judgments on the Beast's 
 adherents and on Babylon, followed by the harvest and the 
 vintage, or final ingathering of the saints, (as you explain 
 the harvest-symbol,) and destruction of the wicked : and 
 then by the Vial plagues, which are expressly said to be 
 the last plagues of God's wrath ; and, in fine, the actual 
 destruction of Babylon, and the Millennium. 
 
 I append a Schedule of your Apocalyptic Scheme of 
 structure, drawn up, in illustration of what has been said, 
 on the principle of chronological parallelism ; in contrast 
 with the fair-looking, but deceptive, Scheme of parallelism 
 given in your Prolegomena ; which seems arranged on no 
 principle that I can discover, save only that of the several 
 
 ' See p. 14, siiprd. 
 
 - All this the reader will find illustrated by my full discussion, and 
 expos^, of the AKordian theory of the Apocalyptic Beast iu the latter part 
 of my next Letter. 
 
 c 2 
 
20 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART I. 
 
 columns having a coinaion ending in the consummation. 
 And let me ask, if such a synoptic historic view of the 
 fortunes since St. John's time of the Church and of the 
 world, drawn up to the present time retrospectively, wonld 
 be scouted by you, (as I am sure it Avould,) alike on 
 account of its own utter inconcinnity and inconsistency, as 
 well as on account of its vast historic omissions, how can 
 you satisfy yourself with supposing it to represent the 
 Apocalyptic scheme of the future, as sketched prospectively 
 by the Omniscient Spirit of God ? ^ 
 
 I am, dear j\[r. Dean, 
 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 E. B. E. 
 
 LETTER 11. 
 
 ON CERTAIN CHIEF EXPLANATIONS IN DEAN ALFORd's 
 APOCALYPTIC COMMENTARY, CONSIDERED CRITICALLY IN 
 DETAIL. 
 
 Dear Mr. Dean, 
 
 I now turn, as the heading of this Letter states, to an 
 examination of certain of your chief Apocalyptic Interpreta- 
 tions in detail ; and shall with this view select (you will 
 admit my fairness in doing so) those which are not only in 
 themselves most important or characteristic, but on which 
 moreover you declare yourself to rest with the most implicit 
 confidence. Thus there will come up for examination, 1st, 
 
 ' In the Alforclian Scheme appended, what is included iu the primaiy 
 part, marked A, must be understood to have been unwritten, the seven- 
 sealed scroll containing nothing of it ; what is included under B to have 
 been written in the little opened Book of Apoc. x. 
 
SUBSTANCE, BUT IN SYNCHRONIC ABEANGEMENT, 
 
 OF THE APOCALYPTIC REVELATIONS OF THE FUTURE MADE TO ST. JOHN IN PATMOS, 
 
 as abstracted from the nine-columned Schedule of the "Apocalypsis Alfordiana." 
 
 ' Come up, and I will show thee the things that are to happen after the time now present ; " i.e., a.d. 96. 
 
 
 A.D. 
 
 1 96 
 
 A.D. 
 500 1000 1500 1862 
 
 Time yet future. .^^e^^dcoS- 
 
 Column 1. 
 
 Apoc. vi. 
 
 The Seven 
 
 Seals. 
 
 
 Ever-advancing progress of 
 gospel - preaching, with wars, 
 famines, and pestilences inter- 
 mingled ; and also Christian 
 saints' persecutions and martyr- 
 doms. 
 
 Cry from martyrs 
 completed 6lh Seal. 
 Signs of Christ's near 
 coming. 
 
 Column 2. 
 
 Apoc.vii. — viii.l. 
 
 Sealing and 
 
 Palm-beating 
 
 Episodes; then 
 
 7th Seal. 
 
 
 
 Palm-bearing 
 Fiiion, or saints 
 Sealing Vision, or ;„ glory of hea- 
 gathering of saints from yen. 
 
 the four winds before 
 
 Christ's coming. 7th Seal. 
 
 Samts ever- 
 lasting rest. 
 
 Column 3. 
 
 Apoc. viii., ix., 
 
 xi. 1—15. 
 
 Six first 
 
 Trumpets. 
 
 
 
 Six first Trumpet 
 judgments, in answer 
 to martyrs' cry in 5th 
 Seal. Fourfirst on life's 
 accessaries ; two next 
 (locusts and horses from 
 Euphrates), on life itself. 
 
 Column 4. 
 
 Apoc.x. — xi. 14. 
 Episode of Angel 
 with little Book, 
 Temple measur- 
 ing Witnesses. 
 
 
 Second half of 6th Trumpet. 
 
 Of Beast from abyss = Roman 
 Popedom (?) an anticipative 
 notice, as warring down Christ's 
 witnesses ; whose sackcloth wit- 
 nessing for 1260 days here ? or 
 future ? 
 
 Beast from abyss' war 
 against the two wit- 
 nesses, and their death, 
 resurrection, and ascen- 
 sion (if not their 1260 
 days' witnessing also), 
 yet future. 
 
 Column 5. 
 
 Apoc. xii. and xiil. 
 
 Sun-clothed travailing 
 
 Woman, Dragon, and Beast. 
 
 Sun - clothed 
 travailing Wo- 
 man and Man- 
 child = Christ's 
 birth, persecu- 
 tion by Dra- 
 gon, and as- 
 cension. Wo- 
 man's flight = 
 Church's flight 
 to Bella. 
 
 The mystic Woman's flight into 
 wilderness for 1260 days (which 
 much more than 1260 literal 
 days, being some long period)^ 
 the faithful Church's exile and 
 suffering, perhaps through the 
 severance of Eastern andWestern 
 Churches, and irruption of Mo- 
 hammedism. 
 
 Or, perhaps," Woman's, 
 or Church's, 1260 days 
 in the wilderness here, 
 as being still future. 
 
 
 Beast's image 
 = Roman Hea- 
 then Emperor's 
 image set up 
 for worship. 
 
 Beast from sea = Roman Pope- 
 dom ; but with two-horned Beast 
 attendant = persecuting Priest- 
 hood of Rome Pagan, as well as 
 Papal. Its 1260 days here ? 
 
 Beast under last head 
 = Beast that was and 
 is not, but shall be, still 
 future; = Man of Sin 
 and Little Horn. Its 
 1260 days here ? 
 
 
 Column 6. 
 
 Apoc. xiv. 
 
 Lamb with 
 
 144,000 on 
 
 Mount Zion. 
 
 
 The Lamb's true Church of 
 the 144,000, in contrast with the 
 Beast's worshippers, here? Or 
 yet future ? 
 
 The three angels in 
 mid - heaven ; gospel- 1 
 preaching completed ; 
 Babylon's fall announced 
 as impending ; and 
 Beast's worshippers' de- 
 struction by fire. 
 
 Column 7. 
 
 Apoc. XV., 
 
 xvi. 
 The Seven 
 
 Vials. 
 
 
 
 Seven Vials, or God's 
 judgments on worship- 
 pers of Beast. 
 
 Column 8. 
 
 Apoc. xvii., 
 
 xviii., xix. 10. 
 
 Judgment on 
 
 Babylon. 
 
 
 
 Babylon, or Papal 
 Rome's exposure and 
 fall. 
 
 Column 9. 
 Apoc.xix.lO. 
 
 — XX. 
 
 Judgment on 
 Beast ; and 
 Millennium. 
 
 
 
 Beast and kings of 
 earth adhering to it 
 destroyed. 
 
 Millennium 
 begins. 
 
 1 
 
 
22 APOCALYPSIS ALFOUDIANA. [PAUT I. 
 
 your explanation of the four first Seals, as figuring the con- 
 tinuous course of Christian gospel-preaching, intermixed 
 with Avars famines and pestilences, throughout the whole 
 coming future of the world's history : 2dly, that of the Qth 
 Seal, as figuring the signs immediately precursive of the 
 day of the Lord, or Christ's second coming ; 3dly, your 
 interpretation of the symbolization of the Ma?i-chihl of the 
 sun-clothed travailing Woman in Apoc. xii., as meant of 
 Jesus Christ's birth and ascension. All which three points 
 you speak of as " landmarks " and " touchstones " of true 
 Apocalyptic interpretation ; and so certainly true as actually 
 to furnish " Canons of interpretation," to depart from 
 wdiich, on the part of an Expositor, is an act of " self- 
 condemnation." ^ 4thly, there must be examined your 
 historic explanation of the seven-headed wild Beast of 
 Apoc. xiii. and xvii. as mainly the Roman Papal Empire ; — a 
 figuration which constitutes, as it were, the nucleus of the 
 latter half of the Apocalyptic prophecy, and with which 
 nearly all else in that division of it is directly or indirectly 
 connected. — Besides wdiich, before ending my criticisms on 
 your details of exposition, certain particular and important 
 oversights and omissions in your view of the prophetic data 
 may perhaps call for a passing notice. 
 
 The two first mentioned points for examination being 
 explained in your Commentary as mere non-historic gene- 
 ralities, I shall unite them together under a primary main 
 head : the two last, being historic, and susceptible of 
 historic as well as internal testing, in detail, under a second. 
 
 I. The Non-historic. 
 
 1. Now here, 1st, as to i\\Q four primary Seals, and their 
 intended significancy, as you affirm, of the Gospel's con- 
 tinuous triiunphant progress, and continuity too of wars, 
 famines, and pestilences, in the future of the world's 
 
 ' Prolegom. i)p. 248, 249. 
 
LETT. 2.] CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF ALFORDIAN SEALS. 23 
 
 history, even to the end, let me say I should really have 
 thought that the fact of these opening visions being under 
 the form of complex impersonations, with sundry specific, 
 and in one case at least (that of the 3d Seal) very singular 
 characteristics, of the persons or things impersonated, might 
 of itself have sufficed to warn off any expositor of discern- 
 ment from supposing the intent of each to be so simple as 
 you state : independently of the fatal objection already 
 urged by me, of the so-called revelations under the Seals 
 being, on such an hypothesis of their intended meaning, a 
 mere repetition of certain points in Christ's previous pro- 
 phecy on Mount Olivet ; and consequently, at the time of 
 St. John's exile in Patmos, no revelations at all. " The 
 horses and their riders," you say generally, " are the 
 various aspects of the Divine dispensations, which should 
 come upon the earth preparatory to the great day of the 
 Lord's coming." ' A curious definition of them, " Divine 
 dispensations," in the plural ; when expressly declared to be 
 not consecutive, but intermixed continually, as together 
 constituting one and the same general intended providential 
 dispensation in the world's history, subsequently to the first 
 preaching of the Gospel. And again, (and this is what I 
 shall have more to dwell on,) " their common feature," you 
 say, " is personification ; in the representation of proces- 
 sions of events by the impersonation of their leading 
 features^ ^ Will this statement of their leading featm*es 
 being impersonated really apply in each case, according to 
 your interpretation of the Seals ? Let us see. 
 
 Take, then, to begin, the 1st Seal. Here, in two closely- 
 printed columns, you find yourself forced to fence a little 
 as you explain your application of the symbol. The 
 descriptive passages in Ps. xlv. and Apoc. xix. are, you 
 say, necessarily suggested by it ; each of those two parallel 
 
 ' Comment, p. 611. * lb. 616. 
 
24 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART 1. 
 
 passages referring to Christ, as the rider intended. So iu 
 the Psahii ; " Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O most 
 mighty ; in thy majesty ride prosperously : thine arrows 
 are sharp in the midst of the king's enemies." And in 
 Apoc. xix. 11;" Behold, a white horse, and He that sate 
 upon him w^as called Faithful and True," &c. But beware, 
 you tell us, of supposing the rider here to be similarly 
 Christ : — " It is only a symbol of His victorious power, the 
 embodiment of His advancing kingdom." Now, the dis- 
 crepancies of the 1st Seal's symbolized rider from those in 
 the other two prophetic passages are sufficiently obvious ; 
 and such as to warn us off from even this modified 
 similarity of interpretation. Wherefore, w^e naturally ask, 
 is there no notice here of the sword girded on the rider ? 
 Wherefore the how alone specified as in his hand, with- 
 out the arrows, so as in the Psalm? — not to allude 
 to the much greater discrepancies in detail from the 
 description in Apoc. xix.' But the grand general 
 objection that forces itself on the mind, in opposition 
 to your view of the symbol of the first Apocalyptic 
 Seal, arises out of what is said of the rider's " going 
 forth conquering and to conquer." For this implies, as 
 you say, a visible uninterrupted course of conquest ■} such 
 as, in fact, the prophetic descriptions of Christ, just noted 
 from Ps. xlv. and Apoc. xix., foreshadowed; referring, as they 
 do, both the one and the other, to His ultimate triumph 
 
 ' I have noticed these discrepancies very fully in my Commentary on the 
 1st Seal in my " Horaj Apocalj^pticiie ;" and I am glad to see that various 
 expositors since, of other views of the ])ro])hecy than my own, have recog- 
 nised them as decisive against identifying the two riders. E.g., in the 
 Futurist Mr. W. Kelly's recently-published "Apocalyptic Exi)ositiou." 
 
 * So in your Comment., p. 611 : " The whole imagery of this first Seal 
 speaks of victory." Again, p. 612 : '^Permanent (as well ?l% final) victory 
 is here imported, on the part of that kingdom against Avhich the gates of 
 hell shall not prevail." No doubt, filial victory. 
 
LETT. 2.] CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF ALFORDIAN SEALS. 25 
 
 over every enemy, on tlie final establishment of His earthly 
 kingdom. But how can this consist with what is so pro- 
 minently set forth in the subsequent Apocalyptic reve- 
 lations respecting the mighty opposition to His kingdom, in 
 the intervening times betw^een St. John and the consumma- 
 tion, and oppression and persecution of Christ's saints ; 
 whether by the inhabitants of the earth generally, against 
 whom the cry of the martyrs is figured as rising up to 
 heaven from under the altar in the 5th Seal ; or, yet more 
 specially, by the Beast from the sea or abyss ; who is set 
 forth as triumphantly warring against Christ's saints, and 
 at length murdering His sackcloth-robed Witnesses, after 
 long reduction of them to the very smallest number for 
 a sufficient testimony? Was it not a period at which 
 they who were baptized on the Christian side were baptized 
 as it were on the side of men dead, so far as this world 
 was concerned ? ' The objection seems to me fatal. 
 
 But to proceed ; and passing over ihe 2d Seal, — of 
 which, however, I must say, that its language seems dis- 
 tinctly enough to indicate civil tvar among the inhabitants 
 of the earth (the Boman earth), ^ not tears fro?n without, as 
 
 ' BaTTTt^o/zf wt vnep rav veKpcov. (1 Cor. xv. 29.) I have often marvelled at 
 the perplexity exhibited alike by expositors ancient and modern, (yourself 
 included, and your favourite grammarian Winer, too,) in the explanation 
 of this passage. The only difficulty is in the vTrep. If it may mean, as no- 
 toriously it may, on behalf of, on the side of, — a sense specially applicable to 
 ^rnvTi^ofxevoc as a term of Christian militari/ profession, — then the apostle 
 himself solves all other difficulties by what he says of his dying daily, &c. : 
 so marking the Christian cause as a life of death iu this world, such as in 
 fact the very bajjtismal immersion, (Eom. vi. 3, 4,) especially in those days of 
 persecution, symbolized ; as well as death of non-existence in the next, if, 
 Christ having failed to rise, there was to the Christian no resurrection. 
 
 - " To take peace from the earth," such was declared the appointed office 
 of the rider of the red horse, " and that they should kill one another^ On 
 which you say, p. 613, " from the earth generally, as ever : not Judea ; nor 
 the Roman orbi^ terrarum ; nor any special portion merely." But in Apoc. 
 xvii. 18, it is said of Babylon, or Rome, in association with the Beast from 
 the sea or abyss, " the great city which hath dominion over the kings (jris 
 
26 APOCALTPSIS ALFORDIANA, [PART I. 
 
 its subject, — let me stop more particularly to examine your 
 view of ihe Sd Seal. On its opening we read thus : — 
 "Behold, a black horse, and he ♦that sat on it having a 
 balance in his hand : and I heard a voice in the midst of 
 the four living creatures saying, A chcenix of wheat for a 
 denarius, and three choenixes of barley for a denarius, and ' 
 see that thou hurt not (m aScK7]ar]<i) the oil and the wine." 
 " This is a symbol," you say, " of famine'' Now you 
 have had before you all my objections to this solution ; 
 showing it, according to the data given, to be nothing less 
 than impossible. Nor on the preliminaries to this conclu- 
 sion do you dispute my statements. The denarius you 
 agree with me in taking as the measure at the time of a 
 day-labourer's wages ; the choenix, as a day's sufficiency of 
 grain for a man's sustenance : moreover, that " barley, oil, 
 and wine, conjointly with wheat, then formed (as in the 
 East they still do) the ordinary sources of nourishment." ^ 
 Yet, admitting this, and that, according to the explanatory 
 words of this Seal, neither was the Avine or oil to be 
 injuriously affected, while the price of barley was to be so 
 moderate as that the labourer might get three days* 
 sustenance in barley bread for his wage of one day's 
 labour, you still persist, (though, I confess, once and 
 again," with a hesitating and half-contradictory voice,) in 
 
 yr\i) of tlie earth:" where (p. 708) you too, uotwithstandiug your "as 
 ever," explain it as simply the Eoman earth. So, too, iu Apoc. xi. 10, 
 ■where the same wild Beast from the sea, or abyss, is s])oken of as in Apoc. 
 xvii. ; and where consequently the inhabitants of the earth (tj;? y;?), there 
 also mentioned as adherents of the great city, Rome, ai-e implied to be 
 inhabitants of the same Roman earth, connected with the Beast. 
 
 ' Mark the and, km ; showing that the charge in the former clause is 
 cognate in spirit to that in tlie latter ; and consequently the former, as well 
 as latter, a charge altogether alien from the infliction of famine. 
 
 * Comment, p. G14. 
 
 * *' Tlie tendency of the voice (from the throne) is to check, or limit, the 
 agency of the rider on the black horse ; and to provide that, notwithstand- 
 ing his errand, sustenance shall not fail." "It is the mercy of God 
 
LETT. 2.] CEITICAL EXAMINATION OF ALEORDIAN SEALS. 27 
 
 exponnding>tlie whole as a symbolization of God's sore 
 judgment of famine. Now, having vainly otherwise made 
 my objections, let me, since the point is so important, 
 (involving as it does the true solution not of the 3d Seal 
 only, but by necessary consequence of the other three too 
 that are associated with it,) let me endeavour to bring the 
 question to a direct issue by a personal and practical appli- 
 cation. Let me suppose then that in the district round 
 Canterbury, or rather we will say throughout the whole 
 county of Kent, there has been a notable failure in the 
 loUeat crop, so as to make its price some double the 
 average ; but that, at the same time, there has been more 
 than a full crop of harley, a vastly greater breadth of land 
 having been sown with it than usual : that the ho^) harvest 
 too, for which your county is so famous, has been abundant ; 
 and the produce of the grazing farms such as to make milk 
 and butter cheap. Suppose, I say, that under these circum- 
 stances you were to issue forth, in your well-known charit- 
 able and kindly spirit, an appeal to the proprietors and 
 wealthier inhabitants of the district, calling their attention 
 to the gravity of the circumstances. " Very dear," we will 
 suppose you writing, " is the price of wheat ; though no 
 doubt barley and butter and milk and beer are cheap 
 enough ; so that the labouring man's wages, united with his 
 wife's earnings, may together be of an amount to secure to 
 themselves and their young family a sufficiency of those 
 
 tempering His judgments." " It is Famine, not sweeping men away by 
 ntter failure of the means of subsistence, but keeping them far below the 
 ordinary standard of comfort ; especially those who depend on their daily 
 labour." So Comment., p. 614. Yet is the j)urport of the whole figuration 
 made by you to be famine; God's sore judgment of famine ; such as was 
 to be one of the predicted signs, or forerunners, of Christ's second coming. 
 Let the reader compare this with the description of real famine, as given 
 elsewhere in Scripture; e.g., Deut. xxviii. 53-57; Lament, iv. 9, 10; &c. ; 
 or again with Josephus' accoimt of that which raged within the city during 
 the siege of Jerusalem ; or, in modern days, with that by which Ireland 
 was depopulated in 1846, 1847. Is it possible, after doing so, to persist in 
 the belief of the 3d Seal's symbolization being one of famine ? 
 
28 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [pART I. 
 
 necessaries and in part luxuries of life ; there being no 
 lack of employment for the labourer, or diminution of the 
 usual wage. Yet, notwithstanding, I cannot but view this 
 as an awful famine, such as to call for the pity and large 
 charity of the wealthier classes in aid of the famishing (?) 
 poor : — indeed as one of those famines told of by Christ as 
 a sign of His coming being near at hand. And, as on the 
 old Rogation Days, I would urge further the advisableness 
 of our all gathering in sad procession and mourning garb ' 
 to our Cathedral ; there, in that Mother Church of Chris- 
 tian England, to deprecate the present and the coming 
 wrath of Heaven ! " — Is the absurdity of such a proceeding 
 by you, in such a case, very evident ? Then, Mr. Dean, 
 unless it can be shown that the case I have supposed, so 
 far as regards the measure of want indicated among 
 the labouring class, is essentially different from that figured 
 in the Apocalyptic vision, (and such a difference I am per- 
 suaded cannot be shown,) there follows by necessary conse- 
 quence the absurdity of any such interpretation of the 
 3d Apocalyptic Seal as that which would make it a 
 symbolization ai famine. 
 
 On your 4th Seal I do not think it needful to dwell, any 
 more than on your 2d Seal. Suffice it to say, that, like 
 your predecessors in the interpretation which explains it 
 simply as a symbolization of jJ^sfilcnce, you give no reason 
 cither why the aggravation of wars and famines should be 
 additionally noted, and that just as prominently in regard 
 to their deadly agency as pestilence ; especially after their 
 supposed distinct figurations in the Seals previous : ^ nor 
 again why there should be the limitation of it to " the 
 
 ' So tlie hlach horse in vision. 
 
 * " And, when he liad opened the 4th Seal, beliold a livid pale horse, 
 and he that sate on it whose name was Death ; and Hades followed with 
 him : and there was given to them jjower to kill on the fourth part of the 
 earth with the sword, and with famine, and with pestilence, and with the 
 wild beasts of the earth." 
 
LETT. 2.] CRITICAL EXAMINATIOTS OF ALFORDIAN SEALS. 29 
 
 fourth part of the earth," territorially ; whereas there had 
 been no such territorial limitation in the supposed ravages 
 of the two previous plagues.' — But I wish to hasten on to 
 what you think it well to speak of distinctly, and by itself, 
 as another grand point in the Seals your explanation of 
 which is incontestable ; in so much so indeed as to con- 
 stitute it another " landmark " of true Apocalyptic inter- 
 pretation ; — I mean ilie Qfli Seal. 
 
 2. Yet really, as regards your view of that 6th Seal's 
 primary vision,^ viz. as depicting not indeed the Lord's 
 coming itself, but the signs of its imminent nearness, it 
 seems to me that you have hardly placed it in a position for 
 examination, because of the indistinctness of your explana- 
 tion as to what that view of the Seal's figuration really is. 
 " We all know," you say in your Prolegomena,^ " what the 
 imagery of the 6th Seal means in the rest of Scripture." 
 Now the imagery is that of the earth quaking, the stars 
 falling from heaven, and the heaven itself being rolled 
 away like a folded up scroll, amidst the consternation of 
 the world's inhabitants, crying out, " The great day of the 
 
 ' '' Over the fourth part of the earth " : — perhaps, you say, " owing to 
 the fourfold division of these former [qu. four primary?] Seals'' ! ! In 
 the same way in the 2d Seal it might have been said, accoi-ding to your 
 half -suggested explanation, "to take peace from the second part of the 
 earth ; " and in the 5th Seal the cry of the martyrs have been against the 
 inhabitants of i\\Q fifth part of the earth ! 
 
 ^ I say its primary vision, because I have no doubt myself of the next 
 following sealing and palm-bearing visions belonging also to the same 
 6th Seal, as its secondary part ; there being here no mark of retrogression, 
 or episodical amplification, or explanation ; and so the natural explana- 
 tion being that the 6th Seal's figui-ation continued onward (like its prede- 
 cessors) to the opening of the next or 7th Seal. 
 
 ^ Proleg. 249. Says Dr. S. R. Maitland, on the other hand ; " Can any 
 unbiassed reader doubt that this passage refers (not to the signs of the 
 approach of, but) to the day of judgment ] " I have entei-ed so fully on 
 this subject in my Comment on the 6th Seal, and in my Examination of 
 the Futurist Scheme in the Appendix to Vol. IV. of my Hor^e Apoc, that 
 I cannot do better than refer an inquirer to those criticisms. 
 
30 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART I. 
 
 Lamb's wrath is come, and who cau stand." But you do 
 not express yourself by any means clearly, as to what " the 
 day of the Lord " is ; whether the mere 24 hours of the 
 day of His second coming, or, so as sundry futurist exposi- 
 tors interpret it, a much longer period, including almost a 
 brief new dispensation.' Nor again do you explain the 
 acceptation in which those symbols of elemental convul- 
 sions in the Seal are to be taken, whether UieraUtj or 
 f(/uratwclf/. At p. 620 of your Commentary you seem to 
 understand them Hi er ally. " The whole earth," you say, 
 " is broken up by a change as total as any of those previous 
 ones which have prepared it for its present inhabitants." 
 So of the eart/is convulsions in the symbolization. And, 
 if these be literal, like the geological convulsions that have 
 occurred before in our planet's crust, how not the same 
 literality of meaning to the falling stars from heaven, and 
 rolling up and vanishing away of the firmamental heaven 
 itself? In which case where could there be any inhabitants 
 of the earth left, previously to Christ's second actual 
 
 ' In order to make out your view of the " day of the Lord," — whetlier as 
 the day literally of Christ's secoud persoual comiug, which event we read 
 is to be in a moment, in the twinkling of the eye, and like the lightning 
 flash, instantaneous, — or whether as a time of longer duration, including 
 that of certain premonitory signs for awhile before, and that of cei'tain 
 results after, — I have consulted your Comment on 1 Thess. iv. 17, 2 Thess. 
 ii. 2, 2 Pet. iii. 10, as well as your Apocaljqjtic Exposition, but in vain. 
 At one time you seem to take it in one sense, at another time in another. 
 E.g., on 1 Thess. v. 2 you speak of its suddenness as in a moment ; on 
 2 Thess. ii. 2, as the period daring which " the day of grace was closed." 
 Surely, speaking so often of it as you do, and entering so largely as it does 
 into your Exposition, you ought to have defined your view of it very 
 clearly. 
 
 For the large duration ascribed to it by certain Futurist expositors I may 
 refer to the Rev. James Kelly's Apocalyptic Exposition " in the light of 
 the day of the Lord;'''' or to the very recent Apocalyptic Ex])osition of a 
 writer of the same name, but quite unconnected J believe, Mr. \V. Kelly, 
 of Guernsey ; of which latter I have given an abstract in the 5th Edition 
 of my Horae Apocalypticse, just published. 
 
LETT. 2.] CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF ALFORDIAN SEALS. 31 
 
 coming, to utter that cry of consternation ? Moreover, as 
 I have urged in my own Comment on the Seal, were actual 
 elemental convulsions intended, such as we have reason to 
 expect as the accompaniment of Christ's second coming, we 
 might surely expect to have that of ilie eartJis covjlagratimi 
 hy fire prominent here, as it is most prominent in St. 
 Peter's striking description of the event ; not to speak of 
 the very different accompaniment of the saints' resurrection, 
 to meet the Lord in the air. The sense here must needs, 
 I think, be figurative ; and, if so, figurative of political 
 revolution and change. Such in fact is the case generally 
 in those prophecies in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, 
 and Matt, xxiv., which you yourself refer to by way of 
 illustration. They are- spoken of indeed as signs of " the 
 day of the Lord," or of " the Lord's coming " : but in the 
 sense of the day of His providential coming ; whether for 
 the overthrow of Babylon, Nineveh, Egypt, or, as you 
 yourself say, in reference to Christ's prophecy in Matt, 
 xxiv., of Jerusalem.^ However, as regards your own view 
 of the Seal, until you have distinctly declared yourself on 
 the two questions that I have spoken of, viz. the intent, in 
 your judgment, of " the day of the Lord," and intent, 
 whether literal or figurative, of its symbols of elemental 
 convulsion, you seem to me, as I said before, not even to 
 be in a position to challenge inquiry into your explanation 
 of it. 
 
 IT. Now for the two grand Historic Explanations in 
 your Commentary: viz. 1st, that concerning the Dragon 
 and Woman in Apoc. xii. ; 2dly, those concerning the 
 Beast in Apoc. xiii., xvii., xi. 
 
 1. Of these \h^ former is a passage in the prophecy 
 which you have spoken of as your third touchstone passage 
 
 ' Prolegom. p. 253. 
 
32 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [pART I. 
 
 of true Apocalyptic interpretation ; viz., that which con- 
 tained the figurings of the persecution by the seven-headed 
 Dragon of the sun-clothed travailing Woman, Apoc. xii. 
 And here, with the numerous and most grave difficulties and 
 objections before you that beset every step of the explana- 
 tion which construes it as meant of Christ's literal birth, 
 persecutions, and ascension, you really seem to me willingly 
 to ignore them ; for you say nothing worth the notice in 
 answer. The following are the questions that you ought 
 to have replied to before the adoption of yoiu- explanation. 
 Where is the Jewish Old Testament Church represented as 
 the mother of Jesus Christ?' How in a composite symbol, 
 like that of the woman and her child, can the child with 
 any propriety be construed literally, and the woman figu- 
 ratively?^ How could the Jewish Church be designated 
 as in heaven, at the time of Jesus Christ's birth ? If the 
 political heaven, how so at a time when Judea had become 
 a subject province of the Roman Empire ? If the spiritual 
 heaven of God's presence, and his saints' aspirations, how 
 can this consist with what we know to have been the irre- 
 lisious state of the Jewish Chm'ch and nation at the time 
 referred to?^ Moreover how could the seven-headed 
 
 ' "The wliole symbolism (regarding the Woman) jioints to the. Church, the 
 bride of God, and of cour.se, from the circumstances afterwards rehited, the Old 
 Testament Church ;" " at least," you add, " at the beginning of the vision." 
 So at p. 664 of your Commentary. In your Prolegom. p. 257, not quite 
 consistently, you say ; " The Church's identification in the eyes of the seer 
 is rendered unmistakable by the scene opening with the appearance of the 
 woman and the serpent, and enmity between him and her seed ;" as if the 
 Woman were Eve. 
 
 ■ Not a word on this in your Commentary. 
 
 ^ All you say at first of the heaven here meant is as follows. " Heaven 
 here is manifestly not only the show-place of the visions as seen by the 
 seer, but has a substantial place in the vision ; being (verse 7) contrasted 
 with the earth," p. 664. Afterwards, on verse 7, you explain it, we shall 
 see, as the heaven of God's presence. But, not a word as to the reason 
 of the Woman's position there. 
 
LET. 2.] ALFORDIAN WOMAN AND DRAGON OF APOC. XII. 33 
 
 Dragon, or Satan animating and acting in the Roman 
 heathen empire,' be designated as also there, coincidently :^ 
 or how again, while there, as drawing with his tail the third 
 part of the stars of heaven?' How could Jesus Christ's 
 ascension to God's throne, if construed literally, be spoken 
 of as made from heaven, not from earth ?^ What was the 
 war in heaven which took place after His ascension ; and 
 how the result of that war the seven-headed Dragon's 
 dejection from heaven ; symbolizing as you say it did the 
 Roman heathen empire, at a time prior to, or coincident 
 
 ' So you exjilain the Dragon, and I doubt not rightly, Comment, p. 664. 
 
 * At p. 666 you attempt to explain the Dragon's figured place in heaven 
 by reference to Job i. ii. and Zech. iii., where Satan personally (not as 
 inspiring and acting in Roman Heathendom) is spoken of as accusing Job, 
 and Joshua the high-priest, before God : also to Luke x. 18 ; where however 
 the meaning is evidently diiferent, being symbolic of earthly power and supre- 
 macy. His fall from thence in the subsequent verse 7 of this vision you 
 construe to mean " his casting down from the office of accuser in heaven :" 
 " his voice being heard before God no more ; for the day of acceptance in 
 Christ Jesus has dawned:" all this, you say, being the effect of Christ's 
 justifying work, as pleaded by Him before God for His people. 
 
 Yet, 1st, Michael, who fights with and casts down the Dragon, and so 
 stops this his accusing of the saints in heaven, is said by you to be not Christ, 
 but a created angel. 2. In the saints' subsequent song of triumjah, 
 verse 10, Satan is spoken of in the present partic. as still Karrjyopcov : and 
 so too I Pet. V. 8 ; where his then acting the same part against the saints 
 is implied in his title, " your adversary the Devil ;" the original being apn- 
 BiKos, a word borrowed from the accusations in a court of justice. (Compare 
 Luke xii. 58, xviii. 3, and also Eom. viii. 34.) — 3. As regards that ejection 
 of Satan from the heavenly place in which his associate angels (here meant, 
 verse 9, you suppose) participated, it is sufticiently clear from other Scrip- 
 ture that it took place long before ; indeed before man's creation. Compare 
 Jude 6. 
 
 ' You here say nothing of " the third part : " but elsewhei-e (p. 634) 
 explain it as an ordinal in this \dsion of indefinite meaning. — As to " the 
 stars " you only suggest from Arethas, as hinted above, that by them are 
 meant the associate angels in Satan's original rebellion. So p. 665. 
 
 * No notice in yovu- Commentary of this objection. Yet, somewhat 
 curiously, your own language unconsciously expresses it, ibid. "The 
 Son of the Woman was taken up to heaven," you say, not from heaven ; 
 "and sate on the right hand of God." 
 
 D 
 
34 APOCALYPSIS ALFOEDIANA. [PART I. 
 
 with, the Romans' destruction of Jerusalem, and when con- 
 sequently it was quite at its height of power ?^ Again, if the 
 woman's flight into the wilderness be meant, as you suggest, 
 of the Christian Church's flight at that time to Pella, how 
 comes it that the woman having been the Jewish Church 
 when travailing with the man-child, should have become 
 metamorphosed in the interim into the Christian Church, 
 without any notice of the change ; and this though 
 pointedly and altogether identified with that woman, by 
 the designation, " the woman that brought forth the man- 
 child ?" How, yet once more, that her stay in Pella should 
 have answered to the predicted period of the 1260 days of 
 the mystical woman's exile in the wilderness?^ — Not to one 
 of these questions, Mr. Dean, do you off'er anything that 
 can be called effective answer, or explanation. And can he 
 
 ' The objection thus arising from Satan's connexion throughout this 
 vision with the Roman heathen empire, as figured, you admit, in his seven- 
 headed Draconic form, is here, as -before, entirely overlooked by you. See 
 Notes 1 and 2, p. 33, supra. 
 
 ^ At p. 6G9 of your Commentary you say ; " I am disposed to interpret 
 the Woman's flight into the wilderness of the Chiu'ch's gi-adual withdi-awal 
 from Jerasalem and Judaea; finally consummated by the flight to the 
 mountains on the approaching siege, as commanded by Christ." But at 
 p. 670, when discussing the 1260 days of her exile, you tacitly seem to bid 
 farewell to Pella and its mountains; recognising 1260 days as meant per- 
 haps to signify a long time: possibly even 1260 years; i. e. as on the year- 
 day scale ; or even moi'e.* After much doubting and various surmisings 
 on this point, and as to the main intent of the Woman's or Church's long 
 figured term of exile in the wilderness, you mention my own view (p. 670), 
 only to misrepresent it ; as if explaining the Woman to be Christ's invisible 
 s]Mritual Church of true-hearted disciples distinctively : and, so misrepre- 
 sented, you speak of it as non-accordant with historic fact. Then finally you 
 just hint, as if your own original idea, what is really the one advocated by 
 nie in the Horae Apoc, viz., that the Woman may be meant to symbolize 
 " the true visible Church," as, after all, perhaps the right view. Only my 
 definition of it is more carefully and guardedly expressed, as the true visible 
 united Catholic Church. See my 4th Letter. 
 
 * See Note * p. 41, infra. 
 
LET. 2.] ALFORDIAN SEVEN-HEADED APOCALYPTIC BEAST. 35 
 
 be a wise master-builder who, in the case of a passage like 
 this, which he himself declares to lie at the very foundation 
 of his system, either ignores such crushing objections to its 
 validity ; or else, while admitting that he cannot solve them, 
 insists with not the less confidence and positiveness on his 
 explanation as true ; and this in profest contravention of a 
 counter-interpretation in which, as I will here venture to 
 say, though in anticipation of my fourth Letter, there is 
 not one of the difficulties left unanswered ? 
 
 2. I now turn to the next point in your Commentary ; (it 
 is the last on which I think it needful to enter at all par- 
 ticularly in the way of critical examination ;) viz. to your 
 exposition of the seven-headed ten-horned wild Beast of 
 Apoc. xiii., xvii., and xi. : — for the Beast from the ahyss of 
 Apoc. xvii. and xi. is recognised by you, as well as by my- 
 self,' as mainly identical with the Beast from the sea of Apoc. 
 xiii. ; though, in your case, with certain notable differences 
 
 ' So p. 701 of yonr Commeutaiy ; " The identity of the scarlet Beast 
 of Apoc. xvii. with that mentioned before in Apoc. xiii. is plain :" also p. 
 672, on Apoc. xiii. 3 ; " The period now treated of is the same as that during 
 which the Woman sits on the Beast ; " i. e. as depicted in Apoc. xvii. 
 
 Ijike me you urge the argument from Apoc. xix. 20, — " The Beast (evi- 
 dently the same Beast from the abyss that had just previously been 
 described in Ajioc. xvii.,) was taken, and the false Prophet that tvrought 
 miracles before Him,^^ — compared with Apoc. xiii. 14, which speaks of the 
 lambskin-covered Beast, or false Prophet (Matt. vii. 15), doing miracles 
 before the Beast from the sea. This, conjointly with the seven-headed fornj 
 ascribed alike to the one and the other, you regard as decisive on the ques- 
 tion. So Comment, p. 701. 
 
 As regards myself it should be observed that, while having no doubt as 
 to the self-same Roman Popedom being distinctly figured alike in the one 
 and the other vision, I consider the vision in Apoc. xvii. to have depicted 
 the Beast at a later epoch in its history than Ajjoc. xiii. ; the latter having 
 reference to the time of its rise, the former to the time shortly before its 
 end. Hence on the one but one name, it may have been, of blasphemy ; 
 (so TO ovofia, in some good MSS. ;) while, in the other, the whole body was 
 full of names of blasphemy. 
 
 As regards yourself the inconsistency of the identity which you predicate 
 
 D 2 
 
36 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART I. 
 
 in regard of the headships respectively, of which more here- 
 after. — Tliis reference of the symbol of the Beast mainly' 
 to the Roman Papal empire constitutes yom' Exposition, in 
 regard of that integral and large part of the prophecy, an 
 historical Exposition ; and subject consequently, so far, to 
 the stringent testing of accordance, or non-accordance, be- 
 tween the prophetic descriptions and the historic facts sup- 
 posed to be referred to, as well as to that of i?iter?iai evidence 
 also. Somewhat inconsistent certainly seems your adoption 
 here of the Iddorical, indeed continuously historical, system 
 of exposition, after your repeated denmiciations of all con- 
 tinuously historical systems of Apocalyptic interpretation -^ 
 and even yet more so, in my opinion, because of your 
 making this large part of the prophecy definitely historical, 
 while construing most that precedes as an enunciation of 
 mere vague, unconnected, unhistorical generalities.^ But 
 the advantage of the double testing here results to us ; and 
 so we proceed, with this advantage, to our examination 
 into the truth of this important part of your Exposition. 
 
 As the Beast referred to is, you tell ns, the same (though, 
 as before said, with certain differences,) alike in Apoc. xiii., 
 xvii., and xi., we have the various chief particulars stated, or 
 figured, respecting it in those three chapters to compare 
 with each other and with history ; alike as regards the 
 Beast's heads, horns, character, doings, duration, name, 
 number, and end ; — its heads, or rather its two last heads, 
 most especially. I shall endeavour to give a connected 
 
 between the two Beasts, with the differences which yoii also predicate will 
 be afterwards noticed by me. 
 
 ' See Note 3, p. 10. 
 
 ^ So Prolegom., 248, 249, 255, 256, &c. 
 
 ' A similar charge of inconsistency applies of course to Wordsworth's 
 and other such Apocalyptic Expositions : which, while interpreting 
 Babylon and the Beast historically and definitely, as symbols of the Papal 
 Eoman empire, exi)lain3 the rest of the prophecy as for the most part mere 
 vague allegory. 
 
LET. 2.] ALFORDIAN SEVEN-HEADED APOCALYPTIC BEAST. 37 
 
 abstract of the views propounded by you on these various 
 points, in your several comments on what is stated of the 
 Beast severally in one or other of the chapters alluded to ; 
 and this, according to the great importance of the subject, 
 very copiously and at large : — though hard indeed is my 
 task in doing this; so much is there in your Exposition of 
 inconsistencies, self-contradictions, and indeed unintelligi- 
 bilities. However I will here do my best ; and shall give 
 my abstract or paraphrase of the whole, with a view to the 
 greater pointedness of my argument, as written hy yourself 
 in the first person : there being interwoven certain hintings 
 of suspected objections, such as can scarcely but have sug- 
 gested themselves to an Expositor of fair intelligence, at least 
 if duly acquainted with his subject, and not writing in a 
 hurry ; together -with the answers, if any, inferable from 
 your Commentary. And to this indeed references will be 
 given on every particular : in evidence that on no one point 
 is any unwarranted statement made by me ; any one that is 
 justly liable to the charge of misrepresentation. 
 
 The following then is a sketch of your Exposition of the 
 Apocalyptic Beast" and the Apocalyptic prophecies therewith 
 connected, as presented to us in your Book ; together with 
 certain self-suggested suspicions of objections, supposed to 
 occur in soliloquy with your own self while elaborating it. 
 
 Secum loquitui" Decanus Cantuariensis. 
 
 " Fundamental is my view of the Beast as in its totality, 
 so as most German interpreters expound it, a generic symbol 
 of the World-Power of every age, opposed to God and Christ. 
 For both by its likeness, when first seen rising from the sea, 
 in part to a lion, in part to a bear, in part to a leopard, there 
 was shown evidently the aggregation in the Apocalyptic 
 Beast of all of Daniel's three first great mundane empires, 
 
38 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART I. 
 
 SO symbolized respectively ; — the Babylonian, Persian, and 
 Greek, as well as Roman.' And again, from the Angel's 
 explanation of the Beast's seven heads, as figuring seven 
 kings (/Sao-tXet9), i.e. kingdoms, (so as in Dan. vii. 17, 23, 
 compared together,) of which the first five had fallen in St. 
 John's time, that being the sixth, it was said, which then 
 existed, it seemed inferable that there were included in the 
 symbol, besides Daniel's four empires, the two earlier mun- 
 dane empires also of Egypt and Assyria : of which six the 
 Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, and Grecian had 
 .all fallen ere the commencement of the Christian era ; leav- 
 ing the supremacy, or then dominant headship of the Beast, 
 to the sixth or Roman power.^ 
 
 " Such is my explanation of the Beast generally, and its 
 six first heads, Eor I repudiate the explanation which would 
 regard the Beast's seven heads as signifying seven different 
 successive executive headships, or forms of (/overnment, at 
 Borne itself: even as if the seven symbolized jBaaCkwi were 
 ascrijjti gleJxB, or bound one and all to the same seven- 
 hilled locality ; so as Mede, and after him EUiott, would 
 have it, accordantly with the Angel's sec'ondary explanation 
 of the Beast's seven heads as symbols of Rome's seven hills. 
 Though heads of the Beast, I would have this their secon- 
 dary meaning apply only to the Woman sitting on it in the 
 vision of Apoc. xvii., not to the Beast itself -^ however unna- 
 tural may seem to some this estrangement of half the declared 
 double significancy of its own heads from its own self. The 
 
 ' Comment, p. 672. - Comment, p. 705'. 
 
 ' So ihid. " As far as the reference to the Woman is concerned they are 
 hills, on which she sits. As far as the reference to the Beast is concerned 
 they are kings ;— not kings over the AVoman, or kings of the city sym- 
 bolized l)y her, but kings in a totally different relation, viz., that to the 
 Beast of whicli they are heads : . . . which Beast is not the Eoman 
 empire, but a general symbol of secular antichristian power." Is not this 
 a little of the argument in a circle ; taking for granted what should be 
 proved ? 
 
LET, 2.] ALrORDIAN SEVEN-HEADED APOCALYPTIC BEAST. 39 
 
 expression fallen, applied to some of the heads, (" five have 
 fallen," eireaav^ I judge to be quite inapplicable to mere 
 changes of government in the same empire; and only referable 
 to kingdoms, or kings, violently overthrown.^ Besides which I 
 cannot of conrse forget that, were we not to make this sever- 
 ance from the Beast itself of the seven-hilled local significancy 
 of the symbol, it would be impossible to maintain our generic 
 view of the Beast, as the aggregate of all the successive 
 great antichristian secular powers of successive ages, which 
 had one after another risen up, and in St. John's time for 
 the most part fallen, in different parts of the world ; which 
 view I have already laid down as a fundamental point with 
 me in my exposition of the Beast. 
 
 "And then, further, as it is one preliminary point of 
 strong conviction with me that the Beast was a symbol 
 generically of the Worlcl-power opposed to God and Christ, 
 from the beginning to the end of time, so it is also my fixt 
 and foregone conclusion, as expressed in the Prolegomena to 
 my Commentary on chap. ii. of St. Paul's second Epistle to 
 the Thessalonians, that the latest form of this World-power 
 (the same that answers alike to the Apocalyptic Beast's eighth 
 head, and to Daniel's little horn and Paul's man of sin) is 
 yet to come.^ Thus the great question now with me for 
 
 ' So Comment, p. 705. This point will be referred to again, and the 
 objection answered, in the vindication of my own explanation of the pas- 
 sage in a subsequent Letter. 
 
 ^ The Apocalyptic Beast, you say p. 706, in his 8th and last form (Apoc. 
 xvii. 11), "is the ultimate miX\chr\sXvA^ jjower; the same that is prefigvu-ed 
 by the little horn of Daniel, and expressly announced by St. Paul (as the 
 man of sin) in 2 Thess. ii. 3." 
 
 Your conclusion in regard to this prophecy of St. Paul's is as follows. 
 " The avofios, in the full prophetic sense, is not yet come ; . . . though the 
 jjivarripiov ttjs avofMias is still working, and much advanced in its working ; 
 the Korexov {i. e. the fabric of human polity, and those that rule that polity) 
 still hindering ... In the Papacy, where so many of the prophetic features 
 are combined, we see as it were a standing embodiment and type of the 
 final Antichrist. . . . We look for this 3Ian of Sin to appear immediately 
 
40 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART I. 
 
 solution, all in consistency with these my two fundamental 
 points of conviction, is as to the Beast's seventh head ; and, 
 as preliminary to the rise of the seventh, what, and when, 
 
 before the coming of the Lord, as the final and central embodiment of that 
 ai/o/iia,— that resistance to God and God's law, — which has been for these 
 many centuries fermenting under the crust of human society ; . . . whether 
 to be expected 2^<^>'sonalh/ , as one embodiment of evil, (and both ancient 
 interpretation and the world's history point that way,)" or otherwise. — So 
 in the Proleg. to youi* Comment, on 2 Thess. pj). 67, G8. 
 
 While admitting the many points of correspondence between tlie Papal 
 power, and the Man of sin, as depicted in this prophecy, you at p. 66 of those 
 Prolegomena specify the two following points of what you judge to be deci- 
 sive difference ; the one as regards character, the other chronology and history. 
 
 1st. " Instead of exalting himself above all that is called god, or is wor- 
 shipjied, (so as the Man of sin was to do,) the Pope's abject adoration of, 
 and submission to, \eyop.evoi 6eoi and o-e^aa-fxaTa, has been ever one of his 
 most notable peculiarities."- — A strange assertion ! Who is it, let me ask, 
 that 7nakes departed men to be saints, and objects of worship, by his acts of 
 canonization ? Who but the Pope ? And wjiich is the more exalted, — he 
 who makes, or he who is (ideally) made ? Even as regards God himself, 
 does not the Pope profess to make Him ; yea, and to give all his priests, as 
 delegated from himself, similar power to make Him, through the trausub- 
 stantiatiou of the consecrated wafer ? And if, after this, he abjectly adores 
 the one or the other, what is it but one of the most marvellous acts of sys- 
 tematic and characteristic hypocrisy ? Let me beg you, Mr. Dean, to consider 
 the very illustrative Pajjal medals on this subject, engraved in the 3d volume 
 of my Horse Apoc. at p. 168 of my 4th edition, or p. 180 of the 5th. 
 
 2dly. " If the Pajiacy be Antichrist, then has the manifestation been 
 made and endured now for nearly 1,500 years ; and yet that day of the 
 Lord is not come, which by the terms of our proj)hecy such manifestiition 
 is immeiliately to jirecede." — A statement equally strange and inaccurate 
 with the former! Pray, when was the Papacy in its proper character 
 developed : i. e. on the self-asserted principle of the Bishop of Rome being 
 Christ's, and so God's, plenij^otentiaiy Vicegerent on earth ; and with 
 the kings of the Western Roman emj^ii-e (in its last form of the mixed 
 iron and clay of the feet of the image) recognising him in that character I 
 Not earlier (see my Vol. iii. Part iv. chaps. 4 and 5 on this subject) tlian 
 the middle or end of the 6th century. Again, where does this projiheey 
 say that the Man of sin's manifestation {first manifestation) was iumie- 
 diately to i)recede Christ's second coming ? On the contrary was not the 
 duration of the Man of sin, or Little horn, or Apocaly])tic Beast of A])oc. x. 
 expressly jHedicted to be \i\ times, or 1260 days: a.s to which you admit 
 in your Apocalyptic Commentary that it is a term of time not to be taken 
 literally; but probably to be a long, long period, whether 1260 years on 
 
LET. 2.] ALFORDIAN SEVEN-HEADED APOCALYPTIC BEAST. 41 
 
 the fall of the Beast's sixth, or Roman Imperial head, that 
 same that was in existence at the time of the visions in 
 Patmos. And I must confess that difficulties here press 
 on me at every step, alike from prophecy and history. 
 
 The explanation I would first propound of the falling of the 
 Beast's sixth head, and rise of its seventh, is that these two 
 events answered to the fall of heathenism, and rise of Chris- 
 tianity to dominant powder, in the Roman empire ; a domi- 
 nancy begun under Constantine and the Christian emperors 
 succeeding him,' and perpetuated, from some two or three 
 centuries later, under professedly Christian Popes.^ Por I 
 here take for granted that the Beast's sixth head had not 
 previously fallen. The famous Diocletianic change of the 
 Roman constitution and government, some thirty years be- 
 fore Constantine, which is so prominent in the pages of Gib- 
 bon's History, and which Elliott has set forth in equal promi- 
 nence as the fulfilment of the predicted fall of the Beast's 
 sixth head, and rise of the seventh, in his Apocalyptic 
 
 the yearday principle, or otherwise ? See Comm. pp. 655, 670, 671.* And 
 then further, with reference to the time of the Lord's coming for the Man of 
 sin's destruction, there is to be considered (as noted in the 5th edition of 
 my Horse) ^he adjustment to the 1260 prophetic days, or right relative 
 l^hicing, of Daniel's additional 75 days of the " time of the end." 
 
 Such misrepresentation of Scripture prophecy by a Scrij^tiu-e Commen- 
 tator is most regi-ettable : not to sj^eak of the great ^ut inferior error, 
 exhibited in this your Commentary on St. Paul's prophecy, of the ignoring of 
 notorious Papal law and doctrine ; and also really of gross self-contradiction. 
 
 ' Connnent. pp. 672, 706. 
 
 " See the Note p. 40, on the real time of the rise of the Pajaacy, as the 
 great predicted Antichristian power. 
 
 * At p. 655 you say that all the several periods of the 3 2- times, 42 months, 
 1260 days, predicated of the Beast's duration, the sackcloth-robed witnesses' 
 witnessing, and Woman's, or faithful professing Church's, exile in the 
 wilderness, (as also of the little horn of Dan. vii. 25,) are equal: — "equal 
 they certainly seem to be." At p. 670 you make them long periods ; at 
 p. 671 even longer perhaps than 1260 years: the woman's invisibility in 
 the wilderness ha%'ing probably begun from the time of the intrusion into 
 the Church of evil men, and evil doctrines and schisms. 
 
42 APOCALTPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART I. 
 
 Commentary, I reject on the ground before stated of the 
 inappUcabihty of the word. /a/ie?i to such changes of govern- 
 mental headships : — though otherwise, I must admit, it 
 woukl well suit two of the prophetic indications here : viz., 
 1st, that of the Angel's statement that the seventh head 
 would be but of brief continuance ; (" when it conieth it 
 must continue, o\i<yov, a little space;") and 2dly, that of 
 the Roman heathen power, as impersonated in the Dragon 
 of Apoc. xii., appearing at the prefigured time of its last 
 actings, and last persecution of the Chiistian Church, with 
 just seven heads, even as if the seventh had ere then risen, 
 ere then attached itself to the Roman Beast. ^ And, putting 
 aside the Diocletianic solution, I seem forced to regard the 
 fall of the Beast's sixth head (whatever may be said of the 
 rise of the seventh) as fulfilled in the fall of heathenism 
 under Constantine : — though, in truth, my own criticism on 
 eireaav might here perhaps be not unreasonably urged 
 against me, seeing that the Roman Empire itself still con- 
 tinued, and the change was only a change of its relicjion ; 
 and seeing too, should the wars which ushered in that change 
 be alleged by me, as showing the violence of the overthrow 
 of the old religion,^ that there had been the same accompani- 
 ment of war in the case of certain previous constitutional 
 changes of government at Rome, such as I have refused to 
 recognise as fulfilment of the falling and rising of other heads 
 of the Beast ; e. g. in the times of Tarquin and Augustus. — 
 Moreover difficulties still graver, I see, encompass the idea 
 of the Beast's seventh head originating at that same time. 
 Could a Christian headship, as begun imder the Constan- 
 
 ' With just seven, I say; not with the superackled cicatrice of an old 
 previous 7th, so as in the case of the Beast from the sea, the Dragon's 
 successor, as it is said, in respect alike of his throne and power : — a cicatrice 
 implying that the new 7th head, then visible on the Beast, was the 8th in 
 order of time and succession. 
 
 * See p. 39, supra. 
 
LET. 2.] ALFORDIAN SEVEN-HEADED APOCALYPTIC BEAST, 43 
 
 tino-Tlieodosiau Christian line of emperors, be figured with 
 any symboUc propriety as a head of the Antichristian Beast? 
 As well, I can conceive it said by an objector, with not 
 unwarranted causticity of humour, might England, with its 
 present orthodox profession of Christianity, and a Christian 
 Archbishop, and Christian Bean too, at its mother Church 
 of Canterbury, be called a head of the Beast ! A partial 
 answer indeed to this objection may, I think, be inferred 
 from what the Angel said of the Beast, as that which, at 
 some certain epoch, then future, would be non-existent ; even 
 as if the essential bestial spirit would be during that certain 
 time suspended. And such was the case in the Constan- 
 tino-Theodosian times. But then, if we apply this to the 
 Constantino-Theodosian Christian times, so as in fact I do 
 primarily,^ ought not the Beast to be regarded as headless 
 during that interval of non-existence, according to all pro- 
 prieties of symbolic representation? — What then (though 
 I have not expressed this in my Commentary) if we shift 
 forward the time of the Beast's seventh head rising, and make 
 it synchronize with the rise of the Roman Popedom? No 
 doubt we should then get rid not only of this difficulty, but 
 also of the difficulty arising out of the conjunction of the 
 Christian Imperial Government and subsequent Antichris- 
 tian Papal Government, as one and the same seventh head 
 
 * " I regard this 7tli head as the Christian empire, beginning with Con- 
 stautine ; dui-ing whose time the Beast in his proper essence, and fulness of 
 opposition to God and His saints, ceases to be." Again ; " Of the Beast 
 which was, and is not" the peculiar power and essence seem suspended 
 while the Empire is Christian by profession." So on xvii. 7, 8, p. 706. 
 Also on xiii. 3, p. 671 ; " The statement. And I saw one of his heads as it 
 were wounded tmto death, seems to represent the Roman Pagan Empire, 
 which having been long a head of the Beast was to all ap2:)earance exter- 
 minated : ' and the stroke of his death was healed,^ in the establishment of 
 the Christian Roman empii-e. The period now treated of is the same, in- 
 troduced hei'e by anticipation, during which the Woman (which, on xvii. 3, 
 you explain, p. 700, as distinctly ' Papal, not Pagan, Rome ') sits on the 
 Beast, and guides it." 
 
44 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PAUT I. 
 
 of the Beast : ' a difficulty which to any intelligent reader 
 must be obvious ; though indeed, as before, I have not ray- 
 self even hinted it. Yet, even so, there would remain to my 
 theory many hard, if not insuperable difficulties. The 
 Beast's seventh head was only to last, the Angel said, " a 
 little space." Now the standard of length or brevity of 
 duration must be here of course that of the time of the 
 Beast's other heads' continuance. How then, considering 
 that the longest of all the Beast's previous heads, whether 
 the Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Hea- 
 then, or Roman, had been far, far shorter, could the 1200 
 or 1300 years of the Roman Popedom be called "a little 
 space?" My suggested parallel passage from Herodotus iv. 
 81, who refers to an observation made by him just but 
 29 chapters before in the same Book of his History, as oXiyov 
 Tt, " some little" before, as if justificatory of suc/i an inter- 
 pretation of the Angel's " little space," I cannot in sober 
 earnest insist on.^ A critical reader will almost think me 
 joking in so doing. — And then too history comes in with its 
 difficulties. It tells of the mighty Gothic irruptions in the 
 5th and 6th centuries, and of the violent overthrow of the 
 Western Roman Empire, (of the Empire itself; not a mere 
 constitutional change in it of government, or religion,) under 
 them. It tells too of the formation synchronically of ten, 
 or about ten, Romano-Gothic kingdoms, on the platform of 
 the same Western Empire : whose kings, after desolating 
 the old Imperial Rome, submitted themselves in supersti- 
 tious awe (a submission continued for many centmics after- 
 
 * See the Note previous. 
 
 * Comment., p. 706 : " The idea given is rather that of duration, tlian of 
 non-duration.''^ So you say ; and follow up that strange statement by the 
 citation from Herodotus. You refer also to 1 Pet. i. 6, v. 10, " having 
 suffered a white,''' oKiyov : which, of course, referring as it does to the suffer- 
 ings of Christians individually during the time of this earthly life, is short 
 as comjiared with the coming eternal life of joy ; and so still less to yoiu* point. 
 
LET. 2.] ALFORDIAN SEVEN-HEADED APOCALYPTIC BEAST. 45 
 
 wards) to the yoke of Papal Rome, as the head of all 
 Churches in Christendom ; and to its bishops, as the divinely 
 appointed Vicegerents of God on earth. Singularly did 
 these seem to answer both to what is told of the ten toes 
 of mixed iron and clay in Daniel's symbolic image, of the 
 ten horns of Daniel's fourth Beast dominated over by its 
 contemporary little horn, and of the ten horns too of the 
 Apocalyptic Beast, in that stage of its existence depicted in 
 Apoc. xiii., when it rose from the sea, under its seventh 
 head ; the which headship and era I am supposing to have 
 been that of the Roman Popedom. And, if the prefigured 
 7th head was the Papal, can it be that those ten Romano- 
 Gothic kings, so associated with the Popedom's rise in 
 history, were not what the ten associated horns of the Apo- 
 calyptic Beast in prophecy, under that its 7th head, signi- 
 fied ? All this however I ignore, — totally ignore, — in my 
 Apocalyptic Commentary. Is it asked. Why ? Because (is 
 not this the real answer?) I wa7it the ten predicted kings for 
 my eighth head ; to the interpretation of which as post-Papal, 
 still future, and answering to the little horn of Daniel's 
 fourth Beast, I am almost irrevocably committed.' Yet can 
 I be quite at ease in the belief that that prophecy, or series 
 of prophecies, which, as the revealing Angel expressly said, 
 was to show to St. John the grand future fortunes of the 
 Church, and Roman world connected with it, similarly 
 ignored them all ? 
 
 ' " These are ten kingdoms, which (as indicated in Dan. vii. 23) shall 
 arise out of the 4th of the four great kingdoms ; ten European Powers 
 which in the last time, in concert with and subjection to the Anti- 
 christian power, shall make war against Christ." So Comment., p. 707. 
 Aiter which you say : — " In the precise number and form here indicated they 
 have not yet arisen. It would not be difficult to point out the elements and 
 already consolidating shapes of most of them ; but in precise number we 
 have them not as yet." You add ; " What changes in Europe may bring 
 them into the required form it is not for us to say :" forgetting your former 
 declaration under the Seals that the Apocalyptic earth was not the Roman 
 earth, but the whole earthly globe. This, however, is perpetually for- 
 gotten by you. See Note 2, p. 25. 
 
46 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART I. 
 
 " Let me tvirn from these sad difficulties and inconsis- 
 tencies, connected with my Papal explanation of the Beast's 
 seventh head, to my post-Papal view of its eighth or last 
 head ; hoping that here at least there may be such self- 
 consistency, and strong infernal gviAqwcq of truth, (for in this 
 there is fortunately no opportunity for historic testing, seeing 
 that I suppose it to be figured of a state of the Beast still 
 future,) as may help in some degree to countervail the disap- 
 pointment of my quest of good evidence of fulfilment in what 
 went before with regard to my explanation of the Beast's 
 seventh head as meant mainly of its Papal headship. But 
 can that hope be realized? Alas, 1st, the hard objection 
 here meets me, that it is this 8M head which the revealing 
 Angel said was to answer to the Beast as revived from its 
 "is not" state; — in direct and flat contradiction to my 
 explanation of its " resuscitation " from the " is not " state 
 as taking place under the Beast's seventh, or professedly 
 Christian, head.' Again, 2dly, it is described as e/c tcov eirra, 
 " of the seven : " a statement which in truth I know not how 
 to explain, consistently with my hypothesis, except as an inti- 
 mation that the Beast proper, or Beast under its eighth and 
 last head, is " the successor and result of the seven previous 
 heads, following and springing out of tliem."^ But will the 
 Greek {avTo<i ck tu>v eirra eariv) properly bear that sense : — 
 the substantive verb, with e/c before the numeral, bear 
 the simple sense cti folloioin(j after ?^ And, if so, did it 
 
 ' So, as noted before, pp. 672, 673 of youi* Cominentaiy. See Note p. 43. 
 
 * Comment., p. 706. 
 
 ' Compare Mark xiv. 20: — "ei? e/c rwj' ScoSe/ca, one of the tw^elve :" also 
 Joh. vi. 71, 6jf toi/ 6K Twi/ SoSeKo, and Luke xxii. 3. Such is the most 
 usual meaning of the Greek i^hrase. And, so construed, the expression 
 here would mean, " one of the first seven," as being one of that number. 
 — Or else it may mean " one of them," in the sense of one with them 
 in character ; so as twice over in 1 Joh. ii. 19, "They went out from us 
 because they were not of us : " ovk rjcrav e^ ruiav. It is this latter sense which 
 I liave settled on as that of the Apocalyjjtic passage, and have so given 
 it in my la-st (5th) Edition, Vnj. iii. p. 132; the Ueast in its Papal and 
 
LET. 2.] ALFORDIAN SEVEN-HEADED APOCALYPTIC BEAST. 47 
 
 need an Angel's revelation to make St. John understand 
 that the eighth head would be, in order of succession, sub- 
 sequent to the previous seven ? — Then, 3dly, as to the 
 Beast's seat and throne of empire under this his eighth 
 and last head, how can we explain it consistently with 
 the prophecy? In Apoc. xvii. 16 the Beast from the 
 abyss is spoken of as, conjunctively with the ten kings 
 his adherents, hating and desolating and consuming with 
 fire the old seven-hilled imperial and Papal capital of 
 Rome;^ in Apoc. xi. 7 as in that same seven-hilled Rome, 
 just as if still his capital, (for so I, as well as the author of 
 the Horse Apoc. explain "the ffreat city " there specified,)^ 
 conjunctively with the kings of the earth his adherents, 
 murdering Christ's two sackcloth-robed witnesses, and 
 rejoicing over their dead bodies ! — Yet once more, 4thly, as 
 regards his time of duration, after stating in my Comment 
 on 2 Thess. ii. that Christ's coming and destruction of him 
 is " immediately " (say, very speedily) to follow his manifes- 
 tation, a view repeated substantially in my Apocalyptic 
 Commentary,^ I, notwithstanding, most distinctly, and as a 
 fundamental point of my exposition, identify him with 
 Daniel's little horn ; and make his duration consequently 
 
 last jiliase being, tliougli professedly Christian, yet in reality heathen, like 
 all the other j^revious seven heads. Comj^are too 1 Cor. xii. 15 ; ' Oti qvk 
 eifxi x^i-povK eifjii €k tov aajxaros ; "Am I not of the body?" Or, "do I not 
 appertain to the body?" as Winer to the same effect translates it. 
 
 On the expression m 1 Joh. ii. 19 1 see that you too substantially exj^Iain 
 it as I have done : — " The sense is, if they had really belonged to our number, 
 had been true servants of Christ, they would have endured." At the same 
 time you add ; " e/c with ewai is very frequently used by our Apostle to 
 denote that inner and vital dependence which betokens origin:" referring 
 to Joh. iii. 31 ; \di. 17 ; viii. 23, 44, &c. Very different ^/w'sfrom the mean- 
 ing that yom- Commentary here attaches to the j^hrase. 
 
 ' You here take (as might be expected) the usual reading of the best 
 Greek MSS., km ; not ejrt ; which however I prefer to take myself. 
 
 ^ Including however the Papal civitas, as well as the Papal seven-hilled 
 capital ; just as I do both on Apoc. xi. 8 and 13. 
 
 * See Note ' to p. 45 ; also the citation from your Comments both on 
 2 Thess. ii. and Apoc. xvii. 11, in the Note at pp. 39, 40. 
 
48 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART I. 
 
 (as was seen before) to be more, rather than less, than 12G0 
 years : though still half oscillating between the assign- 
 ment of that prophetic term of duration to the 7th or the 
 8th, — the Papal or yet future post-Pajml, — headship (ac- 
 cording to my theory) of the Apocalyptic Beast. ^ 
 
 " Alas ! on reviewing the whole, I must confess (though I 
 have put a good face on the thing in my Commentary, I 
 am hopelessly lost in perplexity ! Well would it have been 
 had I never committed myself as I did in my Prolegomena 
 to 2 Thess. ii. on thq Man of Sin ! Well had I not per- 
 mitted myself (like so many others who affect to be thought 
 scholars novv-a-days) to be taken in by German explana- 
 tions, such as of the Beast, as if a mark of advanced scholar- 
 ship, and more to be depended on than our old-fashioned 
 Anglo-Saxon common-sense Apocalyptic expositors ! Then, 
 together with the latter, I might quite consistently have 
 explained the Dragon with his seven heads in Apoc. xii. as 
 meant of the Roman heathen government in its seventh 
 phase, headship, and sera; — the Dragon's fall (fulfilled in 
 the fall of Roman heathendom under Constantine) as the 
 fall of that 7th head, and conunencement of the Roman 
 Beast's " is not " aera ; — a non-existence in the bestial 
 spirit and character consequent on that deadly wound 
 received by it : — the resuscitated Beast, with its deadly 
 wound healed, (alike that of Apoc. xiii. and xvii., which now 
 I am so inconsistent in identifying,) as realized in Rome's 
 revived dominancy, under the Papacy : the Popes of Rome, 
 in the character of Christ's Vicars, being its new 7th, or 
 successionally 8th head ; itself to last 1200 years in supre- 
 macy of power ; and, in its seven-hilled capital, to be the 
 slayer of Christ's two sackcloth-robed witnesses. — Then 
 too I should have been able to rest with abiding satis- 
 
 ' See Note ' p. 39, and Note * p. 41. The terui must be that of tlie 
 Papal headship, if corresponding with that of the Woman's exile in the 
 
 Wilderness, 
 
LETT.2.] ALFORDIAN SEVEN-HEADED APOCALYPTIC BEAST. 49 
 
 faction on the word Aaretvos suggested by Ireneeus, and so 
 many Anglo-Saxon expositors after him, (aye and even by 
 German expositors too,) as the name and nmnber of the 
 Beast ; and not had to print my strong retractation in the 
 Prolegomena of that solution of which I had as strongly 
 expressed my approbation before in my Commentary.' Eor 
 wherefore the retractation ? Is it not because (though I 
 have not expressed the reason in my Prolegomena) I saw 
 that it would only answer to the Beast as distinctwely 
 Boman, distinctively associated through every stage of his 
 existence with the Roman seven-hilled capital : and not as 
 well to the Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, and 
 Greek empires also ; accordantly with the necessities of my 
 German generic interpretation of the Beast, as the World- 
 -power in all its phases ? " 
 
 ****** 
 
 And so here, Mr. Dean, I finish my somewhat full expose 
 of your Commentary on the Apocalyptic Beast ; praying you 
 to forsive the freedom with which I have made it, as being 
 
 ' On Apoc. xvii. 18, " Here is wisdom ; let liini that hath understanding 
 calculate the number of the Beast, for the number of it is the number of a 
 man, and the number is 666," you thus at p. 679 of your Commentary ex- 
 press yourself : " The number of a man means, counted as men generally 
 count. As to it, of all the hundreds of attempts which have been made in 
 answer to the Angel's challenge, there is but one which seems to approach 
 near enough to an adequate solution to requii'e serious consideration : viz., 
 the word mentioned, though not adopted, by Trengeus, Aareiw?." Then, 
 after stating (as is shown at large in the Horse Apoc.) that the spelling of 
 the word with the diphthong et is perfectly legitimate, and descanting a 
 little, after More and other previous Apocalyptic expositors, on the peculiar 
 suitableness of the word to Papal Rome, you conclude thus : " Short of 
 saying absolutely that this loas the word in St. John's mind, I have the 
 strongest persuasion that no other can be found approaching so near to a 
 complete solution." 
 
 On the other hand, in the Prolegom., p. 252, you say: ''Even while I 
 print my note in favour of the Aareti/os of Irenaeus, I feel almost disposed 
 to withdraw it. Though the best solution which has been given, that it is 
 not the solution I have a persuasion amounting to certainty." 
 
 E 
 
50 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART 1. 
 
 (most sincerely may I say this) in the interests of Truth. 
 And here too I end my general critical examination of your 
 Apocalyptic Commentary. For I think that even you your- 
 self will be inclined to admit that I have proved what I 
 proposed to prove respecting it ; and to think it needless, 
 and consequently unfriendly severity, were I to prolong these 
 hostile criticisms ; — criticisms which you have, however, 
 really absolutely called down on yourself and on your Book. 
 I had thought it might be well, ere concluding, to suggest 
 +he marked omission on your part of all use of certain indi- 
 cations furnished by the Divine giver of the Revelation, — 
 alike in the form of the seven-sealed Apocalyptic scroll, in 
 the Apocalyptic scenery, and in St. John the seer's own 
 representative character, — of great help and value towards 
 the right and full understanding of the prophecy ; and from 
 the omission of which your understanding of the prophecy 
 has evidently much suffered. But I may perhaps quite as 
 well allude to these in my next Letter, when I enter on 
 the Second Part of my Pamphlet ; and examination there, 
 and I doubt not refutation, of your adverse criticisms on my 
 Apocalyptic Exposition. For of course this is my primary 
 object in what I am now writing. Very unsatisfactory to 
 an inquirer after Divine truth would be my overthrow of 
 yoiu-ApocalypticExposition, were I not to show that there is a 
 counterview of the sacred prophecy very different, and with 
 evidence of truth supporting it, that cannot be overthrown. 
 To this, then, I shall propose to address myself in my next 
 Letters. And, meanwhile, 
 
 I remain, dear Mr. Dean, 
 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 E. B. E. 
 
PART II. 
 
 EXAMINATION AND REFUTATION OF DEAN ALFORD'S 
 CONDEMNATORY CRITICISMS ON THE EXPOSITIONS 
 
 IN THE 
 
 "HORiE APOCALYPTICiE." 
 
 LETTER I. 
 
 on my exposition of the seals and trumpets. 
 
 Dear Mr. Dean, 
 
 I TURN now to my own Apocalyptic Expositions, and 
 your adverse criticisms, expressed or implied, on much the 
 larger part of it. And forgive me if I confess to breathing 
 more freely as I do so ; and to having certain lines of our 
 great poet running in my mind, after emergence from 
 my toilsome wanderings through the darkness and per- 
 plexities of the chaotic Exposition which it was the duty 
 forced upon me thus far to traverse, — 
 
 "At length the sacred influence 
 Of light appears." 
 
 That such is the character of the Exposition which we have 
 now to consider I shall not propound as my mere dictum, 
 which would, of course, be worthless ; but shall support it, 
 point after point, by the evidence of matter of fact : calling 
 on you, if you are able, to disprove this ; but with the 
 thorough conviction that it is what neither you, nor any 
 
 E 2 
 
52 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [pART II. 
 
 other man, ever can disprove. I have to acknowledge the 
 courtesy and respect with which you have here and there 
 alhided to my book, as well as to myself personally ; more 
 especially as admitting, not only its research, but also the 
 accuracy and fairness with which I have sketched the views 
 of other expositors, even though differing from my own.^ 
 I regret that I cannot here reciprocate the commendation. 
 While obligingly speaking of me as a friend, from whom 
 you differ only because compelled to it by regard to a friend 
 more valued, viz., Truth,^ you have in your condemnation 
 of my interpretation almost uniformly avoided stating the 
 evidence on which it is grounded, though often, as will 
 soon be seen, most striking evidence : — a suppressio veri 
 this, which seems ill to suit the character of one to whom 
 truth is dearer than ought else ; but which I would gladly 
 refer to some pressure of hurried writing, or unconscious 
 concentration of mind on the comparatively petty points of 
 minute manuscriptal variations of reading, which evidently 
 have much occupied you, and small grammatical niceties. 
 My evidence is that of the coincidences of the propliecij, as 
 I expound it, and historic fact : — coincidences continuous 
 from the time of St. John down even to the present time ; 
 and such as to exhibit, as embraced within the Apocalyptic 
 prophecy, a prefiguration that may well be called philo- 
 sophical of all the most characteristic and important phases 
 and events, together with their secret springs and remoter 
 
 ' So at p. 247 of the Prolegomena to your Commentary ; and also, let 
 me add, in a private Letter to myself ; in which you speak of having 
 sufticieutly often tracked my statements, especially in my " History of 
 Apocalyptic Iuterj)retation," to the original authorities, and found them 
 accui-ate, to satisfy you on that head. 
 
 ^ This is at p. 644, in allusion to my explanation of the 6th Trumpet, of 
 which more hereafter. " I cannot but here mention," you say, " in no 
 unfriendly sj)irit, but because, both being friends, Truth is the dearer, that 
 which may be designated as the culminating instance of incongruous inter- 
 pretation in Mr. E.'a historical exposition of these prophecies." 
 
LETT. l.J ALFORDIAN CASE AGAINST SEALS IN " H. A." 53 
 
 results, in the then coming future of the world and of the 
 Church : — coincidences, not such as might suggest them- 
 selves from the mere turning about of the prophetic 
 symbols in the kaleidoscope of an ingenious fancy, of 
 which I am well aware there has been given exemplifica^ 
 tion too frequent and abundant by many other Apocalyptic 
 expositors, alike ancient and modern ; (against this the 
 very nature and instinct of my own mind is repugnant;) 
 but coincidences distinct, pecuhar, striking, and inapplicable 
 in similar strength and distinctness to ought else in history : 
 — coincidences, moreover, of evidence of very various cha- 
 racter, sometimes in curious combination ; and altogether 
 resulting in a view of the world's and Church's coming 
 history, such as to make up a grand consistent whole. Do 
 I overstate in so speaking? It will be for you, I again 
 say, to prove it, if I do. We stand, as it were, in a court 
 of equity before the literary public. Let yours be the part, if 
 you prefer it, (though I hope your choice will be better and 
 fairer,) of opposing counsel. For myself, I wish not to speak 
 as an advocate on my own side ; but rather in that spirit 
 which has always been the object of my admiration, and 
 the object, too, I may truly say, of my imitation, when 
 called to the investigation of important truth ; — the spirit, 
 ever bent on fairly weighing all propounded evidence, of an 
 English judge. Most thankful am I to have before the world 
 the counter-views of a man who has attained to the position 
 you have, alike as a commentator of some repute on Scrips 
 ture, and from your consequent elevation to ecclesiastical 
 eminence. For the repute of their author must needs 
 command attention for his expository views on the Apoca- 
 lypse, as well as on other Scripture. And nothing, I think, 
 can more effectually serve to throw out into striking relief 
 the strength of evidence and consistency of my views, than 
 the want of evidence and inconsistency which characterize 
 
54 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART 11. 
 
 yours. Why is it that I am thankful for this? Most 
 certainly not from any personal consideration ; but because 
 I am persuaded that the cause I have in hand is that of 
 Truth, Divine Truth: — a cause that has unconsciously been 
 betrayed in our own days, even by friends, (of whom you, I 
 know, are heartily one), into the hands of infidelity; 
 whether through want of judgment, of due literary prepara- 
 tion of mind, or of time for full and calm consideration of 
 the subject expounded, in their comments on the Book of 
 God. 
 
 So proceed we to our investigations. The subject of my 
 present Letter will be my exposition of the Seals and six 
 first Trumjjets, with the grounds of evidence that support 
 it, and of your adverse judgment and counter-opinion 
 rejecting it : the subject of my next that of the Apocalyptic 
 prophecy of the Beast, with its adjuncts, including the 
 previous but closely-connected symbolizations of the two 
 sackcloth-robed Witnesses, and seven-headed Dragon ; con- 
 sidered still in the same double point of view. 
 
 I. First, then, as to the Exposition of the Seals in the 
 " Horse Apocalypticae." 
 
 And here, to begin, I of course take that natural view 
 which supposes the connexion of identity of subject between 
 the visions successively exhibited before St. John, and the 
 writing, or picturing,' on the parts of the seven-sealed 
 scroll successively opened, introductorily to those visions, 
 by the breaking of the Seals. So natural is this view, that 
 the counter-view, which you arc at such pains to impress 
 
 ' Old MS. scrolls I have seeu, both in the Vatican and the Bi-itish 
 Museum Libraries, which are divided by perpendicular lines into pages, as 
 it were ; and with the subjects of each there represented both in writing 
 and pictorially. 
 
LETT. 1.] ALFORDIAN CASE AGAINST SEALS IN " H. A." 55 
 
 on your readers, appears to me, not only strange, but 
 inexplicable : it being to the effect that, as the Seals were 
 successively broken by the Lamb, nothing was opened or 
 revealed of the contents of the scroll ; but only preparation 
 gradually made thereby for their disclosure at the breaking 
 of the 7th Seal, or beginning of the saints' eternal rest ; 
 then when a revelation of the whole providential scheme 
 of God respecting His Church while in this world, is, we 
 know, to be made to saints and angels.^ But two or three 
 
 ' Not less than five or six times is this view inculcated in your book. So 
 first in the Prolegom., pp. 254, 255 :— " The Lamb opens one after another 
 the seals of the closed book, or roU ; so that when they are aU opened it 
 may be unrolled and read. One point I have urged in my Notes (to the 
 Commentary) ; viz., that it is never during the prophecy actually opened, 
 nor is any part of it read. The openings of its successive seals are but the 
 successive preparations for its contents to be disclosed ; and, as each 
 is opened, a new class of preparations is seen in prophetic vision. When 
 the seventh is loosed, and aU is ready for the unfolding and reading, [what 
 then ? — the reading of its contents ? No ; but] there is a symbolic sUence, 
 and a new series of visions begins." 
 
 So again on the firat mention of the seven-sealed roll, or book, Apoc. v. 1 ; 
 Comment., p. 602 : " That the roll in the vision was unfolded is nowhere to 
 be gathered from the text These (the Seal) visions are merely sym- 
 bolic representations of the progress of God's manifestation of the purpose 
 of His will. Not its contents, but the gradual steps of access to it, are 
 represented by these visions. What is in that book shall not be known 
 imtU those material events which marked the gradual opening of the sum 
 of God's purposes are all past ; and the roll is contemplated in its com- 
 pleteness (so Eph. iii. 10) by the spirits of the glorified hereafter." Yet 
 presently afterwards, p. 603, you say, " The opening of the Seals, as notified 
 by the symbolic visions belonging to each (p. 628, ' appropriate to each ') does 
 not relate to things past, but things future." How so, if with nothing corre- 
 spondent written within on a page of the scroll thus opened ? Do you sup- 
 pose the Lamb's cracking of the Seals to have been a mere audible signal 
 for the exhibition of some certain visions, like the Trumpet Angels' sound- 
 ings afterwards ? 
 
 So yet again, p. 610, on Apoc. vi. 1, where you declare it to be " o/ 
 the first importance to bear this in mind ; " also p. 624, on the palm-bearing 
 vision in Apoc. vii., where you say that " before the 7th and last Seal can 
 be opened, and the book of God's pui-poses be unrolled, the whole multi- 
 tude of the redeemed must be gathered in, and that then we shall know as 
 we are known." 
 
56 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART II. 
 
 questions here suggest themselves, each ahke putting its 
 negative on this strange notion ; one, which I shall notice 
 first, extra-Apocalyptic, the others directly Apocalyptic. 
 1st, then, can we believe that the actual events, as they 
 occur, of the world's and Church's history, and the gradual 
 unfoldings of God's providential purposes in them, are 
 hidden from the knowledge of angels and saints, even till 
 Christ's second coming ? How can Dean Alford imagine, 
 much more how can he write down in his book, an idea so 
 absurd, unscriptural, and contrary to the obvious facts ? 
 2dly, if the seven primary Apocalyptic visions, represented 
 successively before St. John when the Seals were successively 
 broken, had nothing in what was thereby imfolded in the 
 Scroll corresponding with them, why was their representa- 
 tion connected in each case with the seven Seals' respective 
 openings ; indeed so connected as to imply that but for 
 those openings, and as in connexion with what the Lamb thus 
 unfolded in the Scroll, no such visions depictive of the future 
 would have been given ? And wiiy, again, 3dly, on your 
 hypothesis, when the 7th Seal was at last broken, was there 
 a hiding, instead of disclosure, of the Scroll's written con- 
 tents from the gathered auditory on the Apocalyptic scene ? ' 
 Moreover, 4thly, wherefore the distinction that the latter 
 half of the 6th Trumpet, and all subsequent to it in the 
 
 ' Veiy curious is your attempt at accounting for this. When the 7th 
 Seal is opened, and so (to use your own words, p. G28) " the only yet 
 remaining obstacle removed to the entire disclosvu'e of the secret purposes 
 of God," you explain that the half-houi-'s silence spoken of as then occur- 
 ring in heaven, (ibid.) imported two things : 1st, (in accordance with 
 Victorinus's comment,) the beginning of the saints' everlasting rest ; 2dly, 
 " the passing over and withholding, so far as the Apostle is concerned, of that 
 vjhich the 1th Seal revealed; i.e., the book of God's eternal purposes, and 
 times and seasons which He holds in His own power." 
 
 I must beg my general readers to refer, if they have the opportunity, to 
 the passages themselves whence I have cited from your Commentary : in 
 order to assure themselves that I have here in no wise misrej)resented you ; 
 which otherwise some, i)erhaps, might well be apt to think. 
 
LETT. 1,] ALFORDIAN CASE AGAINST SEALS IN " H. A." 57 
 
 Apocalyptic Book, as we have it, should have its place in 
 a written Book given open in the vision of Apoc. x. into 
 the hands of St. John ; while all the previous figurations, in- 
 cluding both those of the seven Seals, and those of the 
 five first Trumpets, and first half of the 6th, had no place 
 in any such written prophetic document : and indeed, by 
 its thus being given him, all that was afterwards exhibited 
 in vision forestalled, and its elaborate exhibition made a 
 mere work of supererogation ? ^ 
 
 And now, then, proceeding to the Seal Visions, as 
 explained in the Horse Apocalypticse, I must pray you to 
 mark the contrast of the mode of procedure followed out, 
 in order to the discovery of the intended meaning of the 
 visions, in your case and in my own. It is your plan care- 
 fully to shun dealing with their particularities individually : 
 and, under the misty covert of some general idea, to 
 suggest a solution on which, instead of those individual 
 particularities each one telling to the effect required, either 
 an apology will have to be offered (or something very like 
 it) for much that must appear on such an expository hypo- 
 thesis unsuitable or needless encumbrances in the Apoca- 
 lyptic symbolization, of which a striking exemplification 
 will be found in your 3d Seal ; ^ or else, as for example in 
 your 4th Seal, the fact of those encumbrances, however 
 obvious, past over unnoticed in perfect silence.^ On the 
 
 ' See the Comment., at pp. 651, 652, on the little ojiened book given in 
 Apoc. X. to St. John : where, after repeating that the seven-sealed book is 
 " the Slim of the Divine purposes, which is not opened at all within the limits 
 of the Apocalijptic vision,^'' you say that the little opened book is "no por- 
 tion of it," but contains within it what the Angel calls the mystery of God, 
 or "remainder of the Apocalyptic prophecies ; " i.e., all from the beginning 
 of Apoc. X., or the middle of the 7th Trumpet : the latter half of that 
 Trumpet having thus place in a written book, the former half not ! I have 
 already directed attention to this in the Alfordian Apocalyjjtic Schedule, 
 p. 21, and Note referring to it, p. 20. * See Note % p. 26. 
 
 ' See my notice on this point, p. 28, suprct. 
 
58 APOCALTPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART II. 
 
 contrary, it has been my own plan to deal with the symboliza- 
 tions as having that perfectness in parts, as well as in the 
 resulting whole, which a priori might be expected to cha- 
 racterize God's prophetic word, even as His works. ^ 
 
 1. E.g., in the Apocalyptic syrabolization (one of tenfold 
 importance in Apocalyptic exposition, because primary,) of 
 \\s.^ first Seal, six particulars there are to be noted, or rather 
 seven : — the symbol of the //orse ; a symbol repeated, 
 and of course in a similar sense, in the three Seal visions 
 next following : — that of the 7'ider mounted on, and 
 guiding it ; with the characteristic primarily of bearing a 
 bow in hand, then that of having a a-T€<f>avo^^ or crown, given 
 him: the twofold effect resulting, 1st, oi his goinj/ forf/i 
 conquering and to conquer (to the end evidently of the time 
 included in the Seal) ; 2dly, of his causing by his rule and 
 guidance, to that which the horse symbolized, a state corre- 
 sponding with what was indicated by its white colour : — and 
 all this as at an ejyoc/i of commencement close following, 
 according to the revealing Angel's declaration, on the last 
 year of the Emperor Domitian's reign ; i.e., a.d. 96, when the 
 Apocalyptic visions (as we agree) ^ were given to St. John 
 in Patmos. — Now, as I inquired into each of these particular 
 symbols, and explanatory statements accompanying, what 
 found I ? I found the horse to have been stamped on the 
 early coins of the Roman peojjle (a type renewed on the 
 Roman coinage ere St. John's death), as an animal sacred 
 to their reputed father Mars ; besides that horse-races 
 were solemnly celebrated each year at Rome for the same 
 reason, on the day sacred to Mars in the Roman calendar : 
 whence (over and above its fitness as the hellator equus) 
 was not the propriety obvious of the horse being figured as 
 a symbol of the Roman people ; just as the goaf, — an 
 
 ' So Eccles. iii. 14 ; speaking of God's work as perfect : " nothing can be 
 added to it, nor anything taken from it." ' See p. 2, suprd. 
 
LETT. 1.] ALFORDIAN CASE AGAINST SEALS IN " H. A." 59 
 
 emblem sometimes stamped on Macedonian coins, as con- 
 nected with that nation's fabled original, — was selected in 
 Daniel's prophecy as a symbol of the Macedonians ? — Then, 
 as to the rider, the badge of the how in hand was a badge 
 of Cretan connexion, according to express documental 
 testimony extant in St. John's time, as well as to the 
 world-repute for ages of the Cretan archery ; and the badge 
 of the a-Tec})avQ<;^ or imperial laurel crown given him, a sign 
 of his appointment to the Emperorship : while the horse's 
 ivhite colour, and the divinely-added explanatory statement, 
 indicated the conj\mction (a conjunction not always found) 
 of general prosperity and happiness with the triumphant 
 career of the Roman people, under his regime; and this from 
 first to last. — Of all which not one single point was there 
 which I have not shown to have had fulfilment in the ever- 
 memorable era, associated with the names of Trajan and 
 the Antonines, that supervened on the death of the in- 
 famous emperor Domitian, just about a year or so after 
 the revelation to St. John in Patmos.' On Domitian's 
 assassination, it has been shown, an aged General, Nerva, 
 noted at the time as of foreign Cretan extraction, was 
 chosen out, contrary to all former rule and precedent, and 
 presented by the Senate with the imperial o-Te0avo«?, or laurel 
 cro2on : a Cretico-imperial line then began by Nerva's 
 adoption of Trajan as his son and successor; which was 
 perpetuated by Trajan's adoption of Hadrian, Hadrian's of 
 the elder Antonine, the elder Antonine's of the younger 
 Antonine Marcus Aurelius, with whose actual son, Com- 
 modus, the Cretico-imperial line ended : — an sera of some 80 
 or 90 years thereupon commencing which was famed, even 
 
 ' I must of course beg to refer general readers to the ample (perhaps 
 some may think more than amjDle) evidence, on every point here asserted, 
 which I have given in my chapter on the subject in the Horce Apoca- 
 lypticEe : — in the 5th Edition, just published, some little more fully even 
 than before. 
 
60 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [pART II. 
 
 at the time, as the golden cBva of imperial Rome ; and of 
 which the general character given by Gibbon, and other 
 modern philosophic historians, is that it was an a?ra to the 
 Roman people of happiness and prosperity altogether 
 unparalleled in the world's history : an jrra, too, which was 
 illustrated by the far-famed triumphs of Trajan near its 
 commencement, and harder won but yet more wondrous 
 triumphs of ]\I. Aurelius near its close; as it was said, 
 " He went forth conquering," at the beginning of this 
 Seal's a3ra, and with a destiny attached that " conquer he 
 should," even to the end. — As if to make the evidence of 
 coincidence more striking between the prophecy and the 
 history on this most critical and important, because 
 primary, prefiguration in the Apocalyptic prophecy, it has 
 been providentially ordered that not only should there be 
 written historical testimony to the truth of each particular 
 noted, but evidence to the eye, as I have exemplified in my 
 Book, in medals and other ancient monuments still extant : 
 — about the horse, as in the minds of Romans, an animal 
 sacred to their chief god and supposed father Mars, in the 
 medals already alluded to : about the how, as a Cretan 
 emblem, in Cretan medals ; and with allusion to it, and his 
 own Cretic original, in some too of Nerva's own coins, as 
 well-skilled numismatists have judged : about the croion- 
 giving, as the then badge of Roman imperial sovereignty, in 
 numerous coins of the Cretico-imperial as well as of other 
 times ; and, moreover, about the "going forth " of an 
 emperor to war and victory, or " profectio Augusti," (the 
 precise Apocalyptic expression,) in other coins, such as of 
 Trajan and M. Aurelius specifically, which I have had 
 engraved in the new edition of my Ilortr : finally, of the 
 earlier triumphs of Trajan, and later of M. Aurelius 
 Antoninus, alike in Roman coins, and in the magnificent 
 columns of Trajan and Antoninc still existing at Rome. 
 
LETT. 1.] ALFORDIAN CASE AGAINST SEALS IN " H. A." 61 
 
 2. Sharp and clear was the Hne of demarcation in the pro- 
 phetic picturings (as I understand them) between that first 
 figured sera in the coming fortunes of the Roman world, and 
 the second : — the horse now reel, as with the colour of blood- 
 shed ; the cause, as explained, not that of the carnage of 
 war from without, such as through barbarian inroads across 
 the frontier, but that of the carnage of civil war, as it was 
 said, " that peace should be taken from the earth " (the 
 Roman earth, evidently),^ and that thei/ (the inhabitants of 
 that Roman earth) should kill one another ; the presiding and 
 causal influence that indicated by a rider to whom a great 
 sword (/j^axacpay was given : — the badge this (I refer to the 
 presentation of the sword) that of the military profession 
 generally; and, when presented imperially and in state, of the 
 chief Roman military generals, such as the Praetorian Pre- 
 fects in Italy, and military Lieutenants of the great armies 
 on the frontiers. Thus there are four or five points here for 
 historic verification : — the blood-dyed character of the new 
 aera ; its succession chronologically, as next after the before- 
 depicted aera of triumph and prosperity ; the wars of the 
 blood-shedding ciml wars ; the parties causing it milita?j 
 men, especially the great military commanders ; and this 
 through their investiture professionally with undue autho- 
 rity , such as the great tiax^ipa presented to the rider in 
 the vision implied. — And did the next page, then, in 
 Roman history answer to all this ? You know how I have 
 shown that it did: — an aera being recorded there, com- 
 mencing from the 4th or 5th year of the reign of Com- 
 
 ' See the Note 2, p. 25, suprd. 
 
 ' The English rendering in our Authorized Version does not express the 
 peculiarity of the original. It is to be understood that the word [xaxaipa in 
 the original <Treek n^eans, properly, a dagger, or short kind of sword ; ^i<^os 
 being the word more usually employed to signify one of larger size, as well 
 as other form. But here, though a fiaxaipa in shape, it was a fiaxai-pa of 
 a size unnaturally, or rather strangely and unsuitably, large. 
 
62 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART II. 
 
 modus ; when the undue authority of all but supreme civil, 
 as well as military, power having been attached by Corn- 
 modus to the Praetorian Prefects, their ambition, and that of 
 the army at Rome which they commanded, soon made 
 itself felt in revolutionary action, and civil war, and 
 carnage : — an example quickly imitated by the great armies 
 on the frontier, and their commanders ; whence a spreading 
 of the revolutions and bloodshed of civil w^ar over the 
 Roman world, and this with but tw-o intermissions for 
 near a hundred years. "The potver of the sivord" is 
 the well-known commencement of Gibbon's introductory 
 Chapter on the subject of its supremacy in the Empire, as 
 then begun : and well known too is his statement that 
 " the licentious fury of the Praetorian Guards was the first 
 symptom, and cause, of the decline of the Roman Empire." 
 And what the measure of the evil consequent ? " In the 
 ninety-two years from 192 to 284," says Sismondi, " thirty- 
 two Emperors, and twenty-seven pretenders to the empire, 
 alternately hurled each other from the throne by nearly 
 incessant civil warfare : teaching the world on what a frail 
 foundation the virtue of (Trajan and) the Antonines had 
 reared the felicity of the Empire." — Is there here wanting 
 any one point of coincidence between the prophetic figura- 
 tion and the chapter thus portrayed of Roman history ? 
 
 3. But not unattended by other evils could be this evil of 
 military misrule, with its revolutionary violence and bloody 
 civil w^ars. Whence the funds by which to pacify, or 
 control, the thus exaggerated power of the sword, and so 
 to make government possible 1 As the destructive rocky 
 fragment rolled down a precipice sets in movement other 
 rocky fragments, and causes them to join it in its desolating 
 progress, so in the case of the evil of military misrule and 
 domination just described. Must it not be followed up by 
 that of the aggravated pressure of taxation ? It is this 
 
LETT. 1.] ALFORDIAN CASE AGAINST SEALS IN " H. A." 63 
 
 that Gibbon dwells on as the next concurrent cause of the 
 Roman Empire's decline : and such, I doubt not, was the 
 evil pictured in the Apocalyptic 3d Seal. For what the 
 figuration? — the horse hlack, that well-known colour of 
 distress and mourning ; the rider one with balance in hand ; 
 a voice from the throne (that seat of divine equity) imply- 
 ing that he had to do officially with corn, wine, and oil ; and 
 enjoining on \\\m. justice, and a certain j»nce too of the corn, 
 which, from its connexion with the former charge by the 
 conjunctive " and^' must evidently have meant a fair price : 
 the ineffectiveness however of the charge appearing from the 
 fact of the horse's black and mourning colour being still 
 continued throughout the period of this Seal, under the 
 balance-bearing rider's influence. Now have I not, in the 
 medals engraved in the " Horae," given proof striking to 
 the very eye that Roman provincial governors were here sym- 
 bolized, to whom the tax-collection was officially intrusted 
 by the Emperors alike of money and of produce ; speci- 
 fically of that of corn, wine, and oil ? Have I not shown the 
 memorable epoch of the aggravation of this taxation to have 
 begun with Caracalla's famous edict, about a.d. 220, making 
 all the provincials of the empire Roman citizens, with the 
 onerous condition of their taxation as Roman citizens being 
 added to that of Roman provincials ; and the general misery 
 and oppression consequent ? Have I not shown, too, that 
 laws of equity were enjoined on these governors, but in vain ; 
 and, more especially, that the price of wheat specified in the 
 voice from the throne, in the Apocalyptic vision, would seem 
 from the statistics that remain to us to have been approxi- 
 mately near about the fair average price in the reign of 
 Alexander Severus ; by which Emperor the last stand was 
 made on the side of mercy and equity in the taxation of 
 the Empire, but still in vain? For, as Gibbon says, he 
 did but aggravate the evil which he tried to cure, and paid 
 with his own life for the attempt at reform : leaving the 
 
64 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART II. 
 
 evil still to gather strength, and " to darken the Roman 
 world with its deadly shade," Is there here any coinci- 
 dence then wanting between the prophecy and the history ? 
 Surely not one. And mark how many the coincidences ! 
 — the (Bra as following on that of the former Seal : — the 
 colour that of distress and mourning : — the rider, as marked 
 both by the badge of the balance-bearing and the charge 
 from the throne to equity ; in which charge, moreover, the 
 four chief articles of produce falling under the Roman law 
 of taxation arc specified, tcheat, barley, wine, oil : — also, 
 finally, a price of wheat specified, which appears to have 
 been approximately (as before observed) its average price in 
 the Roman Empire about the time of Alexander Severus. 
 To all which there is to be added the singular monumental 
 illustration still remaining to us of an imperial 21b. market 
 weight, stamped with the date of Alexander Severus's 
 reign, and answering precisely to the chaniix measure of 
 wheat specified in the voice from the throne in the Apoca- 
 lyptic vision : — a selected small measure, I imagine, to show 
 how the oppression of taxation was then to fall even on the 
 smallest proprietor, the universal population ; so as, in fact, 
 it did. Fully six coincidences have v/e here between the 
 prophecy and the history. — And what have you to say to 
 controvert them? Nothing whatsoever but a vain dictum 
 against construing the tov olvov kui, tov ekaiov fjn] aZiKriai)<i, 
 as. Act not unjustly in regard to the wine and oil : — a dictum 
 vain, because unwarrantably robl)ing the ahiKeco, Avith an 
 accusative in the sauie clause, of the right of construction 
 universally attaching in Greek to neutral verbs.' 
 
 ' J liave illustrated in my book by the brief example from Anacreon ; 
 
 rpixas yepa>v fifu ((tti, 
 ras 8e (ppevas vta^fi. 
 
 " Not," you say, " as Heinriclis and Elliott, Do not thou commit injustice 
 in the matter of the oil and the wine. AdiKeiv, witli the accusative of the 
 paaterial object hurt or injured, is the constant liabit [five times in all] of 
 
LETT. 1.] ALFORDIAN CASE AGAINST SEALS IN " II. A." G5 
 
 As to the 4th Seal, the coincidence on every single point 
 between the characteristics of the sera Jpocali/pticallt/ pre- 
 jigured in it, and the characteristics of the next following me- 
 morable historic sera after that of Caracalla and Alexander 
 Severns, I mean that associated with the name of Gallienus, 
 is such and so notorious that it seems almost needless to 
 illustrate it. Said the prefigurative prophecy ; " When he 
 had opened the 4th Seal, behold a horse livid (as with 
 deatJdike pallor) : and to him that sate thereon was the 
 name Death, and Hades followed after him : and to him 
 was given power to kill on the fourth part (or four parts) 
 of the earth, with the sword, and with famine, and with 
 pestilence, and with the wild beasts of the earth." Says 
 the historian in his retrospective sketch : — " Prom the cele- 
 bration of the secular games, a.d. 248, by the Emperor 
 Philip to the death of GaUienus, a.d. 268, were 20 years 
 to the empire of shame and misfortune, of confusion and 
 calamity." He depicts the three chief agencies of destruc^ 
 tion as consuming it ; — " the sword, famine, pestilence : " 
 ("a pestilence which from a.d. 250 to a.d. 265 raged without 
 interruption in every province, every city, and almost every 
 family in the empire : ") to which Arnobius, a contemporary 
 writer, adds that of ivild beasts. As to the extent of mor- 
 tality resulting, Gibbon says ; " Could we venture to extend 
 the analogy of Alexandria to the other provinces, we might 
 suspect that war famine and pestilence had consumed in 
 a few years the moiety of the human species :" and he 
 adds that " the ruined empire seemed to approach the last 
 and fatal moment of its dissolution." So too Schlegel, SiS'^ 
 
 our writer ; and iu no case do we find the other construction used by him ; 
 or indeed by any other writer, to my knowledge ; except with such general 
 adverbial accusatives as rt and ov8ev." To prove your point you should have 
 not confined yourself to the caseof aStKeii/ as a transitive verb ; but have shown, 
 that, in its character as an intransitive or neutral verb, it should be cut off 
 from the universal right of neutral verbs in construction with accusatives. 
 
 ¥ 
 
Q6 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART II. 
 
 mondi, Niebulir. Says the last mentioned writer ; " Tlie 
 condition of the empire after the cessation of the great 
 plague, was like that which follow^ed the cessation of the 
 Black Death in the middle age." Nor indeed could the 
 destroyers be said to have relaxed in their work till after 
 Diocletian's tranquillization of the empire in 284. — If 
 we go more into particulars the correspondence will only 
 appear yet the more striking. — And wdiat your objections 
 to the evidence of these coincidences ? Precisely nothing, 
 as to all the particulars specified above : but only, as regards 
 the extent of territory affected, a hint that the fourih part 
 of the earth, as the reading of all extant Greek MSS., ought 
 to be received and recognised as marking the ApocaJi/ptic 
 limit of the evils specifi^ed ; ' not Jerome's reading of the 
 four parts of the earth, received by me, as according with 
 the historic record of the times of Gallienus, which makes 
 the evils to extend over the whole Roman world. But how 
 such an intended limitation of them, consistently with the 
 fact of the horse appearing all over invested with the colour 
 of death ; and while Death too, impersonated, is depicted 
 as bestriding its whole body ? What again the explanation 
 by expositors of such a limit, on any different theory from 
 my own of Apocalyptical interpretation ? How you yourself 
 break down here has already appeared.^ Nor, I may say, 
 is there a single expositor, ancient or modern, who has 
 found himself able to offer a consistent explanation of it. 
 Well then surely am I justified in taking Jerome's different 
 reading, " over the four parts of the earth ; " — a reading of 
 his Latin Vulgate which I have myself verified in the earliest 
 and best MS. of it existing,viz., that in the Laurentian Library 
 at Florence. Which reading, if answering in MSS. extant 
 in Jerome's time to the Greek tu B' t?;? 77;?, instead of the 
 received to 8', well answers to my solution. Or, if it answer 
 
 to the Greek to rerpaStov, instead of to rerpuTOv, or to 
 ' Comment, p. G15, compared with 634. ^ See p. 29, Note ', supra. 
 
LETT. I.] ALFORDIAN CASE AGAINST SEALS IN " H. A." 67 
 
 reraprov^ (the literal sraallness of difference is in either case 
 obvious,) still more striking will be its correspondence with 
 my solution. For, just at that epoch began a division of 
 the Roman w^orld de facto into four parts, which was made 
 a leffal division soon after by Diocletian, and constituted 
 the territorial basis of his famous new quadripartite govern- 
 ment of the Roman world : — a quadripartite division 
 rendered still further remarkable by the absorption in Con- 
 stantine's time, shortly after Diocletian, of two of the 
 divisions into one ; and so a threefold division introduced, 
 answering, as I contend, to the threefold Apocalyptic divu 
 sion referred to both under the Trumpets and in the vision 
 of the Dragon and Woman, Apoc. xii. 
 
 On the whole in these several Seal visions, as explained 
 by me, it will be seen that there are not less than twenty 
 coincidences (coincidences striking, peculiar, consistent) be- 
 tween the prophecy and the history. And how do you answer, 
 or negative, the evidence from them ? You simply pass it 
 over sub silentio : and this in favour of a counter-solution 
 for which there is not, as we have seen, one particle of evi^ 
 dence worth consideration ; but evidence ail to the contrary, 
 
 Still stronger, even yet, becomes the evidence for the 
 solution I have offered when, advancing to the 5th Seal in 
 the prophecy, we find an <er<2 of Christian martyrdoms 
 figured, as the crisis and consummation of persecutions 
 and martyrdoms long previously suffered by Christians 
 from the inhabitants of the Roman world : and, in the 
 history, find Diocletian's reign designated among Christians 
 of the times just succeeding as the Mra of Martyrs .- the 
 miseries of the sad times previous having in fact been 
 popularly ascribed to the advance of Christianity, and con- 
 sequent neglect of the old Roman heathen gods ; whence 
 the cry which ascended from the populace to the Emperor, 
 " Christiani ad leones." — And stronger still becomes the 
 
 F 2 
 
68 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART II. 
 
 evidence from the additional fact of this aera of martyrs 
 being succeeded in the next prophetic vision (that of the 
 6th Seal) by a symbolization which, construed like similar 
 symbolizations in the Old Testament prophets, seemed to 
 betoken a mighty revolution both political and religious in 
 the Roman Empire : just such a revolution as the historic 
 page next sets forth, as the Constantinian, or rather Constan- 
 tino-Theodosian, overthrow of Heathenism in the Roman 
 world. 
 
 And so we arrive at the amount of nearer thirty than 
 twenty coincidences between the successive figurations in 
 the Seal visions and the chief successive phases and fortunes 
 of the Roman world and Christian Church, in the course of 
 the two centuries following forthwith after the revelation 
 Iiiade to St. John in Patmos : — a number yet more increased, 
 if we add the very interesting and important visions of 
 the sealing and the palm-bearing, in which St. John himself 
 had not only to be a spectator but a participator, as the 
 sequel of that great revolution which constituted the pri- 
 mary subject of the 6th Seal ; and then compare them with 
 the history and doctrine of Augustine. But this involves the 
 important interpretative principle, ignored by you, of SL 
 Jolnis representative character on the Apocalyptic scene ; 
 a point which it may be better to enter on in the discussion 
 of Apoc. X., xi. Having therefore thus arrived at the 7th Seal, 
 and its half-hour's silence in heaven, — to which latter 
 you have thought well, as before stated, to attach so curious 
 and incongruous a double signification,' but of which the 
 much more natural explanation is that it marks the break 
 between that Seal's opening, and the seven Trumpet visions 
 which constitute its development, — I would only, ere passing 
 on, ask you, if unable to disprove these many and nmltiform 
 coincidences, whether you are really prepared to ascribe 
 them to chance ? 
 
 ' See p. 5G, Note '. 
 
LETT. 1.] ALFORDIAN CASE AGAINST TRUMPETS IN " H. A." 69 
 
 Proceed we now, 
 
 Ildly, to tlie Trumpet Visions, as explained by me in 
 the " H. A. ; " with the evidence there given in snpport of 
 those explanations, and your condemnatory criticisms 
 against them. 
 
 Preliminarily however I must not omit briefly alluding 
 to our very different views as to the purport of the incense 
 vision ; — the vision introductory to that of the Trumpet- 
 soundings in Apoc. viii. 2, 3. 
 
 1. Most striking and most instructive is the prefigurative 
 indication implied in the incense vision, (if rightly explained 
 by me,) as to certain definite symptoms of commencing 
 antichristian apostacy unfoldhig themselves m Roman 
 Christendom, very very soon after the empire's nominal 
 conversion to the Christian faith : and just in natural 
 sequel, let me add, to what seemed implied respecting it 
 in the previous vision of the sealing.^ Por in the incense- 
 offering scene there depicted, in that Apocalyptic Jewish- 
 like temple, or tabernacle, which seems to have been ever 
 standing in the foreground of vision,^ it was most pointedly 
 intimated that by " the saints " distinctively and alone, or 
 sealed 144,000 out of all the tribes of the professing 
 Israel of the Roman world, would the incense of prayer be 
 then offered through the mediatorship and propitiatory 
 merit of our only great Angel High-Priest, Christ Jesus. 
 To draw that inference from the Apocalyptic figuration, 
 and the divinely added explanatory comment, there was 
 needed nothing more than the application to it of that 
 
 ' As regards the Sealing vision yon thns far agree with me, in explaining 
 the tribes of Israel there si^oken of as meant of the Christian professing 
 Israel. 
 
 ^ On the resemblance of the Ajjocalyptio temple, or tabernacle, so often 
 spoken of, to the old Jewish tabernacle, which you would controvert, 
 I shall have to sjieak when discussing the temple-measuring, Apoc. xi. I, 
 in my next Letter. 
 
70 APOCALTPSIS ALFORDIANA. [pART II. 
 
 principle of allusive contrast which critical investigators so 
 justly and usefully apply, as I have illustrated in my Book/ 
 in the elucidation of Church Creeds, Church Articles of 
 faith. Scripture prophecies of the Old Testament, and many 
 an old legal or historical document too of a bygone a?ra. 
 • — And hence a strong historic corroboration to the 
 correctness of this interpretation of the vision : — viz., that 
 in the records of precisely that sera of the close of the 4th 
 century, to which, on the evidence, as I have shown, of 
 some thirty continuous coincidences between prophecy and 
 history, the Seals' series of prefigurations have brought us, 
 the fact of the apostacy of the great mass of Roman 
 professing- Christians to a belief in saints' mediatorship, 
 and their consequent practical desertion of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ in his character of our propitiation and mediator, by 
 substituting those saints and their merits in his place, as 
 that by which their prayers would be best made acceptable 
 before God, is among the facts most prominent on the 
 historic page.^ — Whence, as I judge, and with too evident 
 reason for it, the casting of the burning embers of God's 
 neglected typical altar on the Roman earth, and conse- 
 quent issuing forth of the Trumpet-judgments. All is 
 thus consistent, all consecutive ; as well as all evidenced by 
 the correspondence of striking historic fact. 
 
 And what then is Dean Alford's objection to this ; what 
 his counter-solution of the vision ? It is grounded on a state- 
 ment in the Apocryphal Book of Tobit, which speaks of 
 created angels exercising this function of ofl'ering up the 
 
 * See my Vol. i., pp. 273, 274 (5th Ed.) ; or p. 25fi, Ed. 4. 
 
 ^ 111 my H. A. ad loc, I have observed ou Gibbon's striking ilhi.stration 
 of this point: heading a Chajiter, as he does, in reference to the date a. D. 
 395, 396, just after Theodosius's death, and just previous to the first great 
 Gothic irniption, thus ; — " Destruction of Paganism. Introduction of 
 "worship of saints and relics among the Christians." 
 
LETT. 1 .] ALf ORDIAN CASE AGAINST TRUMPETS IN " H. A." 7 I 
 
 prayers of saints before God :' there being here, you would 
 have it, an inspired Apocalyptic endorsement of this state- 
 ment ; such however as is no where else to be found in 
 inspired Scripture. For, somewhat I must say presump- 
 tuously, taking for granted against the concurrent judg- 
 ments of various expositors of note what most certainly 
 you have not proved, and I am sure never will prove, that 
 Christ is no where else in the Apocalypse designated as an 
 an(/el, you argue hence that we are therefore bound here to 
 understand by the incense-offering angel in vision a created 
 cmgel -^ and that it was his office to "incense the saints' 
 prayers," and make them acceptable before God.^ And 
 
 ' " I am Raphael, one of the seven holy angels who offer the prayers of 
 the saints and enter before the glory of the Holy One." Tobit xii. 15. 
 
 ^ '■^Another angel: not," yon say, "to be identified with Christ, so as is 
 done by Bede, Vitringa, Calov. and recently by Elliott : for thus confusion 
 is introduced into the whole imagery of the vision." How so ? " In Ch. vii. 
 2 we have clKKos ayyekos, another angel, [viz., the sealing angel] in the sense 
 of a created angel : {see my Note there ;) and is it probable that St. John 
 would, after this, and I may add with his constant usage of a^igel through- 
 out this Book for angel in its ordinary sense, designate our Lord here by 
 this title r 
 
 What then is the elaborate argument, in the Note referred to by him on 
 Apoc. vii. 2 (" see my Note there"), upon which Dean Alford rests as proof 
 of the correctness of his view of the incense-offering angel here as a created 
 angel ? Just this. " I saw another angel : — as before simply an angel : 
 not, as has been fancied, our Lord, nor the Holy Spirit : cf. rov Geou jj/liwi) 
 ('till we have sealed the servants of our God'') below :" — he being "the 
 God," you add, " alike of the speaker and those addressed." — Had you for- 
 gotten, when thus writing, how the Lord Jesus, when just about to 
 ascend to heaven, and as if to mark the relationship in which as man, and 
 redeemed man's representative, he would ever afterwards stand to the 
 Father, said, " I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God 
 and your God''? — Says Hengstenberg justly on Ajjoc. vii.; "The sealing 
 angel is Christ. The description suits Him only.'" 
 
 I have myself, in loc, argued out the identity of the sealing angel with 
 Christ, as also that of the mcewse-bearing angel, somewhat fully. But 
 clearest of all against Dean A.'s general statement is Apoc. x. 3 ; whei-e the 
 rainbow-vested angel speaks of the Witnesses as ^'my Witnesses." On 
 which I shall have to remark in my next Letter. 
 
 ^ "The object," you say, -p. 631, "was to i7icense the prayers of the 
 saints : — i. e. as expressed by Calov, lU redderet eas honi odoris preceaP 
 
72 ArOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART II. 
 
 what the nature and object of the prayers of all saints, thus 
 made acceptable in heaven? To call down divine ven- 
 geance, you say, on the general inhabitants of the earth ; 
 such vengeance in fact, as, in consequence, followed under 
 the Trumpets. How utterly contrary this to the spirit of 
 Christian prayer respecting others, as enjoined in the 
 Gospel, and as carried out by all sincere Christians, who 
 knows better practically and experimentally than yourself, 
 Mr. Dean ? Do you in your prayers invoke God's curse 
 on those that may hitherto have been enemies to the faith ? 
 Rather do you not yourself ever remember what our Lord 
 has enjoined on his disciples, "Love your enemies, and 
 pray for them which despitefuUy use you, and persecute 
 you?" And, as our Lord, so too his apostles.^ Thus is 
 your general counter-explanation a libel (yourself being the 
 judge) on Christ's faithful servants; as well as (what is 
 much worse) a libel on Christ himself: — the latter, as if 
 any but He could effectively act out the part of propitiation 
 and mediator for sinful man \ any but He make sinfid 
 man's prayers acceptable before God. All this you set 
 forth, we saw, as grounded simply and alone on a state- 
 ment in Ajjocryplial Scripture ; of which Apocryphal SS. 
 the Church in which we both minister has solemnly and 
 authoritatively declared in its Gth Article ; " The Apo- 
 cryphal books the Church doth read for example of life ; 
 but yet doth not apjjly them to establish any doctrine^ 
 And you set it forth as a piece of information given on this 
 occasion, all insulated and unconnected with any revelations 
 
 ' So Rom. xii. 19—21 ; 1 Tim. ii. 2 ; 1 Pet. ii. 21, 23, &c. So too the 
 blessed example of the proto-ma7'tyr Stephen ; " Lord, lay not tliis sin to 
 their charge." — There is no contradiction to this in the cry of the martyrs 
 of the 5th Seal, ex})lained so as in the " H. A." 
 
 ''^ What a contrast tlie Ev^angelist St. John's own view ! " If any man 
 sin we have an advocate with the Father, ^/cavw Christ the righteous, who is 
 the propitiation for our sins." 
 
LETT. 1.] ALrORDTAN CASE AGAINST TRUMPETS IN " H. A." 73 
 
 of the future, not to St. John only, but also to the heavenly 
 company gathered round the throne of glorified saints and 
 angels : M'ho, by the way, must certainly have knoAvn the 
 fact long before, if fact it really was ; at any rate from after 
 the time of Tobit. 
 
 2. Next as to the four first Trumpet-judgments ; — in- 
 cluding judgments on the third part of the (Roman) earth, 
 third part of the sea, third part of the rivers, with the 
 fountains of waters, and third part of the sun, moon, and 
 stars in the firmament of the Apocalyptic visions. 
 
 The " third part " being here the point most prominent in 
 the prophecy, it was my primary inquiry, when entering 
 on the consideration of these visions, first, whether there 
 was any such tripartition of the Roman empire about the 
 time of that ever-memorable epoch of the close of the 4th 
 century to which the previous prefigurative visions had, as 
 I judged, so clearly brought us ; next whether, if such were 
 the case, there occurred desolations on one of those third 
 parts of its land provinces, on its sea with the ultra-marine 
 provinces, on its great rivers, and on its ruling governmental 
 luminaries or authorities, separately and consecutively, soon 
 afterwards. To each of which two questions history 
 returned me an answer clear and distinct in the affirmative. 
 As to the 1st, it told how, after the bipartition of the 
 Roman empire at the great Theodosius's death between 
 his two sons, into the Eastern and the Western, the 
 imperial appointment, or rather recognition, of Alaric as 
 Master General of the vast Prefecture of Illyricum, and 
 virtually, though not professedly, its independent ruler,^ 
 constituted that Prefecture one detached third of the old 
 empire ; and so the Eastern division on its one side, and the 
 
 ' I have iu my H. A. ou this poiut cited the contemporary laoet Chiudian, 
 
 Vestator Achiviie 
 Gentis, et Epirum niiper populatus inultam, 
 Praesidet Jllyrico. 
 
74 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART II. 
 
 JFestern on the otlier, each another third : — the former the 
 same third which, some 80 years before, had formed the 
 kingdom of Maximin, and then of Licinius, when making 
 the last fight against Christianity (as figured in the Dra- 
 conic vision of Apoc. xii.) on the side of Heathenism.' As 
 to the 2d, it held forth emblazoned in lurid light upon its 
 page the names, first, of Alai'ic and Mhadagaisus, then that 
 of Genseric, then that of Attila, then that of Odoacer, as 
 names ever famous for the desolation, first, of the land or 
 European provinces of the Western third of the empire, 
 then of its sea and maritime provinces and navy, then of 
 its great rivers, vallies, and European fountains of waters j 
 ending finally in the extinction of the Emperorship itself, 
 and subordinate imperial authorities of the Western empire. 
 Against which what has Dean Alford to allege? Do 
 you, Mr. Dean, controvert any of these historic facts, as 
 reported by me ; or their general coincidence with the 
 Apocalyptic statements and symbols : — and, remember, 
 neither are the prophetic figurations, nor the historic facts, 
 of at all common character ? Not so. You do not even 
 notice them. You only thus dogmatically issue forth your 
 condemnatory sentence against my explanation : — " All 
 special interpretations seem to me utterly to have failed ; 
 and of these none so signally as that of Mr. Elliott, who 
 would understand it of a tripartite division of the Roman 
 empire at the time to which he assigns this judgment :"^ — the 
 main ground of this its condemnation being the "■fatal " (!) 
 objection, that the hail was said to have been cast on the 
 t^vih generally, the burning mountain into the sedi generally ; 
 while the limitation of " the third part " only applied to 
 the destruction wrought by these destroying agencies on the 
 land. Thus the land (" cultivated land," you say,) ^ and sea. 
 
 ' See on this iu my next Letter. ^ So C'omni. p. G.34. 
 
 * So, motil proprio, you yourself here limit the territorial extent of the 
 earth afTected by the ])lague ; iu odd conti-adictiou to youi- objurgation 
 
LETT.l.] ALFORDIAN CASE AGAINST TRUMPETS IN " H. A." 75 
 
 Whence, and as fortified, you further intimate, by the simi- 
 larly indefinite purport of " the third part " in Apoc. xii. 4,^ 
 your inference that " the third part " was in all these pre- 
 figurations of the four first Trumpets used indejinitely, (just 
 like " the fourth part,." and " the tenth part," elsewhere,^) 
 as indicating the limited amount of the injury : it being 
 thus implied that " God, even in these sweeping judg- 
 ments, spares more than he smites ; two thirds in each case 
 escaping, while one third only is smitten." ^ 
 
 against me on the self-same page for ajjplying to the herbage burnt up the 
 Apocalyptic limitation of " the third " of the earth on which the fire was 
 cast : — " Of the earth " ; you say : " t. e. plainly, the surface of the earth, 
 and that of the cultivated soil, which admitted of such a devastation." 
 
 As regards the sea and the creatures and ships in it, of the second plague, 
 you favour us with no further explanation than the general one, applicable 
 to all the four Trumpet-plagues, (as I have before noted, p. 7,) of their being 
 plagues on " the accessories of life." You however controvert my state- 
 ment as to the sea being used by Latin writers of the maritime coasts and 
 ultra-marine provinces of the empire : accordantly with Facciolati's expla- 
 nation, "Mare interdum est regio maritima, et uisulce maris ;''^ and as 
 exemplified from Tacitus, Hist. i. 2, among other authorities, " Plenum 
 exsiliis mare." Is the translation then preferred by you of this passage 
 from Tacitus, " The ocean-brine is full of exiles " I — Compai-e the similarly 
 large intent of the word sea in Apoc. x. 2. 
 
 * " The Dragon's tail draws {(jvpet) the third part of the stars of heaven " : 
 where, you say, "the use of the present tense shows that & general power, 
 rather than particular event is designated." Unfortunately for your argu- 
 ment the verb in the next connected clause is in the aorist ; " the tail 
 cast (f^akev) some of the stars to the ground " : and, presently afterwards, 
 notwithstanding the " general " abiding power over the stai's thus ascribed 
 by you to the Dragon, he is said to have been cast altogether out of the 
 starry region I— The frequent rashness and inaccuracy of your statements 
 and reasonings really amazes me. Because in Isa. 53 it is said of Christ in 
 the present tense, " He is led as a lamb, &c.," is it only a general cha- 
 racter of the Lamb, and not a particular event, that is signified 1 
 
 - Let the reader mark this. In fact, on Dean Alford's exjjlanatory 
 principles, " the fourth,'' " the ffth," &c., would here do just as well to 
 express the meaning of the sacred prophecy as " the thirds — Are not your 
 own words of caution against an indefinite mystical interpretation of pro- 
 j:)hetic periods, p. 670, here ajiplicable against you ; lest thereby, you say, " we 
 leave unfixt what the Spirit of God apparently intended us to ascertain " ? 
 
 ' I a little abbreviate your words. 
 
76 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART II. 
 
 Surely, not to say anything of the wortlilessncss of your 
 counter- view, which speaks for itself, there is nothing 
 forced, unnatural, or uncommon in the supposition on 
 which my explanation of the little clause about the grass 
 proceeds ; viz. that a limitation of it to the specified limits 
 of the earth on which it grew is implied. I do but follow 
 common sense in so limiting it. Let me then, in fine, beg 
 my general readers to weigh, as in a balance, the vanity of 
 your so-called " fatal " objection against the gravity of the 
 evidence by which my solution of these four first Trum- 
 pet visions is supported ; and then judge whether the latter 
 is that which a truth-loving expositor of the passage ought, 
 when condemning the solution, to ignore. 
 
 3. So w^e come to the Mh Trumpet -vision ; and my 
 application of it, after Mede, and the great majority of 
 English Protestant expositors, as a prefiguration of the 
 irruption into Roman Christendom of Mahommcdanism and 
 the Mahommedan Saracens. 
 
 Strongly impressed with a sense of the importance of a 
 clear and indisputable confirmation of the truth of this 
 explanation of the 5th Trumpet figuration, not merely as 
 considered in itself, but in its bearing also on other of the 
 Apocalyptic visions, especially that of the 6th Trumpet 
 next following, I was at pains to try it (since I saw that 
 the fulness and peculiarity of the symbolic description 
 would admit of my so doing) by a testing fuller and more 
 stringent than had been applied to it by any previous ex- 
 positor. Accordingly it was, as you know, a point of pre- 
 liminary investigation by me whether the same rule of good 
 taste (if I might so say) is observable in the figurative 
 allusions, symbols, or personifications in Holy Scripture, 
 which is very generally to be observed and admired in the 
 writings of human authors of repute : viz. the choice of 
 figures suitable to, and characteristic of, the people^ country. 
 
LETT. 1.] ALFORBIAN CASE AGAINST TRUMPETS IN " II. A." 77 
 
 or local scene designated as the subject of reference. And, 
 having shown in a chapter of very copious illustrations that 
 such was notably the case in the figurative picturings or 
 allusions of Holy Scripture, where the local scene or people 
 meant is specified, and consequently known, it seemed to me 
 that in a prophecy couched in complex and peculiar symbols, 
 like those of the prefiguration of the 5th Trumpet, the intent 
 of which was an enigma to be deciphered, we might by a 
 reflex process argue from the symbols to the people or 
 country symbolized, and hence find help towards the more 
 sure deciphering of the intended subject. — Applying this cri- 
 terion to the 5th Trumpet's vision it appeared most strik- 
 ingly that its symbols, whether with regard to what was 
 bestial in them, or what was human, were all Arahian, or 
 Saracenic, in character ; — alike the locust, the scorpion, the 
 horse, the faces as faces of men, the hair long as hair of 
 women, and the crowns on the scorpion-locusts' heads as of 
 gold. With no other country or people, I found, but Arabia 
 and the Arabs, could a correspondency of character so com- 
 plete be shown in the Apocalyptic symbols; and indeed 
 that of some of the symbols the Arabs themselves, of the 
 times of Mahomet and the Caliphs his successors, were 
 wont to speak as national characteristics. — Then, connect- 
 edly with all these indications of the particular people 
 meant in the prophecy, when it appeared further that the 
 portentous irruption of the Saracens into Roman Christen- 
 dom arose out of the irresistible impulse of the fanaticism 
 of the false religion of Mahomet, which had just then risen 
 up among them, like smoke from the pit of hell, now wide 
 opened by the great Spirit of Evil, as if one grand likely 
 means of recovery from his late fall from supremacy in the 
 heathen Roman empire,^ — the time being early in the 
 
 ' I am bappy iu here at length fiudiug a point of agi-eement with you. 
 In my new edition, vol. i., printed some time before the publication of your 
 Apocalyptic Commentary, I had, on reconsideration of the subject, expressed 
 
78 APOCALYPSTS ALFOHDIANA. [PART II. 
 
 seventh century, shortly after that formation of the Romnno- 
 Gothic kingdoms in the West which resulted in fine from 
 the Gothic invasions prefigured in the previous Trumpets, — 
 that they declared their mission against the men of Roman 
 Christendom to be against them as idolaters,^ — also, as to 
 the conseqnence of their irruption, that, notwithstanding 
 their mighty victories and conquests, the result was not to 
 destroy the political life of the people of Roman Christen- 
 dom, but only (just in accordance with the limitatiori 
 assigned to the symbolic scorpion-locusts in the Apocalyptic 
 figuration) to torment them, even as with the envenomed 
 scorpion sting, — while, with regard to the fruit-trees and 
 herbage of the countries conquered, the habit, and indeed 
 prescribed law with them, in direct contrast with the 
 practice of the Goths and Vandals, (just again as Apoca- 
 lyptically figured,) was not to desolate, but to pre- 
 serve,^ — and, once more, as to the duration of the plague 
 in its intensity, that from the first date of Mahomet's 
 announcing his mission, and emergence of the smoke 
 of his false religion, together with the scorpion- 
 locust forms of his disciples, from out of the pit of the 
 abyss to the pacific settlement of the Saracen Caliphs at 
 
 my conviction, after Mede and other English expositors, of Satan being the 
 fallen star intended ; (not Mahomet;) and with a probable reference in the 
 symbol to the fall figured afterwards ii) the later but explanatory vision 
 of Apoc. xii. After notice of Isa. xiv. 12, "How art thou fallen from 
 heaven, Lucifer," &c., and Luke x. 18, " I beheld Satan as lightning fall 
 from heaven," passages also cited by me, you add : " This expression forms 
 a connecting link to Apoc. xii. 9 ; where Satan is represented as cast out of 
 heaven to the earth." 
 
 ' Or saint-worshippers. " Those that have not the seal of God on their 
 foreheads." Compare wliat has been said on Apoc. vii. 3, 4, viii. 3, 4, p. 09, 
 siipr^. 
 
 ■^ Compare Apoc. viii. 7 said of the one with A])0c. ix. 4 said of the other. 
 On the hypothesis of the correctness of the Gothic and Sarcenic reference 
 of the one and other prophecy respectively, the marked contrast of these 
 two predictions, and marked fulfilment in either case by Goths and 
 Saracens historically, seems to me veiy observable. 
 
LETT.L] ALFORDIAN CASE AGAINST TRUMPETS IN " H. A." 79 
 
 Bagdad, far away from the Roman capital, was just 150 
 years, correspoiidently, on the year-day principle, to the 
 Apocalyptic term assigned to the scorpion-locust ravages 
 of 5 months, or 150 days, — it seemed to me that nothing 
 further was wanted to complete the parallel ; and that there 
 could be no reasonable doubt, (with those at least who 
 regard the Apocalypse as a divinely-inspired prophecy of 
 the future,) as to the irruption of the Mahometan Saracens 
 into the Roman Empire in the 7 th century, being the sub^ 
 ject here prefigured.* 
 
 Notwithstanding, not only do you set aside this solution, 
 but you do so with something like contempt and indigna- 
 tion. In reference to it, and more especially I think to my 
 own copious illustrations of the evidence supporting it, you 
 exclaim, " There is an endless Babel of allegorical and 
 historical interpretation of these locusts from the pit." ^ 
 — Do you, then, deny the fact of the literal and allegorical 
 being intermixt in Scripture prophecy ? Not so. On the 
 contrary, you elsewhere expressly assert and apply it.^ 
 Again, do you dispute the interpretative principle enforced 
 by me, that from the local or national appropriateness' of 
 symbols in Scripture prophecy we may rightly argue as to 
 the locality or nation intended ? You will not surely attempt 
 this. Or, finally, do you dispute the justness of my appli- 
 cation of the principle to the multifold correspondence that I 
 assert between the Mahometan Saracens and the scorpion- 
 locusts of the Apocalyptic figuration, both in regard of the 
 literal and the allegorical interpretation of the symbols ? In 
 fact you scarce allude to all this. Save only excepting, — 
 an exception rather hinted than insisted on, — against my 
 
 ' Oji all the above I must of course refer my general readers to the full 
 development and illustration of every point in my " Horse Ajjocalypticse." 
 
 ^ Comment, p. 641. 
 
 ' So ib. p. 633 : — " There is every allowance to be made for the indis- 
 putable intermixtm-e in many places of literal and allegorical meanings," 
 So, too, p. 643, &c, 
 
80 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART II. 
 
 understanding of avdpcoiTwv in verse 7 of tlie human male 
 sex distinctively, and the croions like (/old as meant of the 
 gold-embroidered turbans of the Arabs/ the whole strength 
 of the case, as urged by you, against my Saracenic applica- 
 tion of the symbols consists in the vituperative desig- 
 nation of such my application of them as a " Babel " 
 of admixture of historical and allegorical interpretation : 
 forgetting, apparently, that Babel means confusion ; 
 whereas, in my application of the symbols, all is shown to 
 be consistent and harmonious in its oneness of significance, 
 as of Arab applicability. — As to any counter-interpretation, 
 with which to meet and match it, you confess that you 
 have none definitely to offer : though just suggesting, in 
 strange and direct contradiction both to holy Scripture 
 and to yourself, that the plague, as one of bodily suffering 
 from which God's saints, if on the scene, could not be sup- 
 posed to be wholly exempt, must be at a time when the 
 present admixture of tares and wheat shall no longer exist ;^ 
 
 ' I. That avdpconos is used of the human 7nale sex distiuctively in all the 
 ten examples from the New Testament or Sei^tiiagint, (Eccl. vii. 28 inclu- 
 sivQj) you do not deny : but say that in those passages the word has oieces- 
 sarily that restricted meaning, being in contrast with yvw?, woman; and 
 ought only so to be taken where the restricted meaning is similarly neces- 
 sary. Now, as observed by me in loc, there is in the verse here a double 
 contrast ; alike with the woman in the symbol, (" hair as hair of women,") 
 and with its general bestial resemblances. And, to mark the dotible contrast, 
 the word avdpconos, sasce])tible as it is of both the generic sense as humankind, 
 a,nd specific as the male of humankind, seems just the most proper word. 
 
 2. As regards the " crowns like gold," (ore^ni/oi o/xotoi xpva-o),) you suggest 
 that the phrase "will hardly bear" my apijlication of it to the gold- 
 embroidered Arab turban ; and that you would rather explain it of " a 
 crown-shaped fillet (on the scorpion-locusts' heads) which resembled gold 
 in its material." Not much of difference between us so far. The actual 
 use of the word o-rt^ai-ot for the turbans of the ancient Sabaean Arabs, in 
 the passage cited by me from Ezek. xxiii. 42, you do not notice. — Let me 
 adil from Niebidir, with reference to noble Arabs of modern time, follow- 
 ing no doubt their ancestors in this, that the ujipermost caj) of those which 
 make up their turban " is usually richly embroidered with gold.'" 
 
 ^ The idea is so strange that it is right I should here give your own words. 
 " The plague [i.e. as that which is to fall distinctively on the imbelieviug 
 
LETT. 1.] ALFORDIAN CASE AGAINST TRUMPETS IN " H. A." 81 
 
 that is, as Christ tells us, at and after His coming;^ not, 
 as your Apocalyptic Scheme tells us, before it.^ No 
 doubt God's elect, as you say, p. 644, were scattered up 
 and down in corrupt Roman Christendom during the 
 Saracenic irruptions. And from real evil they had indi- 
 vidually a charter of exemption ; just like the sealed with 
 God's mark at the time of Jerusalem's siege and destruc- 
 tion by the Babylonians, and Christ's disciples at the time 
 of its siege by the Romans.^ But it was against the 
 apostate saint-worshipping men of Roman Christendom as 
 a community that the Saracen scourge was commissioned. 
 And, as regarded non-idolatrous Christian Churches, or 
 communities, such as of the Nestorians and Paulikians, the 
 Saracens, instead of persecuting, were a refuge to them 
 from their pseudo-Christian persecutors.* 
 
 unsealed iuhabitants of the earth] either denotes something pm-ely spu-itual, 
 some miseiy from which they are exemjit who have peace with God, which 
 can hardly be, consistently with verses 5 and 6 ; or else it takes place in a 
 state totally different from this present one, in which the tares and wheat 
 are mingled together." — As regards the state of things, let me say, during 
 the Apocalyptic Trumpets, the mention of the oflPering of the prayers of 
 saints in the introductory incense- vision tells that saints were then existing ; 
 and what is said at the 7th Trumpet-sounding that then only had the time 
 come for the saints receiving their reward. Accordant with this is the 
 implication in the word "murders," Apoc. ix. 21, that saints, the subjects 
 of those murders, were existing under the 6th Trvimpet ; so as explained 
 not by me only, but by you, p. 645. The wheat, you seem to think, after 
 separation under the 5th Trumpet, had, at the sounding of the 6th, con- 
 descendingly and kindly intermixed itself again with the tares ! ! 
 
 ' So Matt. xiii. 30, 41. 
 
 ^ See the place of the 5th and other Trumpets in Alfordian Apocalyptic 
 Scheme, p. 20, suprd. 
 
 ' Ezek. ix. 5, 6 ; Luke xxi. 18. — On the latter passage, " Not a hair of 
 your head shall perish," you yourself thus comment : " Not literally, but 
 really true ; not corporeally, but in that real and only life which the dis- 
 ciple of Christ possesses." — On the /on?ier,^would you argue from the Lord's 
 charge to the destroying angels, " Come not near any man upon whom is 
 my mark," that the destruction portended must have had reference to a 
 state of the world quite different from the present, and in which the wheat 
 had been ah-eady separated from the tares ? 
 
 * See my " H. A.," vol. ii., pp. 247, 252. (4th Ed.) 
 
 G 
 
82 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART II. 
 
 In conclusion, I must beg you — 1st, to refute, if you 
 can, any of the many asserted coincidences between the 
 scorpion-locusts of the Apocalyptic figuration and the 
 Arabs, or Saracens, at the epoch of their irruption into 
 Roman Christendom in the 7th century ; 2dly, to show, if 
 you are able, a similar correspondence between the symbols 
 and any other nation, or events, in the world's history; 
 3dly, if unable to show this, then to retract your con- 
 demnatory criticisms as unjust. Your only alternative will 
 be, as before, that of asserting that all these coincidences, 
 peculiar and characteristic as you find yourself forced to 
 admit them to be, are but the result of chance) 
 
 4. So now we come to the similarly complex figm'ation 
 
 ' Ei-e passing from the 5tli Trumpet I must notice an utterly false charge 
 that you here make against me. At verse 6, " In those days men shall seek 
 death, and not find it," you thus remark : — " On the command not to kill the 
 men, &c., in verse 5, Elliott says, 'i.e., not to annihilate them as a political 
 Christian body:''" whence, you add, " the present verse must in consistency 
 mean that the political Christian body will be so sorely beset by these 
 Mahomedan locusts, that it will vehemently desire to be annihilated, and 
 not find any way ; for the killing of men should not be said of their 
 annihilation as a political body in one verse, and theii- desiring to die in 
 the next be said of their individual miseiy. Is it in consequence of fore- 
 seeing this difficulty that Mr. E. ha.s, as in the case of many imjjortant 
 details in other places, omitted all consideration of this verse ? " 
 
 Now, 1st, Mr. E., instead of omitting all consideration of the said verae, 
 has, p. 425, (4th Ed.) the following observations on it : — " ' In those days 
 men shall seek death, and shall not find it, and shall desire to die, and 
 death shall flee from them.' A statement of which the meaning is made 
 clear by the parallel one in Jer. viii. 3 ; where it is said of the Jews taken 
 captive to Babylon, ' And death shall be chosen rather than life, by all the 
 residue of them that remain of this evil family.' ... It is a strong prover- 
 bial expression of wretchedness." — This, observe, was in reference to a time 
 when the same Jeremiah represents the Jewish people as politically killed 
 and dead. So Lament, passim ; also Hos. xiii. 1, cited by me in the " H. A." 
 
 2. As to your genercd charge against me of omitting to notice passages 
 that might seem to tell against my view, I am I'cally amazed at the bold- 
 ness of so singularly untrue an accusation. I have (I may say) never 
 knowingly omitted the notice of a difficulty in the way of my exjiosition. 
 The examples you give, — alike this, and those referred to p. 92 in/rd, — are 
 really nothing less than gross falsifications of fact. 
 
LETT. 1.] ALFORDIAN CASE AGAINST TRUMPETS IN " H. A." 83 
 
 of the lion-Ueaded horses and horsemen from the Euphrates, 
 of the Qth Trumpet, whose appointed destiny it was "to 
 slay the third part of the men " : — a figuration interpreted 
 by myself, as by most English Protestant Expositors before 
 me, of the irruption of the Turks from the Euphrates in 
 the 11th century; and their destruction, in fine, of the 
 Constantinopolitan, or Eastern third, of the old Roman 
 Empire. 
 
 Now here it is, more I think than anywhere else, that 
 you express yourself most strongly against the interpreta- 
 tion offered by me. " We have here," you say, in refer- 
 ence to one of the particulars of my Turkish application, 
 " the culminating instance of incongruous interpretation in 
 Mr. E.'s historical interpretation of these prophecies : — an 
 interpretation so wild that, if it refutes not itself, it seems 
 scarcely capable of refutation." So in your Commentary : 
 and in your Prolegomena you have this selfsame interpre- 
 tation by me of the 6th Trumpet, I think, specially in 
 mind when thus writing ; " The fault of wresting the text, 
 to make it suit a preconceived scheme, is so glaring in our 
 Expositors of the historical school as to have inspired me 
 with disgust y ' Rather strong language, Mr. Dean ! Let 
 us now then, as before, compare the prophetic figuration 
 and its historic application, so as given in the " Horse " ; 
 note down the number and appropriateness of the coinci- 
 dences ; consider whether there is any other chapter in the 
 world's history to which this prophetic figuration can be 
 made similarly, and in all its most varying particulars, to 
 apply ; and, if the result of our investigation be that it 
 does apply to what I say it does, and can be applied with 
 similar appropriateness to nothing else in history, then 
 further consider whether the coincidences can be regarded 
 as the result of chance ; and, if not, whether the conjunc- 
 
 • Comment, p. 644 ; Prolegom. p. 248. 
 G 2 
 
84 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDTANA. [PART II. 
 
 tion of the two together, the prophecy and the history, as 
 a conjunction intended by the Divine inditer of the Apoca- 
 lypse, is that which should not only be rejected, but 
 rejected with absolute " disgust," by the gentle-minded, 
 Dean of Canterbury. 
 
 Preliminarily let me suggest, what I do not think you 
 will be inchned to dispute, that it seems to me manifestly 
 consonant with good taste that in a series of symbolic 
 picturings of great national subjects, whether historic or 
 prophetic, there should be a certain regard to the national 
 style of description and writing : — by the use, for example, 
 generally of bolder combinations of imagery in the picturing 
 of an Oriental people, and their achievements, than in that 
 of a European people ; as well as by a choice of particular 
 symbols adopted by, or characteristic of, the people. 
 Strikingly, in my opinion, has the Apocalyptic use of this 
 principle been illustrated by what has already passed under 
 review in the Apocalyptic figurations, supposing the expla- 
 nations to be true that I have attached to them : — the 
 symbolizations of Roman subjects being Roman-like, and 
 Saracenic (as already just before noted) those of Saracenic 
 subjects ; not to add Israelitish, also, those of things concern- 
 ing the Christian professing Israel. And so here, if at first 
 sight the combination of imagery in the figm-ation of the 
 6th Trumpet appears strangely bold, and almost grotesque, 
 its general appropriateness in this very respect, if meant of 
 the Turkman people, may soon be made to appear. Take 
 in illustration the descriptive passage in Saadeddin, — the 
 prince, as he has been called, of Ottoman historians, — on 
 the capture of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks ; and 
 compare its bold imagery, though but that of an historic 
 description, with the prefigurative picturing of the same 
 people and same event, as I understand it, in the Apoca- 
 lypse. " The Moslems placed their cannon .... before 
 
LETT. 1.] ALFORDIAN CASE AGAINST TRUMPETS IN " H. A." 85 
 
 the gates and ramparts of Constantinople. The flame ichich 
 issued from the mouths of those loar-instruments of brazen 
 bodies, and fieri/ jaws, cast dismay among the misbehevers. 
 The smoJte, which spread itself in the air, rendered the bright- 
 ness of day dark as night to the unhappy infidels." So the 
 Turkish historian, Saadeddin. ^ And what the Apocalyptic 
 symbolic prefiguration ? " Thus I saw the horses in the 
 vision, and those that sate on them, having breastjdates of 
 fire, and of jacinth, and of brimstone : and the heads of 
 the horses were as the heads of lions, and out of their 
 mouths issued fire, and smoke, and brimstone. By these 
 three was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by 
 the smoke, and by the brimstone which issued out of their 
 mouths." Is there not a sufficiently marked resemblance 
 between the two citations to show the strikingly Turkish 
 character of the Apocalyptic picturing ? 
 
 But not merely was the actual destruction by the Turk- 
 man hordes of the Byzantine third of the old Roman 
 empire to be foreshown in the Apocalyptic prefiguration, 
 but (as in my opinion was to be expected from a divine 
 foreshadowing of that eventful chapter of the coming 
 future) much much more : — viz., the local origin of those 
 fire-breathing destroying hordes, as from the Euphrates : 
 their intimate connexion with the preceding but previously 
 long-dormant 5th Trumpet-plague, figured by the declared 
 loosing, on the occasion, of the four tempest-angels of the 
 Trumpet-judgments from a previous binding (or restraint 
 from action) by the Euphrates : — the time within which they 
 were to kill the third part of the men of Roman Christen^ 
 dom, viz., a period very singularly defined as an " hour, day, 
 month, and year : " — their subsequent habitual and au- 
 thoritative injuring of those whose national life they would 
 
 ' Given in my neAv edition, vol. i., p. 512. 
 
86 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART II. 
 
 previously have taken away, as indicated by the still more 
 singular symbol of serjpent-like horsetails to the Euphratean 
 horses having heads, wherewith it was said (even as by 
 their fire and smoke-breathing mouths in the first instance) 
 they would injure, and do injustice. — And, now, to each and 
 every one of these particulars in the Apocalyptic symboliza- 
 tion was there not an answering in the Turkmans' history, 
 and their acting in the middle age against the Eastern 
 Iloman empire, and its professedly (though only pro- 
 fessedly) Christian inhabitants? I think (and that more 
 strongly even than before, since reading all that you have 
 to object to my solution) that I have shown such to be the 
 case. — Let me give a brief abstract of my evidence in 
 proof ; then an abstract of your objections. 
 
 {a) It is to be remembered, then, that it was on the 
 Saracenic Mussulman Caliphs' settlement at Bagdad on the 
 Euphrates in the 8th century that their once terrible plague 
 ceased from Roman Christendom : the new capital, far 
 removed from that of the Christians on the Bosphorus, 
 being designated by the Caliphs themselves as Medinat al 
 Salem, or Citg of Feace ; and in the Caliphs' cultivation of 
 the arts of peace there, then and thenceforward, the 
 destroying angels bound, as it were, by the Euphrates. 
 So was the Mahommedan plague stayed for some 200 or 
 300 years, and thus a long time of respite granted to 
 Eastern Christendom. Then at length the Turkman hordes, 
 coming down from Turkestan at the instance of the Bagdad 
 Caliph to his assistance, there at once embraced the ]\Ius- 
 sulman faith ; and, with a fury of fanaticism equal to that 
 of the early Saracenic disciples of IMahomct, began again, 
 with their cavalry hordes, the attacks on Eastern Christen- 
 dom, as the natural foe and victim of Mahommedanism ; 
 and, spreading their conquests very soon throughout nearly 
 the whole of Asia Minor, seemed even thus early as about 
 
LETT. 1.] ALFORDIAN CASE AGAINST TRUMPETS IN " H. A." 87 
 
 to overthrow the empire, and destroy, poHtically and 
 nationally, that third of the Romans.^ But, 
 
 {b) The ti7ne for effecting this was not as yet. " An 
 hour and a day and a month and year," — this was the 
 singularly-defined period in the Apocalyptic prophecy, not 
 till the ending of which the destruction of the third of men 
 was to be accomplished ; a period, on the year-day scale, 
 equal to 396 years and 118 days. Accordingly, quite 
 unlikely as it seemed in the early days of the Seljukian 
 Turkmans' conquests in Asia Minor, first one and then 
 another hindrance occurred to delay that catastrophe : — 
 the irruption of Zenghis Khan, the Mogul Tartar, into the 
 Seljukian kingdoms in Asia Minor ; the invasion of the 
 Crusading armies from the West ; and then, finally, that of 
 the Tartar Tamerlane. But, after that second Tartar 
 tempest had swept by, the Ottoman Turks again began to 
 press Constantinople, the great capital, and heart as it 
 were of the life-blood of the Eastern empire ; forming its 
 %\egQ just 396 1/ears after the first loosing of their hordes, 
 on the mission of the Caliph, from Bagdad on the 
 Euphrates. Eor a while their success was doubtful. But 
 the Jire and smohe-hreatldng artillery, then first effectively 
 used in siege warfare, proved irresistible. " After the AS)tli 
 day of the siege^ says Gibbon, " the fate of Constantinople 
 could no longer be averted." On that day, I infer from 
 Byzantine historians, the Emperor in despair offered to 
 accept the Ottoman Sultan as his Suzerain, and rule only 
 as Viceroy under him. Then, on the offer's rejection, began 
 the death-throe, which ended ten days after, of Eastern 
 Boman Christendom. And what the precise relationship 
 of that 40M day of the siege to the Apocalyptic period? 
 It was that very day that completed its 396 years and 118 
 
 ' So Hos. xiii. 1. See uote, p. 82, suprdb. 
 
 == See Vol. i., p. 500, 4tli Ed. ; p. 529, 5th Ed.- 
 
88 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART II. 
 
 days; that very clay that its aggregated "hour and day 
 and month and year " expired.* Was this coincidence of 
 time chance ? 
 
 (c.) And indeed the very formula under which the 
 Apocalyptic period is expressed is characteristically Turk- 
 man. Never but once have I read of a term in historic 
 record similarly expressed ; the one exception being that of 
 the term of truce granted to our Richard Coeur de Lion by 
 the Turkman Saladin ; and therefore one characteristically 
 TurJiman. It was to be for " three years and three months and 
 three weeks and three days and three hours." So singular 
 seemed to me the similarity, that I was at pains to verify it : 
 for verification was needed, in consequence of the blunder- 
 ing of both French and English modern historians of the 
 Crusades. But, as will be seen in my " H. A.," ^ the 
 verification was complete. And so this Turkman pecu- 
 liarity of numeral phraseology, in solemn national trans- 
 actions, has to be added to all the rest. 
 
 {d.) Such again, most certainly, was the serpent-like horse- 
 tails ending in heads, of the symbol, with which it was said 
 that the symbolized invading hordes of horses and horsemen 
 from theEuphrates would do injury and injustice. Eor both in 
 the Apocalypse, and elsewhere in prophetic Scriptm'e, heads 
 are notoriously the symbol oi governing authorities ; and, as 
 notoriously, horse-tails have ever been the emblems of 
 Turkman Pashas' authority, and coincidently also, as the 
 too general practice, of their misrule and injustice. Was 
 there ever elsewhere a nation of historic fame to which this 
 singular, most singular, emblem could be applied? 
 
 (<?.) Nor can I omit to call attention, finally, to the very re- 
 
 • See the calculation, &c., vol. i., pp. 522—527. (5th Ed.) 
 
 * I think it will interest my readers generally to see in my " H. A." the 
 statement, and the resolution, of the difficulty in this incident of the 
 history of Richard and Saladin. 
 
LETT.l.] ALFORDIAN CASE AGAINST TRUMPETS IN " H. A." 89 
 
 markable manner in which, when declaring his mission against 
 Roman Christendom as a nation of idolaters, Mahomet the 
 Second, after his capture of Constantinople, unconsciously 
 designated the people, and their saint and image-worship, 
 almost in the very phraseology of the designation given 
 them, as I doubt not, in the verses of the Apocalyptic pro- 
 phecy next following after the statement of the destruction 
 by the horses and horsemen from the Euphrates of the third 
 of me)i. Said the prophecy : " And the rest of the men, 
 which were not killed by these plagues, repented not of the 
 works of their hands, that they should not worship demons, 
 and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and 
 wood, which can neither see, nor hear, nor w^alk." Said 
 the Turkish Sidtan Mahomet, August 2, a.d. 1469, sixteen 
 years after his capture of Constantinople and overthrow of 
 the Greek Empire, as a vow which he caused to be pub- 
 lished in all the mosques of his empire : — " I Mahomet, 
 son of Amurath, .... emperor of emperors, and prince of 
 princes, from the rising to the setting sun, promise to the 
 only God, Creator of all things, by my vow and by my 
 oath, that 1 will not give sleep to my eyes, nor seek out 
 what is pleasant, nor touch what is beautiful, nor turn my 
 face from the West to the East, till I overthrow, and 
 trample under the feet of my horses, the gods of the 
 heathen ;—i\\o^Q gods of wood, of brass, of silver, of gold, 
 or of painting, which the disciples of Christ have made ivith 
 their hands!' 
 
 And now then, Mr. Dean, I have to ask what are the 
 objections that you have to offer to all these coincidences ? 
 For, as to counter-solution, you have confessedly here, just 
 as in the Trumpet previous, none. 
 
 To my literal construction of the Muphratean locality, as 
 that whence the sytiibolized invading hordes of the horses 
 and horsemen of the 6th Trumpet were to issue, you make 
 
90 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART II. 
 
 no objection. On the contrary, you distinctly admit its 
 scripturalness. " It is a common featiu'e," you say, " of 
 Scripture allegory to intermingle with its mystic language 
 literal descriptions o{ place and time." ^ 
 
 Against my explanation of "the four angels bound in 
 the Euphrates, that had to be loosed as the four tempest- 
 angels of judgment, first commissioned at the beginning of 
 the Trumpets," you thus object :^ — " We must not yield to 
 the temptation, so attractive at first sight, of identifying 
 these four angels with the four angels holding in the four 
 winds in Apoc. vii. : for the mission of these angels is 
 totally distinct from theirs, as the locality is also ; there 
 being not a syllable here of winds, nor any hurting of 
 earth, sea, or trees." But, let me ask, was there not an 
 identity of object in the judicial mission of the four tem- 
 pest-angels of Apoc. vii. and that of the destroyers of the 
 5th and 6th Trumpets ; — this being in each case a mission 
 against those who had not the seal of God on their foreheads, 
 as appears from comparing Apoc. vii. 3, ix. 4, 20, 21 ? 
 
 As regards the term of time you construe the et? rrjv 
 'copav Kat 'i]/j,€pav Kai firjva Kat eviavTov as simply meaning 
 " a(/ainsf, or in reference to, the hour day month and year 
 appointed [such you make the force of the prefixed article] 
 by God : " — a sense self-refuted by the fact that so every 
 additional term, after the first, w^ould be but tautology. 
 Then, as against my construction of the clause, you add ; 
 " Had there been no article, we miyht have understood (with 
 Mr. E.) that the four were to be added together to make 
 up the time : " its insertion, however, in your opinion, 
 negativing the idea. Is there then reason in this objection ? 
 The reader should remember, with reference to the ei? as 
 marking either the length or the ending point of the 
 aggregated term of time, my parallel phrases from Dan. xii. 
 
 ' Comment., p. 642. * Ibid. 
 
LETT. 1. J ALFORDIAN CASE AGAINST TRUMPETS IN "H.A." 91 
 
 111 the beptuaglllt ; et9 Kacpov Kai Katpovy Kai rjiiLcrv Katpov ; 
 aildj fxaKapios 6 (j)6aaa<; ec<; r]fiepa<i %4Xta9 rpiaKoacwi irevre : 
 the et? in the one case marking duration, as in the sense 
 for; in the other the ending point of the term, in the 
 sense at, or at the lapse of. Now, then, does the article 
 prefix here bear me out, as you assert, from the latter sense ? 
 Let us see. As regards then the effect of the one article 
 before the whole clause, I make reference in the " H. A." 
 (a reference unnoticed by you) to the parallel passage 
 
 of Apoc. V. 12, Trjv Bvva/jLcv Kai ttXovtov Kai cro^Lav Kai layyv 
 
 the one article prefix, alike in either of the two passages, 
 governing and binding together as one, I there argue, 
 " even as under a bracket," all the aggregated accusatives. 
 Do you dispute the justice of this criticism ? Let me beg 
 to refer to the corroboration of an expositor for whose 
 opinion you will perhaps have some deference, that expositor 
 beuig none other than Dean Alford. You say, on Apoc. 
 v. 12; "Here one article includes all these nouns. Bengel 
 well remarks that we must regard them all as if they 
 formed hut one wordy Just so in the passage before us. 
 The one article embraces all the terms of time, as if one 
 aggregated word. And then, as to the effect of the one 
 article on the aggregated accusatives of time following, it 
 is that which the same Dean Alford expresses, in the words 
 cited just above, precisely as the Author of the " Horse " 
 had expressed it before him ; viz., as on the expiration of 
 the hour day month and year, " appointed by God." 
 
 Finally, as regards my explanation of the horsetails having 
 heads, after exclaiming against it, in the quotations from 
 your Book already made, as "a culminating instance of 
 incongruity of interpretation," "self-refuted, &c.," — mere 
 words these of objurgation, but with no argument in them, 
 and consequently worthless, — you most reprehensibly assert 
 that "it is convicted [/.<?., of error] by leaving altogether 
 
92 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART II. 
 
 out of view the power in the mouths, which is the principal 
 feature in the original vision, and by making no reference 
 to the serpent-Hke character of the tails, but being wholly 
 inconsistent with it," which statements are each and 
 either, just like that other respecting my Saracenic solu- 
 tion,' wholly untrue : — the fact being that I dwell at large 
 on each of these points in the prophetic figuration, as not 
 only not inconsistent with, but strikingly accordant with 
 my Turkish explanation of it ; ^ indeed strong points in nig 
 case. Your vain attempt at refuting it only makes 
 me feel as I before intimated, more strongly than ever the 
 irrefragable strength of evidence arising out of this most 
 wonderful coincidence, connected as it is with so many 
 other wonderful coincidences, in proof of the truth of the 
 Turkman reference of the Apocalyptically prefigured horses 
 and horsemen from the Euphrates.^ 
 
 And were all these historic coincidences with the 6th 
 Trumpet figuration, thus shown to be unrefuted and irre- 
 futable, as well as all connected with the previous Trumpet 
 figurations, simply the result of chance ? 
 
 I am, dear Mr. Dean, 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 E. B. Elliott. 
 
 ' See p. 82 suprd,. 
 
 ' On the power in their mouths I dwell at large, Vol. i., pp. 481—484 ; 
 on the serpent-like, envenomed, and injurious character of what was sym- 
 bolized by the he.aded horsetails, viz., the Turkish Pashas' government, 
 pp. 486, 487, 4th Ed. (I refer to that Edition as that which you had before 
 you.) 
 
 ' You add : " By distorting too the canon of sjnnmetrical interpretation, 
 in making the heads attached to the tails to mean that the tails are symbols 
 of authority." I think the Dean and this his synimetrical Canon may be as 
 well left to themselves, till the former Ijetter explains the latter. 
 
LETT. 2.] ALFORDIAN CASE AGAINST DRAGON IN "H.A." 93 
 
 LETTER 11. 
 
 alfordian case against my explanation in the " h. a." 
 of the dragon, the beast, and the two witnesses. 
 
 Dear Mr. Dean, 
 
 Now for the explanation in the " H. A." of the 
 large and all-important subject of the Apocalyptic Beast ; 
 including its adjuncts of the Dragon of Apoc. xii., the 
 Beast's precursor and evoker, and Christ's two sackcloth- 
 robed Witnesses told of in Apoc. xi., the objects of per- 
 secution by the Beast, even unto death. In each of which 
 cases, as before, I shall have to note the evidence pro- 
 pounded in support of my explanation ; and then your ob- 
 jections, and adverse criticisms, against it. 
 
 And I think that, in here meeting you, it may be well to 
 speak of the above-mentioned three chief constituent topics 
 of that great subject of the Apocalyptic prophecy in their 
 chronological order : — i.e., of the Dragon of Apoc. xii. first ; 
 of the Beast as figured in Apoc. xiii. and xvii. next ; of the 
 Witnesses, warred against and at length slain by the 
 Beast, last. But not so without first suggesting, what 
 will more fully appear under my 3d head afterwards, a 
 certain accordance with historic fact observable in the very 
 order of arrangement in the Apocalyptic unfolding of the 
 subject : — there being given in the prophecy, first, on the 
 grand figured theatre of the world and Church visible, a 
 symbolization of the Heforniation in all its chief successive 
 stages of progress, as quick following after the destruction of 
 the third of men, or Greek Empire, under the 6th Trumpet ; 
 
94 APOCALTPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART II. 
 
 and then, and thereupon, a general revelation, in the hght of 
 the now opened Gospel, both of the Papal pretended Vicar 
 OF Christ, with the Western kingdoms supporting him, as 
 the long-predicted Antichristian Beast ; and also of a 
 spare witness-line for Christ's truth in previous ages, as 
 warred against to the death by him, till at length, in the very 
 Reformation itself, revived in greater strength than before : — 
 but not till after the 7th Trumpet's sounding, or (historically 
 interpreted) the great French Revolution, in a supplemental 
 series of visions, such as was evidently needed for the purpose, 
 a full illustration, in all its details, of the origin, history, 
 character, and actings of that Antichristian Papal Beast ; 
 of which series the chronological parallelism with the times 
 and history of the Witnesses, in the former series, was 
 shown by the similarly-involved period of the 1,260 days, 
 or years.' — This premised, proceed we now to the develop- 
 ment of the subject in these full supplemental visions. — And, 
 
 1st, the introductory vision of the Seven-headed Dragon 
 and Travailing sun-clothed Woman in Apoc. xii. 
 
 Of the utter failure of your attempt at explaining the 
 opening part of this vision as meant of the JcAvish Church's 
 travailing in hope of the Messiah, and the man-child Jesus 
 Christ's birth, his persecution by Satan through Roman 
 official agencies, and at length ascension to the throne of 
 God, I have already spoken before ; as also of that of your 
 connectedly attempted reference of the Woman's flight, in the 
 latter part of the vision, to the early Christian Church's 
 flight to Pella from the horrors of the siege of Jerusalem : 
 — a failure not on one point, but on all. So that there is 
 
 ' How near you approach to the ycnr-clai/ theory of the great jirophetic 
 chronological ]>eriocls may be seen by reference to what I have stated from 
 your Book, p. 41, supra ; though elsewhere formally, and not very con- 
 sistently, (see my citation Note *, p. 75, S2i_prd,) rejecting both the literal 
 day-day theory and the year-day. 
 
LETT. 2.] ALFORDTAN CASE AGAINST DRAGON IN " H. A." 95 
 
 here no coimterview in the Apocalypsis Alforcliana of the 
 shghtest plausibiUty to oppose to that in the " H, A."' 
 My own view (as was also just hinted before) ^ is to the effect 
 that, at its opening, the vision under consideration figured the 
 last struggles of Satan, as animating Roman Heathendom, 
 against advancing Christianity, and when the still orthodox 
 and united Church was in strong travail with the hope of a 
 Christian prince being elevated to the supreme and thence- 
 forth Christianized throne of the Roman world : — also that 
 in its later figurations it signified the efforts of the same 
 Satanic spirit, after dejection from the imperial throne, 
 against Christ's faithful Catholic Church; and success, 
 through floods of heresies schisms and heathen invaders, 
 poured out against her from his mouth, in driving her into 
 a state of invisibility and desolation. And the historic in- 
 terpretation, given in the " H. A." to this effect, having, 
 as I said, no counterview of the slightest plausibility to con- 
 trast with it, has to be judged of by the strength simply 
 of its own supporting evidence, compared with the strength 
 of the objections urged against that evidence. 
 
 Now, in order to judge of the truth of my interpretation 
 of the former part of the vision, we must, as before, see 
 whether the coincidences urged in the " H. A." between 
 
 * See pp. 32 — 34, sujircb. — After reading the expose there given of your 
 interpretation of the visions in this chapter (and I must beg a reference to 
 it at this point of the discussion), it will, I think, be alike surprising and 
 amusing to the general reader to observe the tone of confidence with which 
 you refer to it, as if so jaalpably plain and satisfactory as of itself to set 
 aside all counter-views. " The man-child is the Lord Jesus Christ, and 
 none other.'''' " The man-child's birth must be understood literally and his- 
 torically of that birth of which all Christians know ; " and " his being 
 caught up to God, and his throne, of Jesus Christ's being taken \\]i to 
 heaven, and sitting on the right hand of God." " This forms one of the 
 landmarks by which the legitimacy of various interpretations may be 
 tested ; and of which we may say that every interjaretation which over- 
 steps their measure is thereby convicted of error," Comment., p. 665. 
 
 ^ P. 48, suprcb. 
 
96 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART II. 
 
 the prophecy and history are distinct, pecuUar, consistent, 
 decisive. Taking, then, for granted that by the Woman 
 is meant the Christian faithful Church, seeing that she is 
 spoken of afterwards as the mother of " them that observe 
 the commandments of God, and keep the testimony of 
 Jesus Christ," and by the seven-headed Dragon Satan, as 
 inspiring and acting in the heathen Roman empire, its 
 seven heads and ten horns being the Roman designative in 
 the symbol of the Beast next following, — neither of which 
 points you would be inclined to dispute,' — the chrono- 
 logical crisis figured is by the following very peculiar and 
 characteristic points of evidence fixed, in my opinion, to 
 Constantinian times, and the last struggles in those times 
 of Roman Heathenism, headed by Maximin, and then 
 Licinius, against Christianity and the Christian Church. 
 
 1st, as Whiston and Bishop Newton have observed, the 
 time of the Church's travailing, or 40th week of gestation, 
 calculated on the year-day prophetic chronological scale 
 from Christ's ascension, was now just expiring; the 
 date of Christ's ascension being about a.d. 33, that of the 
 Constantinian Decree in favour of Christianity, and 
 of Maximin's war immediately afterwards, a.d. 313. 
 2, Construing the heaven spoken of as the Apocalyptic 
 firmamental heaven, that same in which the stars also 
 spoken of seemed set, and so, agreeably with its use both in 
 the Apocalypse and other Scriptures, as the symbolic region 
 
 ' Of the seveu-lieaded Dragon you say, " The Dragon being the Devil, 
 these sjTiibolic features of the seven hejuls and ten horns must be inter- 
 preted .... as indicating that he lays wait for the woman's offspring in 
 the form of that Antichristian power (xdz. the Roman) which is afterwards 
 represented by the Beast." 
 
 The Woman you yourself interpret, in all but the introductory scene of 
 the figurations in Apoc. xii., as the faithful Christian prcfessing Church: 
 the exigences of your interpretation of the man-child's birth forcing you, 
 in that single introductory scene of the vision, very inconsistently to make 
 jt the Old Testament Jewish Church. 
 
LETT.2.] ALFORDIAN CASE AGAINST DRAGON IN " H. A." 97 
 
 of political elevation and power/ the enigma which by a 
 modern Commentator of some note^ was declared insoluble, 
 viz., that the Christian Church and Roman heathen Dragon 
 should be at the same time in the same heaven, receives its 
 solution from indisputable historic fact ; for, at the time 
 referred to, such was precisely the political status alike of 
 Christ's Church in one part of the Roman Empire, and of 
 the heathen power in another. Nor this alone ; but, 3dly, 
 and yet more exactly, Heathenism had then supremacy in 
 but one-third of the Roman world, viz., the eastern third, 
 ruled over by Maximin, just accordantly with the prophetic 
 figuration of the Dragon, as then drawing but one-third of the 
 stars of heaven ; while Christianity was in the ascendant in 
 the other two-thirds, or the dominions of Constantine and 
 Licinius. 4, At that time, agreeably with theDragon's notable 
 seven-headed appearance in vision, the Roman Empire had, 
 in place of the old monarchical Imperial headship, or sixth 
 ruling headship on Rome's seven hills, such as in St. John's 
 time was in power, come recently under a seventh, viz., that 
 of the Imperial quadripartite form of government planned by 
 Diocletian:^ and, 5thly, of this new or seventh headship 
 the badge (contradictorily to all earlier Roman feeling and 
 precedent) was the badge here seen upon the Dragon's 
 heads, not of the old Imperial laurel crotun, but of the 
 autocratic Asiatic diadem} 6. The throne of the great 
 Roman world, after the Christian Constantine's elevation to 
 it, subsequently to his successive overthrows of the succes- 
 sive heathen emperors of the eastern third, Maximin and 
 
 ' Of this more presently, under the head of objections. 
 
 ^ Faber. ■'' See p. 67, suprd. 
 
 * The force of the evidence hence arising is doubled, and quadrupled, 
 by the similar most remarkable correspondence with historic fact of the same 
 diademic symbol as apparent on the ten horns of the seven-headed Beast, 
 when first emerging from the sea, in Apoc. xiii. Of this I shall have to, 
 speak under my next head in this Letter. 
 
 H 
 
98 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART II. 
 
 Licinius, (the latter after his apostasy from the Christian 
 faith,) was celebrated by the Christians of the time as the 
 throne of one who felt and ruled on it as but the Lord's 
 deputy, just after the precedents of David's and Solomon's 
 divinely-instituted thrones, each called the Lord's throne ; 
 and, 7thly, the Christian orthodox baptized emperor, still 
 agreeably with the language of this Apocalyptic figuration, 
 was called a " Son of the Church.'' ^ 8. Notwithstanding 
 this, the Satan-animated heathen power, in the person of 
 Julian, (not to speak of the preparation for this in the 
 Arianism of Constantius,) made yet another war in the 
 elevated region of the political heaven, (so as here prefigured,) 
 for the recovery of its supremacy in the Roman world ; but 
 in vain : the result being that the Dragon was cast down 
 from its elevation, never to rise to it again. 9. Both in 
 Constantine's time, after the overthrow of Maximin and 
 Licinius, and in Jovian's, after the overthrow of Julian, 
 the Apocalyptic imagery was adopted by the chief Christian 
 writers of the time, and the fall of Heathenism celebrated 
 as the fall of the Dragon : besides that both in a Con- 
 stantinian picture before the Imperial palace in Constanti- 
 nople, and on medals of the Imperial coinage still extant, 
 the Dragon was represented as cast down under the Chris- 
 tian standard of the labarum ; or, otherwise, as trampled 
 underfoot by a labarum-bearing Christian emperor.^ 
 
 Such is the evidence given in the " H. A." in support of 
 this my explanation of the jjrhnari/ part of the Apocalyptic 
 figuration of the Woman and Dragon. And what then 
 have you to say against it ? 
 
 In answer to this question the simple truth is that you 
 
 ' Oil these points the reader will do well to look at the illustrations 
 ad loc. in the " Horae Apoc," from Eusebius, Ambrose, &c. 
 
 * I must here again refer to the illustrations, both patristic and medallic, 
 given ad loc. in the " H. A." 
 
LETT. 2.] ALFORDIAN CASE AGAINST DRAGON IN " H. A." 99 
 
 offer no objection against any one point in it. Apparently 
 deeming it sufficient to set forth in contrast your own most 
 palpably inadmissible solution of the vision, (as I have 
 shown it to be,)' together with a somewhat contemptuous 
 allusion to my notice of the elevation of " a son of the 
 Church, a baptized emperor, to political supremacy in the 
 Roman empire," as if an event unworthy to be designated 
 as a mighty result, such as to deserve notice in the Apoca- 
 lyptic figurings of the coming future,^ (an intimation in 
 which, as so often elsewhere, you are certainly incon- 
 sistent with yourself, as well as with common sense and 
 Holy Scriptm-e,) ^ you pass over all these points of evi- 
 dence, just as over so many others spoken of before, 
 absolutely in silence. Insomuch that it is perfectly 
 a marvel with me how to reconcile this with what neverthe- 
 less, I doubt not, is really and essentially your character, viz., 
 that of a lover of truth. Nor do I see any way of recon- 
 ciling things so contradictory prima facie, except by sup- 
 posing you to have drawn up your Apocalyptic Commentary 
 with a haste and inconsiderateness altogether unbecoming 
 a Christian expositor of Scripture ; or else to have naturally a 
 mental inaptitude for the perception, and right appreciation 
 and use, of the evidence of truth. 
 
 There is just one point indeed, I see, in the prophetic 
 figuration, unnoticed by me above, to which you advert as 
 a decisive corroboration of your view of the Apocalyptic man- 
 child as Christ ; viz., his being declaredly destined to rule 
 
 ' See, as before, pp. 32 — 34, suprd, : — also my citations from your Com^ 
 mentary in Note ', p. 95. ^ So Comment., p. 665. 
 
 * With yourself, for you suppose the event to be expressly symbolized in 
 the fall of one and rise of another head of the ApocalyjDtic Beast : — with 
 common sense, for the best historians imder its direction observe on it as 
 one of the mightiest events in history : — with Scripture, for there by his 
 prophets God speaks of such events ; e. g. of the raising up of Cyrus to 
 supremacy in the Persian empire, for the deliverance of his Jewish people, 
 
 H 3 
 
100 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART II. 
 
 the Gentiles, or heathen, with a rod of iron, agreeably with 
 the language respecting Christ in the 2d jMessianic Psalm. 
 But, as I have in my " H. A." observed, the Psalmist's pro- 
 phecy seems to be meant partly, and perhaps primarily, of 
 Christ's subjugating and ruling heathen powers of the 
 world with the rod of severe repression throufjh human 
 agency ; (so various Commentators of repute explain it :) * 
 and that such was the case in the dealing of Roman 
 orthodox Christian emperors after Constantine Avith the still 
 profest heathens in the empire is notorious. To which let 
 me add that such a passage in the Apocalyptic figuration 
 must be judged of not by itself, but as associated with the 
 other many and various indications of the thing and person 
 meant that are given in connexion with it. And, let me 
 repeat, the very primary point in the vision of the Apoca- 
 li/piic heaven being the scene in which both the Dragon 
 and the Woman were conflicting at the time that the vision 
 referred to, suffices of itself to warn us off" from all direct 
 Messianic explanation of the man-child here spoken of. 
 
 And this suggests to me that it may be well to observe 
 here on a point of considerable importance towards the 
 right understanding of the Apocalyptic visions, with which, 
 as it is evident, you have not duly acquainted yourself,^ 
 viz., the scenery, both earthly and heavenly, connected with 
 the figurations in them. In those of the chapter now under 
 review both the Dragon and the Woman are represented as 
 
 ' E.g., in the case of David and Solomon, as ruling ovei' the subjugated 
 heathen in their kingdoms. See my " H. A." vol. iii. j). 29 (5th Ed.)— In 
 Apoc. ii. 27 the. saints, I there observe, are spoken of by Christ as having 
 power given them over the heathen {e0vr]), and that they shall " rule them 
 with a rod of iron." I also cite the observation of i:)aubuz, that in this 
 passage in Aj^oc. xii. it is only the former pai-t of the prophecy in Ps. ii. 
 that is (juoted ; viz., that of the ruling with a rod of iron ; not that about 
 *' breaking in pieces as a potter's vessel." 
 
 This is one of the points of omission in your Commentary on the Apo- 
 calypiie alluded to by me at p. 50, supra. 
 
LETT, 2.] ALFORDIAN CASE AGAINST DRAGON IN " H. A." 101 
 
 first apparent in the heaven of vision, then on its earth ; — 
 the Dragon having been forcibly ejected from the one to 
 the other. On this you thus far justly remark, p. 664 ; 
 " Heaven is here manifestly not only the show-place of 
 the visions, as seen by the Seer,^ but has a substantial 
 place in the vision ; for, in verse 9, v\^e have the heaven 
 contrasted with the earth, and the Dragon cast out of 
 heaven into the earth." But how confused and erroneous 
 is your idea of this heaven of the Apocalyptic visions appears 
 sufficiently (not to add other proof) ^ from your making the 
 heaven here figured to be the heaven of God's beatific pre- 
 sence : — that same, you say, in which Satan was figured in Job 
 and Zachariah as accusing Job and Joshua the high priest 
 respectively ; and here as the accuser of the Christians' 
 brethren before God. But how then was the Woman^ 
 whether the Jewish Church, or Eve, in this sayne heaven ? 
 And how in this same heaven the scene of her parturition, and 
 of Jesus Chrisfs natural birth ? On this question of over^ 
 whelming difficulty you, with more of discretion than valour, 
 say not one word. Now, from simply noting down all that 
 is said in the successive visions of the Apocalyptic scenery, 
 it will appear clearly that, after St. John's being first 
 caught up through the door opened in heaven, there 
 appeared as it were another world, like that which we now 
 inhabit, before him ; with its oion frmamental heaven, as 
 
 ' You allude, I presume, to what was said to St. Joliu introductorily to 
 the visions of the future, Apoc. iv. 1, "Come up hither," viz., through the 
 door opened in heaven, " and I will show thee the things which must be 
 hereafter." 
 
 " So, e.g., in your remarks at p. 592, on " the door (Apoc. iv. 1) being 
 opened in heaven." " Here the heaven, or house or palace of God, remains 
 firmly shut to those on earth : but a door is opened, and the Seer is rapt 
 in the Si^irit through it. Henceforth usually he looks from the heaven 
 doiv)i on the earth; seeing however both alike, and being present in either, 
 as the localities of his various visions require." Thus the Apocalyptic 
 heaven is defined by you to be the high and holy place, opened only in 
 vision, of God's presence ; but the Apocalyptic earth as the actxml earth 
 on which we tread. 
 
102 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART II. 
 
 well as its own earth ; and all the various adjuncts which 
 here meet our eyes in association with both the one and 
 the other : — 
 
 Hi ccelum, solemque suiim, sua sidera nonmt : 
 
 a ready material this for many most important figurations 
 of the Apocalyptic prophecy ; just as was that which we 
 have here around and above us to the Old Testament pro- 
 phets : there being however this addition to the rest quite 
 peculiar to itself -, — that a temple, like the Jewish temple or 
 tabernacle, appeared a fixture in the foreground, (of which 
 more in a later part of this Letter,) with the three several 
 divisions of the Altar-court, the Holy Place, with its candle- 
 stick and golden-incense altar, and the Holy of Holies with 
 God's throne" in it : which last, agreeably with the symbolic 
 intent ascribed by St. Paul in the Hebrews to the Holy of 
 Holies in the old Jewish Tabernacle, is the Apocalyptic 
 heaven of GocTs throne and presence, with angels and bea- 
 tified saints as its inhabitants. So indeed in the visions 
 of the Old Testament prophets ; " The Lord is in his 
 holy temple; the Lord's throne is in heaven." And in 
 the Apocalyptic vision ; " A throne was set in heaven : " a 
 description followed afterwards by notice of certain temple 
 adjuncts; as of the ark materially, and of the attendant 
 angelic company, such as in the heavenly temple seen in 
 vision by Isaiah.^ 
 
 Now then, except where God's throne is referred to as 
 there, or one or other of its perpetual Apocalyptic accom- 
 paniments, it is evident that we should construe the heaven 
 spoken of as the Apocalyptic firmamental heaven. So of the 
 phenomena of the sun, moon, and stars, in the figurative 
 imagery of the Gth Seal, and that of the Trumpets. So of 
 the angels, and the birds of prey, seen flying in mid-heaven.'' 
 So here, of the elevated position of both the Woman and 
 
 ' Isaiah vi. * Apoc. viii. 13, xiv. 6, xix. 17. 
 
LETT. 2.] ALFORDIAN CASE AGAINST DRAGON IN " H. A." 103 
 
 Dragon in the same firmamental heaven, as figurative of 
 pohtical elevation ; and again of the deprest condition of the 
 Woman, when seen on earth, as well as of the fall from 
 heaven to earth of the Apocalyptic Dragon ; just as of the 
 star of Apoc. ix. 1 before it. The point is one of prime 
 importance in Apocalyptic interpretation ; and your own 
 Exposition has suffered much from your not attending to 
 it. Obvious as the fact is, your non-observance of it seems 
 to me surprising : and the more surprising, and the more 
 regrettable, because of its being a point worked out with 
 its proofs from the Apocalypse itself in other Commen- 
 taries, especially my own, which were in your hands when 
 writing; — to which, however, whether from undue haste, 
 or inconsideration, you failed of attending. 
 
 As to the second part of this vision, respecting the 
 Woman s flight towards the wilderness, and fallen Dragon s 
 atte^n/pt at destroying her in her flight, I have no need to 
 dwell at any length upon it. For here, after pretty much 
 discarding your primary application of the figuration to the 
 early Christian Church's flight to Pella, you finally intimate 
 a suspicion that, "after all,"^ it may be meant of precisely 
 that which I explain it to mean, viz., of " the true visible 
 Church, which, as established by Christ and his apostles, 
 continued in unbroken unity during the first centuries ; 
 but which, as time, went on, was broken up by evil men 
 and evil doctrines, and has since remained unseen, unre- 
 alized, with her unity an article of faith, not of sight : but 
 still multiplying her seed, those who keep the command- 
 ments of God and have the testimony of Jesus, in various 
 sects and distant countries : waiting the day for her comely 
 order and oneness again to be manifested ; the day when 
 she shall come up out of the wilderness leaning on her 
 Beloved." And the time for "the great realization," or 
 
 ' Comment., ji. 671. 
 
104 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [pART II. 
 
 consummation, of this her entrance on the wilderness-state 
 of invisibihty, you define, Uke myself, as " the seventh 
 century;" construing the blood cast out of the Dragon's 
 mouth against her, just similarly in regard to the general 
 intent of the symbol, though differently in regard to the 
 particular historical application, of the irruption into Chris- 
 tendom of the JMohammedan armies.' Thus, my own real 
 explanation of tliis part of the vision being admitted by 
 you, in regard of its main points, as that which " after all " 
 you have been led to think may be its true explanation, I 
 have little to do comparatively in answering objections 
 from your pen against it. A few observations only seem 
 required, to show in contrast mg consistency on this point 
 of near agreement between us, and indeed in the whole 
 exposition of the Apocalyptic vision ; i/our inconsistency. 
 
 It is distinctly to be observed, I must premise, that this 
 is, as I have said, my real explanation of this part of the 
 vision ; more especially as regards the Woman, the most 
 prominent of the figures and actors in it. For, by a strange 
 and really inexcusable misrepresentation, you make me 
 to explain the AVoman as figuring " the invisible Church of 
 God's true people, which under all conditions of the world 
 can be known only to Him. "^ Judge yourself if it be not in- 
 excusable ; considering that not only do I again and again in 
 my two chapters on Apoc. xii. define my idea of the Woman 
 as Christ's true, orthodox, visible, catholic Church of the 
 
 ' Comment., p. 671. 
 
 * So ib., p. 670. " If we bring down the event answering to the Woman's 
 flight into the wilderness as late as Elliott does, i. e., to the ])eriod between 
 tlie 4th and 7th centuries, we fall, besides other difficulties into this one, 
 that if tlie occultation of true religion, or its equivalent t/ic similar condition 
 of the invisible Church, was the beginning of the wilderness state, then " 
 one of two alternatives nuist foHow, "either of wliicli would hardly be 
 allowed by that author." And, in reference evidently to the same view, 
 just before ascribed to me, you note, at p. 671, in contrast to it, " the tnie 
 visible Church; not the invisible Church of God's true people, which, under 
 all conditions of the world, nuist be known only to llini." 
 
LETT. 2.] ALFORDIAN CASE AGAINST DRAGON IN " H. A." 105 
 
 4th century, distinguishing it expressly from the invisible 
 Church made up alone of true-hearted Christians/ but that 
 that idea runs through my whole historical sketch of the 
 Christian Church Catholic in the 4tli and 5th centuries, as 
 answering to what is predicated of the mystical Woman in 
 her various prefigured phases and fortunes. 
 
 This premised, observe, 1st, how completely and per- 
 fectly the Womaris individuality of character is preserved 
 in my exposition of the vision. It is not, as with you, the 
 Jewish Church visible, a Church notoriously corrupt in 
 respect both of doctrine and character, so as at the time of 
 Christ's birth, that is supposed to be represented by her, 
 to begin with; and then, afterwards, i\\e faithful Christian 
 Church visible: — but, to begin, the Christian Catholic 
 Church visible of the early Constantinian aera, purified in 
 the general character of its members by the long general 
 and fierce Diocletianic persecution, immediately previous ; 
 and with the witness to both its universality and its true 
 orthodoxy, alike in respect of doctrine and worship, of the 
 great (Ecumenic Nicene Council. 
 
 Observe, 2dly, the continuity and consistency, as well as 
 historic truths of the prefigurative sketch of the faithful Chris- 
 tian Church's subsequent fortunes and history, from after 
 its commencing epoch, on my understanding of the vision. 
 On yours what a vast and unaccountable gap and void is 
 
 ' So first at p. 7 of vol. iii. of the "H. A." (4th Ed., that which was in 
 your hands when you wi'ote) ; " The "Woman was evidently Christ's true 
 visible Church on earth." In a Note to which clau-se I exj^ressly distinoaiish 
 between it and St. Paul's ideal mother Church of the Jerusalem that is above, 
 thus : — " The latter includes all the Lord's saints of all the successive gene- 
 rations of the world ; the former those only that are alive at any particular 
 time on earth, and this with reference to theii- corporate or Church character : 
 further, the latter is pure from all admixture of evil ; while the former 
 has admixture not only from the remaining sin of true Christians but 
 also from the adhesion to it always, more or less, of orthodox but unsound 
 professors." 
 
106 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART II. 
 
 there in it : — even the Church's glorious apostoUc times 
 and history, immediately following after Christ's ascension, 
 being passed over unprefigiu-ed ; and nothing indicated as 
 destined to the Church after his ascension, but a movement 
 soon begun towards a state of invisibility, and completed, 
 under the effect of the Dragon's persecutions, in the 7th 
 century ! ! On the other hand, as explained in the " Horae," 
 the Woman's speedy transference, after the man-child's 
 birth and enthronization, from her primarily depicted state 
 of brightness and exaltation to a lower earthly state of 
 depression, and the commencing obscuration of her most 
 distinctive features, as if with a flight already beginning 
 towards the wilderness, had its counterpart in the depres- 
 sion of the Nicene faithful Church under the advancement 
 of Arianism, within but a few years of the death of Con- 
 stantine, and obscuration at least, if not loss for the time, 
 of her previously marked feature of catliolicity . — Next, — 
 agreeably with that expressive song of the voices of Christians 
 triumphing over heathenism in the firmamental heaven in vi- 
 sion,' after the figured war in heaven, and final dejection of 
 the Dragon, " Our brethren overcame him by virtue of the 
 blood of the Lamb, and of their own witnessincj even unto 
 death,"'^ — there became strikingly prominent in the history 
 
 ' Here observe the importance of a right i;nderstanding of the heaven 
 of the Apocalyptic imagery. See p. 102, suprd. — Thus it is not the voice 
 of the 24 elders, so as you explain it, whose presence was ever in the figura- 
 tive Holy of Holies, in the Apocalyptic temple, before the thi-one of God. 
 — See too the remarks under my third main head, infrd, on the Ajioca- 
 lyptic temple in vision. 
 
 ^ We are indebted to Mr. Biley for this striking and most just inference 
 from the song in question. The more I consider it the more I admire 
 both the Divine prescience in the prefiguration, and the discernment given 
 to his servant for its right interpretation. — Compare, in the chronologically 
 parallel series of visions, the correspondent indications of the early corrup- 
 tion of professing Roman Christendom, after the great Constantinian revo- 
 lution, in the sealing vision first, and the inceuse-oifering vision after- 
 wards. This is just alluded to p. G9, supra. 
 
LETT. 2.] ALFORDIAN CASE AGAINST DRAGON IN " H. A." 107 
 
 and character of the professing Church from after JuHan's 
 overthrow, m the second half of the 4th century, a supersti- 
 tious veneration of departed martyrs for the faith, even as if 
 conjointly vrith Christ the authors of Christianity's victory 
 over Heathenism ; ^ and so, through that ever increasing 
 martyr and saint-venerating superstition, a correspond- 
 ently ever increasing indistinctness and obscuration in the 
 Christian Church, visible before the world, of its old feature 
 of evangelic faithfulness and purity, in regard ahke of 
 doctrine and worship. 
 
 3. Even though you decline to understand the two wings 
 of the great eagle given to the Woman in the Apocalyptic 
 figuration, to assist in preserving her vitalitj'^ in the flight 
 from the Dragon's pursuit, of any Boman imperial inter- 
 vention in favour of the Christian Catholic Church, yet 
 some striking Frovidential intervention in its favour, with 
 that result (like as in the case of God's intervention for 
 preserving Israel in its flight from Pharaoh), you find your- 
 self obliged to recognise in the aptation to the Woman of 
 the eagle-wings of the symbol ; and also to seek something 
 that might answer in the history of the times which your 
 solution embraces to that of the earth's absorbing the floods 
 cast out of the Dragon's mouth against the Woman. And, 
 as what might perhaps historically answer to the latter^ 
 you suggest the fact of Roman Heathendom's " persecu- 
 tions of the Church becoming absorbed by the civil power 
 turning Christian"^ i.e., in the Constantinian revolution: 
 but, as fulfilling the earlier figured intervention in the 
 Woman's favour, find nothing correspondent in the previous 
 history of the Church. — On the contrary, in my solution of 
 the whole vision, how simply does the historic answer on 
 either point suggest itself, just at the precise chronological 
 
 ' This is fully illustrated in the " H. A." ' Comment., p. 669. 
 
108 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART II. 
 
 epoch suitable. Thus to the giving of the icings of the 
 great eagle to the Woman, before the flood's ejection from 
 the Dragon's mouth, there is that of Theodosius the Great's 
 very remarkable and effective intervention in favour of the 
 imperilled faithful Nicene Church, -when Emperor of both 
 Eastern and Western Divisions of the Roman World, by 
 the calling of the second great Qi^cumenic Council, a.d. 385, 
 just before the Gothic irruptions, which re-affirmed its 
 doctrine, and re-asserted its catholicity : (and Roman 
 medals of the time still extant, let me say, illustrate the 
 applicability to the two Empires of the symbol of two wings, 
 such as of the eagle \f — with the added aid too of the great 
 Augustine, rendered possible only by the brief respite from 
 the overwhelming of those barbarian invasions effected by 
 Theodosius' victories. Also to the earth's absorption of the 
 food, subsequently, there is that of the Gothic heathen or 
 Arian invaders of Western Roman Christendom laying 
 aside at length the Arianism and Heathenism which had 
 previously made them bitter persecutors of the faithful 
 Church ; and themselves, in the end of the 6th century, 
 one after another, adopting the Nicene faith of the con- 
 quered kingdoms. 
 
 4. But, just as that consummation was taking place, the 
 recognition also took place of the Pojjes of Rome as Jesus 
 Christ' s 2'>lenipote7itiary Vicars on earth, and of their iisciido- 
 Catholic Church as the real one, instead of the old Nicene 
 Catholic Evangelic Church ; whence a fit commencing 
 epoch to the 12 GO years of the true Catholic Church's pre- 
 figured total withdrawal from men's sight, hke Israel's of 
 old hi the invisibility of the wilderness; — a period this of 
 1200 years, commensurate alike with that predicated of 
 
 ' One of these medals of the time will be fouud given iu the 6th Edition 
 of the " II. A." 
 
LETT. 2.] ALFORDIAN CASE AGAINST DRAGON IN "n. A." 109 
 
 the Papal Antichrist's supremacy in power, — that of 
 ^seiido- Christian Gentiles treading down the symbolic 
 Holy City, or polity of the faithful, — and that of Christ's 
 true witnessing servants (those children of the Woman that 
 were destined to keep up the testimony for Jesus Christ in 
 the long and sad interim) witnessing in sackcloth.^ You 
 have of course, on your principle of exposition, nothing 
 definite to suggest on this head. Nor, 
 
 5thly, is there any contradiction to this, so as you assert, 
 from the open establishment of orthodox Evangelic Pro- 
 testant Churches some three centuries before the lapse of 
 the 1260 years at the Reformation.^ For these were but 
 detached, sectional, or perhaps national Churches ; — the 
 Lutheran Church, the Genevese, the Anglican, the Scotch, 
 the Moravian ; each, though one and all essentially 
 evangelic and true in doctrine, with their own particular 
 articles of faith, and forms of worship. The faithful 
 Catholic Evangelic Church, constituting one visible cor- 
 porate body, and embracing, so as in early Constantinian 
 times, the whole of professing Cliristendom, is still an 
 invisibility. And such doubtless it will continue to be, 
 until He that is to come shall come : and then, more 
 beautiful than ever, and as embracing the whole world, 
 even as one Christendom, she shall " come out of the 
 
 ' The connexion of these witnesses with the faithful Church Catholic, and 
 also the distinction between the one and the other, as here indicated, is most 
 observable. 
 
 - " On' Elliott's most unsatisfactory explanation, if the occultation of 
 true religion {== the condition of the invisible Church) was the beginning 
 of the wilderness-state, then either the open establishment of the Protestant 
 Churches was the end of the wilderness-state of concealment, or those 
 Churches are not true Chiu'ches ; either of which alternatives would 
 hardly be allowed by that author." Comment., 670. 
 
 It is really alike stx-ange and painful that any one whom we respect 
 should make such misrepresentations ; (see this noted p. 104, supra:) and, 
 on the basis of the misrepresentation, argue so inaccurately and unfairly 
 against another expositor, 
 
110 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART II. 
 
 wilderness " (as you, after myself, apply the Scripture 
 passage) " leaning on the Beloved." 
 
 11. Now turn we to my explanation of the Apocalyptic 
 Beast, and your objections against it : — a large subject this ; 
 but which may be the more briefly despatched, as the argu- 
 ment on it has been already in some measure forestalled. 
 
 It may be remembered that one essential in my view of 
 the requu-eraents of the Apocalyptic symbol was this, — 
 that the seven Icings , or ruling autJiorities, declared by 
 the Angel to be one point signified by the Beast's 
 seven heads, ought each, and every one, to be attached to 
 the locality of Rome's seven hills, that being the second 
 characteristic point said to be signified by them : — also 
 that it was your objection against my application of 
 the symbol, so construed, to the several successive 
 headships of supreme authorities ruling at Rome, — five 
 of which \i^di fallen ere St. John's time, viz., kings, consuls, 
 dictators, decemvirs, military tribunes, while the 6th or 
 imperial headship then was, — I say that it was your objection 
 to this that the expression fallen was not applicable 
 to a constitutional change of government, but only to 
 a fallen kingdom, or individual fallen king.^ Your own 
 answer to your own objection was presently after hinted 
 by me ; inasmuch as you yourself apply the expression to 
 the change of religion in the Roman empire from 
 Heathenism to Christianity, though the empire after- 
 wards still stood as before.^ But really where the change 
 of government is one of importance, the application of the 
 word fallen to that which has been superseded is both 
 natural and common. Said Cicero to his friend, after the 
 old republican form of government at Rome had been 
 
 ' See p. 39 suprd. ^ See p. 42, 
 
LETT. 2.] ALFORDIAN CASE AGAINST BEAST IN " 11. A." Ill 
 
 superseded by the usurping triumvirate of Octavius, 
 Antony and Lepidus, " Ea tua laus pariter cum Beipuhlica 
 cecidit."^ And do we not in the Enghsh history of the 
 1 7th century naturally speak of the monarchy falling with 
 Charles the First, the Protectorate with Cromwell's son : and 
 in the French history of the 18th and 19th centuries, 
 of the falling successively of the Monarchy, the Directory, 
 the Consulate, the Emperorship ? ^ Said Burke in cognate 
 phrase with reference, not to Louis the Sixteenth's execution 
 on the scaffold, but to the National Assembly's memorable 
 Act, some time before, of August 4, 1789, abolishing the 
 old laws of the nation, privileges of the nobility, and 
 monarch's supremacy, " Absolute monarchy then breathed 
 its last (in France) without a struggle." Even as I write, 
 an obituary notice by the " Times' " Correspondent from 
 Paris of the just deceased nonagenarian statesman, Duke 
 Pasquier, speaks of his having beheld the glories of the first 
 empire, and its fall ; as also "the Republic once more 
 forced on the Country against its wishes, and its easy 
 overthrow " by Prince Louis Napoleon. ^ 
 
 The objection is on a point so exceedingly important in 
 the interpretation of the Apocalyptic symbol now before us, 
 that I have thought it right to give it its full prominence. 
 And, having now shown its futiHty, we may consider all 
 reasons that you have to offer against my general explana- 
 tion of the Beast's first six heads as answering to Rome's suc- 
 cessive headships of kings, consuls, &c.,* sufficiently refuted. 
 And, since most certainly, as was just intimated in a former 
 Letter,^ the Beast itself ought naturally to have applied to 
 it the symbol of its own heads in their declared double 
 sense, we may conclude also that that explanation is 
 distinctly the true one; I mean as contrasted with that 
 
 ' De Off. ii. 13. « On the French Revohition. 
 
 ' " Times" of July 7 or 8, 18G2. 
 
 * Those '' capita rerum," as Livy calls them. " See pp. 38, 39 suprd. 
 
112 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART II. 
 
 German and Anglo- Germanic solution preferred by you, 
 which, setting aside from the Beast itself the fixed Roman 
 seven-hilled location of its seven heads, explains it and 
 them of the seven chief successive monarchies rising up, and 
 falling, in quite diflferent parts of the world. ^ 
 
 Of the Beast's seventh head, as the famous Diocletianic 
 quadripartite imperial form of government, I have already 
 spoken in an earlier part of this Letter ; ^ and of its answer- 
 ing, while under that head, to the symbol of the seven- 
 headed Dragon of Apoc. xii. : — a symbolization of it we 
 saw, both in respect of its elevation and of its fall. Quite 
 conclusive, in my judgment, was the very varied evidence 
 there detailed in proof of its being the thing intended in 
 that Apocalyptic figuration : and strong and remarkable 
 seems to me the corroboration of this hence arising, that, 
 when the Roman antichristian Beast under that seventh 
 headship fell overthrown by Christianity, and a Christian 
 Emperor then succeeded to the government of the great 
 Roman Empire, so abolishing for the time its bestial 
 character (I pray you to mark in contrast the hopeless 
 inconsistency of your own solution on this point) ^ that 
 Christian Emperor quitted the old capital of Homes 
 seven hills, and chose another far-distant scene for the 
 site of his Christian capital : the Christian laws and 
 writers of the time, meanwhile, let me add, unconsciously 
 adopting the Apocalyptic figure respecting what had 
 just happened ; and speaking of the late overthrown 
 heathen imperial power as a serpent, or dragon, wounded 
 to death hy the sword of civil justice.* — And was that 
 
 ' See pp. 37 — 45 suprci, on your couuter-solutiou, and its gross manifest 
 inconsistencies. 
 
 * See p. 97, suprd,. 
 
 3 See pp. 42, 43, stiprd,. 
 
 * " Oladio sternaticr" said the law of the Christian Emperors of that 
 period respecting lieathen rites and ])racticos. Similarly Julius Maternus, 
 a Cliristian winter of about the middle of tlie fourth century; ^^Ampuianda 
 
LETT. 2.] ALFORBIAN CASE AGAINST BEAST IN " H. A." 113 
 
 wound ever to be healed? The seven-lulled capital lay 
 vacant of any ruling headship there, from the time of Con- 
 stantine's removing the seat of government to Constanti- 
 nople, all through what remained of the 4th century, 
 and nearly all through the 5th ; till at length, as the 6th 
 was about opening, there began to be heard from the Bishop 
 of Rome of the seven hills a claim, as Peter's successor, 
 and so Christ's Vicar, to be King of kings, and Lord of 
 lords. The claim, — the mighty antichristian claim, — was by 
 the end of the 6th century heard, believed in, bowed down 
 to, by the Romano- Gothic kings of the Western Roman 
 Empire : while, moreover, as the immediate temporal patri- 
 mony of St. Peter, the little sovereignty of Rome, and the 
 Campagna round it, was recognised as his right ; accord- 
 antly with Daniel's figm^ation of him as also a little horn. 
 Then was the Beast's deadly wound healed : then the head- 
 ship of a mightier sovereignty than any previous attached to 
 the seven hills of Rome ; and this as one of the same essen- 
 tially heathen character as all before.^ — And mark the extra- 
 ordinary evidence in proof of this explanation from the 
 very diademic badge seen on the ten horns of the symbolic 
 Beast, when rising from the sea ; with its new 7th head, 
 in place of the old 7th, and those ten horns, signify- 
 ing the ten kingdoms of Western Roman Christendom, 
 attached to it. For some considerable time the Gothic 
 conquering hordes had still such veneration for the majesty 
 of the Roman Emperor, alike of the \^'estern Empire, so 
 long as he continued at Ravenna, and then of the Romano^ 
 
 sunt hsec, sacratissimi imperatores, atque delenda, severissimis edictorum 
 vesti'oriun legibus." And so Baroniiis, in the spirit and phraseology of 
 Christian wi'iters of the time, " Idololatriam, ut percussum multis ictibus 
 ayiguem, caput riu'sus extollenteni, jieuitus extingviendani curavit Theo- 
 dosius." 
 
 * " One of the seven" ; ets efc tchv livra. See page 46, suprd. 
 
 I 
 
114 APOCALTPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART II. 
 
 Greek at Constantinople, that they looked on the diadem, 
 first adopted as the Augustan emblem by Diocletian and 
 bis immediate successors/ as a badge that could properly 
 belong only to Roman Emperors. But in the course of 
 the 6th century they, one after another, began to realize 
 their own perfect independence and power, and so proudly 
 to adopt it themselves. And now at length, very much as 
 the result of recent researches of numismatists in that de- 
 partment of the numismatic science, I have been enabled to 
 exhibit an illustration of the fact in a Tabular Plate of 
 barbaric coins of nine out of the ten kingdoms of that 
 Gth century, with the Augustan diademed filet (the very 
 Apocalyptic symbol) depicted round the brow of each 
 barbaric monarch. 
 
 I pray you, Mr. Dean, after well musing on that new and 
 most corroborative Plate of the diademed coins of the Western 
 Romano-Gothic kings of the Cth century, to consider the 
 consistency alike with itself, with the prophecy, and with 
 historic fact, of this my explanation of the Roman seven- 
 hilled antichristian'^ empire's prefigured transitional state; 
 a transition begun, as I explain it, with its temporary ex- 
 tinction in that character, on the fall of the primary 7th, or 
 Dioclctianic heathen head, and ended by its rising again 
 under the Roman Popes, as a new 7th, or successionally 8th 
 head : more especially as contrasted with the astounding 
 inconsistency, in each of these three several points of view, 
 
 ' See p. 97, stiprd,. 
 
 * I here use the word anticJiristian, as I have used it once or twice 
 before, in its more general but less jiroper sense, of hostile to Christi- 
 anity. Though it is abundantly evident that your reading of the " H. A." 
 has been l)ut very superficial, yet you can scarcely have altogether over- 
 looked my somewhat elaborate criticisms in the first volume on the word 
 Antichrist ; and its proper restriction of meaning either to an opposer in 
 the specific character of Christ, iu other words a counter-Christ, or a self- 
 ?.ppointed usuriiing vice-Christ. 
 
LETT. 2.] ALFORDIAN CASE AGAINST BEAST IN " H. A." 115 
 
 of your own.' Surely there must here appear to any 
 candid and intelHgent inquirer the evidence of truth. — And 
 stronger, far stronger, will that evidence be found, when, 
 looking onward, we observe how every trait of character 
 and acting ascribed in the prophetic sequel to the Beast 
 after revival from his deadly wound, under the new 7th, or 
 successionally 8th head, had its counterpart in the cha- 
 racter and actings of the Roman Popes, and Popedom, of 
 
 ' In proof it might suffice to refer to what appears on this point in the 
 Schedule of your general Ai30caly2:)tic Scheme, given p. 21, suprd. But it 
 may perhajis make what I say clearer if I subjoin a tabular sketch, simjjly 
 by itself, of your declared views of the Beast under its 6th and 7th heads 
 respectively, and its last king. 
 
 B. under 6th head 
 = Roman heathen 
 Empire, as in St. 
 John's time ; figured 
 in Apoc. xii. 
 
 B. under 7th and revived head 
 = Roman empire under profess- 
 edly Christian Emperors (begin- 
 ning with Constantine) and Popes: 
 = B. in its " is not " state, because 
 thus Christian; but yet as B. 
 after healing of his deadly 
 wound: = B. of Apoc. xiii. and 
 xvii. 3, when ridden by the 
 Wornan, or Papal Rome ; though 
 still partly the old Pagan Roman 
 power: with duration of 42 months 
 = 3^ years (whether literal or 
 mystical), = time of Anti- 
 
 CHUIST. 
 
 B. under 8th kivg ; (not head :)* 
 " The last and worst phase of 
 Beast ; " one yet future, but near ; 
 (symptoms of its ten destined 
 horns even now appearing;) this 
 being not a head of B., but the B. 
 itself, or Man of Sin, and Daniel's 
 Little Horn, i.i'., Antichrist, " in 
 actual embodiment : " — to appear 
 after Papal Rome's destruction 
 by the ten coming horns. 
 
 * At pp. 46, 47 I have supposed 
 you to make the Beast in his last 
 phase to be the Beast under his 
 8th and last head ; but mis- 
 takenly. See below. 
 
 Thus, under its 7th head, the Beast's " is not " state continues after the 
 Beast's revival and resuscitation, all through the long time of both Eoman 
 Christian Emperors and Popes ! It begins after Pagan Rome's final fall, 
 yet is itself in part the Pagan Roman empire, as well as in part the pro- 
 fessedly Christian Roman empire : moreover, it has the predicted duration 
 of Antichrist ; yet is not Antichrist. 
 
 Again, as regards the Beast under its last king, i. e., as Antichrist, it is 
 the Beast, you say, without any of those seven heads which alone apper- 
 tain to that Apocalyptic symbol ; being ck rav eTrra, the successor of the 
 seven. (See p. 46.) Thus consequently, according to you, is the Beast now 
 headless ! ! 
 
 If my general readers think it all but incredible that Dean Alford should 
 so have stultified himself, I must beg them to look carefully into the 
 Dean's Commentary on Apoc. xiii. and xvii. ; and they will find every single 
 point here stated by me respecting his exi^osition of the Beast to be 
 simply true, 
 
 I 2 
 
IIG APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART II. 
 
 the ten or twelve centuries following: — remembering only 
 that in all this I intend by the revived Beast not the mere 
 secular powers of Western Roman Christendom, as admi- 
 nistered on antichristian principles during that period ; 
 but those powers as each and all subordinated to the Pope, 
 and constituting his kingdom, as their common and recog- 
 nised head, the King of kings and Lord of lords, in his 
 usurped and most extraordinary character of Christ's 
 Vicar, and so the Vicegerent of God on the earth. A 
 character this, let me observe, of the Roman Popes and 
 Popedom, as an antichristian spiritual empire, which you 
 seem almost wholly to have overlooked, or forgotten.' 
 Fulfilled in them, so considered, was most notoriously, as I 
 said, all that is told of the Beast's character and acting in 
 the prophecy. So in regard of the Beast's predicted " blas- 
 phemies both against God, and against his tabernacle, even 
 them that tabernacle in it : " — viz., against Godhj the Pope's 
 sitting as God in God's temple, or the professhig Church ; ^ 
 substituting his own laws and commandments for God's 
 laws and conunandments, and himself and his minion 
 priests and saints for the Lord Jesus Christ, as the source 
 of grace and salvation to poor fallen man: — against God's 
 heavenly tabernacle, and its inhabitants, by representing 
 hhuself as the divinely-appointed key-bearer of its door of 
 entrance ; and Papistic devotees, even though unto death 
 not seldom the cruellest, most superstitious, and even per- 
 haps impure of men, as the saints inhabiting it : the Virgin 
 Mary herself, and angels of heaven, being subordinate co- 
 agents with him in his work ; and thus, in fine, God's 
 high and holy place turned into a den of corruption, and of 
 
 ' Let me beg to refer my readers to the Chapter v., Part iv., of my 
 '* H. A." ou this point. 
 
 * In this view of the Apocalyptic temple as symbolizing the professing 
 Christian Church, you do not disagree with me. So at p. 654 of your 
 Commentary. On the 2 Thess. ii. prophecy, see pp. 39, 40, suprd,. 
 
LETT. 2.] ALFORDIA-N CASE AGAINST BEAST IN " H. A." 117 
 
 most foul conspiracy against God and Clirist.^ So again in 
 regard of the Beast's predicated persecution of Christ's saints 
 and witnesses ; of the Papal fulfilment of which more under 
 my next head. So in regard of the Beast's name and 
 number ; emphatically as we know" the Pope, wdth respect 
 to the language consecrated to his religion, mass-book, lawSj 
 chm-ch, empire, to have been Aareivo'ij (the number of which 
 name is 666,) or the Zatin Man} So, once more, in regard 
 of this Beast's predicted 1260 years' term of duration in 
 his supremacy as Anticheist : — the Roman Pope's con^ 
 tinuance in power, in the recognised character of CItrisfs 
 Vicar on earth, having been just 12 GO years from its 
 primary and imperfect commencement, about a.d. 530, ^ 
 under Ju.stinian, (as I myself, in common with many other 
 Protestant Apocalyptic expositors, date it,) to the epoch of 
 the deadly blow struck against it about a.d. 1790, at the 
 French Revolution, — a blow from which it has never 
 recovered : and from its second and completer commencing 
 date, A.u. 606, when the adhesion of the Romano-Gothic 
 kings of Western Europe in allegiance to the Pope as 
 Christ's Vicar was perfected, down to the present time, when 
 that adhesion and recognition seems, in all human pro* 
 bability, to be near its end, the term being just but some 
 4 or 5 years short of the same fated period of the 1260 
 years.^ 
 
 ' I had myself originally explained " the tabernacle of God and them 
 that dwell in it," of God's saints while sojourning on earth, but having their 
 TToKirevfia, or citizenship, in heaven. This is altered in my 5th and new 
 Edition to the sense here given ; (see vol. iii. p. 190 ;) which is, I doubt nut, 
 the correct one. 
 
 On the character of Papal canonized saints see my Yol. ii., pp. 12, 13. 
 
 ■' Compare on this my remarks, p. 49, supra. 
 
 ' See Note *, p. 41. — How like the late exposm-e of the Papacy before 
 Eiu:-ope, in its real character, to Papal Eome's prefigured exposure in 
 Apoc. xvii., shortly before her destruction from heaven, as figured Apoc. 
 xviii. I say her destruction from heaven ; not that desolation of her by 
 the ten kings mentioned Apoc. xvii. 16 ; which I doubt not referred to that 
 of Eome imperial by the Goths, as observed already, p. 44. 
 
118 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART II. 
 
 As you agree with me in regarding the second Imuhsldn- 
 clofJicd Beast of the Apocalyptic prophecy as, in main part 
 at least, the Papal sacerdotal poiccr, or Priesthood, agree- 
 ably with Christ's own designation of false Christian 
 teachers as wolves in sheep's clothing,' there is fortunately 
 but little need for my here dwelling on the evidence of his- 
 toric fact in proof of the truth of that its application in the 
 " H. A." in the present controversial Letters. — Two points 
 only I nuist beg to insist on, as very important points of 
 distinction between us. The one is my reprobation and 
 rejection of your strange tacking on of the priesthood of 
 Pa(jan to that of Papal Rome, as if conjointly intended in 
 the symbol ; albeit that you yourself distinctly make the 
 first and great Beast of Apoc. xiii., to which this lesser one 
 is the declared subordinate, to be the secular powers of 
 Home Papal, subsequently to the final fall of Roman 
 Heathendom : though, most inconsistently, flinching from 
 this afterwards ; in order evidently to help out your half 
 reference of the lambskin-covered Beast, and whole refer- 
 ence of the Beast's image, to Home Pagan?' — The other 
 point is, that I carefully define the Papal head to this 
 second lambskin-covered Beast to be the Popes in their 
 sacerdotal character as the Metropolitan Patriarchs of the 
 Western Church ; distinctively from that quite different and 
 infinitely higher character of Christ's, and consequently 
 God's, Vicegerent on earth ; in which latter they consti- 
 tuted themselves, and were recognised by others, tlead of 
 the kings and kingdoms synibohzed by the first Beast's 
 horns and body, indeed of all kings and kingdoms of the 
 world. ^ The non-perception of this most important dis- 
 tinction, so fully stated and argued out in the " H. A.," has 
 been one main cause, if I mistake not, of the sad confused- 
 ness of your Apocaly[)tic explanations on this great subject. 
 
 ' So Matt. vii. \h. - Comment., pp. G75, 077. 
 
 ' See again ou this important \nVmt my " II. A.," voL iii., part iv., cli. v. 
 
LETT. 2.] ALFORDIAN CASE AGAINST BEAST IN " H. A." 119 
 
 — This being laid down, I shall only here further request 
 your own and my other readers' attention to the historical 
 sketch carefully drawn out by me in the " Horse Apoc," 
 Part IV. Ch. iv., of the successive steps whereby the clergy 
 of the various countries of Western Europe were gradually, 
 after the Gth century, brought more and more into sub- 
 jection to the Roman Pontiff, or Patriarch, as their head ; 
 till at length, as it has been said, ere the lapse of the 8th 
 century, they were all bound, even as one body, to the said 
 Pontiff by a vow of allegiance, obedience, and submission, 
 such as that by which a vassal in the feudal times was 
 bound to his suzerain lord : — also to my sketch of the 
 manner in which, when thus connected with, and subjected 
 to, the Pope, they had it given to each one of them to " exer- 
 cise all the Beast's power," as "before," i.e., subordinately 
 to him ; alike in confession, absolution, excommunication, 
 and even to the making of God in transubstantiation. 
 
 It only remains, under this head, to speak of the Beast's 
 Image in the prophecy, and my explanation of it as the 
 General Councils of Western Papal Christendom. In proof 
 of the truth of this explanation, I have noted not less than 
 five or six points of coincidence, — coincidences striking, 
 peculiar, complete, — between the prefiguration and the 
 thing affirmed to be its fulfilment. 1st, those General 
 Councils, as the representation of Papal Christendom, were, 
 according to a common figure of speech, alike in ancient 
 and modern languages, its Image : — 2d, they were convened 
 by the Pope in his character of Western Patriarch, througii 
 the clergy : — 3d, when convened, it was the Pope distinct- 
 ively, and they his clerical vassals, that gave breath to this 
 Image of Papal Christendom, and made it speak ; ^ all lag 
 
 ' Strikingly illustrative of this is the description given of the Council of 
 Trent bj one of its Episcopal members, and cited by me from P. Paolo : — ^ 
 
 V 
 
120 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART II. 
 
 representatives being excluded on the voting, as " voceni 
 non habentcs : " — 4th, its dogmas, thus expressed, were re- 
 quired to be bowed down to as the very voice of the Holy 
 Spirit, — his voice as truly as the holy written Scriptures 
 themselves : indeed, yet more so ; forasmuch as, when 
 directly contradicting the Holy Scriptures, which was full 
 often the case, it was the Conciliar dogma which was to be 
 obeyed, not God's written Scriptures : — 5th, it was these 
 Councils' oracular decree that every man, woman, and 
 child should, whether at confirmation or confession, mark 
 themselves, and be marked, as spiritual subjects of the 
 Pope ; and that whosoever would not do so, should be 
 barred out from the privileges of the common commerce 
 and intercourse of human life : ' — indeed, 6thly, that every 
 obstinate rebel against its edicts should be put to death. 
 Against which coincidences of the prophecy and the 
 history, what have you to say ? As usual, you pass them 
 over in silence. 
 
 I observe, indeed, that you are pleased thus to write : — ■ 
 " Elliott's view, which would limit the symbol (of the 
 second lambskin-covered Beast) to the Priesthood of the 
 Papacy fails notably in giving a meaning to its acts as 
 here described ; viz., the making an image to the Beast, 
 and causing men to worship it." But, as you do not con- 
 trovert any of the particulars just detailed as the fulfilment 
 
 " Erant episeopi ilH couductitii pleriqiie ut utres, quos, ut Docem mittent, 
 in/fare necesse est. . . . Cursitabaut Romam nocte dieque veredarii. 
 Omnia quae dicta consultaque essent qu^m celerrimd ad Papam deferre-- 
 bantur. lUinc responsa, tauquam Delphia aut Dodoiul, expectabantur. 
 lUinc nimirum Spiritus ille Sanctus, quern siiis Coiiciliis pr.ieesse jactaut, 
 tabularii luauticis iiicliisus, mittobatur." Cited, " H. A.," vol. iv., pp. 213, 
 214. (4tb Ed.) 
 
 ' Til is is said of the second, or lambskin-covered Beast ; whether as 
 done throvigh the Image, or independently. 1 here suppose it done 
 through the Image. 
 
LETT. 2.] ALFORDTAN CASE AGAINST WITNESSES IN "ll. A." 1 21 
 
 of that Apocalyptic prefiguration, nor, as I just said, even 
 notice them, your dictum against my explanation is, of 
 course, nothing worth. As to your own counterview of the 
 image as literally the image of the old Roman heathen 
 Emperors, and, with a view to this, your making the second 
 Beast to be half the Roman Pagan priesthood, and only 
 half the Papal, it is every way so self-contradictory, that 
 it must really seem I think, as already before hinted,' to 
 any man of common intelligence a work of supererogation 
 to refute it.^ 
 
 III. The two sackcloth-kobed Witnesses. 
 
 We read in Apoc. xiii. 7, " It was given to the Beast 
 {i.e., as you, like myself, mainly explain it, the Popes) to 
 make war with the saints, and to conquer them ; " a state- 
 ment this which may, in one sense, as you say, be desig- 
 nated as " a wider statement " of the same Beast's war 
 against, and victory over, the tioo sackcloth-robed ivitnesses 
 spoken of Apoc. xi. 7 ; the latter being only the bolder 
 and more conspicuous of Christ's saints, who whether 
 individually, or as little communities or churches, bore direct 
 testimony for Christ, during those antichristian times, and 
 at length against Antichrist. But who those Witnesses, and 
 what the Beast's war against them, and their death, resur- 
 rection, and ascension, as described in Apoc. xi. ? For 
 since, in regard of the particulars of the loar, the Witness 
 narrative is much the fuller statement, I prefer to take it as 
 illustrative of this point in the Beast's history. 
 
 SaysDeanAlfordof it: "Of this no solution at all approach- 
 ing to a satisfactory one has ever been given. ... I regard 
 
 • P. lis. 
 
 ^ You yourself confers to be unable (on your Pagan solution of the 
 image symbol) to explain the giving life and speech to the Beast's image. 
 You only here fly from your Pagan reference of the image to a Papal re- 
 ference ; just as you had before from the Papal to the Pagan: saying how it 
 brings to one's mind the moving and the winking images of the Papacy I ! 
 
122 APOCALTPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART II. 
 
 these Witnesses as still among the things unknown to the 
 Church, and awaiting their elucidation \J)cing still f if tun'] 
 by the event : " ' adding, as for your own part, " I have no 
 solution to offer." ^ Yet, Mr. Dean, with that marvellous 
 spirit of self-contradiction, which is one of the most marked 
 features of your Apocalyptic Commentary, you absolutely 
 shut yourself out from all idea of a still future solution. 
 For, after first inclining to think that the two Witnesses are 
 meant to signify two individual persons of that character,' 
 you on the next page incline to think that they symbolize 
 lines of witnesses ; * and, a little further on, bind yourself 
 to that latter view of them by making the prophetic period 
 of the 12G0 days, which is given as the time of the 
 Witnesses prophesying in sackcloth, (as well as that of the 
 Beast Antichrist's supremacy, and the faithful Catholic 
 Church's sojourn in the wilderness,) to be, if not 1260 years, 
 yet a very very long period.^ Moreover in your Commen- 
 tary on Apoc. xiii. 7 you say, as cited p. 121 just above, 
 that the war with the saints, and conquering them, there 
 ascribed to the Papal Beast, is the selfsame, only of 
 larger range, with that spoken of Apoc. xi. 7 as waged by 
 the Beast from the Abyss against Christ's two sackcloth- 
 
 ' Comment., pp. 053, G55. ^ Prolegom., p. 256. 
 
 ^ So p. 656 : " This portiou of the prophetic desciiiitioii (i-espectiiig the 
 wituesse.s being clothed in sackcloth) strongly favonrs the individual inter- 
 pretation." " One cannot see how bodies of men, who lived like other men, 
 can be said to have prophesied in sackcloth." Indeed ! I should have 
 thought that in a symbolic prophecy the symbolic dress of mourning and 
 sadness would be the most suitable possible for men constituting the body 
 under the sui)posed sad circumstances of the witnesses. 
 
 * " The one witness imj)ers(mates the law, the other the prophets." So 
 p. 657, as an inference from the ai)pareut reference to Moses and Elias, in 
 what is said of the witnesses having power to shut heaven, like Elias, so 
 that it shall not rain during their 1 260 days of prophecy ; and also, like 
 Mo.'-ea, to tm-n waters into blood. 
 
 ' So p. 670, on Ajioc. xii. 14 ; as to the length of the prophetic period 
 in one case, coni])ared with your declai-atiou at p. 655, of the equality in 
 length of all those periods, 42 months, 3 A times, 1260 days. See Note *, 
 p. 41, suprd. 
 
LETT.2.] ALFORDIAN CASE AGAINST WITNESSES IN " H. A." 123 
 
 robed witnesses : just accordant with which also is your 
 Commentary on Apoc. xi. 7, stating that the Beast from 
 the Abyss which kills the witnesses is the Beast of Apoc. 
 xiii. 1 ; i.e., the Pa2)al Beast/ 
 
 Thus, in spite of all that you affirm to the contrary else- 
 where, I consider that I have your own admission in favour 
 of my view of the two Witnesses as figuring lines of 
 witnesses in past time ; — in effect, those sons of the faithful 
 Catholic Church who, during her 1260 days' invisibility 
 in the wilderness, were " in various sects," as you say, " and 
 in distant countries, to observe the commandments of God, 
 and keep up the testimony of Jesus Christ : " ^ and against 
 whom, further, most specially it was that the fallen Dragon, 
 or Satan, was figured as raising up the Roman Beast in its 
 Papal form, as his fittest instrument for their persecution 
 and extermination. 
 
 Is there, then, sufficient evidence of there having ever 
 happened (accordantly with the data thus substantially ad- 
 mitted by you) anything in the history of the Popes' noto- 
 rious wars in past times against such individuals, and little 
 communities, as might be bent on keeping God's command-^ 
 ments and the testimony of Jesus, to answer to the very 
 remarkable Apocalyptic prefiguration of the death, resurrec- 
 tion, and ascension of the two loitnesses ? It is my affirmation, 
 as you know, in the "H. A.," that there did take place 
 what perfectly answered to it, in the events jjrecedinf/, 
 accompanying, and following the Reformation. 
 
 It is, of course, a necessary premise, that the clause 
 oTav reXecTcoai rrjv fiaprvpiav avrwv, rendered in Our English 
 version, " When they shall have finished their testimony," 
 may mean and be construed otherwise thus ; " When they 
 shall have ^^erfected their testimony." My proof of this 
 meaning of reXetu was imperfect and insufficient in the four 
 first editions of my " H. A.," but has been carefully, and, 
 
 ' Commeut., p^x 673, 657. * P. 671. 
 
124 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [pART II. 
 
 I contend, satisfactorily, drawn out in the 5th and last 
 edition. To this I must beg to refer you, just giving in 
 the appended note a brief abstract of the critical argu- 
 ment.^ Thus construing the clause, it was the view pro- 
 pounded by me, as you are aware, that the witness of those 
 witnessing bodies for God's connnandments as the rule of 
 life, and for Christ as the only author of grace and salva- 
 tion, (Apoc. xii. 1 7,) which were never wholly extinguished, 
 might be said to have come to its cliuiax and perfectness 
 when they discerned and denounced, so as did the Wal- 
 denses in the twelfth century, the Roman Papacy and Popes 
 as the great antichristian Apostasy, and Antichrist, of 
 Scripture prophecy, — for herein they hit that which was the 
 very vital point of the great Apostasy : and when moreover, 
 coincidentlj^, they disinterred from their long concealment, 
 and translated and circulated the holy written Scriptures, 
 which was the very sword of the Spirit with which to 
 encounter that Apostasy ; and which accordingly became 
 thenceforth with them the standard of truth, ever successfully 
 appealed to in their preaching, and witnessing, and contro- 
 versies with Papal Rome. — This premised, let me enumerate 
 
 ' AsTfXos (touse the woi'ds of Scott and Liddell) " means in its strict signi- 
 fication, not the ending of a departed state, but the arrival of a complete and 
 perfect one" so reXeco signifies most pro]:)erly to bring to siich a state of com- 
 pletion and perfectness. Now in most cases, when a work is thus brouglit 
 to perfectness, the operation of the working agency ceases ; and so to bring 
 to perfection becomes synonymous with to finish. But not so by any means 
 necessarily when the thing pei'fected is of such a nature as to admit of, if 
 not to im])ly, a continuation of the thing perfected ; and of their acting, with 
 a view to its continuation, who originally perfected it, after its attainment 
 of the state of perfectness. Examples from classiccd authors ;u"e given. 
 Vol. ii., p. 417, of the 5th edition of the " H. A." In like manner by 
 Etisehiris and Theodoret the word is used of the sin of the Jeivish nation 
 being brought to its climax and perfection by the Jews' crucifixion of Christ ; 
 but not so as to imply its then ending. The sin, in this its perfected state, 
 was continued by them during the remaining forty years of their resjjite of 
 judgment, till wrath fell upon them to the utmost ; and, indeed, by the 
 Jewish remnant, even to the jiresent day. 
 
LETT. 2.] ALFORDIAN CASE AGAITs ST WITNESSES IN "lI.A." 125 
 
 the coincidences between tlie prophecy in Apoc. xi. 7 of 
 what was to follow after this perfecting of the sackcloth- 
 robed witnesses' testimony, and the historic facts in which 
 I affirm the prophecy to have had its fulfilment. — 1. The 
 Popes did then, as we all know, make relentless war with 
 the Waldensian witnesses, so as never before : and, as the 
 result of that war against them, and against other witness- 
 ing bodies of cognate sentiments and character, gradually 
 more and more prevailed against them ; till at length, at 
 the end of the 15th century, such witnesses and witness- 
 ing were all but silenced and exterminated. In illustration 
 of this, the well-known fact is appealed to of the little 
 persecuted Moravian remnant sending two of their members 
 as deputies to East and West to see if there existed any of 
 like mind and doctrine with themselves ; and of the return 
 of the deputies with answer that they found none, — Still 
 was that little remnant themselves the object, during the 
 remainder of the 15th and commencement of the 16th 
 century, of continued persecution ; and it drove them at last 
 into the very caves and holes of the rocks for refuge. Then, 
 in 1514, the memorable 5th Lateran General Council, com- 
 posed of deputies from all the kings and kingdoms of the 
 West, met at Rome : and, after considerately surveying the 
 whole scene of Western Christendom, the chosen Papal 
 orator mounted the pulpit, and said triumphantly, " Jam 
 nem.o reclamat, nullus obsistit ; " " There is an end of 
 resistance to the Papal rule ; opposers there exist no more." 
 This was on the 4th of May, 1514. The fact thus cele- 
 brated, Mr. Dean, was a mighty fact. It is utterly impos- 
 sible, though you seem inclined to treat it lightly, to over- 
 estimate its gravity. Ilere, then, is my 2nd point of 
 coincidence between the prophecy and the history. The 
 witnessing for Christ against the Papal Antichrist seemed 
 silenced and dead. — And among whom was the paean of 
 
126 APOCALYPSIS ALFOUDIANA. [PART TI. 
 
 triumph over the dead raised ? It was, as the Apocalypse 
 grapliically describes it, amongst deputies from the various 
 peoples, and tribes, and nations, and languages of the 
 Roman earth. Here is a 3rd coincidence. — And where ? 
 Says the prophecy, " in the TrXareta, or fonm, of the great 
 city," i.e., Babylon ; which, taking the city in the sense of 
 Civitas, so as you as well as myself seem inclined to do, 
 must surely be Rome itself. Here is a 4th coincidence. — 
 And what the character of that Roman Civitas and 
 Church ? By the members of the Lateran Council it was 
 designated as IIolj/ Rome, the very antitype to the type of 
 the Heavenly Jerusalem. Of one and another of the 
 sermons of the Orators of the Council this was, in fact, the 
 express subject. But, " spiritually considered," said the 
 prophecy, very pointedly, or as looked on by one taught by 
 the Spirit, it had quite a different character, even as that 
 which combined in itself the characteristics of Babylon, 
 Egypt, Sodom, and the Christ-crucifying Jerusalem. Was 
 there anything to answer to this remarkable point in the 
 history of the times I allude to ? It was just then, we 
 know, that Luther was rising up : and, under the teaching 
 of the Holy Spirit, we find him very shortly after, though 
 little conscious how he was therein fulfilling the prophecy 
 before us, in direct contradiction to all his previous most 
 deeply cherished views of Rome as the holy Rome, inveigh- 
 ing against it, and its Church, distinctly, as alike the 
 Apocalyptic Babylon, and Sodom, and Egy])t, and the 
 modern Christ-crucifying Jerusalem ; — a view of it in which 
 he was followed by all his fellow-Reformers. Here is a 5th 
 and most striking coincidence. — And what was the feeling 
 expressed by the assembled deputies in the Lateran Council 
 towards the witnesses for Christ's truth, when thus looked 
 on as silenced and dead ? They ordered, among other 
 ordinances, that the corpses of any answering to their 
 
LETT..2.] ALFORDTAN CASE AGAINST WITNESSES IN "ll. A." 127 
 
 character should not receive burial ; in similarly exact 
 accordance with that other Apocalyptic statement respecting 
 the treatment of the corpse ' of Christ's two representative 
 sackcloth-robed witnesses by the assembled deputies of 
 Roman Christendom, — that " they would not suffer their 
 dead bodies to be put into a tomb." Here is a 6th 
 coincidence. — To which we have to add, as yet a 7th, 
 their rejoicings on the occasion, — rejoicings enjoined by 
 Pope Leo IX. on " all the faithful " in his Bull for the 
 dissolution of the Council; precisely as in the prophetic 
 description, " And they that dwell on the earth (the 
 JRoman earth, as before) shall rejoice over them, and send 
 gifts to one another." — " But behold," added the prophecy, 
 " after 3^ days the Spirit of life entered into them, and 
 they stood upon their feet." And, as regards history, it 
 records that on the 31st of October, 1517, just 3^ years 
 after the triumphal psean of the Lateran orator and Council 
 over the dead witnesses, Luther put up his Theses on the 
 Church of Wittenberg ; and the Reformation, and witnessing 
 for Christ's gospel-truth, began again with greater power 
 than ever before. Here is an 8th and most marvellous 
 coincidence ! 
 
 You exclaim indeed against this last, taking no notice of 
 all the other coincidences; "Elliott's calcidation of this 
 period as 3^ years labours under this fatal defect, that, 
 whereas his 3 years, from 5th May, 1514, to 5th May, 
 1517, are years of 365 days, his half-year from May 5, 
 1517, to October 31 of the same year, is 180, or half 360 
 days ; i.e. wanting 2-| days of the time required according 
 to that reckoning." But excuse my saying, Mr. Dean, 
 that I have now seen quite enough of your use of the term 
 
 ' irrcofia, in the singular. So in one of the two cases in which the word 
 is used, Apoc. xi. 7. A peculiarity this in the symbolic j^hraseology which 
 simply, but strikingly, corroborates my view of the two Apocalyjitic wit- 
 nesses as a collective body, or line. 
 
128 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [pART II. 
 
 to convince me that for your wovd fatal (at least as applied 
 to myself) we should, in each case, if under the guidance 
 of common-sense, read futile} You agree with me in 
 taking the months of the Apocalyptic prophecy as months 
 of 30 days each; for, like myself, you make 42 months 
 the equivalent of 1260 days, as also of 3^ years : ^ so that, 
 on your own scale of calculation, 180 days would make 
 jast 6 months, and 6 months the 7th part of 3^ years, i.e., 
 just one half-year : these years being however, whether on 
 the year-day or day-day scale, solar years, of 305^ days 
 each ; a point nowhere objected to by you when on that 
 subject.' Thus, with Alford himself in his littera scripta 
 as an assenting party, I have to repeat the exclamation against 
 which you so rashly and self-condemningly animadvert ; 
 " Oh, wonderful prophecy ! The period is ^jrecisely to a 
 day that predicted in the Apocalypse, Oh, the depth of 
 the riches of the wisdom and the foreknowledge of God ! " 
 As to the three grand predicted events consequent on 
 the Witnesses' resurrection, viz., their own elevation to that 
 selfsame heaven of political power and dignity which we 
 saw was the scene, coincidently, of both the Woman's and 
 the Dragon's figured position in Apoc. xii.,"* the fall of the 
 tenth part of the great Babylonian city, or civitas, and of 
 seven chiliads, apparently of the same political city, I see 
 nothing whatsoever in your objections of any weight such 
 as to negative my several historical a})plications of those 
 three prcfigurations : — viz., of the first to the fact of the 
 Protestants' elevation to high political station and power in 
 Europe, — the very name Protestants being the equivalent 
 
 ' ^.r/., your previous application of the phrase /ata^ objection, p. 74, to 
 my restriction of the grass burnt up under the 1st Truin])et (though un- 
 restricted in the prophecy) to that third of the earth on which the fire that 
 burnt it up was prefigured as falling ! Does not the very necessity of tlie 
 case so restrict it ? 
 
 "^ See p. 41, Note *, suprd,. ' See Comment., p. 0.55. 
 
 * See pp. 9(), 97, supra. 
 
LETT.2.] ALFORDIAN CASE AGAINST WITNESSES IN " H. A." 129 
 
 name of Witnesses ; ^ of the second to the fall of Papal 
 England; of the third to the fall of the seven Dutch 
 United Provinces, in their previous character as a smaller 
 constituent part of the Papal Empire.^ The weakness of 
 the objections only strengthens my thorough conviction as 
 to the truth of my explanation of the whole prophecy of 
 which I have been speaking. — To all which coincidences 
 there is yet further to be added that, just as the prophecy 
 notices, as the sequel to these great events about the Wit- 
 nesses, that the second woe, viz. that of the Gth Trumpet, 
 after the fall of the seven chiliads of the great Babylonian 
 civitas, passed away, so in European history it was very 
 shortly after the recognised accomphshment of the emanci- 
 pation of the seven Dutch United Provinces from Papal 
 thraldom, under their bigoted Spanish oppressors, that the 
 Turkman woe, according to the clear record of history, 
 passed away from Christendom. 
 
 And now, having gone through the three grand Apoca- 
 lyptic subjects of prefiguration connected with the seven- 
 
 ' Your objection is simijly the dictum ; •' Elliott has given it the lamest 
 possible interjjretation, viz. the calling up of the Protestants in Germany 
 to political ascendancy and power." Not in Germany only, but in England 
 and Holland also, Mr. Dean. And, let me ask, what historian of rejiute 
 will you find to sujiport you in referring to these mighty events as if of 
 small consequence ; and therefore unworthy of notice in divine prefigura- 
 tions of the coming future ? 
 
 ^ You object that xCKiahe^ in the New Testament always signifies simply 
 the nimieral 1,000. But you know very well that in the Greek Sej)tuagint 
 the use of it is sometimes that which I give it. And what right have you 
 to debar an expositor from illustrating from the Septuagint ; especially in 
 the case of the Apocalypse, a peculiar book, as you elsewhere more than 
 once state, (see Comment., p. 676, &c.,) both in its constructions, and its 
 use of words ? Because ^i^/xt; (leaven) is elsewhere in the New Testament 
 always used in a bad sense, do you therefore argue (as some have done) 
 that it must have the same bad sense in Matt. xiii. 33 ? Quite the contrary. 
 
 You add that the nominative to eba^Kav Bo^av, " they gave glory to the 
 God of heaven," must be the nearest nominative. But this is again a mei-e 
 arbiti-ary dictum. Innumerable are the cases where it is not the proxi- 
 mate, but a less proximate noun, that governs the verb. 
 
 K 
 
130 APOCALYPSTS ALFORDIANA. [PART II. 
 
 headed Beast of the prophecy, and shown how, according 
 to the explanations given of them in the " H. A.," there 
 was that which answered most exactly to the several pre- 
 figm-ations in the origin, history, character, and actings of 
 the Pojjes of Rome, those usurping Vicars of Christ, I 
 might otherwise fitly bring this Letter to a conclusion : 
 save only for the intimation given at its commencement ' of 
 the corroborative evidence of truth arising out of the very 
 position in the prophecy of the story of Cluist's two 
 sackcloth-robed witnesses, and the Beast's successful war 
 against them, as following on the vision of the rainbow- 
 crowned Angel under the latter half of the 6th Trumpet ; 
 and the consequent duty that I felt of noticing this ere 
 concluding. — In regard of the whole prophecy in Apoc. xi., 
 including the measm'ing of the temple enjoined on St. John, 
 and history of the Witnesses given immediately after by 
 the Angel, you thus in one place speak despairingly of your 
 conscious inability to understand it. " I have no solution 
 of my own of the two Witnesses : I recognise the characters, 
 but cannot appropriate them." ^ In another you say more 
 hopefully ; " The prophecy can only be understood as 
 anticipatorily giving in summary, and introducing, the 
 larger prophecy of [the Beast in] Apoc. xiii : " adding that 
 thus " its separate parts, so hard to assign [qy. arrange ?] on 
 any other view, do at once fall into their places." ^ How 
 they Ihus " at once fall into their places," you have, however, 
 omitted to explain to your readers. And I must confess 
 to thinking that for yourself this was a happy forgetful- 
 ness : since it must need the cleverness of a very magician 
 to make that to be arrangement which is on the face 
 of the thing gross misarrangement ; (for, on your view, 
 what the use, or propriety, of such an anticipatory 
 notice of the Beast ?) and that a " summary," or " com- 
 
 ' P. 93, suprd. ' Prolegom. 256. ' Comment., p. 053. 
 
LETT.2.] ALFORDIAN CASE AGAINST WITNESSES IN " H. A." 131 
 
 pendium," which omits almost every point of detail in 
 the subject supposed to be summarized.^ Very different 
 is the result on the historic view which I have set forth 
 of this most remarkable section of the Apocalyptic 
 prophecy. In the light of that historic explanation " its 
 parts do indeed (like all else that we have before been dis- 
 cussing) at once fall into their places." I thank you for 
 your recognition of that test of truth. It will be soon 
 seen whether my explanation does not stand it. 
 
 I take for granted that the evidence on which I have 
 expounded the prefigured slaying of the third of men by 
 the horsemen from the Euphrates of the Turkmans' over- 
 throw of Constantinople and the Uomano-Greek empire, 
 has been shown to be clear and decisive. Thus at 
 Apoc. ix. 20, 21 we find ourselves brought down to the 
 closing half of the 15th century. And, as regards the then 
 undestroyed remainder of the men of Roman Christendom, 
 there prophesied of as not repenting of their idolatries and 
 other sins, there will not I think have been forgotten the 
 remarkable contemporary testimony given to the truth of one 
 part of the charge (applied, so as I apply it, to Western Papal 
 Europe) by himself the terrible Turkman destroyer of the 
 Greek empire ; ^ while both to its truth, and that of each 
 and every one of the other sins charged on them, the testi- 
 mony of the Papal history of the times was only too clear, 
 too abundant.^ So, according to both prophecy and history, 
 was that sera in the fortunes of professing Christendom 
 depicted as closing in not only darkly, but almost hope- 
 lessly. — But behold just at that point of time, in the pre- 
 figurations of the Apocalypse, a sudden and bright inter- 
 vention from heaven. The Covenant-Angel was depicted 
 as suddenly descending thence, with the gospel-book 
 
 ' Such details as at pp. 112—120. 
 
 * See J). 89, suprd. ' See my Vol. ii., Part ii., cli. i. 
 
 K 2 
 
132 APOCALYPSIS ALPORDIANA. [PAPvT II. 
 
 (sucli it afterwards proved to be) ' opened in his hand, the 
 rainbow of the covenant about his head, and his 
 face beaming as with light of the sun : also, when de- 
 scended, as planting his feet on both land and sea, just as 
 if to claim them as his own ; with a voice like as of a lion, 
 against some usurper apparently of his rights. Then He 
 entered into colloquy with St. John, bringing him into 
 prominency as an actor on the scene, in a manner quite 
 unprecedented in the Apocalyptic prcfigurations ; giving 
 the opened gospel-book into his hands, (after a previous 
 warning voice from heaven, and oath from the Angel as to 
 the determined ending of God's providential mystery 
 under the 7th and next Trumpet,) with the charge, first, 
 that he should revive the prophesying, or preaching, of it 
 before many people, and kings, and languages ; secondly, 
 that he should define or measure the Apocalyptic temple, 
 including all worshippers that made the sacrificial altar of the 
 altar-court the centre of their worship, and excluding others 
 as Gentiles ; then, finally, narrating to him the evidently 
 retrospective history of his two sackcloth-robed witnesses, 
 down to that war of the Beast against them of which a little 
 while since we were speaking, and their consequent death 
 and resurrection.. Whereupon his narrative and interven- 
 tion ends. The cloud in which he descended reascends 
 apparently ; for no mention of him occurs afterwards ; and, 
 as I conceive, the risen witnesses ascended with it. 
 
 So the prophecy. And had not all this its fulfilment, 
 
 ' Beiug that which iu the Christian dispensation is given to each minister 
 of Christ, here rejiresented by St. John, as containing in it the subject- 
 matter of his preaching ; just as that which Ezekiel received, and was 
 chai-ged to eat, &c., was to form the subject of his i)roi)hesying and preach- 
 ing. The impossibility of the theory which would i-egard it as a book 
 containing the subse(pient Apocalyptic predictions has been already 
 shown, p. 57, suprd. 
 
 As regards the Angel being the Covenaut-Augel, Christ Jesus, I have 
 also already s])okeu, p. 71. 
 
LETT.2.J ALFORDIAN CASE AGAINST WITNESSES IN "h. A." 133 
 
 just at the time indicated, in the Reformation of the open- 
 ing of the 16th century; with evidence quite pecuHar 
 attesting the truth of the apphcation, ahke as regards the 
 AngeVs descent at the beginning of the vision, and as 
 regards wliat is told of St. John afterwards ? Also, (ap- 
 plying your own test) do not " all the parts of the prophecy 
 thus at once fall into their places," as illustrated and ful- 
 filled in the history ? Let us see. 
 
 1. As regards the Covenant- An (/er s descent it is surely 
 almost superfluous, when speaking with any intelligent 
 man at all versed in the history of the Reformation, to 
 suggest the general truth and appropriateness of each parti- 
 cular figured point and feature in the Angel's description : 
 as depicting the revelation then prominently made before 
 the world of Christ's own glorious functions and character 
 as the Sun of Righteousness, the author and applier of 
 God's covenant of grace (typified by the rainbow about the 
 Angel's head) to sinful man ; and Lord too of this redemp- 
 tion-purchased world : all in contrast with the counter- 
 pretensions in the same characters of the long-established 
 usurper of his place, the great Papal Antichrist. — But, 
 over and above this, was there not in the history of the 
 times, as already hinted, a confirmatory testimony to the 
 truth of this application of the Apocalyptic figuration of 
 quite a peculiar character: — as peculiar, I may say, as that 
 of the Turkman Sultan to the truth of my application of the 
 prophetic verse just preceding ? Such indeed there was ; 
 and let me state how it came before me. Deeply 
 persuaded of the divine inspiration of this prophecy, 
 when I came to the account in the Apocalyptic vision 
 of the Covenant-Angel's planting his feet so peremptorily 
 on sea and land, with a voice, as if in assertion of 
 his rights, like as when a lion roareth, it seemed 
 to me so obviously to imply that it was against some 
 
134 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART II. 
 
 usurper of them that he \yas depicted as then vindicating 
 his rights, which usurper could only be the Papal Anti- 
 christ, that I thought it well worth the while to look into 
 the Papal records of the time, and there see whether there 
 might not be just then some more pointed illustration of the 
 antagonism implied than the mere general facts of the Papal 
 usurpation (striking as those w^ere) to which I have just 
 alluded. And what the result of my inquiry? It was, as 
 you know if you have read my book, that precisely at 
 the epoch I suppose to be referred to, on occasion of 
 Leo X.'s accession to the Papacy, and in that magnificent 
 festival at Rome which inaugurated it, there were in some 
 of the pictures and devices on the arcs of triumph, &c., 
 along the line of procession, jrrccise counterjjcirts to these 
 Ajmcalyptic figurations ; with application, however, to the 
 Papal Antichrist, not to Christ: — Pope Leo being depicted 
 as having come down from heaven, and planting one foot 
 on the land, one on the sea, as his own ; Pope Leo as the 
 rising sun, and with the rainbow of the covenant in asso- 
 ciation ; Pope Leo as a lion, resistlessly roaring against 
 every enemy.' Such was the idea of the Papacy, and the 
 rights of the Papacy, entertained at that time, as for centiu-ies 
 previous, throughout Western Christendom ; such, just then, 
 the anti-Apocalyptic pictorial figurings of them. And 
 against this came now at length that most remarkable inter- 
 vention of the Lord Jesus Christ, asserting His rights in each 
 of those three characters, through His servant Luther, and 
 Luther's associates, (those ministers of true apostolic doc- 
 trine and character whom John here represented, as I shall 
 presently observe,) in a voice that resounded like a lion's 
 
 ' I must beg such of my present rearlers as have not penised the Cliap- 
 tei-s in the " H. A." (Part iii., ch. iii.) to wliirh I here alhule, to do so 
 now, if really interested, according to its iniportanoo, in the i)rosent contro- 
 vei'sy. The illustration appeiu-s to me really marvellous. 
 
LETT.2.] ALFORDIAN CASE AGAINST WITNESSES IN "h.A." 135 
 
 roar all over Christendom, at the great Reformation. — Tims 
 exactly does this part of the prefiguration, thus historically 
 interpreted, fall into its place. And, let me ask, was the 
 illustration of it by allusive contrast just mentioned, so 
 striking and so peculiar, a mere thing of chance ? Again, 
 did it deserve, as if nothing worth as a corroboration of my 
 application of the vision to the Reformation, to be passed 
 over by you, if a lover of truth, in perfect silence ? 
 
 2. Then as regards what follows further respecting 
 St. John. Not less than six points are there stated 
 successively respecting what passed from the descended 
 Covenant- Angel to, or before him, which (regarding him in 
 the representative character before stated) had so their 
 counterpart and realization in the actual progress of the 
 Reformation, as to constitute together, when thus historic- 
 ally expounded, nothing less than a compendious history of 
 it ; — not, observe, Mr, Dean, a comj^endium in your sense 
 of the word ; ' but one so perfect, and so philosophic, as 
 more than to bear a comparison with any compendious 
 history by the best of its human historians, of the chief 
 successive steps of that mighty religious reformation and 
 revolution. 
 
 I say, assuming St. John to bear the character of repre- 
 sentative on the great Apocalyptic scene of the line of 
 Christian ministers of really Apostolic doctrine and 
 character, at each epoch successively prefigured : — which is 
 a point of prime importance towards the right rendering of 
 the Apocalypse,^ in two at least of its most important 
 figurations. You are aware, I presume, that it was not 
 without various evidence and testimony in support of it that 
 
 ' See p. 130. 
 
 ^ A ijoint hinted at, at p. 50 siiprH, as one of your omissions which I 
 should notice in a subsequent letter. 
 
136 ArOCALYPSIS ALFOUDIANA. [PART II. 
 
 I adopted this view. There was noted by me, in proof/ 
 the fact of snndry of the Old Testament prophets having 
 acted as mophfhiju, qy fgurative representative men, ahke in 
 real life, and when rapt into other scenes in vision ; and 
 that this was a character of them recognized alike by 
 Jewish Rabbis and early Christian Fathers : also by some 
 of the earlier patristic expositors, e.(/., Tichonins, Primasins, 
 Ambrose Anspert, and the Caesarean Andreas, as well as 
 by eminent later expositors snch as Vitringa and Daubnz, 
 applied in illustration of the Apocalyptic prophecy. Further, 
 it was shown by me that, whereas two particular and most 
 interesting passages in the Apocalypse, viz., that of the 
 sealing and palm-bearing visions in Apoc. vii., and the 
 vision now before us of Apoc. x., xi., are otherwise unsus- 
 ceptible of explanation agreeable both with their position 
 and their importance, the view of St. John, as bearing the 
 representative character of which I have spoken, proves to 
 be a key that at once opens them. AVitness the names and 
 VioX^ oi Aiifftistine ^w^ Luther. Of this view, however, of St. 
 John, and evidence given by me in support of it, you 
 say not a word. We have only the introductory unsup- 
 ported dictum by you, that " St. John is in this book the 
 simple recijnent of the Apocalypse : " ^ and, as to any satis- 
 factory, probable, or self-consistent explanation of the two 
 visions just cited, in which St. John is brought prominently 
 forward as speaker, hearer, and actor on the public Apoca- 
 lyptic scene, figuring the Chiu'ch and the World, you have, 
 as has been already seen, none to offer. 
 
 Putting aside, then. Dean Alford and his dictum, and 
 adopting the view of St. John above stated, mark how the 
 successive particulars in the vision had their counterpart in 
 
 ' See especially my Part iii., cli. iv. § 2 ; beginning p. 112 in the 2(1 vol. 
 of the " H. A.," 4th ed. 
 * Comment., p. G04. 
 
LETT..2.] ALFORDIAN CASE AGAINST WITNESSES IN "H. A." 137 
 
 the successive steps of progress in tlie Reformation. — 
 ]st, there was the revelation communicated with power as 
 from heaven to Luther and his associates after him, of 
 Christ as the Saviour, the Covenant-Ange], the Sun of 
 Righteousness, the Lord of all : followed, 2d]y, (for quite 
 vain seem to me your objections to my explanation,^) by the 
 discovery, even again as Avith the power of a direct revelation 
 from heaven, of the Pope of Rome as the predicted usurper, 
 Antichrist ; though previously bowed down to with in- 
 
 ' Inferred from vers. 3 aud 4 : " And when he cried, the seven thunders 
 uttered their own voices. And when the seven thunders had uttered their 
 own voices, I was about to write. And I heard a voice from heaven saying, 
 Seal n\-> what the seven thunders uttered, and write them not." The pro- 
 cess of this inference, which I have elaborately drawn out in the " H. A.," 
 is as follows. — 1st, the thunders were vocal, so as to be intelligible to 
 St. John. 2dly, the voices were called emphatically, theii- own voices, as if 
 in contrast with the angel's voice just spoken. 3dly, the prohibition heard 
 by St. John from heaven, to seal up and not to write what those seven 
 thunders had uttered, when he was about to write, was absolute ; aud 
 consequently altogether on diiferent grounds, and of a different character, 
 from that charged on Daniel, with reference to a prophecy not to be 
 understood till the latter days, "Seal up till the time of the end:" while 
 the reason elsewhere given for his writing what he did write, — viz., as 
 being "the voice of the Spirit," "words true and faithful," "the true 
 sayings of God," — suggests that these voices, though, as thunders, the pre- 
 tended voice of God, were not so, but counterfeit, even as if the voice of 
 Antichrist. 4thly, the numeral seven confirms this idea ; forasmuch as a 
 voice from Rome, as seven-hilled, was thence actually called seven voices : and 
 5thly, when the voice was that of Emperor in Rome's heathen days, or 
 (yet more) of the Pope in Rome's Papal days, it was called thunder, from the 
 fact of both the one and other assuming the character of Deity. 6thly, 
 the fulfilment of the prophetic passage, so explained, in the histoiy of 
 Luther (here represented by St. John), just at the very commencement of 
 the Reformation, was most exact and striking. After the blessed and 
 glorious revelation of Christ to his sovil, through understanding of the opened 
 gosjjel, and when, under impulse from that revelation, he was beginning his 
 contest against Papal Indulgences, the jirohibitory thunders from the 
 Vatican sounded forth against him : and he was on the point of acting 
 as well as writing in recognition of them as Christ's own voice, (" Most 
 blessed Father, kill me or make me alive, approve or condemn, for I shall 
 recognize in thy voice that of Christ speaking in thee,") when a suspicion, 
 at first too fearful for him to listen to, more and more forced itself, and soon 
 
138 APOCALTPSIS ALFORDIANA. [pART II. 
 
 tensest reverence, as Christ's own divinely-appointed 
 Vicar and Vicegerent on earth. 3d]y, amid the tronbles 
 and deadly trials thereupon arising to the Reformers, 
 we next read of theii' delighted inference from the voice of 
 prophecy, just accordantly with the Apocalyptic Angel's 
 oath,' that there wanted but the lapse of what re- 
 
 with thorough conviction, on his mind, that the PajDal voice was in real tnith 
 the voice of the great scripturally-predicted Antichrist, This was the second 
 grand step of progress in the Eeformation. 
 
 Against all which elaborate argument what say you ? Simply and solely 
 as follows : — " It is matter of siu'prise and gi-ief {sic !) to find Elliott inter- 
 preting these seveji thunders of the Papal anathemas of the time of the 
 Reformation. Nothing could be more unfortunate ; nothing more thoroughly 
 condemnatory of the system which is compelled to have recourse to it (i. e. 
 that interpretation). For (merely to insist on one point) if it were so, then 
 the Apostle sealed the utterances in vain ; for all know what those thunders 
 have littered. Then the command should have run, ' Seal them till the 
 time of the end,' as in Dan. xii. 4 ; instead of an absolute command, as 
 here." 
 
 Permit me to advise you, Mr. Dean, in future, for your own sake at 
 least, to take care that you read and understand an author before con- 
 demning or criticising him. Your whole condemnatory argument rests on 
 the two ideas, taken for granted, 1st, of St. John's bearing no representative 
 character on the Apocalyjitic scene, 2dly, of " sealing up and not ^Titiug" 
 meaning necessarily concealing ; i.e., you say, from all others but himself. 
 How alien from the truth are these two ideas, will have been seen from my 
 argument as abstracted in the text above, and given much more fully, of 
 course, in the " H. A." Your objection thus recoils quite harmlessly from 
 me. 
 
 As to your idea of concealment from all but John himself, let me beg 
 you to refer to Apoc. i. 2, 3 ; and your own recognition there of the 
 injunction laid on St. John of writing all that he saw and heard, for the 
 benefit of the Churches and faithful generally. How would this consist 
 with your view of these seven thunders as divine utterances, meant for 
 St. John's own understanding, and that of none other of the faithful ? — 
 Inconsistently indeed you think that even we may infer something of what 
 was meant ; viz. that " the arrows of God's quiver were not yet exhausted," 
 &c. : — a commonplace this of yours, very valuable apparently in your own 
 judgment, as being ap])licable on all kinds of occasions where you can make 
 out nothing of the meaning of a passage in the prophecy. See pp. G, 7, &c., 
 suprd. 
 
 ' You object, but here not dogmatically, to my rendering orav fiiKKjj 
 adXniCfiv in veree 7, " at what time soever he may have to sound," as 
 
LETT. 2.] ALFORDIAN CASE AGAINST WITNESSES IN "H.A." 139 
 
 mained of the Gth Trumpet; and that then, under the 
 7th Trumpet, God's dark mystery of Providence would be 
 ended, and Christ have his rights fully recognized in the 
 world. 4thly, came the charge as from heaven, heard and 
 acted on by Luther and his brother Reformers, to take the 
 gospel-book ; and, after first themselves experimentally 
 digesting it, to publish it abroad, alike by translations into 
 the various languages of Western Europe, and preaching it 
 before its several kings and peoples : and 5thly, their then 
 rising up, as in obedience to the Covenant- An gel's com- 
 mand, (the 'pa^So^, or rod of ruling authority, being given 
 them for the purpose,) and defining, as what might alone 
 properly be called true professing Christian Churches, those 
 that in their worship and articles of faith set forth distinctly 
 what the Jewish sacrificial altar and service typified, viz. 
 the Messiah, Christ Jesus, in His two grand characters, 
 of sinful man's full and perfect atoning sacrifice, and His 
 one Mediator and High Priest ; excluding those Churches 
 which, instead of this, set forth other sacrifices, another 
 righteousness, other mediators, so as above all did the 
 Romish Church, as excommunicate, and appertaining only 
 to the pseudo-Christian or outer Gentile court. — Gthly, and 
 finally, this was followed, just as in the Angel's retrospective 
 narrative of his two sackcloth-robed witnesses, by their 
 having their researches directed to the past Church history ; 
 and there in sundry poor and persecuted communities, or 
 Churches, tracing a broken line of witnesses that had testified 
 for Christ's gospel-truth in the previously past dark ages, 
 until apparently exterminated after long long persecutions 
 by the Papal power, or Beast from the abyss ; their death 
 
 hardly defensible ; saying that " Srav in the New Testament and Sejitna- 
 gint will not bear such an emphatic uncertainty in contingent clauses." 
 But really my sense is so little different from the common that I see no 
 reason to alter it. As 6 ixeXKcov epxeadai is the equivalent of 6 epxofievos 
 in Matt. xi. 3, 14, so orav fieWr] a-aXTriCeiv is the eqiiivalent of orav craXTrtf//. 
 
140 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART II. 
 
 being figured before the Reformers' eyes with all that 
 circumstantiality with which (as we have seen before)' the 
 two sackcloth-robed witnesses' death is set forth in the 
 Apocalyptical prophecy. 
 
 Consider all this carefully and candidly, Mr. Dean ; and 
 then say whether all the parts of this prophecy do not " at 
 once fit into their places," this interpreted ? — And consider 
 further whether my whole interpretation of the connected 
 prophetic series of Seals, Trumpets, and Beast is not, con- 
 sequently, by the very position of that which we have just 
 examined into, (a position to yourself so inexplicable,) 
 confirmed and clenched, just as I said it would be at the 
 beginning of this Letter:^ indeed, so confirmed as to make 
 the rejection of it nothing less than an act of the most 
 palpable opposition to all evidence and all reason, 
 
 I am, dear Mr. Dean, 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 E. B. ELLIOTT. 
 
 ' See pp. 125-128, suprcL. " P. 93. 
 
PART III. 
 CONCLUDING LETTER. 
 
 Dear Mr. Dean, 
 
 It only remains for me, in this concluding Letter, 
 to smn up the particulars of the review given in the pre- 
 ceding Letters of your Apocalyptic exposition and my own ; 
 with consideration of the result, 1st, in regard of its bearing 
 on the great question which lies more directly before us, as 
 to whether either, and, if so, which of the two, has the 
 stamp of truth upon it ; 2dly, in regard of its bearing on 
 your general Commentary on the Greek Testament. 
 
 I. And, as regards the first point, am I too sanguine in 
 hoping that even you yourself, after calmly, thoughtfully, 
 and candidly considering the state of the case, will be pre- 
 pared to join me in giving the verdict against your own 
 Exposition, and in favour of mine? Of course I cannot 
 but be aware of the strength of prejudice and self-love 
 which may be expected to operate with you against such a 
 conclusion. How is it possible that it should be otherwise 
 with one who has not only imagined to himself an interpre- 
 tation such as yours, but written it ; not only written, but 
 published it to the world : and this as an expositor of 
 Scripture of a certain standing and repute ; moreover, as a 
 dignitary of the English Church of high position, and 
 raised to that dignity very mainly, it may be supposed, in 
 consequence of that repute. Against this I have only to 
 appeal to your declared supreme love of Truth. " Amicus 
 
142 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART. III. 
 
 mihi Egomet; sed magis arnica Veritas." And, as you 
 consider the two sides of the case in that character, what is 
 the coimterview of the one and the other which, as I have 
 shown, must come before you ? 
 
 Contrast them, 1st, in regard of the nature and amount 
 of revelation respecting the coming future set forth as 
 given to St. John in the one scheme and the other : never 
 forgetting that preUminary fact on which I am glad to 
 think we are altogether agreed ; viz., that the revelation was 
 a divinely -planned revelation ; and one, moreover, of which 
 the declared subject-matter was the coming fortunes, as 
 associated together, of the Church and of the world. This 
 premised, and if we divide the prophecy for our passing 
 examination into two parts, you will observe, on taking a 
 retrospective glance at your Apocalyptic Exposition, that it 
 makes the revelations of the primary part, including the 
 Seals and the Trumpets, to be really little better than the 
 prophecies of the future that used to appear in Moore's 
 once famous Almanack. If I may trust to my reminis- 
 cences of what met my eye in one and another chance 
 number of it that fell in my way in the days of boyhood, 
 this was the kind of prophesying of the coming year by 
 which the said Mr. M. sought, and not unsuccessfully, to 
 take in silly people : — " About this time famine, or 
 scarcity, is to be looked for, more or less severe, followed 
 sooner or later by pestilence " : — " War seems looming in 
 the distance " : — " Fearful trials now threaten religion ; but 
 it passes through them undcstroyed, though suflFering ": — 
 " There are signs in the heavens which forebode evil ; 
 eclipses and falling stars ; earthquakes and tempests ": — 
 " Tidings from the East trouble the minds of men": — and 
 so on. So Moore's Almanack. And what the substance 
 of the prophecies of the Apocalyptic Seals and Trumpets, 
 on your understanding of them ? " Wars, famines, and 
 pestilences are to be expected, sometimes more, sometimes 
 
CONCL.] ANTl-ALFORDIAN APOCALYPTIC CONCLUSION. 143 
 
 less severe, throughout the coming future ; and persecu- 
 tions, too, of Christians : but Christianity, notwithstanding, 
 still advances successfully. Then, in fine, come eclipses of 
 the sun and moon, and falhng stars, and earthquakes, the 
 proximate signs of Christ's coming; but with judgments 
 yet additional to follow : some four on earth, sea, rivers, and 
 heavenly luminaries, in type of life's accessories ; some two 
 on life itself; the latter of the two being a judgment from the 
 East." ' — And then, as to all that concerns the Beast in the 
 second division of the Apocalyptic prophecy, though pur- 
 porting in the main to explain it of the Papacy in the first 
 instance, and of some future supposed Antichrist after- 
 wards, yet is your exposition such a medley of confusion, 
 with reference of the same symbol to the Roman heathen 
 power and the Homan Papal power, — or to the Roman 
 Papal power and a supposed future Antichrist, — that, as a 
 prophecy of anything that has yet appeared in the history 
 of the Church and Christendom, it is absolutely worthless.^ 
 Whether, then, as regards the primary part of the Apoca- 
 lypse, or the second, can we believe this to have been 
 God's promised and divinely-inspired revelation of the 
 events of the coming future ? 
 
 On the contrary, on my exposition of the prophecy, there 
 is nothing in the grand mutations and events that have 
 marked the history of the professing Christian Church and 
 Roman world connected with it, from St. John's time down 
 even to the present, that was not prefigured in the Apoca- 
 lypse. So as regards the very varying fortunes of the 
 Roman heathen empire in the two centuries between St. 
 
 ' See on this my first Letter, and the Alfordian Apocalyptic Schedule, 
 which is given at its conclusion, p. 21. — Let not our Lord's prophecy, 
 Matt, xxiv., be suggested as a parallel. What He there said was not as a 
 professed continuous prophecy of the events of the coming future down to 
 the consimnnation ; but simply a statement of what would not be a sign of 
 His immediate second advent. 
 
 ^ See the conclusion of my second Letter, pp. 37 — 49. 
 
144 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART III. 
 
 John and Constantine ; and then the great Coiistantinian 
 revolution, and subsequent irruptions successively of Goths, 
 Saracens, and Turks : — also, as regards the Christian 
 Church, its faithfulness and persecutions in the first in- 
 stance ; then, on the Empire becoming in profession Chris- 
 tian, its gradual apostasy to a pseudo-Christian heathenism ; 
 and, at length, the development of the Papal Antichrist at 
 Rome as its head. Thus comj^rehensive (as I understand 
 them) are the Apocalyptic prefigurations of the future, 
 considered as a whole ; at the same time that they are so 
 distinct and graphic, in particular, and so fitting in each 
 case into their proper c/^ro;2o/oj7/c(2/ position, that not one can 
 be applied (with at all the same exactness)^ to any other 
 historical event, or people, than that to which I have ap- 
 plied it : while, moreover, it is in the highest sense of the 
 word, i.e. the Christian sense, ^^^'^^^osophic ; the causes, as 
 vrell as results, being set forth ; and these not mere second 
 causes, but the ultimate cause, and reasons for it, in the 
 counsels of God himself. If the evidence only be sufficient 
 to authenticate it, you cannot but acknowledge that this 
 would be indeed a revelation of the future worthy of the 
 Divine Spirit as its inditer ; — as worthy as that which you 
 have imagined is unworthy. So that the only remaining 
 question is as to the sufficiency of the evidence. 
 
 And, on this vital point, I must again and again remind 
 you that the grand evidence is that of coincidences between 
 the Apocalyptic figurations and the historic facts that they 
 are applied to ; — coincidences, I mean, such as are irrefrag- 
 able, distinct, peculiar. Now of these I have in the two 
 preceding Letters enumerated not less than some scvenf//ov 
 eifjhtij : — say twenty-five or thirty for the Seals, twenty for 
 the Trumpets, the remainder for the prophecies connected 
 
 ' In Ly far tlie larger number of cases the prophecy is in its details 
 altogether iua2)plicaLle otherwise than to the subjects and events to which 
 I apply it. 
 
CONCL.] ANTI-ALFORDIAN APOCALYPTIC CONCLUSION. 145 
 
 with the Apocalyptic Beast, or Antichrist. I have certainly 
 in this not overstated. Besides which, there is the strong 
 corroborative internal evidence of all being thus consistent 
 with itself; all bound together as one in a simple but 
 beautiful arrangement : — the prefigurations being consecu- 
 tive down to the 7th Trumpet : then, (the Beast from the 
 Ahyss, that grand subject of Old Testament as well as New 
 Testament prophecy, having been just mentioned under the 
 6th Trumpet, at a period of time at which its actings Avere 
 prominent in Christendom, but only cursorily mentioned, 
 so as not to interrupt the continuous progress of the 
 Trumpet prefigurations,) a supplemental series being added 
 with full explanation about that Beast, inclusive of the various 
 phases of his existence, from first to last; and afterwards 
 the two series alike converging, to figure the ending of the 
 great mundane Providential drama. I pray you, Mr. Dean, 
 carefully to consider the Apocalyptic Chart prefixed to my 
 Exposition, with its two parallel lines of prophecy, and the 
 multitudinous events in either, all in meet chronological 
 arrangement, in order the better to familiarize yourself 
 with what I say of both its historical and internal evidence : 
 not forgetting, let me add, the comparison of it with the 
 Schedule of your own Apocalyptic Exposition, given chro- 
 nologically at p. 21 of these Letters; as perhaps the very 
 best means of deepening in your mind the impression that 
 I desire. 
 
 And what, then, when you have thus really familiarized 
 yourself with the evidence of truth in the " H. A." ? Of 
 course it will be your part, as a lover of truth, to test the 
 accuracy of any of my historic statements, especially of the 
 more striking and important of them, if there appear to 
 you to be any reasonable ground for questioning it ; 
 then to see if I fairly deduce from the several Apocalyptic 
 figurations that which I affirm to correspond with the 
 
146 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [pART III. 
 
 history.' And here it is very possible that a really candid 
 and honest inquirer may now and then hesitate, where for 
 my own part /see no reason for hesitation. Strong indeed 
 is my conviction that such cases will be comparatively very 
 few. But, supposing the case to occur, what then is the 
 course to be pursued ? To say, " I have found a weak 
 point, or hit a blot ; " and so to pronounce against the 
 whole"? There have been professed critics that have done 
 this ; done it avowedly. But not so, surely, a wise man, or 
 real lover of truth. AVith such an one it will be a 
 necessity, from his very love of truth, conscientiously to 
 consider the whole evidence together ; — the multitudinous 
 points of evidence to which he can see no fair objection, as 
 well as the few to which he thinks he may fairly object : 
 — just as does an English judge, in summing up on an 
 intricate case, involving much circumstantial evidence. 
 Wise and just are the remarks of Bishop Butler on this 
 point. " Objectors may say that the conformity between 
 the prophecies and the event is by accident : but there are 
 many instances in which such conformity itself cannot be 
 denied." And he then speaks of the impression to be 
 derived from the multitude of apparent coincidences, in a 
 long scries of prophecies, some vast, some minute ; and the 
 improbability of their being all accidental. It is on the 
 effect of the ivhole, not on single coincidences, he observes, 
 that the argument depends. Bishop Butler is of course 
 speaking of Scripture prophetic evidence generally ; not of 
 the particular case of the Apocalyptic prophecy. But his 
 remarks, I may truly say, apply to the evidence of the 
 Apocalyptic prophecy with peculiar force and propriety. 
 
 ' Let nie observe, that the usual process with me in the formation of my 
 Apocalyptic views was the reverse of this : my habit having been tirst 
 to deduce what a])peared to me deducible from the piophfcy, then to 
 consult and com])are the Jiage of history. 
 
CONCL.J ANTI-ALFORDIAN APOCALYPTIC CONCLUSION. 147 
 
 Is it too much, Mr. Dean, to hope (let me at any rate 
 indulge myself in so hoping until I hear from yourself to the 
 contrary) that you will both thus appreciate, and thus 
 apply, that learned Prelate's remarks? This done, the 
 result will be necessarily, I think, the entire abandon- 
 ment of your own Apocalyptic Scheme, and adoption too of 
 mine : not without regret for having so often misrepre- 
 sented it ; and everywhere done it, and the cause of 
 truth in it, so little justice. — Painful no doubt in such case 
 will be the effort. But will it not be appreciated by Him 
 who is himself supremely the Truth, and the lover of truth, 
 especially when followed out at some cost by His servants ? 
 Moreover, how else can you effectually undo the evil that 
 may very possibly have resulted in the professing Church from 
 your setting forth of error on this book of divine revelation, and 
 depreciation of what at length you come to recognize as 
 truth ? Then, instead of your appearing as an antagonist, and 
 so furnishing to Dr. A. Stanley, and others too, it may be, 
 the occasion of sneeringly alluding to our respective Apoca- 
 lyptic expositions as if each alike incredible, (a strange 
 collocation, as I have said in the Preface to my new Edition 
 of the Horae Apoc, of the proofless with that in which 
 proof is almost superabundant,) and so a fresh illustration 
 of the hopeless diversity of Apocalyptic interpretation, and 
 consequent impossibility of any use of this prophecy as an 
 evidence of the divine origin of Christianity against our 
 modern sceptics, there would be the satisfaction of our 
 standing on this same platform together, in defence of our 
 most holy faith. — Not indeed that I feel the need of any 
 such support, or alliance. Too fully am I conscious of the 
 strength of my case to have the slightest fear, even were I 
 to stand alone in this confidence in its strength, (which is 
 very very far from the fact,) as to the issue of any the most 
 searching, if only honest and intelligent, investigation into 
 
 L 2 
 
148 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART III. 
 
 its truth.' And, after the settlement of the question as 
 between our two selves, I shall hope (as I have also said in 
 that same Preface) that Dr. A. Stanley will essay the 
 justification of his rash dictum, and so give me the oppor- 
 tunity of settling the question with him. The real battle, I 
 repeat, nuist be on the truth of the coincidences asserted by 
 nie between the prophecy and history : and sure I am that no 
 man can disprove their existence, and consequently over- 
 throw the proof of supernatural foreknowledge that I have 
 argued from them as attaching to the revealcr of the pro- 
 phecy ; for none can test them more strictly than I have done 
 myself. And when, on this testing, they are found true, 
 if any man choose to ascribe them to chance, it is evident 
 that he might just as well ascribe to chance the many and 
 cmious fittings of a steam-engine, or a watch. 
 
 II. And now as to the bearing of this Review of your 
 Apocalyptic exposition on 
 
 YOUR GENERAL GREEK TESTAMENT COMMENTARY. 
 
 Of course the Apocalypse is a Book of the New Testa- 
 ment in many respects quite peculiar, and one of cor- 
 respondingly peculiar difficulties to the Expositor. So that 
 his failure in expounding it, however total, may arise from 
 defects such as might be comparatively innocuous in his 
 treatment of other of its sacred books. But, in truth, 
 among the causes of failm^e in your Apocalyptic Exposition 
 there are some Avhich one might feel sure, even prior to 
 examination, must needs have operated unfavourably in 
 
 ' In all future controversy on the truth of my Ex])osition, let me request 
 that the 5th edition be referred to ; as being tliat on wliich I have most fidly 
 Met forth the evidence, and with my nnwt maturctl views on a few points 
 less correctly stated before. 
 
CONCL.] ALFORd's GENERAL N. T. COMMENTARY. 149 
 
 your dealing with other books of the New Testament. So, 
 more especially, in regard of the precipitation and incon- 
 siderateness too often manifest, as we have seen, in your 
 formation of opinion, and its positive and dogmatic expres- 
 sion, in your Apocalypse : — a precipitation and inconsiderate- 
 ness of opinion arising in some measure, probably, from 
 undue exhaustion of your time and strength, whether with 
 correct or incorrect results, on small manuscriptal varia- 
 tions and as small grammatical niceties ; and to which may 
 be partially at least ascribed the inaccuracies, inconsisten- 
 cies, and misrepresentations too, (of myself at least,) in your 
 Commentary : but of the dogmatic and oracular expression 
 of which one cannot but see the origin in an unwarranted 
 and overweening self-confidence.^ Nor, indeed, (forgive my 
 saying so) does there appear in your Apocalyptic Com- 
 mentary the presiding influence of that strong common 
 sense which is essential everywhere to a dependible expo- 
 sition of Holy Scripture : — an Anglo-Saxon characteristic 
 this markedly observable in the more eminent of our 
 English expositors, such as Whitby for example ; and as 
 markedly wanting too generally, if I may judge from my 
 limited knowledge of them, (though of course with notable 
 exceptions,)^ in German expositors : with which school 
 
 ' Though speaking myself with confidence of the truth of my own 
 Ai^ocalyptic Exposition, I trust that I have not done so overweeningly, in 
 violation of my own implied moral rule of feeling and conduct ; or for- 
 gotten Locke's admirable inculcation of the knmvledge of our ignorance, 
 as one important element in true self-knowledge, and the modesty con- 
 sequently due to others in the expression of one's opinions. From the first 
 I have felt, and said, that my readers ought to take nothing on my dictum ; 
 but referred them to the evidence apj^ended at large, for their own con- 
 sideration and judgment. After all that has passed since however, in th( 
 way of controversy, I cannot but be conscious that no one has been able t( 
 shake the mass of that evidence ; and so feel it to be as on a rock. 
 
 ^ Very specially in the diplomatic department of Scripture textua 
 criticism ; in which the names of Griesbach, Lachmann, Tischendorf stan< . 
 out so pre-eminent. 
 
150 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART III. 
 
 you, in common with other of our English theologians now- 
 a-days, think it well almost exclusively to ally yourself ; as if 
 a mark, and indeed requirement, of scholarship. These 
 defects, I say, in your Apocalypse, are such as could not fail, 
 one might be sure even a priori, to operate injuriously in 
 yowY (/cneral New Testament Commentary : — a presumption 
 fully confirmed by a careful and critical examination of 
 other parts of it. And, under the peculiar circumstances 
 of our Church in the present time, I feel it a duty not to 
 conclude these Letters without a voice of warning on the 
 subject to our theological students, and younger brethren in 
 the ministry ; among whom your Greek Testament Exposi- 
 tion is often cited as authority. In proof that I have not 
 thus spoken without reason, and as what is alike due to 
 you and to myself in reference to it, I shall subjoin a brief 
 series of critical remarks that I have noted down on your 
 comments upon St. Mark's Gospel : selecting a Gospel for 
 my remarks as more easy, for the most part, and favourable 
 to the Expositor, than one of the Epistles with its deeper 
 doctrinal difficulties ; and Mark's Gospel in particular, as 
 by much the shortest, and consequently most suitable to 
 the limits within which I must confine myself. 
 
 In the prosecution of my object it may be well perhaps 
 first to giv-e a distinct and separate notice of your mainly 
 anti-Petrine theory on the origin of Maries Gospel ; then a 
 selection from my more general series of criticisms ; and 
 after them, distinctly and separately also, to observe on your 
 view and treatment of the chief ^Joints of discrejmacy in 
 St. Mark from the corresponding narratives in the three 
 other Gospels. 
 
 1. In your Prolegomena you speak of "the universal 
 belief in the ancient Church that St. Mark's Gospel was 
 written under the influence, and almost by the dictation, of 
 
CONCL.] ALFORU'S GENERAL N. T. COMMENTARY. 151 
 
 Peter:" but add that all the patristic reports to that 
 efiFect " must be judged according to the phoinomena pre- 
 sented hy the Gospel itself : " — and that, although " it is 
 possible that some of the narratives in it may have been 
 derived from that Apostle," both " the various mentions, 
 and omissions of mention, of incidents in which that 
 Apostle was directly concerned are such as can in no way 
 be consistently accounted for on the hypothesis of Peter's 
 hand having been directly employed in its compilation," 
 or " of his having exercised any considerable influence 
 over its writing : " seeing that " his own individual 
 remembrances must unavoidably have introduced addi- 
 tions so considerable, as to have given to the Gospel 
 more original matter than it actually possesses." ' In 
 illustration and proof of this your anti-Petrine (at 
 least mainly anti-Petrine) theory, the reader of course 
 looks, agreeably with your own statement of what 
 must be regarded as the decisive testing, for your notices 
 of the internal evidence supporting it in the progress of 
 your Commentary on the Gospel. And he finds the notices 
 on the subject to be in detail as follows. — -1. On Mark i. 16, 
 19, where the calling is narrated of Simon and Andrew, 
 James and John, you observe ; " May we not say that this 
 account, so carefully corrected and made accurate, {i.e. as 
 compared with St. Matthew's,) even to the omitting of the 
 name (viz. that of Peter after Simon) which, though gene- 
 rally known, was not yet formally given, came from Peter 
 originally?"^ — 2. On Mark iii. 16, which mentions Jesus' 
 giving the name Peter to Simon, you say ; " This, at all 
 events, does not look like the testimony of Peter." ^ 
 — 3. Mark v. 42, " And immediately the damsel arose 
 
 ' Proleg., pp. 33, 34, 35. 
 
 ^ Why from Peter, rather than from John or James ; on youi" hypo- 
 thesis of Mark's general independence of Peter in the construction of his 
 Gospel ? 
 
 ' Why not ? Your mode of reasoning seems to me very incomprehen- 
 
152 APOCALYPSTS ALFORDIANA. [PART III. 
 
 and walked." On this you remark; "The whole account 
 is very probably derived from the testimony of Peter, who 
 was present."^ — 4. On Mark vi. 31 — 34, describing the 
 pitiable state of the multitudes before Christ's miraculously 
 feeding them, you say, " Do we not trace here the warm 
 heart of Peter?" ^ — 5. On Mark vi. 50, stating how the 
 disciples feared on seeing Jesus walking on the sea, and 
 His words of comfort to them, " It is I, be not afraid," you 
 observe; "After this follows {i.e. in Matthew xiv. 28) the 
 history respecting Peter's attempt at walking on the water 
 to Jesus, tvhich mi (/Jit naturally be omitted here, if this 
 Gospel w^ere draAvn up under his inspection." ^ — 6. On the 
 omission in Mark viii. 29 of Christ's praise of and promise 
 to Peter, after his confession, " Thou art the Christ," &c. 
 (an omission also found in St. Luke,) you say ; " No stress 
 must be laid on this as to the (Petrine) character of Mark's 
 Gospel'"'— 7. Mark x. 28: "We have left all," &c. 
 " Here," you observe, " a saying of Peter is reported, with- 
 out any distinction indicating that he had a share in the 
 
 sible. The omission of the surname Peter, on the first mention of Simon, 
 at a time when it had not in fact been given him by Christ, warrants us, 
 you argue, in ascribing that part of Mark's narrative to the apostle Peter ; 
 while the mention of the gi\'ing him the surname, when it was given, is 
 "ai all events" unlike Peter's testimony. 
 
 ' Why so, on your generally anti-Petrine hypothesis of the origin of 
 Mark's Gospel? See Note ■, p. 151. 
 
 ^ Had not St. John as warm a heart as Peter ? 
 
 * Why so ? If you mean the omission to have arisen naturally from 
 Peter's modesty, we should remember that the facts of the omitted narra- 
 tive exhibited Peter's weakness, as well as primary ardour of faith. More- 
 over, since it is all but incredible that Peter should not have mentioned 
 this in the unreserved intimacy of his intercourse with St. Mark, that 
 Evangelist had certainly himself no motive of modesty to prevent him from 
 nan-ating it ; especially if he pul)lished his Gospel, so as Eusebius says he 
 did, after Peter's decease. 
 
 * If it is to Peter^s modesty that you would ascribe certain omissions in 
 Mark's narrative, on the hypothesis (an hypothesis with which you so 
 strangely play fast aud loose) of his inspection of it, this omission, of all 
 others, seems to be the one on which stress might most be laid. 
 
CONCL.] ALFORd's GENERAL N. T. COMMENTARY. 153 
 
 report." ' — 8. Mark xiv. 13. On the narrative here given 
 of Christ's sending two disciples to obtain a room for the 
 celebration of the Passover, you thus connnent : " If this 
 Gospel, as traditionally reported, was drawn up under the 
 superintendence of Peter, we could hardly have failed 
 to have had the names of the two disciples given." ^ — 
 9. Mark xvi. 7, " Go, tell the disciples, and Peter, that he 
 goeth before you into Galilee." On this we have your 
 remark : " It must not be concluded from this (this speci- 
 fication you mean, I presume, of Peter) that we have a trace 
 of Peter's hand in the narrative." ^ 
 
 These, I beheve, are all your direct notices of the 
 internal marks of evidence in St. Mark's Gospel bearing 
 on the question of the measure of Peter's connexion with 
 it.^ And of these it will be seen that, on your oion shoiv- 
 
 ' What particular "distinction" do you here imagine, such as would have 
 indicated Peter as in part the reporter ? 
 
 ^ Wliy so ? I must again ask. Do you mean because of Peter having 
 been one of the two, as we read Luke xxii. 8, John being the other? 
 According to your mode of reasoning elsewhere we might have seen in the 
 omission Peter's modesty, and consequently an argument in it for Peter's 
 supervision of Mark's narrative. It seems to me probable that here, just 
 as in the case of a similar mission of two disciples told of in Matt. xxi. 1, 
 the names are uumentioned because of the unimportance of any such 
 specification. 
 
 ^ I must confess that this is just that notice (a notice peculiar to St. 
 Mark) which most of all looks to me like what may have originated from 
 St. Peter himself ; especially when taken in connexion with the repoi-t of 
 Peter's denial of Christ, given by Mark as well as the other evan- 
 gelists. 
 
 * You add here and there certain notices of one and another graphic 
 particular in Mark's descriptions, as indicative of its having been drawn up 
 by an eye-witness; meaning, I suppose, St. Peter. So in the account of 
 the woman with the issue of blood, v. 32, " And Jesus looked round to see 
 her that had done this." " Peculiar," you observe, " to Mark, and indica- 
 tive of an eye-witnessP But how so peculiar to Mark ? Matthew, ix. 22 
 has what seems very similar ; " And Jesus turning, and seeing her, said. Be 
 of good cheer, daughter," &c. And indeed both Matthew and Luke are 
 often similarly graphic elsewhere ; e.g. Matt. xiv. 30, xvi. 23 ; Luke vi. 10 
 
154 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [pART III. 
 
 ing, and according to your own inferences from them, 
 (gromidless indeed, and inconsistent, as my Foot-Notes 
 show those several inferences to have been,) the prepon- 
 derance of the evidence seems rather to be in favour of a 
 Pefrine inspiration ^ in the main, than against it : — Nos. 1, 
 3, 4, 5, being in its favour, as you state your opinion ; 
 Nos. 6, 7, 9 neutral ; Nos. 2 and 8 only against. Now 
 in a case of this kind, where the internal evidence is thus 
 doubtful, it is the part of -wisdom to rest more on the 
 external evidence of historical testimony. And thus we 
 may with Papias and Euscbius (not inconsistently with its 
 internal phsenomena) regard Mark's Gospel as that which in- 
 corporated in it probably many of the airofivqvevfiaTa orally 
 delivered by Peter to St. Mark ; though drawn up as a book, 
 from this and other sources, after Peter's martyrdom-.^ — a 
 conclusion this somewhat more Petrine than your own. 
 But it is your reasonings on the several items of internal 
 evidence which I have had chiefly in view under this head. 
 And, let me ask, can it be the mind of a true master in 
 Israel that reasons thus loosely and inconclusively ; and 
 thinks it well even to print such reasonings in a Scripture 
 Commentary, professedly designed for the use and guidance 
 of theological students ? 
 
 vii. 14, 44, &c. ; though you give them no credit foi' it. (See Prolog., 
 pp. 38, 39.) 
 
 It is rather remarkable (though you yourself take no notice of it) 
 that, in Mark's account of Peter's denial of Christ, he omits all mention of 
 that most remarkable of all such graphic notices of Christ's looking on the 
 particular object of His regard ; I mean the one recorded in Luke xxii. 61, 
 " And the Lord turned, and looked on Peter." 
 
 ' Let me be excused for using this word, as well expressive of my mean- 
 ing, in its modern French Imperial sense. 
 
 * In this case we nuist suj)pose Luke's Gospel to have been wi-itten before 
 St. Mark's : as St. Luke's Gt)spel preceded his Book of the Acts ; and the latter 
 fixes its own date as soon after the end of St. Paul's first imju'isonmeut at 
 Rome, and consequently before that Apostle's and St. Peter's martyrdoms. 
 
CONCL.] ALFORD's GENERAL N. T. COMMENTARY. 155 
 
 2. Now for a selection from a brief series of particular 
 criticisms penned by me when going through your Annota- 
 tions on St. Mark ; and which all tend to confirm the 
 opinion that I have expressed as to the want of due con- 
 sideration and judgment manifest in your general Commen- 
 tary.^ 
 
 {a.) Mark i. 10: "So Jesus was baptized by John: 
 
 Kai, evdv<i avajSaivwv eic tov v8aT0<;, eiSev . . . to Trvev/xa coy 
 irepis-epav Kara^aivov et? avrov Kat (pcovrj eyevero k.t.X." 
 
 On this the question arises, Which of the two is meant as 
 having seen this, Christ or John ? You say : " It is very 
 improbable that ava/3acvcov is to be taken absolutely, and 
 John to be understood before ulev : therefore Mark must 
 be supposed to have taken the oral account (whose oral 
 account ?) verbatim, and applied it to Jesus ; avrov meaning 
 /timself." Now, as regards grammatical considerations, 
 that the participle in the nominative may be taken abso- 
 lutely is unquestionable, (though the construction is rare,) 
 and you yourself indeed elsewhere so apply it : ^ while, on the 
 other hand, the use of avrov for avrov is surely, to say the 
 least, quite as rare and difficult. Balancing these diffi- 
 culties, there is in favour of Jo/m the Bajjtist being meant 
 as the seer the very notable statement in St. John's 
 Gospel, not only of the Baptist as having seen it, but of 
 his seeing it being the subject of Divine promise, even as 
 a sign from heaven that Jesus was indeed the Messiah.^ 
 Besides which, if the dove lighted and rested on Jesus' 
 
 ' In the following ci'iticisms it is the 3d edition of your fii'st volume that 
 I refer to. 
 
 ^ See my notice {g) below, of your critical annotation on a(f>f8p(ova 
 Ka6api^coi>. 
 
 ^ John i. 33 : " And I knew him not : bvit he that sent me to baptize 
 with water said to me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, 
 and abiding on him, that same is he who baj^tizeth with the Holy Spirit. 
 And I saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God." 
 
156 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART ITT, 
 
 head, it is difficult to understand how Jesus, humanly 
 speaking, coiTld have seen the dove's alighting and resting 
 there. Your judgment on this point seems to me un- 
 sound. 
 
 {d.) i. 12. After Christ's 40 days of temptation, you 
 explain the Tempter's at last " coming to Iliin," ]\Iatt. iv. 3, 
 as meant in the sense of His " becoming visible and 
 audible." Is Satan's becoming visible and audible to be 
 understood then in Mark iv. 15, "Then comefh Satan, and 
 taketh away the seed," &c., and similar passages? 
 
 (c.) iv. 29, In the parable of the seed sown, "growing 
 up no one knows how," St, Mark speaks tliTTS of the time 
 
 of reaping ; " oTav TrapaSo) 6 Kapiro^ evOvs airo^eWei to 8pe- 
 TTOvov, OTC irapes'TjKev 6 OepiafjLO<;' " When the fruit IS 
 brought forth, immediately he puts in the sickle," &c. On 
 this you refer, as parallels, to Joel iii. 13 and Rev. xiv. 
 14, 15 : references not very consistent ; forasmuch as Joel's 
 is plainly a gathering of the wicked in God's harvest of 
 judgment, that in Rev. xiv., according to you, a gathering 
 of the good} For you notice my argument to the con- 
 trary, drawn from the fact of the harvest of the earth being 
 there said to be dried up, only to set it aside as if with no 
 foundation in truth. ^ Let me then beg you to compare 
 with this the notice in the text as to the fit time of reaping 
 good grain. So soon as. the fruit puts itself forth, then is 
 to be the reaping : not, observe, a waiting till the plant be 
 dried up. And, indeed, you have only to consult the 
 farmers on your own Deanery lands on the subject ; and you 
 will find that it is while there still remains some sap, and 
 consequently greenness, in the lower part of the stalk, that 
 
 ' See p. 19, suprcb. 
 
 * " The distinction in the passages cited by Mr. Elliott from Bernard, &c., 
 ' magis siccic ad ignem (pitlm albte ad messeni,' does not seem really to exist." 
 So in your Apocalyptic Commentary on Apoc. xiv. 15. 
 
CONCL.] ALFORd's GENERAL N. T. COMMENTARY. 157 
 
 they deem tlie time to have come for putting in the sickle.' 
 The question as to the character of " the harvest of the 
 earth " in the Apocalypse is, as you well know, of consider- 
 able importance, in reference to the order of events in the 
 coming consummation ; and therefore one which you ought 
 specially to have well considered, ere pronouncing in autho- 
 ritative tone upon it, against another expositor's adverse 
 evidence and argument. 
 
 {d.) VI. 21 : ryevo/jievrj^i '7]fjb€pa<i evKacpov, "a convenietit day 
 having come, Herod made a feast," &c. ; the conveniency 
 of the day being, you explain, " for the purpose of 
 Herodias ; " and that it *' shows that the dance, &c., had 
 been all ^jreviouslf/ contrived by her." But it is surely 
 more natural to refer the conveniency of the day to him 
 who chose it for the feast to his nobles, viz.. King Herod : 
 and that Herodias only took advantage of it for her pur- 
 pose, after it had been thus fixed by him. 
 
 {e.) vi. 35. On occasion of Christ's miracle in feeding the 
 5,000, you assign the nearness of the Passover^ as account- 
 ing for " such a multitude being on the move." But was 
 the Passover similarly near, and the cause of the gathering 
 of the multitude, on occasion of the feeding of the 4,000, 
 recorded in Matt. xv. 29 — 39 ? Rather, in either case, I 
 conceive, we may assign the cause of the gathering to the 
 fame of Jesus ; just as you yourself do elsewhere, e.^. on 
 Mark viii. 32. 
 
 (/.) vii. 4, ^es-cov. This, you say, " is a corruption of 
 seootarius!' Rather leo-xT^? was the regular Greek word 
 for that Roman measure, as will be found on reference to 
 any of the Greek writers on weights and measures, and no 
 
 * So Thorley's Farmers' Almanac ; — " Do not let the corn become too 
 ripe before you cut it:" just as of old VTi-gil, Pliny, Columella ; cited by 
 me in the " H. A." 
 
 ^ In John vi. 4 we have this note of time. 
 
158 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART III. 
 
 corruption of it. Is the French sou, properly speaking, a 
 corrujjtion of solidus ? or the EngHsh ounce of tmcia ? 
 
 (y.) Vll. 19, et? Tov a(f>e8poiva eKiropeverai Kadapt^cav (or 
 Ka$apc^ov) iravra ra ^pwfiara. On this you observe : " KaOa- 
 pi^wv appUes to a^ehpwva by a construction . . . Uke that in 
 
 Soph. Antlg., Xofyot, ^ev aWrfkoiaiv eppodovv KaKot, (pvXa^ 
 
 eXejx^'^v <})v\aKa:" i.e. taking KaOapi^oov as a nominative 
 absolute. And you add : " What is stated is 2Jf'ysicany 
 true. The a^eSpcov is that which by the removal of the 
 part carried off purifies the meat : the portion available for 
 nourishment being in its passage converted into chyle, and 
 the remainder (the Ka6apfx,a) being cast out." Now ought you 
 not to have here premised what you suppose to be the sense 
 of a(f)eBpcov ; that so your readers might be able to under- 
 stand, and judge of, the correctness of your statement ? 
 Says Mr. Shadwell, in his critical comment on the verse, 
 and 1 am happy here (and indeed elsewhere also) to avail 
 myself of the criticisms of so acute a Greek scholar : ' 
 " A^ehpwv is a refinement upon Koirpcov; meaning t/ie 
 jjiace on which the K07rpo<i falls, airo t??? eS/ja?." And it 
 
 ' I refer to the " New Translation of the Gospels of St. Matthew and 
 St. Mark, with Notes ;" (Walker and Co., Strand) by the late Lancelot 
 Shadwell, Esq., son to the Vice-Chan ceUor of Enghind of the same name, 
 and formerly Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. 
 
 Both the translation and the notes evidence Mr. S.'s acuteness and scholar- 
 shi]) ; and at the same time his thorough honesty of mind, and jn-ofound de- 
 votedness of heart and soul to the Lord Jesus Christ, Jiud the glorious Gospel 
 of His salvation. It was a subject of much regi-et to me (and I ventured 
 often so to express my opinion to him) that qualities so valuable should be tar- 
 nished by a spirit almost of acrimony in his criticisms on your Commentaiy, 
 and indeed yourself ; as well <as against whatever in the Church of England, 
 and its functionaries, he judged to be antichristian, and oj)posed to the 
 simplicity of the Gospel of Christ. And I have a melancholy satisfaction 
 in stating, that in a Letter to me, written not very long before his death, he 
 expressed his acquiescence in my judgment on the point referred to ; so that, 
 had it pleased God to spare his life, we might probably have had the advan- 
 tage of his learned and acute criticisms on the New Testament, j)urified of all 
 bitterness and acrimony. 
 
CONCL.] ALFORD's GENERAL N. T. COMMENTARY. 159 
 
 is not the a^ehpwv, lie proceeds most justly to argue, which 
 purifies all meats eaten by a man ; but the e/cySoX?;, or 
 casting out, of the refuse and excrement. Hence the 
 necessity of taking the reading KaOapi^ov in the neuter, for 
 which there is good MS. authority; the Kadapi^ov having 
 reference to the whole preceding clause, " it goes out into 
 the a(f)€8pa)va": this, or the separation from the chyle, and 
 going out and riddance of the excrementitious part, being 
 the means and mode of leaving the nutritious part pure for 
 man's nourishment. 
 
 {Jt) vii. 37. "He hath done all things well." On 
 this you remark ; " This work (viz. of healing the deaf 
 and dumb) was properly and worthily compared with that 
 first one of creation, of which it is said that all was very 
 good." I see not what reason you have for supposing St. 
 Mark to have meant in his words any such comparison ; nor 
 do I believe that he had the slightest thought of it in his 
 mind. 
 
 {i) ix. 1. On Christ's declaration, " There be some 
 standing here which shall not taste of death till they see 
 the kingdom of God coming with power," or, as Matthew 
 expresses it, " till they see the Son of man coming in his 
 kingdom," (a declaration followed in all the three Evange- 
 lists with an account of the transfiguration as that which 
 occurred a week afterwards,) your comment is as follows. 
 " This declaration refers in its full meaning certainly not 
 to the transfiguration which follows, for that could in no 
 sense, except as being a foretaste, (see Peter's own allusion 
 to it, 2 Pet. i. 17, where he evidently treats it as such,) be 
 named [?] the Son of man coming in His kingdom, — besides 
 that the expression, ' some standing here shall not taste of 
 death till,' &c., indicates a distant event, — but to the 
 destruction of Jerusalem, and full manifestation of the 
 kingdom of Christ hy the annihilation of the Jewish jyolitg ; 
 
160 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART III. 
 
 which event was a type and earnest of the final coming of 
 Christ." In which explanation each statement is, I con- 
 ceive, erroneous ; and your conclusion as to the main point 
 intended, though said to be certain^ the direct contrary to 
 truth, 1st, Peter does not speak of what occurred at the 
 transfiguration as 'ix. foretaste, but an anticipative view, of 
 Christ's glory in His coming kingdom. How could that 
 have been a foretaste of it to him and his two brother 
 disciples, when they were oppressed hy sleep aiidfear during 
 it ? 2dly, what is said of their not tasting of death till 
 they had seen the promised manifestation does by no 
 means necessarily indicate a distant event ; but only that 
 the beatific vision, to which death is usually the necessary 
 precursor, should be seen by a favoured few of those around 
 Him before death. Did the divine assurance to Simeon 
 that he should not see death till he had seen the Lord 
 Christ indicate a distant event? 3dly, whereas the de- 
 struction of Jerusalem is, if I mistake not, nowhere spoken 
 of as Christ's coming in His kingdom,' (and most inapt 
 truly would be such an application of that catastrophe, 
 above all if spoken of, so as by you, as its fall manifesta- 
 tion,) St. Peter's words imply that at the transfiguration 
 there was an anticipaiive manifestation of it ; indeed such 
 an one that the remembrance never left him as an ocular 
 assurance of its certainty. It needs, I think, only to read 
 his words to show this. " We have not followed cun- 
 ningly-devised fables when we made known to you the 
 
 ' Compare Matt. vi. 10, "May thy kingdom come ;" Luke xxiii. 42, 
 " Lord, remember me when thou comest in thy kingdom " : also, in Luke 
 xix. 12, tlie parable spoken by Christ, on seeing the exj)ectation then rife 
 that the kingdom of God would soon a])pear : — a parable in which He 
 likened himself to a nobleman who went into a distant country, to receive 
 to himself a kingdom, and then return ; which return, however, was not 
 to occur till long after. Compare too Dan. vii. 13, 14, 27; — a fundamental 
 passage on the time, mode, and nature of Messiah's coming in His kingdom. 
 
CONCL.] ALFORd's GENERAL N. T. COMMENTARY. 161 
 
 power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ ; but we were 
 eyewitnesses of his majesty : for he received from God 
 the Father honour and glory, when there came that voice 
 to him out of the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, 
 &c. And this voice, coming from heaven, we heard when we 
 were with him in the holy mount." Somewhat similarly 
 Isaiah is said " to have seen Christ's glory," {i.e. as inaugu- 
 rated into His earthly kingdom,) when he saw the antici- 
 pative visioti of it recorded in Isa. vi. ^ 
 
 ij) ix. 47. "Rather than having one eye, fiovoj>6a\fjio^, 
 &c." On the parallel passage to this in Matt, xviii. 9 you 
 thus comment ; " Movo(f)daX/jio<i in classical Greek is born 
 blind of one eye : but here it is used for eTepo(l3ddX/j,o<;. See 
 Herod, iii. 116." Not so, replies Shadwell. Herodotus, in 
 the passage referred to, speaks of the Arimaspi, not as bor/i 
 blind of one eye, but as horn loith but one eye : and so too 
 the Cyclops in Ammonius ; which is quite a different thing 
 from being born with two eyes, one of them blind. Again, 
 as to €Tepo(f)Oa\fu,o<i, its meaning is one who having lost the 
 use of one eye, sees only with the other. Now this is not the 
 case figured by Christ. For He speaks of a mmipluckiny 
 out the offending eye, and casting it from him : so that 
 he would then have but one eye; and consequently be 
 /Movocf)da\fio<; in its true classical as well as natural sense, not 
 eTepo(f)da\fjios. We have here in your brief note error on error. 
 
 (/(•) ix. 49, TTvpt a\La6r]creTat. On this we have a fearful 
 comment from you. The fire meant is, you say, the fire of 
 God's holiness. The wicked it consumes. In His saints 
 it burns up whatever is impure and sinful. Then you add ; 
 " Every off'ence and scandal must be burnt out of us before 
 we can enter into life." But, if so, which of ns all, Mr. 
 
 ' The Lord Messiah there appeared to Isaiah on His throne ; and what 
 the throne and kingdom we may iiifer from the cry of the Seraphim, " The 
 whole earth is full of thy glory." 
 
 M 
 
162 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART III. 
 
 Dean, with our many frailties and inconsistencies, in temper 
 perhaps, or conversation, such as may constitute an offence 
 to some about us, and here beset us even to the end, can 
 hope to enter into hfe ? Can you ? Can I ? Or do you 
 look for a purgatorial fire after death, to burn up whatever 
 impurity has not been burnt out here ? Thank God, very 
 different is the mode and ground of salvation set forth in 
 the Gospel. See Rom. viii. 1, 34 ; 1 John ii. 1, 2 ; &c., &c. 
 (/) X. 7. Not a word in your notes here, or in those on 
 the parallel passage in Matt. xix. 3, 5, 10, on the use of 
 avOpwiros for the male of mankind, distinctively, as if any- 
 thing objectionable or peculiar ; though you make objection 
 to the same view of the word, when so taken by me in 
 Apoc. ix. 7. (See p. 80, supra.) 
 
 {)))) X. 8. eaovrat eis aapKa fjiiav. On the parallel and 
 
 similarly expressed sentence in Matt. xix. 5, (and which is 
 
 used also by St. Paul in 1 Cor. vi. 16, Eph. v. 31,) you 
 
 affirm, as from Meyer, " that etvat eis is ?iot Greek, but a 
 
 Hebraism." Are not then such expressions as that in 
 
 James v. 3, et? /xaprvpiov v/xLv €5-ai, good Greek ? I must 
 
 beg altogether to question the correctness of this your 
 
 grammatical dictum. I do not happen to have by me, as 
 
 I write, any classical Greek authors, or to have access to 
 
 them. Else I think I could myself have shown your 
 
 incorrectness by examples of my own selection. I do 
 
 however happen to have your favourite grammarian Winer. 
 
 And from his " New Testament Grammar," p. 196, I 
 
 abstract as follows. " Some have erroneously regarded 
 
 the accusative with et9, in the phrase eivai or yiveaOai et? ti, 
 
 as a Hebraistic circumlocution for the nominative. (Leusden 
 
 Diale.) The greater part of the passages adduced in 
 
 support of this alleged Hebraism arc either quotations from 
 
 the Old Testament, or expressions taken from it, and 
 
 become set forms. (Matt. xix. 5, 1 Cor. vi. 16, Eph. v. 31, 
 
CONCL.] ALFORd's GENERAL N. T. COMMENTARY. 1G3 
 
 Heb. viii. 10, &c.) Here it has been overlooked that 
 lytveaOat eis ti fieri, i.e. abire {inutari) in aliq. (Acts v. 36, 
 John xvi. 20, Rev. viii. 11) is good Greek (Georgi Vind. 
 337, Schwartz Comment. 285), and is used, by later authors 
 at least, even in reference to persons." So 1 Cor. iv. 3, 
 €/j,ot. €i<; eXa^i'S-ov es-tv ; similar to which is Acts xix. 27, ec9 
 ovSev Xoytadrjvai. Compare ^sop. xxiv. 2, et? fiei^ova croi 
 
 (o(ji€\€tav eaojxac ^ and GcQ. Pachymer. i. 345, ea a-v/jbiJ,axov<i 
 avTOL<i 'yivovTat. 
 
 (n) X, 13. You speak of the act of bringing infants to 
 Christ that He should touch them " as seemingly super- 
 stitious." But how so ? Was not the putting hands on 
 any one the accompaniment, even from patriarchal times, 
 of blessing ? And could either the disciples then, or we 
 now, deem the desire of Christ's blessing for our children 
 superstitious.'^ As to what you add of the disciples 
 " despising such interruption in their converse on high and 
 important subjects," it is not merely fancy, but improbable 
 fancy. Rather, as in the case of the blind men, told of 
 Matt. XX. 30, 31, and the Syro-Phoenician woman. Matt. 
 XV. 23, they seem to have deemed it troublesome and 
 intrusive. 
 
 (o) X. 38. " Can ye drink of the cup of which I drink, 
 or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with ? " 
 On the parallel passage to this in Matt. xx. 22, you say; 
 " Stier rightly observes that this answer of our Lord con- 
 
 ' Other grammatical laws ai'e from time to time laid down by you, which 
 are either incorrect, or very loosely and inaccurately expressed. E.g. on 
 Mark ii. 1 ; " ets oikov in doors, as eis aypov to the country, = etr tov oikov, eis 
 rov aypov : the practice of omitting the articles after a lareposition being 
 universal.'''' But how universal ? Is not the insertion of the article just as 
 common : — eis r-qv 'Na^aped, eis ttju Kanepvaovp., eis ttjv epijpov 1 
 
 Again you at times seem to declare against an aorist being ever pro- 
 perly taken in a pluperfect sense : which, of course, if really meant, would 
 be most untrue. 
 
 M 2 
 
164 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIA>'A. [PART III. 
 
 tains in it the kernel (sic) of the doctrine of the Sacraments 
 in the Christian Church." A strange comment by Stier; 
 and stranger still its endorsement, and praise, by Dean 
 Alford. So far as regards a death to sin the baptized have 
 a figure of it in Christian baptism by immersion. (So Rom. 
 vi. 4.) But, as regards Christ's peculiar h^}^i\s,n\m persecu- 
 tio7i, agony, and deatli on the cross, Christian baptism 
 generally neither figures, nor supposes it. It was only the 
 apostles and primitive disciples, as also certain witnesses in 
 aftertimes, that were called to imitation of Christ on this 
 point. Again, as to the other Christian sacrament, its 
 kernel (to use Stier's absurd expression) is this; — that I com- 
 memorate, in drinking of the wine poured out, Christ's 
 having poured out His blood for me ; not that it is a 
 symbol of my having to pour out my blood in His cause. 
 Is it in any other than the above view of the sacra- 
 ments that you yourself have baptized your children ; and 
 that you yourself partake of the wine-cup in the Lord's 
 Supper ? 
 
 (/?) xi. 8. s-i/3a8a'i, rendered hrancltes in om' E. V. On 
 this you say ; " The word, by its dei'ivation from ^e.i^oi (to 
 tread), signifies not merely branches, but branches cut down 
 for the purpose of being littered to loalk on!' But how, 
 specifically, branches cut down to tread on ? Rather, says 
 Mr. Shadwell, citing Hesychius, it means primarily, from 
 the sense of pressing down in the verbal root ^eiBeiv, a bed 
 made, as was common, of rushes, leaves, and twigs ; whence 
 it comes to mean branches full of leaves and twigs, such as a 
 man may lie on. So Sophocles, ^ltttti ye (f)vX\.a<;, 0)9 evavXi^ovTt 
 Tw. — The peculiar propriety of the word, so explained, is very 
 obvious. Branches indiscriminately cut down from trees, 
 and strewed in the way, would necessarily be obstructions 
 in the road. But if mere s-i/3aB€<i, leafy twigs, such as were 
 used for beds, they would offer no such obstructiveness. 
 
CONCL.J ALFORd's GENERAL N. T. COMMENTARY. ]65 
 
 {q) xi. 32. " If we say John Baptist's mission was 
 from men, thei/ feared (ecfio/SowTo) the people." On this 
 change in the verb to the third person you say from Meyer ; 
 " The question is answered d?/ the Evangelist, because no 
 one Hkes openly to ascribe fear to himself." A reason 
 negatived by the corresponding narrative in Matt. xxi. 26, 
 where the consciousness of fear is expressed in the first 
 person ; " If we say from men, we fear (cjjo^ovfieda) the 
 people." 
 
 (r) xii. 4. "Again he sent to them another servant; 
 and him eKe^aXaiwaav, Kai T^rL/xTjaav" Sucli is your text, in 
 
 place of the received text, eKeivovXido/SoXTjaavres eKe^akaiwa-av, 
 Kau aire^eCkav 7]rc/j,cofj,€vov. And on it, and your explanation 
 of €Ke<^aXaLcoaav as struck him on the head, Mr. Shadwell 
 thus remarks. 1. Dean Alford's reading, though given 
 as the result of his own critical examination, is in fact 
 borrowed from Tischendorf's second edition ; who however, 
 in his seventh edition, on maturer consideration, restores 
 the old received text. 2. Though thus in his text abandon- 
 ing the aires^eiKav, yet in his comme7itary Dean A. reasons 
 from it, as if still in the text ; "They did not kill him, but 
 sent him aioay^ 3. As to the sense of Ke^aXatow given by 
 Alford, as if the same as KecpaXc^co, herein following Rosen- 
 miiller, Schleusner, and others, it seems more than doubt- 
 ful : seeing that it is a derivative verb from Ke(f>a\aiov ; not, 
 as «;e-</)aXt^&), from Ke(f}a\r}. And, as Ke^aXaiov signifies a 
 crowning or consummating act, the more natural sense of 
 Ke^aXaiow should correspondingly be, " they consummated 
 their evil treatment by stoning him, and sending him away 
 dishonoured : " the received text being taken as the best. 
 
 {s) xii. 15. On the Herodians' question here, " Shall we 
 pay tribute to Caesar? " you thus comment, at the parallel 
 passage in Matt. xxii. 17: "The latter clause in Christ's 
 answer, ' Render to God the things that are God's,' reaches 
 
1G6 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART III. 
 
 infinitely deeper than the former, ' Render to Ca?sar/ &c. 
 Man is the coinage, and bears the image of God (Gen. 
 i. 27) ; — an image not lost by the fall. (Gen. ix. 6, Acts 
 xvii. 29, James iii. 9.) We owe, then, ourselves to God." 
 A comment very fanciful, as it seems to me, and far-fetched. 
 Yet more, is it scriptural 1 The passages referred to by you, 
 to show that we have not lost God's image through the 
 fall, are insufficient, and not to the point ; for they speak of 
 man's original creation by God, after His image. Compare, 
 as to the change wrought by the fall, Gen. v. 1, 3 ; also 
 Col. iii. 10, 1 Cor. xv. 48, 49, &c. 
 
 {t) xiii. 4. "Tell us when shall these things be?" On 
 this you refer to your Commentary on the parallel passage 
 in Matthew xxiv. -. where, verse 8, after Christ's saying, 
 " There shall not be left one stone upon another," iSrc, and 
 the disciples asking, " When shall these things be, and 
 what the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the o^lwv ? " 
 you remark ; " We must be careful not to press the clauses 
 of this questioning too much, so as to make them hear 
 separate meaninfjs corresponding to the arrangements of our 
 Lord's discourse!' For this, how^ever, you give no reason : 
 — what is said of Christ in his mediatorial character, as Son, 
 being uncognizant of the time of the end, not applying. 
 And I cannot but think that the fact of the agreenjent of 
 the separate clauses of the question with the separate parts 
 of Christ's answer, (including of course what is given by 
 St. Luke, as well as what is given by Matthew and Mark,) 
 is a sufficient reason for so considering them ; and just the 
 most interesting and elucidatory view^ of Christ's answer 
 possible : — there being in it, 1st, what should happen be- 
 fore the destruction of the temple, and end of the Jewish 
 dispensation ; 2dly, the sequence thereupon of the times of 
 the Gentiles, or times of the Gentile dis})ensation, during 
 which Jerusalem would be trodden under foot of the 
 
CONCL.] ALFORD's GENERAL N. T. COMMENTARY. 167 
 
 Gentiles ; 3clly, the signs at the end of those times, that 
 would precede His second coming to take the kingdom. 
 
 {ii) xiii. 19, KTiaeui'i rj<; cKTicre. "A peculiarity this," 
 you say, " of Mark's style, for greater solemnity." How, 
 if a peculiarity of Mark's style, it could have been adopted 
 by him with the object Qi greater solemnitij, is quite beyond 
 my faculty to understand. But was it such a peculiarity ? 
 
 Comparing John xvii. 26, ^7 w^airr) rjv rjyaTrrja-as fie, \ John 
 
 V. 16, &c., &c., the contrary will appear. Mr. Shadwell 
 gives examples to show the use of such phrases in the Greek 
 classical writers. It is also an Hebraic mode of speech. 
 So Ezek. xviii. 24, &c. 
 
 With similar inconsiderateness and inexactitude you 
 speak, on Mark iv. 3, of " the solemn prefatory word, 
 aKovere, as peculiar to St. Mark." In proof, however, that 
 it is not so, we have only to look to Matt. xv. 10, " Hear 
 and understand ! " uKovere Kai awtere. In Mark it only 
 occurs twice; iv. 3, and vii. 14. 
 
 (y) xiii. 26. On the parallel in Matt. xxiv. 30, " Then 
 shall appear {to arjixeiov) the sign of the Son of Man 
 in heaven," you say ; " Manifestly, some sign in the 
 heavens by which all shall know that the Son of Man is at 
 hand : and none, I think, would completely answer the 
 conditions but that of the cross;" — meaning thereby, I 
 presume, a luminous cross, like that said to have been seen 
 by Constantine. But. is not this pure fancy, unsupported 
 by any of the various Scripture prophecies of the events of 
 the consummation ? ^ Moreover, if suc/i a sign is to be 
 the precursor, how could the actual coming of Christ be so 
 sudden and unexpected, as Christ says it will be ? 
 
 But, perhaps, on this first part of Christ's discourse on 
 
 ' How would this suit with the views expressed by you in your Ajjoca- 
 lypse, as to the events immediately jsrecursive of Christ's second coming ? 
 See pp. 29 — 31, supra. 
 
168 ArOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [pART III. 
 
 the Mount of Olives, as well as on the next in Matt, xxv., 
 containing the three parables of the ten virgins, the talents, 
 and the sheep and goats, (the two first referring, you say, 
 to the times of the first resurrection and millennial king- 
 dom of Christ, during which all Christians are judged, the 
 third to that of the general judgment of the non-elect 
 edvT),) your views may have changed since you have more 
 thoroughly studied prophecy : agreeably with the notable 
 retractation given at the end of Matt. xxv. in the 3d Edition 
 of your New Testament Commentary; which, as my chief 
 controversy with you has been on the subject of Scripture 
 prophecy, I must not omit. " Having now entered on the 
 deeper study of the prophetic portions of the New Testa- 
 ment, I do not by any means feel that full confidence which 
 I once did in the exegesis, quoad prophetical interpretation, 
 here given of the three portions of Matt. xxv. And I nuich 
 question whether the f/wrou//// study of Scripture prophecy 
 will not make me more and more distrustful of all human 
 systematizing." This is dated July, 1855. And, as the 
 deeper study of prophetic Scripture had then begun, we 
 may probably presume that " the tliorongh study of it," 
 which you was then anticipating, Avould, in your own 
 judgment, have been attained ere completing your Apoca- 
 lyptic Commentary, five or six years later. But then is that 
 Commentary really to be regarded as the result, and expres- 
 sion, of the t/ioroif(/Ji study of prophecy spoken of? 
 
 {to) xiv. 3, vaphov 7ris-iK7]<;. On this you say ; " It seems 
 impossible to assign any certain, or even probable, meaning 
 to 7ris-t/c779 : " mentioning afterwards, as the two senses of the 
 word given by modern interpreters, (so as in the margin of 
 our English Version,) 1st, that a'i (jenuine, unadulterated, (as 
 if from TTtros,) " which sense of the word, however," you 
 affirm, "does not anywhere else occur;" and, 2dly, that 
 oi potable, as from ttlvw, which you think the less objection- 
 
CONCL.] ALI'ORd's GENERAL N. T. COMMENTARY. 169 
 
 able of the two. Better, you conclude, on a point so 
 uncertain, "to leave the word untranslated; " just as it is 
 in Bishop Hall, " narde pistik." On the other hand, Mr. 
 Shad well, after noting the preposterousness of the sense 
 of drinkable, — for why speak of the i^vpov as drinkable, 
 when not to be drunk, besides that the epithet belongs to 
 vapBo^, the plant, not to fivpov, the oil extracted from it, 
 and that Trtro? is the Greek adjective for drinkable, not 
 TTis-iKo^;, — after this, I say, Mr. S. excellently well illustrates 
 the true meaning from Plutarch and Pliny. Says Plutarch 
 (Vlt. Pelop.), av8pe9 irpo<i aWrjXov; (f)t\cKa><; Kac iris'tKco'i 
 e%ovT69, ^'-c truthfully or sincerely. Says Pliny, N. H. 
 xii. 12, "De folio nardi plura dici par est, ut principali 
 in unguentis. Adulteratur ei ^jseiido-nardo herba; quae 
 ubique nascitur crassiore atque latiore folio, et colore 
 languido in candidum vergente. Sincerum. quidem levitate 
 deprehenditur, et colore rufo, odorisque suavitate." So 
 that the vap8o<; Tris-iKr) of Mark and John was the ge7mine 
 unadidterated nard. Further, as to the preciousness (ttoXv- 
 reXov^i) of the ointment from it, Mr. S. further cites the 
 following classical illustrations : — 
 
 0)9 rjSv TO fjLvpov' TTca <yap ov)(^t, ; vaphivov. — 
 
 Menand. Atheu., 691. 
 fivpov T€ irapa IIepcovo<;, ovirep airehoro 
 e^^e? WLekavoiTTw, 7ro\uT€\ou<i , Acjutttiov, 
 ft) vvv a\ei(f)€L Tov<i 7roSa<; KaWcs-paTou. — Anaxandr., ib. 689. 
 
 Tla/xTToWou S" €7ri7rpaaK€T0 Adrjvqcriv ■>] rov fxvpov kotvXt]' w? 
 fxev ' l7nrap')(^o<; (prjaiv irevre /jlvcov, &)? 8e MevavSpa Se/ca. So 
 that a cofj/le, or /talf-pinf, of it was valued at 5 or 10 Attic 
 fivat, or (as the fiva = '61. about of our money) 15/. or 30/. : 
 a price not unlike that of otto (or attar) of roses, some 30 
 or 40 years ago. 
 
 {a:) Ibid. (Tvvrpiy\ra'i to aXa/Sas-pov " having crushed it," 
 you say, " in the hand, and t/u/s [sic'] pouring the ointment 
 
170 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART Til. 
 
 over his head." On which let me ask, have 3'ou ever seen an 
 aLibaster vase, such as was used for ointment, and specially 
 for ointment for the dead ? Had you seen any you could 
 hardly, I think, have supposed it to have been crushed in a 
 woman's hand. Besides which, had it been so crushed, its 
 sharp broken bits must needs have mingled with the 
 ointment tluis poured forth. I have myself dug up many of 
 these alabaster vases in the tombs at Athens ; and one of 
 them, very curiously, had the top so cemented to the neck 
 that it seemed like a whole piece of alabaster. I su})pose 
 this was done in certain cases, where the ointment was of 
 special value, to preserve it quite fresh. And then a sharp 
 stroke, whether of a hammer or other instrument, Avould 
 be needed to break it off at the neck of junction : under 
 which operation, if cleverly done, the upper part would 
 come off clean, and no fragments mix with the ointment. 
 Into that, however, wdiich I found no ointment seemed to 
 have been poured previously. 
 
 (y) xiv. C.2, £70) eiyii. On the parallel passage in Matt, 
 xxvi. 64, recording Christ's answer, "Thou hast said," 
 ^'ueiTra?, to Caiaphas' question, "Art thou the Christ? " you 
 thus observe. " By 2'f etTra? more is implied than by Mark's 
 £70) ei/it. The latter is a simple assertion. The former 
 refers to the convictions and admissions of Caiaphas (see 
 John xi. 49) : the expression being never used, I believe, 
 unless some reason is latent in, or to be gathered from, the 
 words of the questioner." The meaning of this is suf- 
 ficiently obscure : but I suppose you intend the reason of 
 some such consciousness (" a latent consciousness," you 
 rather oddly say, on Matt. xxi. 38,) ' as in the case of 
 Caiaphas. Was the existence of such a consciousness then 
 in Pilate's mind, as regarded Christ's being King of the 
 
 ' Very latent iiuleeil must have Leeii C'aiai)has' consciousness on this 
 point, according to your own explanatory comment on John xi. 49. 
 
CONCL.] ALFORd's GENERAL N. T. COMMENTARY. 171 
 
 Jews, to be inferred from the question and answer, John 
 xviii. 37, " Art thou then a King ? Jesus answered. Thou 
 sayest {^v \e7ei9) that I am a King " ? — As to your " never," 
 the expression ^v eiiras occurs, if 1 mistake not, only twice 
 in the Gospels, Matt. xxvi. 25, 64 (in the former in refer- 
 ence to Judas, the latter to Cuiophas), and the Xv Xeyet? 
 once, viz., in the place cited from John. 
 
 {z) xvi, 3, 4 : " And they said to themselves. Who shall 
 roll away the stone for us from the door of the sepulchre ? 
 And looking up they beheld {OecopovaL) that it was rolled 
 away : for it was great." On this you say, " Its greatness 
 is stated as a reason loUy they could see that it was rolled 
 away." And you add: "To refer this clause back, as the 
 reason why they questioned who should remove the stone, 
 is not only harsh, but inconsistent with the usage of this 
 Gospel." How so does not appear. Though not common, 
 yet you will not deny that cases occur of such a reference 
 back, both in the New Testament and elsewhere. Indeed 
 in Mark iii. 31 you yourself construct the text on the 
 principle of there being such a back reference in the similar 
 conjunction ow} And I must beg to think that common 
 sense will reject so poor and meagre a sense as that 
 which you here affirm ; ^ and make the women's anxious 
 question to refer to the possibility of rolling away the 
 stone ; — that reference which you reject. 
 
 Thus in above twenty examples taken from your Anno- 
 tations on St. Mark, (a complete alphabet indeed, we 
 see, numerically,) brief as is the space that these Annota- 
 
 ' Ep;(oi'rai ovv oi abe'Xcjioi avrov. So verse 31. And here, you explain, 
 "there is a reference back" to the previous uotice of those his relations, 
 verse 21 ; i.e. ten verses before. 
 
 ^ Mr. Shadwell explains by reference to the verb eOeapovv, not eibov ; it 
 being thence implied that they gazed with surprise, because the stone was 
 great. But this seems to me to be neither so natural nor weighty a sense 
 as the other. 
 
172 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART III. 
 
 tions occupy, I have variously illustrated the truth of what 
 I affirmed of the inconsiderateness, inaccuracy, or, at best, 
 the questionableuess, of much in your general New Testa- 
 ment Exposition ; alike as regards the meaning assigned by 
 you to Greek words, your statements on Greek grammar, 
 your illustrative references to ancient Greek authors,' and 
 explanations of the sense and force of sentences in the 
 sacred text itself. A fault this the less venial, on account 
 of the positive and dogmatic tone in which your opinion on 
 such points is too often laid down. 
 
 3. I proceed thirdly, as proposed, to speak of your 
 
 ' See p. 161, supra. Several other exemplifications are given by Mr. 
 Shad well ; as in your citation from Plutarch, noted by him p. 86, that 
 from Polytenus p. 324, from Herodotus p. 368, &c. — One that he instances, 
 not, indeed, from your commentaiy on Mark, but from that on Acts xx. 13, 
 is too remarkable to pass over without notice. On the mention there of 
 Assos as a landing-place of Paul in his voyage to Jerusalem, you have 
 the note following : — " Aaa-ov. A seapoi-t in Mysia or Troas, — built on a 
 high cliif above the sea, with a descent so precipitous as to have j^romjited 
 a line of Stratonicus, the lyric poet (Strabo xiii.) : — 
 
 Acraov iff, as Kev dacrcrov oKeffpov irapaff iK7]ai." 
 
 Now, on referring to Strabo, we find his words to be, after mention of 
 the steepness and ])recipitousness of the clitf above the harbour at Assos, 
 o)t' tn avrqs oiKeicos eipeiadaL 8ok€i to tov ^TparofiKov rov Kidapi'^ov, Acrcrof iff", 
 K. r. X. In which passage it will be observed that Stratonicus is not called 
 a lyi'ic poet, which he was not, (and how, indeed, had such been his 
 literary designation, would he have been likely to have written in hexame- 
 ters ?) but Ki6api<^T]s, a mitistrel. But the strangest mistake in your refer- 
 ence to Strabo is that you should not at once have recognised old Homer's 
 line in the hexameter cited. (Iliad Z, 143.) It seems that Stratonicus was 
 a famous wit and punster of his day, as stated in a passage of Machon, 
 jjreserved V)y Athenreus ; and, in the case cited by Strabo, that Stratonicus 
 had cleverly puinied on the word aaaov in Homer's line. ^Aaa-ov i6\ ws Ktu 
 6a(T(xov, &c., said Homer's hero; "Come nearer (aa-a-ov) and be killed." 
 "Aaraov id, as Kfu daaaov, &c., said Stratonicus, punning; " Come to Assos, 
 and be killed." 
 
 This instance of mistake impressed itself the more strongly on my mind, 
 as Ml". Shadwell borrowed my own copy of Strabo to show me the citation ; 
 when telling me of what I could at first hardly believe, the strange error 
 into which you had here fallen. 
 
CONCL.] ALEORd's GENERAL N. T. COMMENTARY. 173 
 
 treatment of the discrepancies in, tJiis Gospel of St. Mark 
 from one or other of the other three Gospels. 
 
 AHke the verbal coincidences often recognizable in the 
 four Gospels, and their discrepancies of statement on the 
 same story or subject, offer topics of inquiry of much 
 interest, and more or less difficulty. On the former my 
 opinion does not differ from your own, as to the fact of 
 their having mainly arisen from documentary memoranda 
 of Christ's life and history early drawn up from apostolic 
 teaching, early circulated in the infant Church, and known 
 alike to each of the four several Evangelists ; though I should 
 wish to state that opinion with certain not unimportant 
 modifications in its expression.' It is not however this, but 
 their discrejjancies, which is now the subject of our inquiry. 
 On these I have to notice the remarks that I find both in 
 your Prolegomena and your Commentary, as made gene- 
 rally and more particularly. 
 
 And not a little, I must say, has been my surprise at 
 the union of your boldness of assertion, not infrequently, 
 as to the irreconcilableness of such discrepancies in the 
 
 ' Proleg. 5, 11. To this opinion of there having been early written 
 documents about Christ in the first infancy of the Church tends, 1st, the 
 necessity of such from the very nature of things ; 2dly, St. Luke's mention 
 of the various SiJ^yj/o-ety which he had consulted ; 3dly, the fact of its 
 sufficiently accounting for the phaeuomena inquired into. — As regards your 
 habit however of conjectiu-ing, and sometimes expressing rather positively 
 the crude conjecture, from what particular documentary or other source 
 this and that statement in the Gospels may have originated, I must beg to 
 protest against it, as fanciful and worthless. 
 
 Further, as to what you say of the " inconceivableness " of any one 
 Evangelist, if he had the recognised Gospel of another inspired Evangelist 
 before him, altering his diction in parts, in other parts copying more 
 exactly, I must again differ from you. Wei-e you yoiu-self an historian, 
 and, as I believed, a diligent and trustworthy historian, I might probably 
 sometimes adopt your language exactly, if writing on the same subject ; at 
 other times condense, or modify, so as might suit my purpose or taste. 
 
174 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART III. 
 
 several Evangelists, and your inconsistency with yourself, not 
 to add with candour and truth also, in so speaking of 
 them. 
 
 In the Prolegomena you strongly express your belief in 
 the divine supernatural insjnration of the Gospels : — a 
 belief grounded on their apostolicity of origin, as recognised 
 from the very first by the early Christian Church, distinct- 
 ively from other so-called but spurious Gospels, (Mark and 
 Luke being now viewed as Peter's and Paul's exponents,') 
 and on Christ's formal promise (John xiv. 26) that, after 
 his departure, the Holy Spirit should bring to his apostles' 
 remembrance all that He had said to them,— a promise 
 which implied his teaching and influence over them in the 
 narration of his doings, as well as sayings; — all coupled 
 with a consideration of the fact of Matthew, John, and 
 Peter's own personal witnessing from its beginning to 
 its end of Christ's ministerial life, which is the main sub- 
 ject of their narratives, of St. Paul's supernatural teaching 
 on these subjects, and of their common access to the most 
 authentic source of information with reference to his previous 
 birth and earlier life.^ In all which, you say, (and here I fully 
 agree with you,) there needed not to be any superseding of 
 the individual character, thought, and feeling of each 
 apostle and evangelist respectively : nor, moreover, you 
 add, any negativing of the gradual development to their 
 minds of God's purposes ; ^ a statement this latter which I 
 
 ' So I presume ; though the view is not quite consistent with that noted 
 j)p. 151 — 154, suprd,. 
 
 ' I have often thought of the wisdom of Divine Pro^adence in ordering 
 that Mary, the mother of our Lord, shoukl have survived (so jis her 
 husband appears not to have done, judging from tlie non-mention of him 
 Matt. xiii. 55, 56, Mark vi. 3, and especially John xix. 26) through the 
 whole time of Christ's ministry, down to its termination in his death, 
 resurrection, and ascension. ' Pi-oleg., ]). 17. 
 
CONCL.] ALFORd's GENERAL N. T. COMMENTARY. 175 
 
 think should have been expressed both more clearly and 
 more cautiously.' 
 
 Now, then, in accordance with this view of their insjnra- 
 tion, you first speak of the discrepancies of the Evangelists 
 slightingly and tenderly, as if on nothing of importance. 
 " In no material point," you say, " do their accounts differ : " 
 — but only " in various little changes of transposition, or 
 omission, from that primitive narrative which had been 
 orally delivered to catechumens, or in fragmentary written 
 documents ; " including " variations in diction, or emphasis, 
 such as would be sure to arise in the freedom of individual 
 teaching;" and " those modifications which the individual 
 memory, brooding affectionately and reverently over each 
 word and act of our Lord, would naturally introduce into 
 a narrative, in relating it variously and under different 
 circvmi stances." ^ In proceeding, however, to denounce the 
 "orthodox Harmonizers," as you somewhat sneeringly 
 call them, having begun by misrepresentation, as if 
 they supposed " all the Evangehsts' own mental powers 
 and faculties to be superseded under the conscious inspira- 
 tion of the Holy Spirit," ^ you proceed in your Prolegomena 
 to show forth discrepancies in the Evangelists very grave, 
 and such as no Harmonizer can truthfully make to agree. 
 " Hardly a single instance is there of parallelism between 
 the Evangehsts, where they do not relate the same thing 
 in terms which, literally taken, are incompatible with each 
 other r * And, as in the Prolegomena, so in the Commentary, 
 
 ' When you thus wrote there had not been made the sceptical use of the 
 idea which we have subsequently seen. 
 
 ^ Proleg., pp.4, 9—11. 
 
 ^ Proleg., p. 19, Note. Very just is Mr. Forshall's protest against this, at 
 pp. xviii., xix. of the preface to a little work of his, which has just come 
 to hand, as I am bringing the present Letter to its conclusion. It is 
 entitled " The Gospel of St. Mark, ari'anged in Parts and Sections, by 
 the Eev. I. Forshall, F.K.S." * Proleg., p. 20. 
 
176 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART III. 
 
 very frequently afterwards. I proceed to notice some of 
 the cliief of these discrepancies, and your remarks upon 
 them. And this I will do, for the most part, in the order 
 of the sacred narrative. 
 
 (1) Matt. ii. 22, 23 : " Joseph, being warned of God, de- 
 parted into the parts of Galilee, and came and dwelt in a city 
 called Nazareth." On this you say, (notwithstanding that 
 in ch. xiii. 54, 57, Matthew calls Nazareth Jrsus Christ's 
 irarpiBa, or country,) " I prefer believing, as most consistent 
 with the fair interpretation of our text, that JMatthew was 
 not aware of the events related in Luke i., ii., and how 
 Nazareth had been before tJds the abode of Joseph and 
 Mary, but wrote under the impression that Bethlehem was 
 their original place." But how so ? Matthew not aware 
 of the events related in Luke i., ii. ? Of course you include 
 not in this what Luke tells of Jesus Christ's actual concep- 
 tion and birth of the Virgin Mary ; which is as expressly 
 told of in Matthew as in Luke. As regards the rest let me 
 reply in Alford's own words. " Can the divine discrimina- 
 tion have forsaken them in judging of our Lord's birth and 
 infancy ? Some account of these things must have been 
 current in the apostolic circle ; for Mary, the mother of 
 Jesus, survived the Ascension, and would be fully capable 
 of giving undoubted testiuiony to the facts. Can we con- 
 ceive that, idUIl her amoiiy them, the Apostles should have 
 delivered other than a true history of these things ? " ^ 
 
 (2) Luke iv. 14 — 32. Here is the account of Jesus 
 Christ's visit to Nazareth, and there reading Isaiah in the 
 synagogue: — a visit which in Luke follows immediately 
 after Christ's temptation, but which you determinately iden- 
 tify with Jesus' visit to Nazareth related (as if much later) 
 in Matt. xiii. 54, and Mark vi. 2 ; not with that after his 
 
 ' Proleg. 18. 
 
CONCL.] ALFORd's GENERAL N. T. COMMENTARY. 177 
 
 temptation implied in Matt. iv. 13. And, on the strength 
 of this, you make the following charge on St. Luke, not- 
 withstanding his own affirmation (i. 3) of having endea- 
 voured to give a generally orderly narrative of Christ's life ; 
 " Here the chronological order of Luke's history begins to 
 be confused ; and the first marks occur of indefiniteness in 
 arrangement, which I believe characterize his Gospel." 
 Three main reasons are given by you for identifying the 
 visit to Nazareth in Luke iv. with that in Matt, xiii, and 
 Mark vi. 1, "That Christ should have been ill-treated, 
 so as in Luke iv. at hisfrst visit, and then have marvelled 
 at the Nazarenes' unbelief on a second visit, (so as he is said 
 to have done on the occasion told of in Mark vi. 6,) is 
 vtterlij impossible." But why so, considering that so many 
 mo7'e mighty works had been done by Christ in Capernaum 
 and Galilee at the time of such second visit, if a year or 
 several months later ? 2dly you argue, that " before the 
 visit told of in Luke iv. some famed mighty w^orks had 
 been done in Capernaum and its neighbourhood, as implied 
 Luke iv. 23." But is it not likely that other miracles fol- 
 lowed, after the first done by him at the marriage of Cana, in 
 Capernaum or its immediate neighbourhood, whither John 
 says that he went from Cana for "not many days;" and 
 that then \\\% primary visit to Nazareth took place? (See John 
 ii. 1 — 12.) 3. "That our Lord should have used the same 
 proverbial expression on two occasions is most improbable." 
 So you say here. But what say you in your Proleg., p. 14 ? 
 "The probability is that Christ repeated most of his important 
 sayings many times over, with more or less variation, to dif- 
 ferent audiences, though still in the hearing of the same apos- 
 tolic witnesses. . . . Such various reports of Christ's sayings 
 are most unreasonably treated by certain German critics 
 {e.g., De Wette) as discrepancies." And so too on Mark i. 7, 
 
 N 
 
17b APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART III. 
 
 with reference to Matthew's report of John Baptist's saying, 
 " Whose shoes I am unworthy to bear" while the other 
 EvangeUsts say to loose; "John used the two expressions 
 on different occasions, and our witnesses have reported 
 both." — The objections you urge h-ave to be weighed 
 against the counter evidence, not only of the order in which 
 Luke places that visit to Nazareth, but of the fact of the 
 reading of Isaiah Ixi. in the synagogue being singularly 
 appropriate to the opening, rather than to any later ejjoch, of 
 Christ's ministry ; and that both Matthew and INlark, in their 
 accounts of the visit to Nazareth described in Matt. xiii. and 
 Mark vi., make no mention whatever either of that reading 
 of Isaiah by Christ as then occurring, or of the Nazarenes 
 subsequently seeking to throw him over the precipice of 
 the hill on which the city was built. Moreover, he is said 
 in Matthew iv. 13 to have gone to Capernaum from Naza- 
 reth after the visit described Matt, iv., just as after that 
 told of in Luke iv. 31; but not so after the visit narrated in 
 Matt. xiii. Perhaps, yet once more, since he is in Luke iv. 
 called Joseph's son, just as also in Luke iii. 23, but in 
 Matt. xiii. and Mark vi. Marys son, there may be some 
 reason in the inference thence drawn by certain critics, 
 {e.g. Shadwell,) that in the latter epoch Joseph would 
 seem to have been dead, not in the former. Now is 
 the case one, with such countervailing evidence, to warrant 
 your onslaught on St. Luke for confusedness and mis- 
 arrangement ? 
 
 3. Luke iv. 44 : " Here the reading Judcea, you observe 
 in your 4th Edition, not Galilee, " must on any intelligible 
 critical principles be adopted : . . and our narrative is thus 
 brought into the most startling discrepancy with that of St. 
 Mark!' So you say, though 16 out of 21 imcial MSS. 
 (including A, B,) and out of 200 or 300 in minuscules 
 
CONCL.] ALFORU's GENERAL N. T. COMMENTARY. 179 
 
 all except 20, have Galilee : besides that, of the versions, the 
 later Syriac and Coptic alone have Judcea ; and also the 
 critical texts of Griesbach, Lachmann, and Tischendorf. 
 So observes most justly Mr. Porshall. To which I have to 
 add also, not only that there is the reading of Galilee in the 
 three first Editions of Alford himself; but that in his 
 Proleg., p. i., he thus bars himself out (if consistent) 
 from the reading of Judcea ; " Matthew, Mark, and Luke 
 confine themselves exclusively to the events which took 
 place in Galilee, until Christ's last journey to Jerusalem. 
 No incident whatever of His ministry in JudcBa is related by 
 them." So too in your comment on Matt. xxi. 12; a 
 comment referred to in that on Mark xi. 15. 
 
 4. Comparing Mark v. 2, x. 46, with Matt. viii. 28, 
 XX. 30, we find that the latter speaks of tioo demoniacs that 
 were healed by Christ at Gadara, and two blind men after- 
 wards near Jericho ; the former of but one on either occa- 
 sion, the blind man specified being Bartimasus : — besides 
 that, in regard of the latter miracle, Matthew and Mark 
 localize it as being done when Christ was going out of 
 Jericho; Luke, xviii. 35, as when He was drawing near to 
 Jericho. In reference to the latter discrepancy the Har- 
 monizers (as Gresswell, Neander, &c., after Theophylact,) 
 attempt to reconcile the accounts by supposing two miracles 
 of healing the blind ; one as Christ was about to enter 
 Jericho, the other when He was going out of it. But you 
 exclaim (on Luke xviii.) against such harmonizing as ''per- 
 fectly monstrous." Yet the very names of the Harmonizers 
 that I have cited might have led you, one would have 
 thought, to speak of it with a little less dogmatism and 
 severity of censure : and to remember, and here apply, your 
 own remark in the Proleg. (p. 23,) that from the fact of 
 the Apostles' divine inspiration " we may be sure that, if 
 
 N 2 
 
ISO APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [pART III. 
 
 we knew the real process of the transactions themselves, 
 that knowledge would enable us to give an account (a satis- 
 factory account evidently) of the diversities of narrative and 
 arrangement Avhich the Gospels now present to us :" (and 
 so too on Matt. xxvi. 69 — 75 :) — a statement which, if true, 
 would well justify the attempts of the " orthodox harmo- 
 nizers:" not to speak of your own similar attempts, here 
 and there, at harmonizing ; and rebuke too, on such 
 occasions, (as e.g. on Mark i. 13) of certain sceptical 
 German critics, like De Wette and ]\Ieyer, for re- 
 presenting differences which you would thus reconcile 
 as irreconcilable. Is this function of harmonizing, one 
 might ask, to be regarded as your own exclusive pre- 
 rogative ? 
 
 But I hasten on to the discrepancies that are the most 
 important of all ; viz., those involved, or said to be involved, 
 in the varying reports by the four several Evangelists of 
 certain chief circumstances attending the close of Jesus 
 Christ's life ; — His last passover. His denial by Peter, the 
 time of His crucifixion, the inscription over the cross, His 
 resurrection, and His ascension. 
 
 5 and 6. Of these let me at once (though here inverting 
 the order of events) despatch the alleged discrepancies 
 concerning the time of Christ's crucifixion, and the title 
 over His head on the cross. 
 
 5. The former discrepancy arises out of a comparison of 
 St. Mark's saying that it was at the 3rd hour that lie was 
 crucified, or about 9 a.m. ; St. John that it was about the 
 6th hour, i.e. about 12, that He was delivered up by Pilate 
 to the Jews for crucifixion. As you say, " The difficulty is 
 insuperable, as the text note stands'' For, as to the 
 different computations of time by St. John, which some (as 
 AVordsworth) have suggested, with a view to its solution, I 
 
CONCL.] ALFORd's GENERAL N. T. COMMENTARY. 181 
 
 think there is no sufficient evidence for it, but the contrary.' 
 For myself I have no hesitation in adopting in St. John 
 the various reading, v^ ^o-et oypa rpiTT), instead of eKTrj. For 
 this there is respectable MS. evidence.^ And common sense, 
 therefore, in my opinion, requires our adopting it on the 
 hypothesis (on w^hicli we are both fully agreed) of the 
 thorough trustworthiness of the two Evangelists ; not to 
 take the higher ground of their inspiration. And I think 
 it savours not a little of that enslavement to the letter in 
 regard of MS. criticism, (which on other points you so 
 much deprecate,) instead of freedom of spirit, to cramp and 
 martyr yourself, under such circumstances, on the Procrus- 
 tean bed of rigid critical rule in dealing with manuscriptal 
 readings. Then the coo-et will admit of the time of Pilate's 
 presentation of Jesus to the Jews for crucifixion being after 
 the second, and verging towards the iliird hour of the day, 
 — that notable time of the offering of the morning sacrifice 
 of the lamb, which seems in St. John's mind, even more 
 than in that of any other of the Evangelists, to have been a 
 type of Jesus ever cherished, never forgotten ; and that of 
 Christ's arrival at Golgotha, to be crucified, three quarters 
 of an hour after, or 9 a.m., just accordantly with St. Mark. 
 6. As regards the title, or superscription, over the cross, 
 you specially single it out in your " Prolegomena," p. 20, as 
 an example of the absolute incompatibility of the language 
 of the Evangelists one with another, if literally taken, accord- 
 ing to what you call the verhal-inspiration theory. " The 
 title was written," you say, " in Greek: (Greek onlij?) accord- 
 ing to which theory each Evangelist must have recorded the 
 
 ' Compare John xi. 9, " Are there not twelve hours in the day," 
 with Matt. XX. 6, 9, on the twelve day-liours of labouring in the vine- 
 yard, &c. 
 
 ^ So Griesbach admits. 
 
182 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART III. 
 
 exact words of the inscription ; not the general sense, but 
 the inscription itself; not a letter less or more. How, then, 
 Avill the theory here apply ? ]\Iatthew writes it. This is 
 Jesus the King of the Jews ; ]\Iark, The King of the Jews ; 
 Luke, The King of the Jews this ; John, Jesus of Nazareth^ 
 the King of the Jews." — To all this I cannot better reply 
 than by abstracting from Forshall's Preface, pp. xiv — xvii. 
 St. John (xix. 20) tells us that the title {rLT\os:) was written 
 (not in Greek only, but) in Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin. 
 And so too Luke, xxiii. 2S ; " in letters of Greek, and Latin, 
 and Hebrew." There were thus three superscriptions; 
 St. John's apparently being (if we judge from the order in 
 Avhich he mentions them) that in Hebrew; St. Luke's that 
 in Greek ; St. Mark's that in Latin. And we may reason- 
 ably believe that, while St. Luke has written the Greek 
 inscription (eTriypacfir)) letter for letter, the Hebrew and 
 Latin have been rendered by John and Mark as closely as 
 the Greek language permitted. As to St. Matthew, he does 
 not profess to give the inscription, but ouly (xxvii. 37) the 
 aiTia^ or ground of Chrisfs accusation and condemnation : 
 " They set up over his head his accusation {airia) written." 
 And, forasmuch as the fact of His having been a Nazarene 
 citizen had nothing to do with this, Matthew omits it; 
 incorporating faithfully the rest, " This is Jesus the King 
 of the Jews!' 
 
 As regards the chief of what remain, viz., the several 
 accounts of the Passover and also the Resurrection, there is 
 much more of difficulty. And I think that it may be well 
 to premise a notice of your own harmonizing of the Evange- 
 listic reports of Peter s denial, before entering on them. 
 
 7. At first (as stated, I infer, in your primary Edition) you 
 seem to have viewed the discrepancies on this head of the 
 four reports (of Avhich I subjoin your useful Tabular 
 
CONCL.] ALFOKD's GENERAL N. T. COMMENTARY. 183 
 
 Schedule') as irreconcilable. And so, you still say, in the 
 3d Edition of your Book, on the hypothesis of our being 
 
 MATTHEW. 
 
 Sitting in the hall 
 without (efo)), Peter is 
 charged by a maid- 
 servant with having 
 been with Jesus the 
 Galilaean. He re- 
 plied, " I know not 
 what thou sayest." 
 
 Peter having gone 
 out (or, as he went 
 out), into tlie porch 
 {* TTvAtoi/a) another 
 maid saw him, and 
 says lothehijstanders, 
 " This man also was 
 with Jesus of Naza- 
 reth." Peter denies 
 with an oath, " I 
 know not the man." 
 
 After a little while 
 the bystanders say, 
 " Surely thou too art 
 of them, for thy dia- 
 lect betrayeth thee." 
 Then Peter began to 
 curse and swear, "I 
 know not the man." 
 
 And immediately 
 the cock crew. And 
 Peter remembered, 
 &c. ; and going out, 
 he wept bitterly. 
 
 Warming himself 
 in the hall, Kara), 
 below (flepfiaifo/u.ev'os 
 Trpo? TO (^ws). he is 
 charged, as in Mat- 
 thew, by a maid, and 
 replied, " I know not 
 what thou sayest." 
 
 Then Peter went 
 out into the irpoav- 
 Atoi' ; * and the cock 
 crew (the first, or 
 midnight crow). 
 
 The same maid, 
 seeing him again, 
 says (to the by- 
 standets), "This man 
 is of them." And 
 Peter denied again. 
 
 After a little while, 
 the bystanders said 
 to Peter, " Surely 
 (just as in Matthew) 
 thou art a Gali- 
 lean, and thy speech 
 (ofioiafet) is like that 
 of Galilee." And he 
 began to curse and 
 swear, " I know not 
 the man ye speak 
 of." 
 
 And a second time 
 the cock crew : and 
 Peter remembered, 
 " Before the 
 crow twice, 
 shalt thrice 
 me." And 
 
 &c., 
 cock 
 thou 
 deny 
 
 €7rt /SoAioi' he wept. 
 
 LUKE. 
 
 A fire being lighted 
 ev /uetro) tt;? ovAr)5, 
 Peter sate with others 
 where the tire was : 
 and a maid, seeing 
 him where he sate by 
 the light, said. "This 
 man was with him." 
 And he denied, — 
 " Woman, I know 
 him not." 
 
 After a little while 
 another person(eT6p05, 
 a male) seeing him, 
 said, "Thou too art of 
 them." Peter said, 
 " Man, I am not." 
 
 After about an 
 hour, another man 
 insisted, saying, 
 
 " Truly this man was 
 with him, for he is 
 a Galilean." Peter 
 said, " Man, I know 
 not what thou say- 
 est." 
 
 Immediately, while 
 he was yet speaking, 
 the cock crew. And 
 the Lord turned and 
 lo'iked on Peter. 
 And Peter remem- 
 bered, &c. ; and go- 
 ing out, he wept 
 bitterly. 
 
 JOHN. 
 
 Peter is recognised 
 by the porteress on 
 being introduced by 
 the other disciple (St. 
 John): "Art not thou 
 aKo one of this man's 
 disciples?" Hesaith, 
 " I am not." 
 
 As Peter stands 
 with the servants, 
 and warms himself 
 by a fire of charcoal, 
 which theyhad made, 
 they said to him, "Art 
 not thou also of his 
 disciples? " And he 
 denied, and said, "I 
 am not." 
 
 One of the slaves of 
 the High Priest, be- 
 ing a kinsman of him 
 whose ear Peter had 
 cut off, said, " Did I 
 not see thee in the 
 garden with him?" 
 Peter denied again. 
 
 And immediately 
 the cock crew. 
 
 * " An Oriental house," you say, in an apposite citation from Robinson, "is usually built 
 round a quadrangular interior court ; into which there is a passage, sometimes arched, through 
 the front part of the house, closed next the street by a heavy folding gate, with a small wicket 
 fir single persons, kept by a porter. In the Gospel text the intervening court, often paved or 
 flagged, and open to the sky, is the avArj where the attendants made a fire; and the passage 
 beneath the front of the house, from the street to this court, is the npoavXiov, or ttvXuiv. The 
 place where Jesus stood before the High Priest may have been an open room, 'or place of 
 audience, on the ground floor in the rear, or on one side, of the court : such rooms open in front, 
 being customary." 
 
184 ArOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART III. 
 
 forced " to suppose Peter's denial of Christ to have taken 
 place thrice, and onlj/ thrice.'' But, having concluded that 
 there is nothing in the sacred narratives so to bind us, and 
 that there is nothing inconsistent with those narratives in the 
 idea of Peter's recognition having been made by different 
 persons, of whom however one only may be mentioned, 
 and that the identity In siibsfcuice only of the language 
 of Peter's denials is all that is required, (not to allude 
 further to the varying statements of the one cock-crowing 
 and the tico, which, as in the Schedule appended, are easily 
 reconciled,) " all difficult y seems to you to he removed'' from 
 the otherwise apparent discrepancies in the synoptical 
 view of the four different reports. — Now surely this is 
 reasonable. But would not the same principle of reason- 
 ing apply to cases like that of the varying reports of two 
 or only one demoniac at Gadara, two or only one blind 
 man healed near Jericho : — as well as to much in cases of 
 apparent discrepancy like those which yet remain for 
 consideration ? 
 
 8. Christ's last Passover. On the time of Christ's eating 
 this with His disciples you, when commenting on ]\latt. 
 xxvi., express your opinion that St. John's account, which 
 seems to fix the Jews' passover-day to Friday, the day 
 of the crucifixion, and that of the other three Evangelists, 
 which seems to fix it to the Thursday, is insurmountable. • 
 Let me beg, while on this subject, to refer to the two 
 Tables of astronomical calculations by the Astronomer- 
 Royal, Professor Airey, given in a Paper which is printed 
 both in the Appendix to my Warburton Lectures, and in 
 that also of Vol. 3 of my 5th Edition of the " H. A.," 
 as bearing upon the true year of Christ's crucifixion : 
 in which Paper I have also stated my impression in favour 
 of the Thursday pre-sunset evening, on which Christ ate the 
 ^ assover with His disciples, having been the Jews' regular 
 
CONCL.] ALFORU'S GENERAL N. T. COMMENTARY. 185 
 
 passover-day, and consequently the 14M of Nisan ; agree- 
 ably with the concurrent intimations to that effect of the 
 three synoptic Evangelists. But I must confess that, on 
 reconsideration, I am perplexed by what is said in Lev. 
 xxiii. about the date of the unleavened bread great Sabba- 
 tical festival, as fixed to the 15th Nisan, the passover being 
 on the 14tli : in regard of the Sabbath on which, or day of 
 holy convocation, (which might fall of course in different 
 years on ani/ loeeJc-dai/,) all four Evangelists concur in fixing 
 it in that particular year to the Saturday, or common 
 w^eekly Sabbath, following the Eriday of the crucifixion. 
 
 So they call Friday the irapao-Kevq, or irpoaa^^arov} 
 
 On the whole, and on this ground, I now incline to think 
 that the Jews' regular passover-day, or 14th Nisan, must 
 have been on the Friday, (the day when Christ our passover 
 was sacrificed for us,) agreeably with St. John's report of it : 
 and that thus our Lord must have ante-dated His eating it 
 by a day ; perhaps, as you intimate among the offered 
 solutions of the difficulty, in common with certain of the 
 Jews, when the pressure of preparing the paschal lamb was 
 such that it was needed thus to divide the day of celebra- 
 
 ' As regards the day for the passover proper, and that for the beginning 
 of the unleavened bread festival, properly speaking, we find them thus 
 assigned in Lev. xxiii. 5, 6, to the 14th and the 15th of the first Jewish 
 month Nisan. " In the 14th day of the first month, at even, is the Lord's 
 passover. And on the 1.5th day of the same month is the feast of unleavened 
 bread to the Lord. Seven days ye must eat unleavened bread. In the first 
 day ye shall have an holy convocation : ye shall do no servile work 
 therein." 
 
 John, xix. 14, speaks of the Friday of Christ's crucifixion as the 
 napaaKevr] tov naaxa ; and in verse 31 of the same chapter implies that 
 this napaa-KevT] day was the Trpoaa^^arov ; — eTret TrapaaKevrj r)v r]v yap p,eyakr} 
 T] rjpepa fKeivov tov aa^[3aTov. Similarly says Mark, xv. 42, of the late 
 afternoon of the Friday, rjv napaa-Kivr], 6 ect npocra^^aTov and Luke 
 xxiii. 54, of the same aftei'uoon, or evening, km rjpepa r]v napaa-Kevr] km 
 aal3(3aTOP eTre^cotrKe. 
 
186 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART III. 
 
 tion. — Then we have only to suppose that, Senrvov ^evofievou, 
 the supper-tmie having come, (so you justly explain the 
 phrase,) Christ first washed the disciples' feet, then partook 
 of the paschal feast with them, Judas included ; then, Judas 
 having gone out, (perhaps, it was thought, to buy things 
 for the unleavened bread feast, for ere the sunset the shops 
 would not be shut,) celebrated the after-feast of the Lord's 
 supper, the Christian passover.' 
 
 9. Further, as regards the various Evangelistic reports of 
 Christ's resurrection. 
 
 Here, — since you apply to these reports a statement in your 
 Prolegomena, saying that, " were we acquainted with every 
 thing said and done, in its order and exactness, we should 
 doubtless be able to reconcile the present forms of the nar- 
 ratives," although, this key being wanting, all attempts to 
 harmonize them must be futile, — I might perhaps have 
 passed over all notice of the subject ; were it not that else- 
 where you charge the harmonists with disingenuousness 
 (" probably unconscious disingenuousness ") in attempting 
 their reconcilement. I shall therefore take the liberty of 
 showing, as 1 trust, that it may be made with little more of 
 " arbitrary assumptions " than you yourself have made in 
 your harmonizing Schedule of the four several reports of 
 Peter's denial of Christ. 
 
 The women from Galilee having, at the close of the Priday 
 afternoon, befo7'e sunset, ^n& therefore before the commence- 
 ment of the great Sabbath, bought spices, then rested the 
 
 * Let me observe here that it is quite incredible that St. Jolin should 
 not have seen the other thi-ee Gospels, so as you suggest ; considering the 
 perpetual intercourse of the sevei-al parts of the early Christian Church one 
 with the other. And hence the rather our inference that St. John did not 
 see a discrepancy between his report of the passover-day, and that of the 
 other Evangelists; whether to be reconciled from admitted Jewish irregu- 
 larities, such as I have suggested, or otherwise. 
 
CONCL.] ALFORd's GENERAL N. T. COMMENTARY. 187 
 
 Sabbath according to commandment, (Luke,) but on its 
 evening, after sunset,^ bought in addition what might still 
 be needed for their purpose, prepared for their work of love 
 to the corpse of their departed Lord on the morrow. 
 
 Now, in regard of what then was to happen, it may be 
 well to premise, 1st, that the disciples for the most part 
 seem to have had separate lodgings in Jerusalem, at least 
 the women separate from the apostles ; ^ 2dly, that, Jerusa- 
 lem being a great city, the distance of the lodgings might 
 probably be such as that paths from Calvary, outside the 
 city, to the one part of it and to the other would 
 immediately diverge ; 3dly, that, Jerusalem being all 
 rocky, these narrow paths would almost certainly, just 
 as in its immediate neighbonrhood now, have stone walls 
 on either side ; so that what might pass in the one path- 
 way would very soon be on a spot hidden from the other. 
 
 This premised, we take up the Evangelistic story ; and 
 have to suppose that the Galilean women, including Mary 
 Magdalen, having planned to start at the early dawn of the 
 Sunday, Mary Magdalen in her zeal and love anticipated 
 the other women, starting while it was yet dark (John) ; 
 and, on finding when arrived at the tomb that the stone was 
 rolled away, hastened by a different path to Peter and 
 John's lodgings to tell them. While she is on the road 
 thither, or rather when arrived there, the other women 
 come to the tomb, the sun having just risen (Mark), which, 
 ten or twelve days after the vernal equinox, might be 
 
 ' Yoix oddly call this variety in the reports of the time of buying the 
 spices "a slight but valuable discrepancy, as showing the independence of 
 the accounts." Surely there is nothing whatever of improbability in the 
 way in which I have harmonized them. 
 
 ^ Compare John xix. 27, " From that hour that disciple took her (ets ra 
 tSta) to his own home " ; John xvi. 32, " Ye shall be scattered every one 
 (ets ra ihia) to his own home " ; and John xx. 10, hnrjKOov irpos eavTovs ol 
 fia^TjTM, " the (two) disciples (Peter and John) went away to their own 
 home." 
 
188 APOCALYPSIS ALFOR DIANA. [PART III. 
 
 about tweiit}^ minutes before six;^ and see an Angel sitting 
 on the stone, by the right of the tomb, who tells them Jesus 
 Christ is risen, and charges them so to tell the disciples. 
 They run affrighted, yet hopeful ; telling no one hij the way 
 that they might meet. Then, by another path, come up 
 John and Peter, Mary Magdalen following. The two 
 former look into the tomb, see it empty, and depart, 
 leaving there Mary Magdalen, to whom Christ then first of 
 all manifests Himself : the purport of His reply to her, when 
 about to touch and worship Him, being (as I think) to the 
 eftect ; " Stop not now for this ; I am not yet ascended, 
 nor immediately about to ascend, to heaven. Other oppor- 
 tunities of intercourse ere then will be afforded. But go, 
 tell the disciples." He vanishes ; then immediately after- 
 Avards reveals Himself to one party of the other women 
 that have separated on their various homeward routes in 
 returning ; and, in His sovereignty, permits them to hold 
 His feet and worship Him. 
 
 All else is comparatively plain. The women that have 
 first arrived, and who have only seen the Angel, go about, 
 and tell one and another of the disciples scattered in 
 Jerusalem. Two of these, apparently still early in the day, 
 start for Emmaus ; and, having been detained, by stopping 
 perhaps at a friend's on the road, resume their journey in 
 the afternoon. Then followed the meeting with Jesus ; 
 their statement of what they had heard from the women of 
 an Angel's appearance at the tomb, and declaration that 
 He was risen : — His revelation of Himself to them in the 
 breaking of bread, and then vanishing ; their return forth- 
 with to Jerusalem ; and, on finding that the apostles and 
 disciples had gathered together, going to them with their 
 report ; and hearing from them that not only had He 
 
 ' See ProfesHor Aii-eyla Tables, already alluded to, pretiy much fixing 
 the day of Christ's resurrection to the 5th Ajn-il, a.d. 33. 
 
CONCL.] ALFORD's GENERAL N. T. COMMENTARY. 189 
 
 been seen by the women, but at some time in the day by 
 Feter. 
 
 Such is my idea of the way in which we may fairly har- 
 monize the four Evangehsts' several accounts. And, iii 
 doing so, if there are assumptions to be made that may 
 seem arbitrary, and an undue exercise of imagination 
 in filling up certain hiatus' in the narrative with proba- 
 bilities, it is that which has sometimes to be done, and may 
 be most truly done, in circumstantial narratives of occur- 
 rences in common life. If the impression still remain of 
 the case as intricate, and of the solution as involving 
 improbabilities, let it never be forgotten that in various 
 important events described in His revealed Word, and 
 most especially in this, it pleases God to do that which 
 otherwise characterizes His dealings in Providence ; viz., 
 2mrposely to leave ilificidties, in order to try the faith 
 of men. So the dishonest sceptic grounds his unbelief on 
 the consideration simply of the difficidties. But the honest 
 inquirer (like an English judge in difficult and intricate cases) 
 fairly considers the tohole evidence : and, looking to the 
 immensity, variety, and consistency of the evidence for the 
 truth of revelation, rests his belief on it (notwithstanding 
 certain difficulties that he cannot resolve) as on a rock. 
 
 10. Once more, as to the ascension, I have only to 
 observe that though St. Mark in that part of ch. xvi. of his 
 Gospel which is alone undoubtedly his,^ and St. John in the 
 conclusion of his Gospel, give no account of Christ's ascen- 
 sion, they do yet both the one and the other imply it. So 
 Mark xii. 36, 37 ; (compare Acts ii. 32, 35 ;) John vi. 62, 
 XX. 17; &c. 
 
 Thus in fine, Mr. Dean, I have shown on what I think 
 
 ' May not the addition of the remaining verses in Mark xvi. have been 
 the addition made by himself (so as was the custom then, even as now) on 
 a later edition of a book ? 
 
190 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART III. 
 
 abundantly sufficient evidence that the inconsiderateness 
 and inconsistencies which so strikingly characterize your 
 Apocalyptic Commentary are in no little measure character- 
 istic also of your general Commentary on the Greek Testa- 
 ment. Alike we have observed them in yoiu* general theories 
 about that Gospel of St. Mark which I have made the 
 subject of my more special investigation, in your particular 
 criticisms, and in your treatment of its more prominent 
 difficulties as compared with the other Gospels. 
 
 Now, as regards the Gospels at least, I cannot but think 
 that this evident want of due consideration in the Scriptural 
 Comments is partly attributable to the too large measure 
 of time and thought w^hich must have been absorbed in the 
 preparation of the Table of various Manuscriptal and Pa- 
 tristic readings w^hich forms so conspicuous a feature on 
 every page of your Gospel Commentary. In chap. vi. 
 of your general Prolegomena,^ you propose " to set before 
 the student the principles on which the sacred text has 
 been revi'ed by you:" and, after measured praise of 
 Lachmann's recension, and still more of that of the second 
 edition of Tischendorf, coupled, however, with a discrimi- 
 native notice of the " miserable meagrencss " of its digest 
 in the earlier Gospels, and its other imperfections,^ you 
 speak of your own Tabular Digest as one combining the 
 various readings both of those two critics and of Scholz, 
 and which, indeed, you have endeavoured to make " as 
 complete as possible : " ^ at the same time intimating that 
 your own judfjmcnt has been everywhere carefully exercised^ 
 in order to educe out of the lists of all three the best and 
 most reliable text.* Now in St. Mark, for example, so 
 copious is the list thus given by you (given, as you profess, 
 
 • P. 72. ' Pp. 74-78. » p. 79. 
 
 * At p. 77 you speak of " having worked through tlie whole of Tischen- 
 dorf's text in conatnicting your own ;" that " your aim has been, in every 
 case, to endeavour to mount up to the original reading ; — that reading 
 •which may be supposed to liave given rise to the variations :" and so on. 
 
CONCL.] ALFORD's GENERAL N. T. COMMENTARY. 191 
 
 after critical examination,) as I tliink more than to equal, in 
 regard of the quantity of letter-press, both that of the text 
 and that of the annotations on it put together. I subjoin a 
 specimen.' From this it will be seen that in the first five 
 lines of the Table of various readings on this Gospel 
 there are references to 67 different MSS. and Versions ; 
 all of course to be compared together, and adjudicated 
 on, by him who would carefully and independently 
 construct his text (so as you profess to have done) out 
 of them. And, supposing some three minutes only to be 
 given to the consideration of each on an average, (and I 
 think the smaller time required for many would be so 
 counterbalanced by the greater time required for others. 
 
 Chap. i. 1. VI. 9. om. 28. 255 Iren. gr. Orig Jer : ins A B D, &c. Iren (expr ) Jer . — 
 
 3 3 3 11 
 
 rec. Tov 0., with A, &c. : txt BDL 102.— 2. /caflws BKLA 4. 201 . 33. 209—55 Orig : txt 
 
 3 
 
 A D P, &c.— rec. 6vTois'rpo</»jTais(corrn, the cit. being from Mai. and Isa.), with A Paeth. 
 
 si arr Chr Phot Iren-lat , &c. : ev tw 7rpo<^r)T)) al : om tol 1 : al vary : txt (tw bef i\<i. 
 22 1 
 
 om D al) BDLA 1. 22. 33 al it v Syr syr-jer perss ar-erp copt goth syr-marg Ir-gr-lat. 
 
 16 
 
 In your brief critical notice of Griesbach, Proleg., p. 73. you observe that 
 "the nvunber and complexity of his symbols, indicating his judgment on 
 the quality of the readings, form an objection to his Edition as furnishing 
 a text for general use." Did you forget, when thus writing, the complexity 
 apparent in your own digest ; such as it must appear to the theological stu- 
 dent, and young hard-worked clergyman, to whom you recommend " the 
 diligent study of the various readings indicated in it, as of the first 
 moment" ? 
 
 I must not forget, too, your marginal references, and which must necessarily 
 have occupied time. In yom- Prolegom., pp. 80, 81, you say that they are 
 references " to verbal and idiomatic usages " ; and " that you have inserted 
 not one which has not been verified." Unfortunately the very first which 
 I happened to look for, viz. that in Mark ix. 11, on "Elias coming first," 
 &c., turned out to be a non-existent verse. Acts xii. 32 ; that chapter 
 having only twenty-five verses : and, as for the only other reference, viz. 
 Dan. ii. 28, (" There is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets," &c.,) what 
 it has to do with any verbal or idiomatic usage here, I am at a loss to 
 understand. 
 
 I was wishing to see if your references threw any light on a real diflficulty 
 in the sacred text, viz. about " Elias coming, and restonng all things:" — 
 I say a real difficulty ; since Christ himself is He who is to make all things 
 new, and bring in the wished for aTTOKuTa'^affi.s. But not a word is there to 
 explain this, or even of allusion to it, either in your notes or references. 
 
19.2 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART III. 
 
 involving points of more special difficulty, as to constitute 
 this a perhaps fair average), then for the due consideration 
 of the items in these five lines, 3 x 67, or about 200 
 minutes, would be necessary ; i.e. 3^ hours. And, as St. 
 Mark's Gospel occupies in your Work from p. 284 to 
 p. 396, or 112 pages, with some 20 of these lines on each, 
 
 as about the average, there would be needed ^^^^^^^^ — x 3I- as 
 
 D 
 
 the number of hours needed for the due consideration 
 simply of these various readings, i.e. near 1,600 hours. 
 And, supposing you to have been able to devote 5 hours 
 a-day continuously to your Work on the New Testament, 
 which, considering your various ministerial and other 
 avocations, must be admitted to be a large allowance 
 for it, then a whole year must have been occupied simply 
 on the various readhigs in the one Gospel of St. Mark, 
 with its 112 pages; and, on the same scale, for the whole 
 first volume of 834 pages on the Gospels, some 7 years : ' 
 not to add what would be needed for the important sub- 
 jects of the Prolegomena. Now, then, who does not see 
 how this must have cramped you for time in the deliberate 
 and mature consideration requisite in the yet more im- 
 portant department of the elucidation of the sacred Scripture 
 itself! Probably there has been a mutual injury from the 
 interference of these different departments of literary labour, 
 one with another. And thus it is, as you doubtless know, 
 that Tischendorf, the highest existing authority on that 
 subject, has spoken so depreciatingly and severely (I think 
 indeed too severely) of your w'ork, in respect of this parti- 
 
 ' J do not thus speak without having paid some little attention to the 
 "science diplomatique ;" and had experience of the time requisite for the 
 noting, and the comparison of, various readings in different MSS. of Holy 
 Scripture. Among other MSS., I have had the good fortune of inspecting 
 and examining for some hours both the famous Vatican MS. and the Codex 
 Ephraemi llescriptus : — the latter at Paris ; the former, thi'ough the courtesy 
 of Cardinal Mai, at Rome. 
 
CONCL.] ALFORD's GENERAL N. T. COMMENTARY. 193 
 
 cular department of your literary labours/ I cannot but 
 think that you erred in judgment in attempting (however 
 noble the undertaking, if with strength sufficient for its 
 due accomplishment,) to combine the two objects of an 
 indejjendent recension of the text, as the result of your own 
 critical investigation of the various readings, and the eluci- 
 dation of its sense and the lessons involved in it ; and that 
 it would have been better to have given your strength 
 time and thought, separately and less ambitiously, to the 
 one department or the other : — if to the latter, professedly 
 adopting Tischendorf's text, except on the few occasions on 
 which you felt bound to differ from him. In such case 
 you would have had both space and time for more fully con- 
 sidering and stating the grounds of difference on that head ; 
 and also been able to throw your almost undivided strength 
 into the grander department of the elucidation, and vindica- 
 tion from objectors, of Holy Scripture. 
 
 In the foregoing criticisms I have made one of the 
 Gospels only in your Commentary the subject of my 
 investigation. But the same defects might be easily 
 shown to characterize your Annotations on the Epistles. 
 A specimen or two have already appeared in my 
 
 ' " Quod rem texttis sacri criticam attinet Alfordius tarn parum studii, 
 judicii, religionisque probavit, ut vix in scholarum usum scripsisse 
 censendus sit." Moreover he adds the charge of had faith against you : — 
 " Editionem meam recentissimam omni modo, neque vero sine mala fide, 
 suam in rem convertit." A charge this made in 1850; and to which it 
 astonishes me that you should have made neither answer, nor aUusion, in 
 your 3d edition of the 1st vol. in 1856. 
 
 Mr. Shadwell, who cites this both in his Preface, and at p. 413 of his 
 Notes on Mark's Gospel, specifies also some five or six places in St. Mark's 
 Gospel in which you have followed the emendation from the received text 
 given in Tischendorf's 2d edition, as if, however, on your own judgment ; 
 but in which Tischendorf in his 7th edition has, on more mature considera- 
 tion, returned to the textus receptus : viz. on Mark vii. 32, viii. 1, xii. 4, 
 xvi. 39, and a few others. 
 
 O 
 
194 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART III. 
 
 strictures on your Apocalypse.' They are stamped on the 
 face of every Section alike of your Book. 
 
 But ^vlly is it that I have thus included in my unfavour- 
 able criticisms your general Commentary; as well as that 
 on the Apocalypse, the examination of which was forced on 
 me by your strictures on my Horae Apocalypticse ? From 
 any uncalled-for and unkind desire of depreciating it ? By 
 no means. Much more gratifying would it have been to 
 me, could I have done so with truth, to notice eulogistically 
 the elaborate work of the son of my old and valued friend, 
 your father ; a son of whose early poetic promise I used in 
 olden times to have pleasure in speaking to him, and whose 
 subsequent successive steps to distinction I have marked 
 with friendly interest. — But higher considerations enjoin on 
 me a tone other than eulogistic. I have had occasion again 
 and again to hear your Commentary referred to as an 
 authority on points on which I doubted not its erroneous- 
 ness, by younger brethren in the ministry. For example, 
 in my own pulpit at Brighton a valued young friend, in 
 commenting on 2 Thess. ii. 2, spoke of the eves-vcev 
 there, which our received version renders (quite rightly, I 
 doubt not,) " the day of Christ is af hancV,'' as determined 
 by " modern criticism " to mean " the day of Christ is 
 adaalhj ^n-escnt." ^ On which, having asked him for his 
 authority for that piece of modern criticism, and. learned 
 that it was Alford, I advised him ever to exercise his own 
 careful judgment before resting on any dictum of " modern 
 criticism " as truth : and, with reference to the particular 
 point then in question, to consider whether, after St. Paul 
 had quite recently before told the Thessalonian Christians 
 
 • See pp. 40, 41, 30. 
 
 * I have ali-eady, nt p. 30, observed on the indistinctness of your views 
 as to the meaning of the day of Christ. 
 
CONCL.] ALIORd's GENERAL N. T. COMMENTARY. 195 
 
 that the first result of Christ's coming would be the 
 gathering to Him into the air first of the risen departed 
 ones of the Christian body, then of the Christians living at 
 the time, it was credible that those Christians at Thessa- 
 lonica should have thought Christ's coming to have actually 
 taken place, at a time when neither any of their own Chris- 
 tian body, nor even the Apostle Paul, had themselves ex- 
 perienced the promised blessed rapture to meet their Lord 
 in the air. This, after a little more had past between us 
 as to the eves-rjKev,^ was sufficient to satisfy my friend ; and 
 a lesson of caution suggested which, I doubt not, will have 
 been usefully thenceforward remembered by him. Other 
 similar cases have come before me of young clergymen 
 asserting very questionable, if not decidedly erroneous 
 opinions, on the strength of statements to that effect in 
 your Commentary. — To which might be added the in- 
 distinctness and obscurity at times of its explanations, 
 chiefly when from Germanic sources. Not long since a 
 clerical friend, having to take for his sermon the subject of 
 John xvi. 8, " When he, the Paraclete, is come, he will 
 reprove (^ekey^ei^ convince) the world concerning (Tre/ot) sin, 
 and concerning righteousness, and concerning judgment," 
 &c., spoke to me of the mistiness of the view of part at least 
 of it left on his mind by your note on the passage.^ Yet this, 
 
 1 See the Note on this word at p. 92 of the 3rd vohime of the 5th Edition 
 of the Horse Apoc, just published. On the fir] a-oKfvOrjvai of 2 Thess. ii. 2 
 ■we may fitly compare the /lit; Opoeiade of Mark xiii. 7 ; each said in refer- 
 ence (as I understood the eve'TTjKet/) to the expected imminence of Chi'ist's 
 second advent. 
 
 ^ Not very difficult surely, as I said to the friend who consulted me, is 
 the true exjilanation. It is but a statement of the usual work of the Holy 
 Sjjirit in the conversion of a man, previously dead in trespasses and sins : 
 for Koa-fjLos, as Liicke justly observes, includes here, just as in John iii. 17, 19, 
 and elsewhere, those who, though not at present convei-ted, may yet here- 
 after be so. There is, 1st, his conviction in respect of his previous unbelief 
 in the Lord Jesus Christ, after his accomplishment of the work of redemp- 
 tiou, as the sin of sins : (compare John iii. 18, xv. 24, Acts ii, 36, 37 :) 
 
196 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [PART III. 
 
 which is partly from Liicke, partly from Archdeacon Hare, 
 and in part also your own, is by no means so misty as 
 others that I could point out ; and which indeed arc a 
 mystification, rather than elucidation, of Scripture. How 
 different from the clearness, and sound sense and judgment, 
 of our best English expositors ! I must confess that 
 when I hear crude novelties of thought on Scripture 
 announced pretentiously by young theologians from the 
 pulpit, (which, let mc say, was the furthest from the spirit 
 of the young friend in the ministry to whom I was just a 
 little while since alluding,) as resulting from the " exegesis" 
 of " modern criticism," the tendency with myself, as well 
 as with many others, I know, of the more experienced, 
 sensible, and learned of our clergy, is not exactly to listen 
 with any very deferential feeling to the announcement. 
 
 " Wlien they talked of their Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff, 
 He shifted his trumpet, and only took snuff." 
 
 Nor does this express the full amount of the resulting 
 evil. Is it not the case that this deference to German 
 criticism, even where simply misty and speculative, has had 
 
 2dly, Ills conviction respecting Christ's own perfect righteousness, as unto 
 all and upon all them that believe, by virtue of his pleading it for them 
 after that very going to the Father which the disciples ignorantly depre- 
 cated ; — a conviction involving that of the total defectiveness before God of 
 his own best righteousness : (coni])are Rom. iii. 22, Phil. iii. 6 — 9 :) 3dly, his 
 conviction as to that judgment having begun on Satan, which is' expressed 
 elsewhere (Matt. xii. 29) under the figure of the strong man being bound, 
 and cast out of the soul, who before occupied and ruled over it in 
 peace : (compare John xii. 31, 32 :) a judgment, and ejection, experi- 
 mentally known to each emancipated Christian ; and effected through 
 his reception, and jiersonal a])i>licati()n, of the two former teachings of 
 the Holy Spirit. — A view this of the passage in cjuestion not very different, 
 if I rightly understand you, from Lucke's, Hare's, and your own on the two 
 first heads : but on the third more accordant with the text which defines 
 the judgment meant ;is t]\n.t pcust on the Prince of the world, not as the judg- 
 ment formed in men's minds ; and without your misty adunxture of the 
 subjective and the objective in the exposition. 
 
CONCL.] ALFORd's GENERAL N. T. COMMENTARY. 197 
 
 a deleterious effect in weakening the mind of our young 
 Acadeniics, perverting it from its natural Anglo-Saxon good 
 sense, and, in combination with other causes,^ preparing it 
 for the reception of the irrationalism (in the true sense of 
 the word) of infidelity ? And this even in the case of the 
 clergy of our own Church ! ^ Little could I have believed a 
 few years ago that to men of this class and profession, in 
 our own most favoured country, there would be applicable 
 the indignant saying of Burke relatively to the infidels of 
 the French revolutionary era : — " They cannot strike the 
 sun out of heaven ; but they can raise a smouldering smoke, 
 and hide it from their view ! " 
 
 I am quite aware that you distinctly disclaim and oppose 
 yourself to such " modern criticism," whether of the 
 German or Anglo-Germanic school;^ and that you hold 
 fast to the plain old blessed truth of our Divine 
 Saviour's vicarious atoning sacrifice for us. And so too, / 
 woiiid //ojje, (though here you are not altogether consistent,) ^ 
 
 ' jEJ.c/., the misty thoughts and writings of certain modern pseudo-liberal 
 theological authors ; shedding obscurity on the most precious gospel-truths ; 
 and euvelojDing them (to use Coleridge's happy expression) in the fog-blight 
 of their own minds : also, again, the recklessly false caricatures of evan- 
 gelic doctrines and character by other popular writers in semi-religious novels 
 and romances. Let such writers read the real picture of the operation of 
 evangelic principle in biographies such as that of Chalmers or Hewitson ; 
 men far above themselves in intellect, as well as in the higher exaltation of 
 spirituality and holiness : and then think how such caricatures wall appear 
 even to themselves in the hour of death, and the light of eternity. 
 
 ^ I have spoken somewhat fully on this subject in a Paper at the end of 
 the Appendix to the 3rd Volume of the 5th Edition of my Horse Apoc. 
 
 ^ " How capricious," you say on Mark v. 40, " accordiyig to modern 
 criticism, must this Evangelist have been ... in leaving out here," &c. And 
 then you add ; " Can testimony be stronger as to the untenableness of 
 such a view?" This is against certain of the German Rationalistic critics 
 who take the view, so impugned, of the mutual non-independence of the 
 Evangelists. 
 
 * See, for example, your view of Apoc. viii. 2, 3, pp. 70 — 72, suprd,. So, 
 too, your frequent and really reckless intimations, from time to time, of 
 
198 APOCALYPSIS ALFORDIANA. [pART III. 
 
 in regard of that of liis acting as Intercessor and High 
 Priest, to plead that atoning sacrifice, and also His perfect 
 righteousness, as man's representative, on the behalf of all 
 that heartily believe on Him, before the throne of God. 
 Still the measm'e of your deference to, and adoption of, 
 the statements and mode of thought of German critics has, 
 in my opinion, tended too plainly to injure the scriptural 
 character of your Commentary ; and, in so far, to make it 
 by no means a safe guide on doctrine for the theological 
 students and younger clergy, for whom it is specially and 
 professedly intended. Hence the solemn duty that I have 
 felt it not to close my Pamphlet on that Apocalyptic sub- 
 ject of controversy which you have forced upon me without 
 the accompanying critical notice and voice of warning 
 respecting your General Commentary. And I pray you to 
 accept this as my apology for such notice of it : and, at the 
 same time, to believe that I am not the less your sincere 
 friend and well-wisher : with the hearty desire that, 
 eschewing whatever may have hitherto dimmed your testi- 
 mony, you may, in these latter and perilous days of the 
 Chiu'ch,' become eminent, distinctly and unmistakably, 
 
 the irreconcilability of the statements on the same suhject of the one 
 Evangelist with the other. 
 
 ' On the probability of our present near advance to the closing times 
 of the jn-esent dispensation we are agreed. See what I have cited at p. 45, 
 suprcb, from your expressed opinion on this point. — And, let me :tsk, is not 
 the Roman Pajjacy's late and present exposure of itself before the world, 
 in its true character, confirmatory of this : answering so well as it does to 
 the Apocalyptic Babylon's exposure, ;is prefigured in Ajjoc. xvii. ; a pre- 
 figuration next i)receding that of Babylon's destruction ; and which is itself 
 the precursor of Christ's second advent ? 
 
 Let me add, since you have sp(jken (albeit inconsistently*) against the 
 year-day principle as applied to the 1260 ilays of pi-ophecy, and the more 
 definite view of the appointed time of the ending of the present disj^ensation 
 therein implied, — more especially because of the incorrectness, as events 
 
 * See the Note, p. 94, suprd,. 
 
CONCL.] ALFORd's GENERAL N. T. COMMENTARY. 199 
 
 as a true exponent, and consistent advocate, of the pure 
 Gospel faith. 
 
 E. B. ELLIOTT. 
 
 have proved, of the terminating dates of the end proiioimded by certain 
 former expositors, — just two thoughts for yom- calm and cai-eful considera- 
 tion. 
 
 The first is that of the parallelism of the prophetic period of Daniel's 70 
 hebdomads which marked the time that was to elapse before Christ's first 
 coming in humiliation, with that of the Apocalyjitic j^eriods marking the 
 time before Christ's second coming : — its parallelism not otherwise only, 
 but specially, in regard of the dubiousness of the true terminus h, quo 
 whence to calculate it. Hence probably many mistaken anticipations by 
 Jews as to the time of Messiah's first advent, if arguing from Dan. ix. ; 
 without however any impeachment thereby of the truth of the year-day 
 principle so ai^plied, or truth of the prophecy itself. Certainly, had I 
 lived in the times shortly before the Christian sera, my own inclination 
 would have been to calculate from Cyriii decree for the Jews' return ; 
 and then my expectation would have been falsified by the event. And 
 so again, if calculating from Darius^ decree as the terminus k quo. Yet, 
 as measured from Artaxerxes' decree, the prophecy had its fulfilment. 
 Would a Jew then have been justified, after, and because of, the failure of 
 those primary calculations, in decrying the principle of any such definite 
 principle of calculation ; so as you do in your Proleg. to the Apocalyptic 
 Commentary, p. 251 ? 
 
 The other thought that I would beg you to consider is, what I have said 
 in the new or 5th Edition of my Horse Apoc. respecting the dubious 
 terminus a quo of the additional 75 days of Dan, xii. : whether to be 
 measm-ed from the date of what I regard as the 'primary ending of the 
 great prophetic period of the 1260 days, i.e. about 1790; or from that 
 of the secondary and chief ending, about a.d. 1866. If from the latter, 
 the time of the end will still have above 75 years to run, on the year-day 
 principle of calculation, and my application of it. 
 
 Macintosh, Printer, Great New-Btrtet, London. 
 
(?S 
 
JUST READY, THE FIFTH EDITION OF 
 
 HORJ] APOCALYPTIC^; 
 
 A COMMENTARY ON THE APOCALYPSE, 
 CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL ; 
 
 Including, also, an Examination of the Chief Prophecies of Daniel. 
 
 Illustrated by an Apocalyptic Chart, and Engravings from Medals and 
 other extant Monuments of Antiquity. 
 
 By the Rev. E. B. ELLIOTT, M.A., 
 
 Incumbent of St. Mark's, Brighton, Prebendary of Heytesbury, and 
 
 sometime Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. 
 
 Carefully Revised, Corrected, Improved, and Enlarged, with some 
 additional Illustrative Plates, and a New Preface. 
 
 In 4 Vols. 8vo., cloth, price 21. \Qs. 
 
Date Due 
 
BS2825 .E458 
 
 Apocalypsis Alfordiana ; or, Five 
 
 Princeton Theological Semmary-Speer Library 
 
 1 1012 00069 2907