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years, is faulty; because his calculation, from the taking of Babylon by Cyrus in the year A. C. 538 (according to the chronology of Abp. Usher) to the year of our Lord 1866 (his supposed termination of the 1260 years,) produces 2403 years, instead of 2400 years, which it ought to have produced, had it been founded upon just principles, and supposing the reading of the LXX to be the genuine reading*. This last indeed I believe to be the case; and therefore, like Mr. Whitaker, I adopt their reading: but, as it will appear in the sequel, by a different mode of computation the precise number 2400 may be produced; and thus the two periods of 2400 and 1260 years may be perfectly harmonized together, if we conceive the date of the latter to be the year of our Lord 606, a point in which we are both agreed. On the same grounds, his opinion, that the holy city mentioned in the eleventh chapter of the Revelation is the literal city of Jerusalem, will be found equally untenable, even independent of other objections to which it is liable. The taking of Jerusalem by the Persians in the year 1614, can never be made to synchronize with the delivering of the saints into the hand

* General View, p. 272-277.

of

of the Papal little horn in the year 606; nor is it to me at least at all satisfactory to be told, that the nearest round number, which will include the whole time intervening from the year 614 to the year 1866, will be 1260*. Since the saints are to be given into the hand of the little horn during the precise period of 1260 years, and since the holy city is to be trodden under foot by the Gentiles during the selfsame period of 42 prophetic months; the reign of the little horn and the treading of the holy city under foot must be exactly commensurate. Consequently, if the saints were first given into the hand of the little horn in the year 606, the holy city must have begun to be trodden under foot in that same year. But the literal Jerusalem did not then begin to be trodden under foot by the literal Gentiles †. Therefore the literal Jerusalem cannot be meant by the holy city; nor the Christians of Jerusalem surrounded with the abominations of Mohammedism, by the two witnesses. Mr. Whitaker seems to allow that

General View p. 272–277.

In strictness of speech the literal Jerusalem began to be trodden under foot long before, even in the year 70; so that Mr. Whitaker's scheme is untenable either way. See Luke xxi. 24. which can have no relation to Rev. xi. 2.

VOL. I

b

this

this prophecy may be understood in a figurative sense, as it is by Bp. Newton, no less than in a literal one: I, on the other hand, will venture explicitly to assert, that it is incapable of any other than a figurative sense. In short, in the selfsame year that the saints were first delivered into the Irand of the little horn, the mystic holy city began to be trodden under foot by a new race of idolaters, the mystic witnesses began to prophesy in sackcloth, the mystic woman fled into the wilderness, and the ancient pagan Roman beast revived. So again; in the self same year, at the termination of the 1260 days, that series of events will commence, by which the kingdom shall be given unto the saints, the power of the little horn shall be destroyed, the sanctuary shall be cleansed, and the beast shall be slain. These synchronisms must ever be kept in view: and, unless they be absolutely perfect, they are in effect no synchronisms. A failure of three years or of eight years, as in the two cases which have been last discussed, destroys a synchronism no less completely than a failure of as many centuries.

2. Dr. Zouch's Work on Prophecy is liable to many of the same objections as the two works of Mr. Whitaker: but it deserves the same commendation and attention from the protestant reader,

on

on account of its severe though just censures of Popery. Differing as I do very essentially from Dr. Zouch in many points, I with pleasure acknowledge my obligation to him for the interpre tation of the apocalyptic image of the beast, which I have adopted in the present work: an interpretation so simple, so natural, so perfectly according both with the text and with the event, so little liable to any reasonable objection, that I cannot but wonder how it came to be overlooked both by Mr. Mede, Sir Isaac Newton, and Bp. Newton.

Mr. Kett's History the Interpreter of Prophecy, and Mr. Galloway's Commentary on the Revelation, I have read with much attention: but I have risen from the perusal of them unconvinced. Both of these respectable authors seem to me to have fallen into several considerable errors; although the general idea, that many recent events are foretold by the inspired writers, is, I think, well founded.

3. Mr. Kett has involved the beautifully simple, and chronologically accurate, prophecies of Da niel in much needless confusion, by his scheme of ascribing to the same prediction a primary and a secondary, and sometimes even a threefold and a fourfold, accomplishment. Had he more fully considered the nature of chronological prophecy,

he would not have fallen into this mistake.

Whatever may be the case with insulated predictions, it is physically impossible that a chronological one can admit of more than a single completion. The only difference between a connected series of chro-, nological prophecies, and a regular history, is this: a series of strictly chronological prophecies is a prospective detail of successive future events; a history is a retrospective detail of successive past events. As well therefore might we suppose, that, when a history relates one circumstance, it ultimately means another; as expect to find, in a chronological prophecy, what Mr. Kett terms double links of accomplishment. The thing in both cases is equally impossible. The very circumstance of a prophecy being a chronological one excludes every idea of a twofold completion. And, when it is further recollected, that Daniel more than once connects his predictions with certain specific numbers of years, it will appear yet more evidently, that Mr. Kett's system is perfectly un

tenable.

4. The preceding error cannot be charged upon Mr. Galloway but, although he escapes this fault, he is repeatedly guilty of another; I mean the want of a strict adherence to unity of symbolical interpretation. If a symbol may signify one thing