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HISTORY AND REVELATION.

THE CORRESPONDENCE

OF THE

PREDICTIONS OF THE APOCALYPSE

WITH THE

MARKED EVENTS OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA,

FROM GIBBON, MEZERAY, MOSHEIM, D'AUBIGNÉ, AND OTHER EMINENT HISTORIANS.

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SEELEY, JACKSON AND HALLIDAY, 54, FLEET STREET.

LONDON. MDCCCLXX.

101.

PREFACE.

THE object which the author has had in view being fully explained in the first few pages of this work, he has little to say here beyond the expression of a hope that his labours may prove as beneficial to his readers as they have been interesting and instructive to himself. Should they do so, his reward will be full. He has been induced to give the result of those labours, by his own early experience of the difficulties that beset the path of the Biblical student on approaching the one great book, The Apocalypse, which, to the majority of readers, notwithstanding the many and able, much more able, commentators that have preceded him, remains almost a sealed book. The conflicting opinions presented in various expositions appeared to render hopeless the accomplishment of his desire to obtain an interpretation of the Apocalyptic predictions, possessing internal evidences, as well as the simplicity, of truth. He, however, said :-The word of God is true. No part is without design. If the Apocalypse is deemed by many to be unintelligible, its design cannot be fully accomplished; something remains to be done in the Lord's vineyard, and it is the duty of His labourers to endeavour, in humility, to do it. Events must surely be true exponents of a prophecy declared to foreshow "the things that must shortly come to pass. Light may follow a simple record of those events. Expositors must be laid

aside, and historians be taken up.

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The result, after years of close application, is presented to the public in the following pages containing the historic

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