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 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 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 accom plishments 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. 2. p. 23, 24. with Vol. 1. p. 381.) 1 shall hereafter shew, that such a plan is altogether untenable. describes describes the Apostasy in its first, or individual character: Daniel and St. John specify its 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 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 never can 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 chropological 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 Accordingly they both specify, with much exactness the era, from which those years are to be computed. Daniel directs us to date 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 date 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 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 delivering 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 must evidently be the year, in which the Bishop of Rome was constituted supreme head of the Church with the proud title of Bishop of Bishops: 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 is the date of the 1260 years, and the era of what St. Paul terms the revelation of the man man of sin. The Apostasy, in its individual çapacity, 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 commenced the 1260 years of the Apostasy in its public and dominant capacity *. 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 up out of the fourth or Roman beast, which should exercise a tyrannical authority over the saints during the period of *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 were decidedly formed 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 not, when he was first acknowledged Universal Bishop? "Then did he become a monarch diverse from the first. Then 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, 206, 1260 1260 years; I must now notice the contemporary eastern Apostasy of Mohammedism. In the Apocalypse, St. John describes the origin of this false religion at the beginning of the first woe-trumpet; the blast of which introduces, in the self-same year 606, the universal episcopacy of the Roman prelate, and the commencement of Mohammeḍism. From the description, which he gives us of the rise of Mohammedism, it appears, that we are to consider it in the light of an apostasy no less than Popery, though an apostasy doubtless of a very different nature. A star which had fallen from heaven, or an apostate Christian minister, is said to open the bottomless pit, and to let out Apollyon and his figurative locusts and we shall find, in exact harmony with the prophecy, that Mohammedism is in reality a sort of corrupted and apostate Christianity. Like the divine religion of the Messiah, it claims to be a revelation from God at the hand of an inspired prophet, to call the world from the vanities of polytheism to the worship of the one true God, and to declare authoritatively a state of future rewards and punishments. Like the Gospel, it professes to build itself upon the Law of Moses; and allows the divine commission both of the Jewish legislator, and of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. But, borrowing the peculiar tenet of the fallen star, it pronounces the Saviour of the world to be a mere mortal, and makes void the whole of the Gospel; it contaminates, with licencentious |