tain classes of men; for its superstitious injunctions to abstain from particular kinds of food; and for its attachment to vain traditions and bodily mortifications, which have no warrant from Scripture, and which are very far from being conducive to real godliness.

Though I have cited the prophecies relative to the man of sin and the Apostasy, I shall purposely refrain from discussing the character of that arch enemy of sound religion, because I have nothing to add to Bp. Newton's excellent Dissertation upon the subject. I am aware that some great modern names have applied the prophecy of the man of sin to French Infidelity; but I have not yet seen any arguments which convince me of the propriety of such an application. In every particular, as Bp. Newton hath fully shewn, the prediction answers to Popery and the Pope: in several particulars it by no means answers either to French Infidelity or the French Republic. Hence I conclude, that Bp. Newton's interpretation is the true one *.

(2.) The

*In one point, however, I certainly think his Lordship mistaken. He singularly confounds, as it appears from his citations, the man of sin, whom he rightly judges to be the first little horn mentioned by Daniel, both with the second little horn, and with the king who magnified himself above every god. Thus he makes the two little horns and the king to be all one and the same power; herein being inconsistent even with his own scheme of interpretation, which had previously represented the second little horn as the Roman Empire invading the East by way of Macedon. Mr. Kett, agreeably to his favourite plan of double accomplish

ments

(2.) The period, assigned both by Daniel and St, John to the tyrannical reign of the man of sin or the little horn of the Roman beast and to the dominance of the great western Apostasy, is three times and a half or 1260 years. Here, therefore, we must define the proper mode of dating that period.

In prophecies which are strictly chronological, the overt acts of communities or the heads of communities are necessarily alone considered in the fixing of dates; because it would be impossible for us to know how to date any particular period from the insulated and unauthorized acts of individuals. But in prophecies, which are not strictly chronological, the scope is much more wide and much less definite; extending, not merely to communities and their heads, but to every individual whose actions the prophecies may describe. On these grounds there are two entirely different dates to the Apostasy. The first is its date, when considered as relating to individuals: the second is its date, when considered as relating to that community over which the man of sin presides. St. Paul describes the Apostasy in its first, or individual, character Daniel and St. John specify its triumphant duration in its second, or general, character, Now, it is manifest, that the date of the Apostasy, when considered individually, is the very day and

ments of the same prophecy, fancies that the man of sin is at once both the Papal and the Infidel power (Compare Hist. the Interp. Vol. ii. p. 23, 24. with Vol. i. p. 381.) I shall hereafter shew, that such a plan is altogether untenable.

hour

hour when any single Christian individual was first guilty of any one of those acts which characterize the Apostasy: and it is equally manifest, that this date can never be ascertained by man, but is known unto God alone. We can say, indeed, in general terms, that monkish celibacy, and a superstitious veneration of saints and angels, were creeping fast into the Church during the fourth, fifth, and sixth, centuries; but we shall find it impossible to point out the precise year of their commencement. Such being the case, Daniel and St. John, in their chronological prophecies, consider the Apostasy, only in its public and authorized capacity: and teach us to esteem the 1260 years, as being the period of the public dominance of the Apostasy, not of its individual continuance. Accordingly they both specify, with much exactness, the era, from which those years are to be computed. Daniel teaches us to reckon them from the time when the saints were by some public act of the state delivered into the hand of the little horn; and St. John, in a similar manner, teaches us to reckon them from the time when the woman, the true Church, fled into the wilderness from the face of the serpent; when the mystic city of God began to be trampled under foot by a new race of Gentiles, or idolaters; when the great Roman beast, which had been slain by the preaching of the Gospel, revived in its bestial character, by setting up an idolatrous spiritual tyrant in the Church, or, as Daniel expresses it, by de

livering

livering the saints into the hand of such a tyrant; and when the witnesses began to prophesy in sackcloth. A date, which will answer to these concurring particulars, can certainly have no connection with the mere acquisition of a temporal principality by the Pope. It seems most probably to be the year, in which the Bishop of Rome was constituted supreme head of the Church with the proud title of Universal Bishop: for by such an act the whole Church, comprehending both good and bad, both the saints of the Most High and those who were tainted with the gentilism of the Apostasy considered individually, were formally given by the chief secular power, the head of the Roman empire, into the hand of the encroaching little horn. This year was the year 606, when the reigning Emperor, Phocas, the representative of the sixth head of the beast, declared Pope Boniface to be Universal Bishop: and the Roman Church hath ever since shewn itself to be that little horn, into whose hands the saints were then delivered, by styling itself, with equal absurdity and presumption, the catholic or universal Church. The year 606 then seems to be the date of the 1260 years, and the era of what St. Paul terms the revelation of the man of sin. The Apostasy, in its individual capacity, was already in existence previous to such revelation; hence he represents it as commencing before it but, as soon as the man of sin was openly revealed by having the saints delivered into

his hand, then apparently commenced the 1260 years of the Apostasy in its public and dominant capacity *.

2. Hitherto I have spoken only of the western Apostasy of the Romish church, predicted by St. Paul, and represented by Daniel under the symbol of a little horn springing out of the fourth or Roman beast, which should exercise a tyrannical authority over the saints during the period of 1260 years; I must now notice the contemporary eastern Apostasy of Mohammedism.

*I with pleasure strengthen myself with the concurring opinion of Mr. Whitaker, relative to the proper mode of dating the 1260 years; and the more so, because my own sentiments on the subject was decidedly formed, so far as we may be allowed to form sentiments on such a subject, previous to my knowing what he had written respecting it. "When then "were they (the saints) thus given into his (the little horn's)

hand; and any authority, that may be called universal, granted to the Pope? Was it knowledged Universal Bishop? "narch diverse from the first.

not, when he was first acThen did he become a moThen were the souls of men,

an article of merchandise in the mystic Babylon, given into "his hand. And so well was this title deemed to merit the reproach of speaking great things, that Mr. Gibbon has "made the following remark on Gregory. In his rival, the "Patriarch of Constantinople, he condemned the Antichristian "title of Universal Bishop, which the successor of St. Peter was "too haughty to concede, and too feeble to assume. Yet, within

a few years, in the year 606, did Boniface assume the title *of Universal Bishop, in virtue of a grant from the tyrant "Phocas." General and connected View of the Prophecies. P. 207, 208..