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ment: and there were lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail."

The prophet, reserving a more full account of the sexeral important events which were to take place under this woe for the pouring out of the seven last plagues and the chapters subordinately connected with them, gives us here a general preliminary statement of them. For the consolation of the afflicted Church he inverts the order of their accomplishment, placing the triumphant establishment of the kingdom of Christ, before God's assumption to himself of his great power; before the time of his wrath; before his destruction of those that destroyed the earth; before the day of the anger of the nations; before the last earthquake, which was to divide the great city into three parts, and to overthrow the cities of the nations; and before great Babylon came in remembrance before God. Anticipating the final triumph of Christianity and the commencement of the millennium, he eagerly looks forward to that blessed period when the kingdoms of this world should become the kingdoms of our Lord; and afterwards, as it were reluctantly, touches upon the calamities which yet remained to be fulfilled under the seven vials. The propriety of this interpretation of the passage will be evident, if we consider that the seventh trumpet was to introduce the third great woe which surely cannot be the conversion of the world to Christ, and if we reflect that all the seven vials of the last plagues yet remain to be poured out ere the triumphant reign of the Messiah commences.*

Thus it appears, that the eleventh chapter of the Apocalypse, or the first of the little book, extends through the whole period of the 1260 years. The three remaining chapters of the little book do the same: for all the four, in point of chronology, run parallel to each other; and jointly give us a complete history of the western Apostacy, and of all who are concerned with it whether actively or passively.

* See Mede's Works B. V. Summary view of the Apoc. p. 920-Bp. Newton's Dissert. on Rev. xi. in loc.-Sir Isaac Newton's Observ. on the Apoc. Chap. II. p.

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SECTION II.

Concerning the war of the dragon with the woman,

The main-spring of the Apostacy is the great red dragon, or, as the Apostle himself informs us, the devil. It was this grand deceiver of the whole world, that actuated the two-horned beast, and that employed at his instigation the ten-horned beast, to trample under foot the Gospel of Christ. Hence St. John thinks it necessary to dedicate one whole chapter of the little book to the full elucidation of his wiles.

"And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the Sun, and the Moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered. And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.

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she brought forth a man-child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne. And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two-hundred and threescore days."

The excellent Bp. Newton appears to me to have failed in no part of his commentary upon the Apocalypse so much as in that on the present chapter. Although he had before very justly stated, that the little book described the calamities of the western church, and as such was with good reason made a separate and distinct prophecy and although the little book itself repeatedly declares, that it comprehends nothing but the history of the great Apostacy of 1260 years, which commenced as we have seen in the year 606: yet he now supposes, in direct contradiction to his former statement, that St. John

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resumes his subject from the beginning, from the very first propagation of Christianity. Hence he conjectures, that the dragon, which persecutes the symbolical woman or the Church is pagan Rome; and that he is styled the red dragon, because "purple or scarlet was the distinguishing colour of the Roman emperors, consuls, and generals" that the man-child is primarily the mystic Christ, for whom the Roman dragon laid snares to destroy him in his infancy, as Pharaoh did of old for the male children of the Hebrews: but that Constantine however, the first Christian emperor, was here more particularly intended, for whose life the dragon Galerius laid many snares, though he providentially escaped them all; and, notwithstanding all opposition, was caught up unto the throne of God, was not only secured by the divine protection, but was advanced to the imperial throne; called the throne of God; for there is no power but of God; the powers, that be, are ordained of God." Agreeably to this system, his Lordship thinks that the war between Michael and the dragon, mentioned in the succeeding verses, is the struggle between Christianity and Paganism; and that the fall of the dragon from heaven is the final overthrow of idolatry. In a similar manner, the wrath of the dragon after he is cast down to the earth is the attempt to restore paganism in the reign of Julian, and the discord excited in the Church by the followers of Arius: and the flood, which he vomited forth from his mouth, signifies the irruption of the northern barbarians, whom Stilicho, prime minister of the Emperor Honorius, invited into the Roman empire. The Bishop however, being perfectly aware that the woman's recess into the wilderness during the space of 1260 days, stood in direct opposition to the whole of his scheme, maintains, that this is said merely by way of prolepsis, or anticipation; and that she did not flee into the wilderness at this time, but several years after during the reign of Antichrist notwithstanding the prophet is at this very time professedly writing the history of the 1260 days: and notwithstanding the three other chapters of the little book, namely, the chapter which immediately precedes this, and the two chapters which immediately follow it,

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are by the Bishop himself allowed to relate exclusively to the events of the 1260 days in the West.*

This plan of interpretation is liable to numerous objections In the first place, it is highly improbable that the prophet, after having already foretold the conversion of the Empire to Christianity under the sixth seal, should now at length, after he has begun to write the history of the western Apostacy, suddenly return to the pagan persecutions of the Church and the days of Constantine. To suppose this is to suppose that a professedly chronological prophet, without a shadow of reason, violates at once the order both of time and of place: the order of time, by suddenly turning back from the year 606 when the Apostacy in its dominant state commenced, to the earliest days of Christianity and the year 312 when Constantine became a convert; the order of place, by us suddenly quitting the peculiar history of the West for the general history of the whole empire, and more especially that part of the Empire which lay in the East-In the

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⚫ Sir Isaac Newton's mode of explaining the whole prophecy of the little book appears to me very unsatisfactory. In many respects, it is liable to the same objections as the scheme of Bp. Newton; and, in some points, it is liable even to greater objections. Thus Sir Isaac conceives the two women, mentioned in the Apocalypse, to be one and the same person; notwithstanding their characters are evidently so different and supposes, that the woman fled into the wilderness, when the Roman empire was divided into the Greek and Latin empires; notwithstanding the prophet represents her as fleeing there at the beginning of the 1260 days. The general outline of his whole explanation, so far as it regards the three grand symbols of the little book, is as follows. He conjectures, that the dragon is the Greek or Constantinopolitan Empire; that the ten-borned beast is the Latin Empire; and that the two-borned beast is the church of the Greek Empire. In none of these particulars can I think him right, except in his opinion of the ten borned beast; and even of that his definition seems to me to be somewhat too limited, for the sixth bead of the ten-horned beast when it revived was the Constantinopolitan Emperor. As for the dragon being the Greek empire, such an opinion is utterly irreconcileable with the plain declaration of St. John that he is the devil and nothing but the devil: and as for the second apocalyptic beast, there is scarcely a single point in which his character answers to that of the Greek Church. For the Greek Church never wrought miracles to deceive the Latins; nor did it exercise all the power of the first beast, or the Latin empire, before him; nor did it cause the whole earth to worship that beast; nor did it set up any image for him; nor lastly did it ever forbid all to buy and sell, except those who bore the name and the mark of the first beast. In short Sir Isaac's exposition entirely confounds the whole plan of the little book, which treats exclusively of the affairs of the West, as the two first woe trumpets had already treated of the collateral affairs of the East.

Since Sir Isaac has discussed all these matters in a single chapter, I thought it best to throw together my objections to his scheme in a single note, and not resume the subject hereafter. I shall only add, that I have not brought forward every objection that might have been urged, but have only stated some of the principal ones. See Observations on the Apocalypse, Chap. ii.

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second place, the Bishop's supposition, that the dragon is pagan Rome, runs directly counter to the unequivocal declaration of St. John, that he is the devil*—In the third place, his conjecture, that the man-child is Constantine, is equally incongruous with the analogy of scriptural language. The description of this man-child, that he should rule all nations with a rod of iron, is evidently borrowed originally from the second Psalm, where the universal dominion of Christ is predicted. The same mode of expression is twice likewise used in the Apocalypse to describe the power which Christ exercises both in his own person and through the instrumentality of the faithful hence surely it is very improbable, that it should here be intended to allude to Constantine. Had the prophet meant to have pointed out that prince, he would scarcely have used such very ambiguous phraseology, as must by his readers have been thought prima facie applicable, not to Constantine, but to Christ-In the fourth place, the prolepsis, of which the Bishop speaks, is no where to be discovered in the plain simple language of the prediction. Nothing is there declared,

I have never been able to learn, upon what grounds Mr. Mede and Bp. Newton so peremptorily pronounce the dragon to be the pagan Roman empire; and, as if such an opinion could not be doubted, interpret the whole prophecy accordingly. Nothing can be more definite than the language of St. John. He tells us unequiv ocally, that the great dragen is "that old serpent, called the Devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world." (Rev. xii. 9.) If then the dragon be the devil, how can he be the pagan Roman empire? The circumstance of his being represented with ten borns shews plainly, that the agent, through whose visible instrumentality he persecutes the woman, is the Roman empire in its divided state. But the Empire was not divided, till after it had renounced Paganism. The whole of the prophecy therefore must relate to the Empire, not when pagan, but when papal. In short, what most decidedly shews it to be absolutely impossible that the dragon should be the Pagan Roman empire; he is brought again upon the stage long after the Pagan Roman empire had ceased to exist. Under the yet future sixth vial, an evil spirit is said to come out of his month (Rev. xvi. 13.); and, at the commencement of the Millennium, after the destruction of the beast and the false prophet, he is bound for the space of a thousand years, and cast into the bottomless pit. Nor is this all: at the end of the thousand years he is again let loose to deceive the nations, and succeeds in forming the great confederacy of Gog and Magog; after the overthrow of which he is finally cast into the lake of fire and brimstone. It is observable, that in the course of the last prediction relative to him, he is no less than four times styled Satan and the devil : "but, even independent of this circumstance, how is it possible that the Pagan Roman empire can perform all the actions ascribed to the dragon? (Rev. xx. 1-10.) Bp. Newton himself allows him to be the devil at the close of his career. If then he be the devil in one part of the Apocalypse, he must surely be the devil in every other part.

Rev. ii. 27. and xix. 15.

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