CRITICAL EXAMINATION AND REFUTATION OF THE CHIEF COUNTER-SCHEMES OF APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION; AND ALSO OF DR. ARNOLD’S GENERAL PROPHETIC COUNTER-THEORY

IT was stated at the conclusion of my Sketch of the History of Apocalyptic Interpretation, that there are at present two, and but two, grand general counter-Schemes to what may be called the historic Protestant view of the Apocalypse: that view which regards the prophecy as a prefiguration of the great events that were to happen in the Church, and world connected with it, from St. John’s time to the consummation; including specially the establishment of the Popedom, and reign of Papal Rome, as in some way or other the fulfilment of the types of the Apocalyptic Beast and Babylon. The first of these two counter-Schemes is the præterists’ which would have the prophecy stop altogether short of the Popedom, explaining it of the catastrophes, one or both, of the Jewish Nation and Pagan Rome; and of which there are two sufficiently distinct varieties: the second the Futurists’; which in its original form would have it all shoot over the head of the Popedom into times yet future; and refer simply to the events that are immediately to precede, or to accompany, Christ’s second Advent; or, in its various modified forms, have them for its chief subject. I shall in this second Part of my Appendix proceed successively to examine these two, or rather four, anti-Protestant counter-Schemes; and show, if I mistake not, the palpable untenableness alike of one and all. Which done,1 it may perhaps be well, from respect to his venerated name, to add an examination of the late Dr. Arnold’s general prophetic counter-theory. This together with a notice of certain recent counter-views on the Millienniem, will complete our review of counter-prophetic Schemes.

Now with regard to the Præterist Scheme, on the review of which we are first to enter, it may be remembered that I stated it to have had its origin with the Jesuit Alcasar:1 and that it was: subsequently, and after Grotius’ and Hammond’s prior adoption a of it adapted and improved by Bossuet, the great Papal champion, under one form and modification;2 then afterwards, under another modification by Hernnschneider, Eichhorn, and others of the German critical and generally infidel school of the last half-century;3 followed in our own æra by Heinrichs, and by Moses Stuart of the United States of America.4 The two modification as appear to have arisen mainly out of the differences of date assigned to the Apocalypse; whether about the end of Nero’s reign or Domitian’s.5 I shall I think, pretty well exhaust whatever can be thought to call for examination in the system, by considering separately first the Neronic, or favourite German form and modification of the Præterist Scheme, as propounded by Eichhorn. Hug. Heinricks, and Moses Stuart; secondly Bossuet’s Domitianic form the one most generally approved, I believe, by Roman Catholics.


CHAPTER I


§ 1. EXAMINATION AND REFUTATION OF THE GERMAN NEGOSIC PRÆTERIST APOCALYPTIC COUNTERCHEME

The reader has already been made acquainted with the main common features of this German form of the Præterist Apocalyptic Scheme.6 Differing on points of detail yet with the exception that Hartwig and Herder pretty much confine themselves to the Jewish catastrophe, and Ewald, Bleek, and De Wette to that of heathen Rome1) it may generally be described as embracing both catastrophes: the fall of Judaism being signified under that of Jerusalem, the fall of Heathenism under that of Rome; the one as drawn out in symbol from Apoc. 6 to 11 inclusive, the other from Apoc. 12 to 19: whereupon comes thirdly, in Apoc. 20, a figuration of the triumph of Christianity. So, with certain differences, Hernnschncider, Eiehhorn, Hug, Heinrichs, &c., in Germany;2 M. Stuart in America; and, in England, Dr. Davidson.3—In my review of the Scheme each of these two historic catastrophes, as supposed Apocalyptically figured, will of course furnish matter for critical examination; not without reference to the Apocalyptic date also, as in fact essentially mixt up with the historic question.—But, before entering on them, I think it may be well to premise a notice,

1st, on THE GENERALLY VAGUE LOOSE PRINCIPLE OF PROPHETIC INTERPRETATION professedly followed by the Præterists.

Considering the self-sufficient dogmatism which pre-eminently characterizes the School in question, even as if, à priori to examination; all other schemes were to be deemed totally wrong, and the Præterist Scheme alone conformable to the discoveries and requirements of “modrn exegesis,”4 (a dogmatism the more remarkable, when exhibited by a man of calm temperament and unimpassioned style, like Professor Stuart,5 and which to certain weaker minds may seem imposing,) the question is sure to arise, What the grounds of this strange presumptuousness of tone? What the new and overpowering evidence in favour of the modern Præterists? What the discovery of such unthought of coincidence between the prophecy on the one hand, and certain facts of their chosen Neronic æra on the other, as to settle the Apocalyptic controversy in their favour, at once and for ever? And then the surprise is increased by finding that not only has no such discovery been made, not only no such discovery been even pretended to, but that in fact they put it forward, as the very boast of the Præterist system, that coincidences exact and particular are not to be sought or thought of: that the three main ideas about the three cities, or three antagonist religions represented by them, so as above mentioned, are pretty much all that there is of fact to be unfolded; and that, with certain exceptions, (of which exceptions more in a later part of this review,) all else is to be regarded as but the poetic drapery and ornament.1—Now in mere rationalists of the School, like Eichhorn and many others, men professedly disbelieving the inspiration of the Apocalypse, all this is quite natural and consistent: seeing that its author wrote, they take for granted, as a mere dramatist and poet; and, as to details, what the limit ever assigned to a poet’s fancy, except as his own taste or critical judgment might impose one? But that Christian expositors, like Professor Stuart and Dr. Davidson, men professing to believe in St. John’s inspiration as a prophet, (and to these I here chiefly refer,) should deliberately so pronounce on the matter, so resolve even what seems most specific into generalizations,1 and what seems stated as fact into mere poetic drapery, will appear probably to my readers, as to myself, most astonishing.

It is of course due to these writers to mark by what process of thought they arrive at this conclusion; and on what principle, or by what reasons, they have justified it to themselves. And, passing by the negative argument from the discrepancy and unsatisfactoriness of the historic detailed interpretations given by expositors who seek in the Apocalypse a prophetic “epitome of the eivil and ecclesiastical history of Christendom,” (as to which, wherever justly objected to, the remark was obvious that further research might very possibly supply what was wanting, and rectify what was unsatisfactory, so as I hope has been done on various points in the present Commentary,2) passing this, I say, the intended use and object of the Apocalypse, at the presumed time of its writing, will be found to have been that which mainly guided the learned American Professor to the true principle of exegesis, (as he designates it,) whereby to interpret the Book.1 For, argues he, during a persecution like Nero’s, (this being his supposed date of the Apocalypse,) when the Church was “bleeding at every pore,”2 how could it take interest in information as to what was to happen in distant ages, (excepting of course the final triumph of Christianity,) or indeed as to anything but what concerned their own immediate age and pressure, whether in Judea or at Rome? Hence then to this the subject-matter of the Apocalypse must be regarded as confined.3 And whereas, on this exegetic hypothesis, scarce anything appears in the actual historic facts of the particular period or catastrophe in question, which can be considered as answering to the prophetic figurations in detail, therefore all idea of any such detailed and particular intent and meaning in these prophetic figurations must be set aside; and they must be regarded as the mere drapery and ornament of a poetic Epopee, albeit by one inspired. As a Scriptural precedent and justification for this generalizing view of the Apocalyptic imagery, Psalm 18, which was David’s song after his deliverance from Saul, and Isaiah 13, 14, on the fall of Babylon, (the former more especially,) are referred to, and insisted on, by the learned Professor.

But (reserving the subject of the Apocalyptic date for a remark or two presently under my next head of argument) let me beg here to ask, with reference to the very limited use and object so assigned to the Apocalyptic prophecy,—as if only or chiefly meant for the Christians then living, by them to be understood, and by them applied in the way of encouragement and comfort, as announcing the issue of the trials in which they were then personally engaged,—what right has Professor Stuart thus to limit it? Was it not accordant with the character of God’s revelations, as communicated previously in Scripture, (especially in Daniel’s prophecies, which are of all others the most nearly parallel with the Apocalypse,) to foreshow the future in its continuity from the time when the prophecy was given, even to the consummation: and this, not with the mere present object of comforting his servants then living, but for a perpetual witness to his truth; to be understood only partially, it might be, for generations, but fully in God’s own appointed time? So, for example, in the Old Testament prophecies concerning Christ’s first advent; prophecies which not only the Old Testament Jews, but even the disciples of Christ, understood most imperfectly, till Christ himself, after he had actually come, explained them: and so again in Daniel’s prophecies extending to the time of the end; which, until that time of the end, were expressly ordered to be sealed up.1—And then, next, what historic evidence have we of Christians of Nero’s time having so understood the Apocalypse, as the American Professor would have it that they must have done?2 Not a vestige of testimony exists to the fact of such an understanding; albeit quite general, according to him, among the more intelligent in the Christian body. On the contrary, the early testimony of Irenæus, disciple to Polycarp, who was himself disciple to St. John, indicates a then totally different view of the Apocalyptic Beast from Professor Stuart’s, as if the only one ever known to have been received: a view referring it, not to any previous persecution by Nero and the Roman Empire under him, but to an Antichrist even then future; one that was to arise and persecute the Church not till the breaking up, and reconstruction in another form, of the old Empire.—Moreover the whole that our Professor would have to be shown by the Apocalypse, viz. the assured triumph of Christianity over both Judaism and Paganism,—I say this, instead of being any new revelation specially suited to cheer the Christians of the time, had been communicated in part by Daniel, in part by Christ himself, much more fully and particularly long before.1 As to the Professor’s grand precedent of Psalm 18, urged again and again in justification of his explaining away nearly all the more particular symbolizations of the Apocalypse, as if mere poetic drapery and ornament, is the parallel a real one, or the argument from it valid? Says the Professor;2 See, though the subject of the Psalm be at the heading declared to be David’s deliverance from Saul, yet under what varied imagery this is set forth:—how, in depicting them, David makes the earth to shake and tremble, and the smoke to go forth from God’s nostrils, and his thunderings to be heard in the heaven, and his lightnings shot forth to discomfort the enemy: all mere poetical ornament; not particular circumstantial fact; much less fact in chronological order and development. But, let me ask, does the Psalmist profess, as his very object, to tell the facts that had occurred in the period of David’s suffering from Saul, so as the Apocalyptic revealing Angel does to tell the things of the coming future?3 Or with any such orderly division, and arrangement for chronological development of facts, as in the singularly artificial Apocalyptic division into its three septenaries of Seals, Trumpets, and Vials, (each of the latter subordinate evidently to the former,) and the various chronological periods so carefully interwoven? Again, as to the symbolizations in the Psalm, is Professor Stuart quite sure that they refer only to David and Saul; and that David is not carried forward in the Spirit, beyond his own times and his own experience, to picture forth the future triumphs of a greater David over a greater Saul; triumphs not to be accomplished in fine without very awful elemental convulsions, and the visible and glorious interposition of the Almighty? Surely what is said in verse 43, of his (the chief intended David’s) “being made the head of the heathen,” tells with sufficient clearness that such is indeed the true exegesis of the Psalm: and so most expositors of repute, I believe, explain it.—If the testing is to be by a real parallel, let Daniel’s orderly prophecies of the quadripartite image and the four Beasts be resorted to, to settle the question of exegesis. Is all there figured relative only to Daniel’s own time; and all else mere poetic ornament and drapery?
So much on the general exegetic principles of the German Præterist School. Let me now proceed,

IIndly, to consider these Præterists’ HISTORICAL SOLUTION, including especially the two grand catastrophes laid down by them, as the two main particulars unfolded in the Apocalypse; and show, as I trust, both in respect of the one and the other, the many and indubitable marks of error stamped upon it.

Of course the Neronic date is an essential preliminary to this Scheme, in the minds of all Præterist expositors who, like M. Stuart and Dr. Davidson, admit the apostolicity and inspiration of the Book. And, as I venture to think that I have in my 1st Volume completely proved that the true date is Domitianic, agreeably with Irenæus’ testimony, not Neronic or Galbaic,1 that single fact may in such case be of itself deemed conclusive against the theory.—Nor, let me add, in case of non-infidel Præterists only. For the very strong opinion as to the sublimity and surpassing æsthetic beauty of the Apocalypse admitted by the German Neologians, Eichhorn inclusive, as the result of the Semlerian controversy, compared with the utter inferiority of all Church writers of the nearest later date, does even on rationalistic principles almost involve the inference of St. John’s authorship; especially as coupled with the fact of the Apocalyptic writer’s assumption of authority over the Asiatic Bishops he addrest, and the air of truth, holiness, and honesty that all through mark his character. Which admitted, and also, as by Eichhorn, the Domitianic as the true date, even a rationalist like him must, I think, be prepared to admit the high improbability of such a writer making pretence to prophesy a certain catastrophe about Nero and Rome, and another certain catastrophe about Jerusalem, as if things then future, when in fact the one had happened 30, the other 25 years before. Whence the baselessness, even on rationalistic principles, of the whole Neronic Præterist Scheme.—But we will now proceed more in detail to the examination of the two catastrophes separately.

1. And, 1st, as to the catastrophe of Judaism and Jerusalem, depicted in the figurations from Apoc. 6 to 11 inclusive.

Argues Professor Stuart, as abstracted in brief, thus:1 “It is for some considerable time not unfolded who the enemy is against whom the rider of the white horse in the first Seal has gone forth conquering, followed by his agencies of war, famine,2 and pestilence; him against whom the cry is raised of the Christian martyrs slain under the 5th Seal, and the revolution of whose political state is evidently the subject of Seal the sixth. But in Apoc. 7 the enemy meant is intimated. For when it is stated that 144,000 are sealed, by way of protection, out of all the tribes of Israel, meaning evidently those that have been converted from among the Jews to Christianity, it follows clearly that it is the unsealed ones of those tribes, or unconverted Jews, forming the great body of Israel, that are the destined objects of destruction. A view this quite confirmed in Apoc. 11; where the inner temple is measured, as that which is not to be ejected: this meaning, that whatever was spiritual in the Jewish religion was to be preserved in Christianity;3 while the rest, or mere external parts of the system, as well as the Holy City Jerusalem itself, was to be abandoned and trodden down.” So substantially Professor Stuart: and so too his prototype Eichhorn, and his English follower Dr. Davidson. This is the strength of their first Part; the details of Seals and Trumpets being of course little more in this system than intimations of something awful attending or impending, altogether general; or indeed, perhaps, mere “poetic drapery and costume.” Let us then try its strength where it professes to be strongest.

The enemy to be destroyed, it is said, was shown to be the Jews: because it was the Jewish tribes (all but the sealed few from out of them) that were to have the tempests of the four winds let loose on them; and because it was the Jewish temple (all but the inner and measured part of it) that was to be abandoned to the Gentiles. Let us test this conclusion by the threefold test of what is shown, first, as to the intent of the Jewish symbolic scenery elsewhere in the Apocalypse; secondly, as to the religious profession of the people actually destroyed in the Trumpet-judgments; thirdly, as to the intended people’s previous murder of Christ’s two Witnesses, in their thereupon doomed city.

As to the first, already in the opening vision a chamber as of the Jewish temple had been revealed; with seven candlesticks like those in the old Jewish temple,1 and one in the High Priest’s robing that walked among them. Was its signification then Jewish or Christian; of Judaism or Christianity? We are not left to conjecture. The High Priest was distinctively the Christian High Priest, Christ Jesus; the seven candlesticks the seven Christian Churches. This explanation at the outset is most important to mark; being the fittest key surely to the intent of all that occurs on the scene afterwards of similar imagery.—Further, in Seal 5 a temple like the Jewish, at least the temple-court with its great brazen altar, is again noted as figured on the scene. Now we might anticipate pretty confidently, from the previously given key just alluded to, that the temple was here too symbolic of the Christian worship and religion, not the Jewish. But there is, over and above this, independent internal evidence to affix to it the same meaning. For the souls under the altar, who confessedly depict Christian martyrs, appear there of course as sacrifices offered on that altar; their place being where the ashes of the Jewish altar-sacrifices were gathered. Which being so, could the altar mean that of the literal Judaism; and the vision signify that the Jews, zealous for their law, and thinking to do God service, had there slain the Christian martyrs, as if heretics? Certainly not; because on their altar the Jews never offered human sacrifices, and would indeed have esteemed it a pollution. Therefore we have independent internal evidence that the Jewish temple and altar, figured on the Apocalyptic scene, had here too a Christian meaning; depicting (as both St. Paul, and Polycarp after him, so beautifully applied the figure) the Christian’s willing sacrifice of himself and his life for Christ.2—Further in Apoc. 8 the temple is again spoken of as apparent; with its brazen sacrificial altar in the altar-court, its golden incense-altar within the temple proper, and one too, habited as a Priest, who received and offered incense, according to the ceremony of the Jewish ritual. Was this meant literally of Jewish incense and Jewish worship? Assuredly not. For the incense of the offering priest is declared to be “the prayers of all the saints;” i. e. as all admit,1 of Christians distinctively from literal Jews.—Again, with reference even to the temple figuration in Apoc. 11:2, which furnishes his chief Jewish proof-text, our Professor himself admits, nay argues, that the inner and most characteristic part of it (the same that was measured by St. John) signified that spiritual part of Judaism which was to be preserved in Christianity, as contrasted with the mere externals of Jewish ritualism:2 thus construing it, not literally, with reference to the worship of the national Israel, but symbolically, with reference to that of the Christian Israel:3 albeit with no little mixture of what is erroneous, and consequently confused and inconsistent in his reasoning.4—All which being so, what, I ask, must by the plainest requirements of consistency and common sense follow, but that as the offerers of Jewish worship in the Jewish temple, depicted on the Apocalyptic scene, meant in fact Christians, so they that are called Jews or Israelites in the Apocalyptic context must mean Christians also, at least by profession? A conclusion clenched by the fact which I have elsewhere urged, that the twelve tribes of God’s Israel in the New Jerusalem of Apoc. 21 are on all hands admitted to designate Christians, mainly Gentile Christians; and so surely, in all fair reasoning, the twelve tribes of Israel mentioned in Apoc. 7 also.

Next, as to the religious profession or character of those that were to suffer through the plagues of the first great act of the Drama, (or rather Epopee, as Stuart would prefer to call it,)1 their character is most distinctly laid down in Apoc. 9:20, as actual idolaters. For it is there said, “that the rest of the men, which were not killed by these plagues, yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship dæmons, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and wood:”—a description so diametrically opposed to the character of the Jews in Nero’s time, and ever afterwards, that one would have thought with Bossuet,2 and indeed Ewald too,3 that it settled the point, if anything could settle it, that Jews were not the parties meant. And how then do the German Præterists, that take the Judaic view, overcome the difficulty? Few and brief are the words of Eichhorn’s paraphrase:—“It means that they persevered in that same obstinate mind, which once showed itself in the worship of idols!”1 says M. Stuart:2 “In the Old Testament Jews that acted in a heathenish way were called heathens: and moreover in the New Testament covetousness is called idolatry: and moreover in the time of Herod theatres, and other such like heathen customs, had become common in Judea.”3 But surely such observations, when put forward in explanation of the descriptive clause that spoke of men “worshipping idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and wood,” must be felt to be rather an appeal ad misericordiam in the Expositor’s difficulty, than an argument for the fitness of the descriptive clause, to suit the Jews of the times of Nero and Vespasian: especially when coming from one who is led elsewhere in his comment to state (and state most truly) that the Jews were ready, one and all, rather to submit their necks to the Roman soldiers’ swords, than to admit an image that was to be worshipped within their city.4 Indeed it is notorious that they regarded images altogether as abominations; and that the Roman attempts at erecting them more than once nearly caused desperate rebellions.—As for Dr. Davidson, he here exhibits more at least of discretion than the American Professor. He passes over the difficulty, as if re desperatâ, in dead silence.

Try we, thirdly, the Judaic theory of our German Præterists by the test of the Witness-slaying prophecy, including the place, time, and author of their slaughter.—This is put forth as one of the strongest points in the Judaic part of their view: it being stated to occur in the city “where their Lord was crucified;” i.e., say the Præterists, in Jerusalem. But first, we ask, what witnesses? “The Jewish chief priests Ananus and Jesus,” answer Herder and Eichhorn; “mercilessly massacred, as Josephus tells us, by the Zealots.”5 But how so? Must they not rather be Christ’s witnesses, exclaims Stuart;6 (since it is said, “I will give power to my witnesses;”) and therefore Christians? Of course they must. Which being so, the next question is, Who then the notable Christians that Stuart considers to have been slain in Jerusalem, in the witness character, at this epoch; i. e. during the Romans’ invasion of Judea? Does he not himself repeat to us the well-known story on record, that the Christians forthwith fled to Pella, agreeably with their Lord’s warning and direction, so soon as they saw the Romans approach to beleaguer Jerusalem? “But,” says he in reply, “can we imagine that all would be able to make their escape? Would there not be sick and aged and paupers to delay the flight; and faithful teachers too of Christianity, that would choose to remain, to preach repentance and faith to their countrymen? These I regard as symbolized by the two “Witnesses:”1 and these therefore as answering in their history at this crisis to St. John’s extraordinary and circumstantial prediction, about the Witnesses’ testimony, miracles, death, resurrection, ascension. But what the historic testimony to support his view? Alas! none! absolutely none! In apology for this total and most unfortunate silence of history he exclaims; “The Jew Josephus is not the historian of Christians; and early ecclesiastical historians have perished:” adding however, as if sufficient to justify his hypothesis; “But Christ intimates, in his prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem, that there would be persecution of Christians at the period in question.” A statement quite unjustified (if he means persecution to death in Jerusalem, and at the time of the siege) by the passages he refers to.2 Does not Christ say, “Not a hair of your heads shall perish?” At last he condescends to this: “At all events it is clear that the Zealots, and other Jews, did not lose their disposition to persecute at this period!!”3 Such is the impotent conclusion of Professor Moses Stuart: such the best explanation he can devise, on his hypothesis, of the wonderful Apocalyptic prophecy respecting the Witnesses.—Nor is his need supplied by Dr. Davidson. “Notwithstanding God’s long-suffering mercy,” says this latter, “the Jews continue to persecute the faithful witnesses.” This, I can assure the Header, is the sum total of his observations on the point before us.4—Nor is it here only that the Judaic part of the Præterist Scheme, applied to the Witness-story in the Apocalypse, breaks down. For, further, the city where the Witnesses’ corpses were to be exposed is declared to be the city the great one;1 that which is the emphatic title of the seven-hilled Babylon or Rome, in the Apocalypse; never of Jerusalem.2 (How it might be Rome, and yet the city where the Lord Jesus had been crucified, the Reader has long since seen!3)—Nor this alone. For the Beast that was to slay them was το θηριον το αναβαινον εκ της αβυσσου, the Beast that was to rise from the abyss;4 a Beast which (especially with the distinctive article prefixed so as here to it) cannot but mean one and the same with that which is mentioned under precisely the same designation in Apoc. 17:8;5 and there, as all the Præterists themselves allow, designates a power associated some way with Rome. And what Stuart’s explanation? Why, that it means in Apoc. 11 simply Satan!6—Indeed alike the declared fact of the witness-slaying, and of the great city as the place of their slaughter, and of the Beast from the abyss as their slayer, (as also, let me add, the period of the 1260 days, assigned alike to the Witnesses’ sackcloth-prophesying first, and to the Beast’s reign afterwards,) do so interweave the first half of the Apocalyptic prophecy, from Apoc. 6 to 11, with the part subsequent, that, as to any such total separation, in respect to subject, of the one from the other, as the Præterists urge, on their hypothesis of a double catastrophe, it is, I am well persuaded, and will be so found by one and all who attempt to work it out, an absolute impossibility.

I might add yet a word as to the ill agreeing times of the supposed Jewish catastrophe and the Roman; the former being in the Præterist Scheme first set forth, and the Roman figured afterwards: whereas the chronological order of the two events was in fact just the reverse; the Roman persecution of Christians, and quickly consequent fall of Nero, preceding the fall of Jerusalem. But the argument (which indeed might be spared ex abundanti) will occur again, and somewhat more strikingly, under our next Head.—To this let us then now pass onwards; and consider, as proposed,

2ndly, the German Præterists’ second grand division of the Apocalypse, and second grand catastrophe; viz. that affecting Pagan Rome.

And here, as before, I shall not stop at minor points; but hasten rapidly to that which is considered by the Præterists as their strongest ground.—It is to be understood that they generally make Apoc. 12 retrogressive in its chronology to Christ’s birth, and the Devil’s primary attempts to destroy both him, and his religion, and his early Church in Judea; though in vain. Then, after note of the Dragon’s dejection from his former eminence, and the song, “Now is come salvation, &c.,” we arrive at the Woman’s flight into the wilderness, meaning they say the Church’s flight to Pella, on the Romans advancing to besiege Jerusalem: some outbreak of Jewish persecution at the time (the same under which the Witnesses were to fall within Jerusalem) answering probably1 to the floods from the Dragon’s mouth; and the 3½ years, said of the Woman’s time in the wilderness, answering also sufficiently well to the length, not indeed of the siege, but of the Jewish war. (Mark, in passing, how the symbolic Woman, first made to be the Theocratic Church in its Jewish form, travailing with, and bringing forth Christ,2 has now become, not the Church Catholic, which in Nero’s time had indeed spread over the Roman world, but the little Section of it which remained stationary in Judea!)—Then the Dragon, being enraged at the Woman, “went away to make war with the remainder of her seed, who keep the commandments of God, and hold fast the testimony of Jesus.” That is, enraged that the Jews, his original instrument of persecution, should be destroyed and fail him, he leaves the Jewish scene of his former operations, and goes elsewhere, to stir up a new persecutor against Christians in Nero.—But did not Nero’s persecution occur before the Jews’ destruction? No doubt! The anachronism is honestly admitted by Professor Stuart.1 An anachronism the more remarkable, because he makes the vision of the 144,000 in Apoc. 14 to be a vision of encouragement to Christians, suffering under Nero’s persecution; depicting as it did, according to him, the Christian Jews occupying Jerusalem as a now Christian city:2 an event this which could not have happened till Jerusalem’s destruction, about four years after the commencement of Nero’s persecution; and did not in fact take place till some years later.3 “But in an Epopee, like the Apocalypse,” says Stuart, “we are surely not bound to the rigid rules of a book of Annals!”

Thus then we come to consider Apoc. 13 the Chapter on the Beast; and, connectedly with it, (for it does not need to dwell on the intervening Chapters,)5 the further explanatory symbolizations about the Beast in Apoc. 17,

Behold us then now before the very citadel of the German Præterists! “And see,” they say, “how impregnable it is! For not only is the Woman that rides the Beast expressly stated to be the seven-hilled imperial city Rome, so that the Beast ridden must be the persecuting Roman Empire; but the time intended is also fixed. For it is said that the Beast’s seven heads, besides figuring seven hills, figured also seven kings, or rather eight: of whom five had fallen at the time of the vision; which must mean the five first emperors, Julius, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius; and one, the sixth, was; which of course must be the nest after Claudius, i. e. Nero. Nay, to make the thing clearer, the Beast’s name and number 666 are specified; or, as some copies read, 616. And so it is that in Hebrew נֶרוֹן קֵסַר, Neron Cæsar, has the value in numbers of 666, which is one frequent Rabbinical way of writing Nero’s name; or, “if the Hebrew be that of Nero Cæsar, without the final n, then it gives the number 616.”

No doubt the numeral coincidence is worthy of note, and the whole case, so put, quite plausible enough to call for examination. It is indeed obvious to say, as to the name and numeral, that a Greek solution would be preferable to one in Hebrew; and a single name to a double one: principles these recognized, as we have seen, by Irenæus, and all the other early Fathers that commented on the topic.2 But in this there is of course nothing decisive. A graver objection seems to me however to lie against the suggested numeral solution, in that a part of the name being official,—I mean the word Cæsar,—this agnomen, though fitly applicable to Nero while the reigning emperor, would hardly be applicable to him when resuscitated after his death-wound, and so become the Beast of Apoc. 13 of whom the name was predicated. But this involves inquiry into the Beast’s heads; to which inquiry, as the decisive one, let us now therefore at once pass on.

The heads then, as they assert, mean certain individual kings. This is not surely according to the precedent of Daniel 7:6, where the third Beast’s four heads would seem from Dan. 8:8 to have signified the monarchical successions that governed the four kingdoms into which Alexander’s empire was divided at his death.—But, not to stop at this, the decisive question next recurs, What the eighth head of the Beast, on this hypothesis of the Præterists: Nero being the sixth; and, as they generally say, Galba, who reigned but a short time, the seventh? It is admitted (and common sense itself forces the admission) that this eighth head is the same which is said in Apoc. 13:3, 12, 14, “to have had a wound with a sword and to have revived:” and it is this revived head, or Beast under it, (let my Readers well mark this,1) that is the subject of all the prophecy concerning the first Beast in Apoc. 13 and all concerning the Beast ridden by the Woman in Apoc. 17, What then, we ask, this eighth head of the Beast? And, in reply, first Eichhorn, and then his copyists Heinrichs, Stuart, Davidson, all four refer us to a rumour prevalent in Nero’s time, and believed by many, that after suffering some reverse he would return again to power: a rumour which after his death took the form that he would revive again, and reappear, and retake the empire.2 Such is their explanation. The eighth head of the Beast is the imaginary revived Nero.—But do they not explain the Beast (the revived Beast) in Apoc. 13 and his blasphemies, and persecution of the saints, and predicated continuance 42 months, of the real original Nero, and his blasphemies and his three or four years’ persecution of the Christians, begun November, 64, A.D. and ended with Nero’s death, June 9, A.D. 68? Such indeed is the case; and by this palpable self-contradiction, (one which however they cannot do without,) they give to their own solution its death-wound: as much its death-wound, I may say, as that given to the Beast itself to which the solution relates.

So that really, as regards the truth of the solution concerned, it is needless to go further. Nor shall I stop to expose sundry other absurdities that might easily be shown to attach to it: e. g. the supposed figuration of the fall of the Pagan Roman empire in the fall of the individual emperor Nero, albeit succeeded by Pagan emperors like himself.3—But I cannot feel it right to conclude my critical examination of the system without a remark as to something on this head far graver, and more to be reprobated, than any mere expository error, however gross or obvious. The reader will have observed that as well Prof. Stuart and Dr. Davidson, as the German Eichhorn, explain the repeated direct statements, “The Beast had a wound with the sword, and lived,” “The Beast that thou sawest is not, and shall be, and is to ascend from the abyss,” &c. &c., to be simply allusions to a rumour current in Nero’s time, but which in fact was an altogether false rumour. That is, they make St. John tell a direct lie: and tell it, with all the most flagrant aggravation that fancy itself can suppose to attach to a lie; viz. under the form of a solemn prophecy received from heaven! Now of Eichhorn, and others of the same German rationalistic school of theology, we must admit that they are here at least open and consistent. Their declared view of the Apocalypse is as of a mere uninspired poem by an uninspired poet. So it was but a recognized poetical license in St. John to tell the falsehood. But that men professing belief in the Christian faith, and in the divine inspiration as well as apostolic origin of this Book, should so represent the matter, is surely as surprising as lamentable. It is but in fact the topstone-crowning to that explaining away of the prophetic symbols and statements, as mere epopee, of which I spoke before,1 as characteristic of the system. And how does it show the danger of Christian men indulging in long and friendly familiarity with infidel writings! For not only are the Scriptural expository principles and views of Christian men and Neologists so essentially different, that it is impossible for their new wine to be put into our old bottles, without the bottles bursting; but the receiver himself is led too often heedlessly to sip of the poison, and bethinks him not that death is in the cup.


§ 2. EXAMINATION OF BOSSUET’S DOMITIANIC OR CHIEF ROMAN CATHOLIC PRÆTERIST, APOCALYPTIC SCHEME

It may probably at once strike the reflective reader that if the chronology of Bossuet’s scheme, extending as it does from Domitian’s time to the fall of the Roman empire in the 5th century, do in regard of the supposed Roman catastrophe abundantly better suit with historic fact than the German Neronic or Galbaic Præterist Scheme, it is on the other hand quite as much at disadvantage in respect of the other, or Jewish catastrophe. For surely that catastrophe was effected in the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, above 20 years before Bossuet’s Domitianic date of the Apocalypse: and all that past afterwards under Hadrian was a mere rider to the great catastrophe.

But to details. And here at the outset Bossuet’s vague generalizing views of the five first Seals meet us; as if really little more than the preliminary introduction on the scene of the chief dramatis personæ, or agents, afterwards to appear in action; viz. Christ the conqueror, War, Famine, Pestilence, Christian Martyrs: followed in the 6th by a preliminary representation, still as general, of the impending double, or rather treble catastrophe, that would involve Christ’s enemies; whether Jews, Romans, or those that would be destroyed at the last day. A view this that even Bossuet’s most ardent disciples will, I am sure, admit to be one not worth detaining us even a moment: seeing that, from its professedly generalizing character, the whole figuration might just as well be explained by Protestants with reference to the overthrow of one kind of enemy, as by Romanists of another.—Nor indeed is there anything more distinctive in his Trumpets: with which, however, he tells us, there is to begin the particular development of events. For, having settled that the Israelitish Tribes mentioned in Apoc. 7 mean the Jews literally, (the 144,000 being the Christian converts out of them,) and so furnish indication that they are parties concerned in what follows in the figurations, (though the temple, all the while prominent in vision, is both in the 5th Seal before, and in the figuration of the Witnesses afterwards, construed by Bossuet, not of the literal Jewish temple, but of the Christian Church,) he coops up these Jews, and all that is to be developed respecting them, within the four first Trumpets:—the hail-storm of Trumpet 1 being Trajan’s victory over them; the burning mountain of Trumpet 2 Adrian’s victories; (why the one or the other, or the one more than the other, does not appear;) the falling star of Trumpet 3 figuring their false prophet Barchochebas, “Son of a star,” who stirred up the Jews to war; (of course however before the war with Adrian, signified in the preceding vision, not after it;) and the obscuration of the third part of sun, moon, and stars, in Trumpet 4, indicating not any national catastrophe or extinction, but the partial obscuration of the scriptural light before enjoyed by the Jews, through Akiba’s Rabbinic School then instituted, and the publication of the Talmud. As if forsooth the light of Scripture had shone full upon them previously: and not been long before quenched by their own unbelief; even as St. Paul tells us that the veil was upon their hearts. Did Bossuet really believe in the absurdity that he has thus given us for an Apocalyptic explanation?—In concluding however at this point with the Jews, and turning to Rome Pagan as the subject of the following symbolizations, he acts at any rate as a reasonable man; giving this very sufficient reason for the transition, that they who were to suffer under the plagues of the 5th and 6th Trumpets are marked in Apoc. 9:20 as idol-worshippers, which certainly the Jews were not. A palpable distinctive this which, but for stubborn fact contradicting our supposition,1 one might surely have thought that no interpreter of this, or of any other Apocalyptic School, would have had the hardihood even to attempt to set aside. Only does not the statement about the unslain remnant’s non-repenting of them imply that the slain part had previously been guilty of the self same sins of idolatry?

So, passing now to the heathen Romans, with reference to their history in the times following on Barchochebas and the Talmud, the scorpion-locusts of Trumpet 5 are made by our Expositor to mean poisonous Judaizing heresies, which then infected the Christian Church: (Was it not “a piece of waggery” in Bossuet, exclaims Moses Stuart,1 so to explain it?) Trumpet 6, somewhat better, the loosing of the Euphratean Persians under Sapor, that defeated and took prisoner the emperor Valerian; though it is to be remarked that Valerian was the aggressor in the war, not Sapor, and his defeat in Mesopotamia some way beyond the Euphrates.—.All which of course offers no more pretensions to real evidence than what went before: indeed, its total want of anything like even the semblance of evidence makes it wearisome to notice it. Yet it is by no means unimportant with reference to the point in hand; for it shows, even to demonstration, the utter impossibility of making anything of the Seals and Trumpets on Bossuet’s Scheme.—Let us then hasten to what both he and his disciples consider to constitute the real strength of his Apocalyptic Exposition: viz. his interpretation of the Beast from the abyss, with its seven heads and ten horns, and of the Woman riding on it: as symbolizations respectively of the Pagan Roman Emperors, and Pagan Rome.

The notices of this Beast occur successively in Apoc. 11, 13, and 17. First, in Apoc. 11 the Beast is mentioned passingly and anticipatively, as the Beast from the abyss, the slayer of Christ’s two witnesses. Next, in Apoc. 13 it appears figured oil the scene as the Dragon’s successor, bearing seven heads and ten horns; (one head excised with the sword, but healed;) another Beast, two-horned, accompanying it, as its associate and minister; and its name and number being further noted as 666. Once more, in Apoc. 17, it appears with a Woman, declared to be Rome, seated on it: and sundry mysteries are then expounded by the Angel, about its seven heads and ten horns.

Now then for Bossuet’s explanation. This Beast, says he, is the Roman Pagan Empire, at the time of the great Diocletian persecution; its seven heads being the seven emperors engaged in that persecution, or in the Licinian persecution, its speedy sequel: viz. first, Diocletian, Galerius, Maximian, Constantius; then, Maxentius, Maximin, and Licinius. Of which seven “five had fallen” at the time of the vision; “one was,” viz. Maximin; another “had not yet come,” viz. Licinius; and the eighth, “which was of the seven,” was Maximian resuming the emperorship after he had abdicated. As to the name and number, it was Diocles Augustus; which in Latin gives precisely the number 666. Further, the revived Beast of Apoc. 13 (revived after the fatal sword-wound of the head that was) figured the emperor Julian; and the second Beast, with two lamblike horns, the Pagan Platonic priests of the time, that supported him: the stated time of whose reign, 42 months, was simply a term of time borrowed from the duration of the reign of the persecutor Antiochus Epiphanes; signifying that it would, like his, have fixed limits, and be short.—With regard to the ten horns that gave their power to the Beast, these signified the Gothic neighbouring powers; which for a while ministered to Imperial Rome, by furnishing soldiers and joining alliance; but which were soon destined to tear and desolate the Woman Rome; as they did in the great Gothic invasions, beginning with Alaric, ending with Totilas. At the time of which last Gothic ravager, Rome’s desolation answered strikingly to the picture of desolated Babylon in Apoc. 18—As to the Woman riding the Beast, the very fact of her being called a harlot, not an adulteress, showed that it must mean heathen, not Christian Rome.

Such is in brief Bossuet’s explanation. Now as regards both the first Beast, and the second Beast, and the Woman too, let it be marked how utterly it fails; and this is not in one particular only, but in multitudes.

Thus as to the first Beast.—1. The seven heads, he says, were the seven persecutors of the Diocletianic æra. But the emperor Severus, Galerius’ colleague and co-persecutor, as Bossuet admits, is arbitrarily omitted by him, simply in order not to exceed the seven. 2. The Beast from the abyss, being the Beast that kills the Witnesses, is made in Apoc. 11 to be the Empire under Diocletian: whereas in Apoc. 17, the Beast from the abyss (and the distinctive article precludes the idea of two such Beasts) is explained of a head that was to come after the head that then was; this latter being Maximin, himself posterior to Diocletian. 3. The head that was wounded with the sword being, according to Bossuet, the sixth head “that was,” or Maximin, its healing ought to have been in the next head in order, that is Licinius. But, this not suiting, he oversteps Licinius; and explains the healed head of one much later, Julian. 4. The Beast with the healed head being Julian, the subject of the description in Apoc. 13 the Beast’s name and number ought of course to be the name and number of Julian. But no solution suitable to this striking him, Bossuet makes it Diocles Augustus; the name of the Beast under a head long previous. 5. As to this name, Diocles Augustus, it is not only in Latin numerals, which on every account are objectionable, and which no early patristic expositor ever thought of;1 but, in point of fact, is a conjunction of two such titles as never co-existed; Diocletian being never called Diocles when emperor, i. e. when Augustus.2 6. The Beast “that was, and is not, and is to go into perdition,” being “the eighth, yet one of the seven,” Bossuet makes to be Maximian resuming the empire after his abdication. But the prophetic statement requires that this eighth should rise up after that “which was,” viz. Maximin; whereas Maximian’s resumption of the empire was before Maximin.—7. As to the idea of Julian’s hatred of, and disfavour to Christianity, answering to what is said in Apoc. 13 of the Beast under his revived head making war on the saints, and conquering them, it seems almost too absurd to notice. In proof I need only refer to Julian’s own tolerating Decree about Christians;3 and the behaviour of Bossuet’s saints, i. e. of the professing Christians of the time, at Antioch towards Julian.4—8. The contrast of the Beast’s time of reigning, viz. 3½ years, with Diocletian’s 10 years and Julian’s 1½, might be also strongly argued from. But I pass it over cursorily; as Bossuet confesses to have no explanation to offer of it, except that it is an allusion to the duration of the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes!

So as to the Beast’s heads: and still a similar incongruity strikes one about the Beast’s horns. Take but two points. First, these horns, “having received no kingdom as yet,” i. e. at the time of the Revelation, were to receive authority as kings μιαν ὡραν μετα του θηριου, “at one time with the Beast.” So the doubtless true reading, and true rendering, as Bossuet allows. But how then applicable to the kings of the ten Gothic kingdoms?—kingdoms founded long subsequent to both Diocletian and Julian; and when the Roman empire under their headships, (which is Bossuet’s Beast,) had become a thing of the past. To solve the difficulty, Bossuet waves the magician’s rod; and, without a word of warning, suddenly makes the Beast to mean something quite different from what it was before: viz. to be Rome, or the Roman empire, of a later headship than the 8th, or latest specified. Says he “their kingdoms will synchronize with the Beast, that is with Rome: because Rome will not all at once [i.e. not immediately on the Goths’ first attacks, begun about A.D. 400] have lost its existence, or all its power!”2—Yet, again, secondly, these horns were with one accord to impart their power and authority to the Beast; of course after themselves receiving this authority: i. e. as the context of the verse demonstrates, after receiving their kingdoms. But how so? Says Bossuet, because of their giving their men to be soldiers of the Roman armies, and of their settling as cultivators in the empire, and making alliances with the Roman emperors. But, as to time, could this be said of the reigns of Diocletian or Julian, when the Gothic ten kings had received no authority as kings, in the Apocalyptic sense of the word?3 And, as to the character of the thing, could it be said of the Gothie settlements in the empire, when sometimes terrible and destructive, (like that of the Visi-Goths under Valens) that it was a giving their power with one accord to the Romans?

Then turn we to the second Beast. And let me here simply ask, How could Bossuet’s Pagan Philosophers, zealots that blasphemed Christ as the Galilean, answer to the symbol of a Beast with a lamb-skin covering: the recognized scriptural emblem under the Old Testament of false prophets who yet professed to be prophets of the true God;1 under the New Testament of such as would hypocritically pretend to be Christians?

Once more, as to the Woman. And here, 1. instead of the word πορνη, harlot, fixing her to be Rome Pagan, so as Bossuet asserts, not Christian Rome apostatized, it most fitly suits the latter; being applied in the Septuagint to apostatizing Judah,3 in Matthew to an unfaithful wife.4 2. What the mystery to make St. John so marvel with a mighty astonishment, if the emblem meant Rome Pagan?5 Did he not know Rome Pagan to be a persecutor; know it alike by his own experience, and that of all his brotherhood? 3. What of the total and eternal destruction predicated of the Apocalyptic Babylon, “the smoke of it going up even εις τους αιωνας τως αιωνων, for ever and for ever,”6 if there was meant merely the brief temporary desolation of Rome Pagan, in transitu to Rome Papal? 4. What of its being afterwards the abode of all unclean beasts and dæmons? Would Bossuet, observes Vitringa, have these to be the Popes and Cardinals of Papal Rome? 5. Was it really Rome Pagan that was desolated by the Goths; so as Bossuet and his followers would have it? Surely, if there be a fact clear in history, it is this, that it was Rome Christianized in profession, I might almost say, Rome Papal, that was the subject of these desolations.

As this last point is one which, if proved, utterly overthrows the whole Bossuetan or Roman-Catholic Apocalyptic Præterist Scheme, the Romanists have been at great pains to represent the fact otherwise. So Bossuet in his Chap. 3:12–16; and Mr. Miley too, just recently, in his Rome Pagan and Papal. “It is well nigh a century since the triumph of the labarum,” says the latter writer in one of his vivid sketches, with reference to the epoch of Alaric’s first attack on Rome, “and Rome still wears the aspect of a Pagan city:—one hundred and fifty-two temples, and one hundred and eighty smaller shrines, are still sacred to the heathen gods, and used for their public worship.”1 On what authority Mr. M. makes such an assertion I know not. Bossuet takes care not quite so far to commit himself. The facts of the case are, I believe, as follows. Constantine did not authoritatively abolish Paganism: but he so showed disfavour to it that it rapidly sunk into discredit in the empire; less however at Rome than elsewhere. With Julian came a partial and short-lived revival of Paganism; followed on his death by a reaction in favour of Christianity. But “from that period up to the fall of the empire a hostile sect, which regarded itself as unjustly stripped of its ancient honours, invoked the vengeance of the gods on the heads of the Government, exulted in the public calamities, and probably hastened them by its intrigues.” So Sismondi, with his usual accuracy, as quoted by Mr. Miley.2 Of this sect were various members of the Roman senate. On Theodosius’ becoming sole emperor, i. e. emperor of the West as well as East, one of his first measures, A.D. 392, was to forbid the worship of idols on pain of death. At Rome, however, by a certain tacit license, or connivance, heathen worship was still in a measure permitted: until in 394 himself visiting Rome, and finding a reluctance to abolish what remained of Pagan rites on the part of many of the senators, Theodosius withdrew the public funds by which they had been supported. On this the old Pagan worship was discontinued:4 and, the Pagan temples having in many places soon after been destroyed by the zeal of Christians, the very fact of Pagan worship having been discontinued was given by Honorius, the Western Emperor, as a reason for not destroying the temple fabrics.1—Such was the state of things when Alaric first invaded Italy. And it was only in 409, after he had begun the siege of Rome, and God’s judgment began to be felt, that the Pagan faction or sect, spoken of by Sismondi, stirred itself up: and raising the cry that the calamity came in consequence of the gods of old Rome having been neglected,2 prevailed on the authorities, including Pope Innocent himself, to sacrifice to them in the capitol and other temples.3 But this was a comparatively solitary act. As the judgment of the Gothic desolations went on, it was only in secret that the worship of the heathen gods was kept up; and this in reference to such more trivial Pagan rites, as taking auguries.4 The dominant religion, that which was alone legalized in Rome, as well as elsewhere throughout the empire, and whose worship was alone celebrated openly and with pomp, was the Christian religion with the Pope as its head. Insomuch that in 450, just at the epoch of Genseric and Attila, Pope Leo, in an address to the people of Rome on St. Peter and St. Paul’s day, thus characterized Rome and the Roman people:—“These are they that have advanced you to the glory of being a holy nation, a chosen people, a priestly and royal city: so as that thou shouldest be, through the seat of Peter, the head of the world; and with wider rule through religion than by mere earthly domination.”5
Was it then Rome Pagan, or Rome incipiently Papal, that was the subject of Alaric’s first attack, and of the subsequent ravages of Genseric, Odoacer, and Totilas?1 I think the reader will agree with me that Pope Leo himself has pretty well settled that question; and there with given the coup de grace to Bossuet’s and Miley’s Roman Catholic Version of the Præterist Apocalyptic Scheme.

And so I conclude my critique. In concluding, however, I must beg my readers not to forget another and quite different absurdity that attends the Scheme; viz. that of crowding all the magnificent Old Testament promises of the final promised blessedness on earth into some minimum of time after Antichrist’s destruction: one Apocalyptically not exprest at all, according to Bossuet;2 and in Daniel only perhaps by the 45 days. But on this it will suffice that I refer my readers to the remarks on it of the Roman Catholic writers Père Lambert or Lacunza.


CHAPTER II


EXAMINATION OF THE FUTURISTS’ APOCALYPTIC SCHEME

The Futurists’ is the second, or rather third, grand anti-Protestant Apocalyptic Scheme. I might perhaps have thought it sufficient to refer the reader to Mr. Birks’ masterly Work in refutation of it,1 but for the consideration that my own Work would be incomplete without some such examination of this futurist Scheme, as of the Schemes preceding: moreover that on more than one point (chiefly as regards the 6th Seal and the Apocalyptic Beast) Mr. Birks’ own views, of some of which I have spoken elsewhere,2 must necessarily, in my mind, have prevented his doing full justice to the argument.—Besides which, there is otherwise abundantly sufficient difference between us to prevent all appearance of my trenching on his ground.

The futurist Scheme, as I have, elsewhere stated,2 was first, or nearly first, propounded about the year 1585 by the Jesuit Ribera; as the fittest one whereby to turn aside the Protestant application of the Apocalyptic prophecy from the Church of Rome. In England and Ireland of late years it has been brought into vogue chiefly by Mr. (now Dr.) S. R. Maitland and Mr. Burgh; followed by the writer of four of the Oxford Tracts on Antichrist.3 Its general characteristic is to view the whole Apocalypse, at least from after the Epistles to the Seven Churches, as a representation of the events of the consummation and second advent, all still future: the Israel depicted in it being the literal Israel; the temple, Apoc. 11 a literal rebuilt Jewish temple at Jerusalem; and the Antichrist, or Apocalyptic Beast under his last head, a personal infidel Antichrist,4 fated to reign and triumph over the saints for 3½ years, (the days in the chronological periods being all literal days,) until Christ’s coming shall destroy him. Of which advent of Christ, and events immediately precursive to it, the symbols of the six first Seals are supposed to exhibit a prefiguration singularly like what is given in Matt. 24; and therefore strongly corroborative of the futurist view of the Seals and the Apocalypse.—Thus, while agreeing fully with the Præterists on the day-day principle, and partly with them as to the literal Israel’s place in the prophecy, they are the direct antipodes of the Præterists in their view of the time to which the main part of the Apocalypse relates, and the person or power answering to the symbol of the Apocalyptic Beast: the one assigning all to the long distant past, the other to the yet distant future. And here is in fact a great advantage that they have over the Præterists, that, instead of being in any measure chained down by the facts of history, they can draw on the unlimited powers of fancy, wherewith to devise in the dreamy future whatever may seem to them to fit the sacred prophecy.

Notwithstanding this we shall, I doubt not, find abundantly sufficient evidence in the sacred prophecy to repel and refute the crude theory; whether in its more direct and simple form, or in any such modified form as some writers of late have preferred to advocate. The consideration of the latter I reserve for another Section. That of the former will be the subject of the Section on which we are now entering.


§ 1. Original Unmodified Futurist Scheme

I purpose to discuss it with reference separately to each of the four points just noticed as its most marked characteristics:—viz. the supposed instant plunge of the prophecy into the far distant future of Christ’s coming and the consummation;—the supposed parallelism of the subjects of the Apocalyptic Seals with the successive signs specified by Christ in his prophecy on Mount Olivet as what would precede and usher in his coming;—the supposed literal intent of the Israel mentioned in the Apocalyptic prophecy;—and the supposed time, place, and character of its intended Antichrist.

I. THE SUPPOSED INSTANT PLUNGE OF THE APOCALYPTIC PROPHECY INTO THE DISTANT FUTURE OF THE CONSUMMATION

Now, to begin, there seems here in the very idea of the thing a something so directly contrary to all God’s previous dealings with his people, and to all that He has himself led us to expect of Him, as to make it all but incredible, unless some clear and direct evidence be producible in proof of it. We read in Amos (3:7), “Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.” And of this God’s principle of action all Scripture history is but a continued exemplification: his mode having been to give the grand facts of prophecy in the first instance, and then, as time went on, to furnish more and more of particulars and detail: so, gradually but slowly, filling up prophetically that part of the original prophetic outline in which the Church for the time being might have a special interest; but always with the grand main point kept also in view. Thus to Adam, after the fall, there was revealed God’s mighty purpose of the redemption of our fallen world through the seed of the woman: to Noah, together with declaration that this original covenanted promise was renewed to him, the prediction of the coming judgment of the flood: to Abraham, together with similar renewal of the grand covenant respecting Him in whom all the families of the earth should be blessed, the more particular prediction and promise, also, as to his natural seed becoming a nation, and occupying Canaan: to Moses, when leading Abraham’s family, now become a nation, from Egypt, together with reminiscence of the great Prophet like him, that was to come, sundry predictions also about the several tribes; and further, respecting Israel nationally, the prediction of its apostasy from God in the course of time, and consequent temporary casting off, captivity, and return. So too again, long after, when the time of their first captivity drew near, together with repetition of the same great promise, which in the interim had been ever more and more particularly dwelt on, e. g. especially by David and Isaiah,—I say as the time of Israel’s first captivity drew near, then there was predicted by Jeremiah its appointed term, 70 years; and then again, just at the close of the 70 years of that captivity, Daniel’s memorable prophecy of there being appointed yet 70 weeks, or 490 years, until Messiah should come, and be cut off though not for himself, and the Jewish city and sanctuary be destroyed by a Prince that should arise: a prophecy this last which Christ himself, after coming at the time so defined, expanded, when speaking to his disciples on Mount Olivet, into the full and detailed prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem. Such, I say, had been the method pursued by God for above 4000 years, in the prophetic communications to his people, through all the Old Testament history. And now then when the prophetic Spirit spoke again, and for the last time, by the mouth of his apostles, more especially of the apostle St. John, what do the Futurists contend for, but that God’s whole system is to be supposed reversed; that in regard, not of smaller events, or events in which the Church was but slightly concerned, but of events in which it was essentially and most intimately concerned, and of magnitude such as to blazon the page of each history of Christendom, the whole 1800 years that have passed subsequently are to be viewed as a blank in prophecy; the period having been purposely skipped over by the Divine Spirit, in order at once to plunge the reader into the events and times of the consummation.

The case is made stronger against them by comparing more particularly the nearest existing parallels to the Apocalyptic prophecy in respect of orderly arrangement, I mean the prophecies of Daniel. For we see that they, one and all, prefigured events that were to commence immediately, or very nearly, from the date of the vision. So in that of the symbolic image, Dan. 2; which began its figurations with the head of gold, or Nebuchadnezzar. So in that of the four Beasts, Dan. 7; which also began from the Babylonian Empire then regnant. So in that of the ram and the goat, Dan. 8, which began from the Persian Empire’s greatness; the vision having been given just immediately before the establishment of the Persian kingdom in power. So, once more, in Dan. 11: where the commencement is made so regularly from the Persian Prince “Darius the Mede,” then reigning, that it is said, “There shall stand up yet three kings in Persia; and the fourth shall be richer than they all, and shall stir up all against Greece;” i. e. Xerxes. Strange indeed were there in the Apocalypse such a contrast and contrariety, as the Futurists suppose, to all these Danielic precedents!—Moreover, the fact of its following those precedents seems expressly declared by the revealing Angel, at the opening of the vision in Apoc. 4, “Come up, and I will (now) show thee what must happen μετα ταυτα, after these things.” A statement evidently referring to Christ’s own original division of the subjects of the revelation into “the things which St. John had first seen,” (in the primary vision,) “the things that then were,” (viz. the then existing state of the seven Churches,) and “the things which were to happen after them.”—Thus our inference as to the speedy sequence of the future first figured in the Apocalypse upon the time when the Apocalypse was actually exhibited, seems to me not only natural, and accordant with all the nearest Scripture precedents, but necessary. And it both agrees with, and is confirmed by, the other divine declarations, made alike at the first commencement and final close of the Apocalypse; to the effect that the things predicted were quickly to come to pass, the time of their fulfilment near at hand.

And what then the Futurists’ escape from such arguments? What the authority for their unnatural Apocalyptic hypothesis? On the argument from the analogy of Scripture, and specially of Daniel, no answer that I know of has been given.1 With regard however to those statements, “To show to his servants what must shortly come to pass,” and again, “Seal not the sayings of this Book, for the time is at hand,” Dr. S. R. Maitland replies that, since Christ’s coming is often said in Scripture to be quickly,2 and the day of the Lord to be at hand,”3 albeit very far distant, we may similarly suppose the whole subject of the Apocalyptic predictions to be distant, though prophesied of as “shortly to come to pass.”4 An answer little satisfactory, as it seems to me. For the principle it goes on seems to be this;—that because two particular cognate predictive phrases have the word quickly, or its tantamount, attached to them, to each of which phrases a double meaning attaches,—a lesser and a greater,—a nearer and a more distant,5—the former typical perhaps of the latter, and this latter avowedly veiled in mystery, in order to its being ever looked for by the Church,—that because these have the word quickly attached in dubious sense to them, therefore events of a quite different character, and that are altogether most distant in time, nay and a long concatenated series of events too, may be also so spoken of:—a principle this on which all direct meaning of such words as quickly, or at hand, in sacred Scripture might, I conceive, be gainsayed.—Nor indeed is it from these adverbial expressions, insulated and alone, that the whole difficulty arises. For we have further to observe that the events Apocalyptically prefigured to St. John as first and next to happen in the coming future, are connected and linked on in a very marked manner with the then actually existing state of the seven Asiatic Churches, as the terminus à quo of all that was to follow: it being said by the Angel, forthwith after the long and detailed description of them in Christ’s seven dictated Epistles, to the Churches, “Come up, and I will show thee what events are to happen after these things;” ἁ δει γενεσθαι μετα ταυτα·—just like the defined present terminus à quo in Dan. 11:2, “There shall stand up yet three kings in Persia.”

But stop! Are we quite sure of our terminus? Behold the futurist critic and expositor, as if by sleight of hand, shifts the scene itself on the seven Asiatic Churches, which I spoke of as constituting the terminus à quo of all that followed in the prophecy, some two thousand years, or nearly so, forward in the world’s history. “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day” (Apoc. 1:10), he explains to mean, “I was rapt by the Spirit into the great day of the Lord.”1 And so, instead of merely contesting the direct sequence of what was prefigured in the Apocalyptic visions of the future, beginning Apoc. 4:1, from the definite commencing epoch of St. John and his seven Asiatic Churches,—instead of this, I say, he takes the bolder ground of making the great day of Christ’s coming to judgment to be the avowed subject of all that followed St. John’s announcement of being in the Spirit; including first and foremost, of course, the description in the seven Epistles of the seven Churches themselves. But how so? Is this the first mention of these Churches; so as to leave open the idea of their being Churches non-existent until the supposed prefigured time of the end? Assuredly not. The Apostle’s salutation is presented to them in Apoc. 1:4, five verses prior to his announcement of being in the Spirit, in terms just like St. Paul’s to the then existing Churches of Thessalonica or Philippi; “John to the seven Churches in Asia, Grace be unto you!”—Besides which who can help being struck with the violence done by Dr. M. to the Greek original, in construing its simple verb substantive, with the preposition in and ablative following, “I was in the Spirit on (or in) the Lord’s day,”1 as if it were a verb of motion, with into and an accusative following?2—Dr. Maitland argues indeed, as “a sufficient reason” in favour of so rendering the clause, that the Sunday, or Christian sabbath, was not in St. John’s time, or till two centuries afterwards, called the Lord’s day, ἡ Κυριακη ἡμερα.3 But this will be found on examination to be a statement altogether incorrect.4 Rather it will appear that the great day of the Lord, or judgment day, to which Dr. M. would apply it, has never, either in the Septuagint or the New Testament, the peculiar appellation Κυριακη attached to it, in the adjectival form; nor, I believe, in the early Greek Fathers.1—Thus the verbal argument too is against, not for, Dr. Maitland. The sleight of hand by which he shifts the seven Churches, and Epistles addrest to them, into a distant future, proves to be one that sets the sense of language, as well as the requirements of grammar and context, at defiance. And the difficulty remains, as it was, a millstone round the neck of the Futurist principle of interpretation.

II. THE FUTURISTS’ IDENTIFICATION OF THE SUBJECTS OF THE APOCALYPTIC SEALS WITH THE GOSPEL-PREACHING, WARS, FAMINES, PESTILENCES, PERSECUTIONS, AND REVOLUTION NOTED IN CHRIST’S PROPHECY, Matt. 24, as the precursives, they say, of his second coming

To this subject I have already briefly alluded in my Vol. i.2 And as may be remembered, it was there shown that, while there was scarce a point on which the asserted accordance could be made out, there was at least one on which irreconcileable discordance could be demonstrated; and this one so interlacing with the rest as to involve in its failure the whole theory of Parallelism. For while, as regards the 1st Seal, it appeared that there was nothing in its symbols to identify the rider with Christ, or the rider’s progress on the white horse with that of gospel-preaching,—and, as regards the 2nd Seal, the difference suggested itself between its civil wars and the wars of nation against nation in St. Matthew,—as regards the 3rd Seal the utter impossibility was shown of its symbols ever figuring famine; seeing that 5 lbs. of barley was defined in it as procurable for a man’s daily wage of a denarius, and with wine and oil in abundance.—Moreover, even supposing that the earlier Seals’ symbols were capable of identification with the signs in Matthew, it would remain for the Futurists to prove that the gospel-preaching, wars, famines, pestilences, and persecutions that Christ spoke of were meant as signs immediately precursive of his personal second Advent; and not rather of the destruction of Jerusalem:—a point this difficult indeed of proof: and of the furnishing of which by any of the School, in contravention of the other more natural interpretation, so given by the best expositors, I must confess myself wholly incredulous.

But, at any rate, they insist on the 6th Seal prefiguring the consummation; as what may help (though certainly, unless the previous Seals have that reference too, with most insufficient help)1 the Futurist view.—Says Dr. S. R. Maitland; “Can any unbiassed reader doubt that this passage refers to the day of judgment?”2 And Mr. Burgh: “This Seal so obviously refers to the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, … that I must say there is no room for difference of opinion.”3 So again R. D. in the Dublin Christian Examiner, for December, 1844; (a writer of whom more in my next Section;) “If there be a day yet future, it is the day of the wrath of the Lamb, [i.e. as in the 6th Seal,] when he shall be revealed from heaven in flaming fire: with declaration added of the impossibility of rightly expounding the imagery of the 6th Seal, where his wrath is spoken of, except with reference to that day. And so too Dr. Todd,4 and most other Expositors of the School.—Now, in order to understand here the real value of the Futurists’ argument, it is essential to inquire at once, very distinctly, whether by Christ’s coming they really mean his personal visible coming to judgment; and, if so, on what construction of the imagery of the 6th Seal, literal or figurative? R. D., we saw, declares plainly that it is indeed his personal coming, “when he shall be revealed from heaven in flaming fire.” And I presume he would have the elemental convulsions of the Seal construed literally, as that which is to attend it. But, if so, does it not seem passing strange that we should have no representation whatsoever of the flaming fire that is to accompany Christ’s second coming; nothing shown, or said, even of his own glorious epiphany; nothing of the rapture of the saints to meet him? So as to the evidence from omission. Besides which may we not say that there seems to be that stated which absolutely forbids the supposition of any literal construction of the figures? For were the stars literally to fall to the earth, so as in the Apocalyptic vision they appeared to do, then the earth would not only reel to and fro like a drunkard, but be struck from its orbit into fragments:5 whereas from the Sealing vision in the second part of the same 6th Seal, next following, and which depicts the Angels of the four winds as preparing to blow upon it, it appears that the earth still existed afterwards, and with men still inhabiting it, just as before. What then remains (unless, with Dr. Todd, we boldly eject the Sealing vision from its place in the Apocalyptic Book)1 but to construe the symbols figuratively: and with this, and the consequent reference in them only to some mighty revolution, religious or political, to abandon all argument for the Seal’s signifying Christ’s personal coming to judgment?—Indeed by some of the best-known advocates of the School (contradictorily to R. D.) this seems to me pretty much admitted. As Dr. Maitland has maintained silence on the point inquired into, we cannot do better, I think, than to look for explanation to Mr. Burgh, the next most popular writer probably on the same side. And, strange as it may seem to my readers, they will find that if the passage quoted a little while since in part from him be completed, and the hiatus represented by the dots filled up, it will read thus:—“This Seal so obviously refers to the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, containing as it does the very signs and omens of his coming,2 … that there is no room for difference of opinion.” Does Mr. Burgh then mean, after all, that instead of depicting Christ’s coming itself, this Seal merely depicted certain signs and omens showing that it was near? Such is indeed the case. So at p. 159; “When these several signs of Christ’s coming shall have been developed, [viz. in the Seals preceding,] then the sixth Seal opens with the day itself of his coming, OR [I pray the reader to mark this significant little word, OR] with the signs by which it is more immediately announced!!” And what then, we next ask, as to the precise signs thus immediately announcing the advent;—the sun becoming black as sackcloth, the moon like blood, the stars of heaven falling to the earth, and heaven itself removing like a scroll rolled up? Is the description to be taken literally or figuratively, of physical and elemental, or only of political change? For a direct, straightforward answer to this question I look into Mr. Burgh in vain. In one place he seems to assign a literal meaning to the 6th Seal.1 But, judging from the sequel, this can hardly be. For he considers the Sealing Vision, 7th Seal, Trumpets, &c., all chronologically to carry on the subject.2 And as he makes the Sealing Vision depict the sealing of a Jewish remnant, to be saved from the judgments threatened by the tempest-angels on the godless of the nation, and the other visions similarly to refer to the earth as still existing, and men dwelling on it, I infer that he cannot suppose any physical changes to have been intended by the sixth Seal’s vision, such as to have destroyed earth, and sky, and earth’s inhabitants. The rather since I observe that he explains the palm-bearing vision next following, as only, at that point of advance in the sacred drama, an anticipative, prospective representation of the heavenly blessedness of the saints; and infer consequently that their translation, and therefore Christ’s second coming, will not, in Mr. Burgh’s opinion, even at this epoch (an epoch subsequent to the sixth Seal), have yet taken place: nay that at a much later epoch, that of Apoc. 10:7, the consummation will not have occurred; “judgment having followed on judgment, but the end not being yet.”3 Hence it seems evident that Mr. Burgh, like myself, must construe the symbols of the sixth Seal figuratively; and if figuratively, then, according as the figure is elsewhere used in Scripture prophecy, of mere political or politico-religious change and revolution. In which case all argument for having anything to do with Christ’s second advent vanishes; and together there with all aid from it, (if aid it could give,) as well as from the Seals preceding it, to the Futurists’ Apocalyptic Scheme.


III. AS TO THE FUTURISTS’ LITERAL CONSTRUCTION OF THE APOCALYPTIC ISRAEL

A point this quite essential to their system, just as much as to the Præterists’; for it is thereby that they identity, and link on, much of this prophecy with those in the Old Testament respecting the ultimate restoration and conversion of the Jews: insomuch, I believe, that if the Apocalyptic Israel were proved not to be the literal Israel, there is not a Futurist but would admit that their cause was lost.

“The Jew,” says Mr. Burgh, emphatically, (p. 432,) “is the key to prophecy.” And again (p. 165) on the same Apoc. 7; “I can understand (though I do not think an undoubted instance of it exists) how the name Israel may be supposed to be figuratively applied to the Gentile Church in Scripture: but to suppose that not merely the name of Israel is so applied, but that the names of every one of the twelve tribes have also a spiritual meaning, and apply to the Gentile Church,” this he would have to be incredible indeed. Again, on Apoc. 11:1, “Rise and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein, but the court without, measure not, for it is given to the Gentiles, and they shall tread under foot the holy city forty and two months,” he remarks to the effect that every word marks to an unprejudiced reader that the passage concerns the Jewish nation; and that it is matter for astonishment that it should have been so allegorized by most of the English Protestant expositors, as to exclude all reference to the Jewish people.1 And so too Maitland, Todd,2 and, I believe, all the chief writers of this school. Now in my Chapter on the præterists3 I showed, 1st, that a figurative explanation of the Jewish Apocalyptic symbols was not only accordant with St. Paul’s application of them to the Christian Church, but accordant also with our Lord’s own express explanation of the Apocalyptic figure of seven candlesticks, in what seemed like the holy place of the Jewish temple, to signify the seven Asiatic Christian churches: 2ndly, and in objection to their literal system of explanation of these Jewish symbols, that the Præterists are forced by it into inconsistency; explaining the temple symbol, as they do, and its adjuncts elsewhere in the Apocalyptic drama, to signify things Christian. Just so it is also with the Futurists.—Let me turn to Mr. Burgh, as before, for illustration. And as regards the Jewish temple, and temple-worshippers on the Apocalyptic scene, I observe, first, that he makes “all the saints” that offered incense there in Apoc. 8:3 to be “the Lord’s people:” not unconverted Jews at all; nor even converted Jews alone, but only in part.1 Next in Apoc. 11:1 he explains the temple, and altar, and them that worship in it, to designate a “converted” remnant of the Jewish nation;2 that is, mark, a Christianized remnant; and whose worship consequently will not be Jewish,3 but Christian. Further, with regard to the twelve tribes of Israel, he makes the New Jerusalem of Apoc. 21,—that same city “which had twelve gates, and the names written thereon of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel,” viz. of Judah, Reuben, Gad, &c., the very same that were noted in Apoc. 7 originally, and that are here re-mentioned just as fully and as specifically,—he makes it mean—what? “No doubt,” thinks the reader perhaps, “the blessed and glorious state of the Jewish nation in the millennium.” Nothing of the kind: (Mr. Burgh well knew certain stringent reasons, of various kinds, against this:4) but the polity of the Christian Church, completed and beatified: “that same,” he observes, “which St. Paul meant in that magnificent passage addressed to the Hebrew Christians, ‘Ye are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to the general assembly, and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven.’ I view it,” says he,5 “as identical with the final consummated blessedness of the whole Church.” I doubt not he is here perfectly correct. But what an astounding exemplification of the inconsistency of the Futurists! Of course, if under the names of the twelve tribes of Israel, written respectively on the gates of the New Jerusalem, there be meant the true Christian Church in its heavenly completeness and beatification, then the 144,000 sealed ones on earth out of all the tribes of Israel must surely mean the completeness at any particular period of God’s own Israel, or true Church on earth; and the holy city and the temple still the same mystical body, in regard of its polity and of its worship, respectively.1—Such is the general Protestant view. And on it all seems harmonious; as well as all accordant with Christ’s own most illustrative explanation of the Jewish symbol of the candlesticks, at the beginning of the Apocalypse. Whereas, on the other hand, enough, I think, has been said to show that in the Futurists’ system, let the advocate be able as he may, this its essential characteristic will prove on real examination to involve confusion, inconsistency, and self-contradiction.

IV. As to the FUTURISTS’ SUPPOSED YET FUTURE ANTICHRIST

Under this head I shall have to remark on the difficulties which beset their theory, and the contrast between it and the Scriptural statements, with reference, 1st, to Antichrist’s time of reign and local seat of empire; 2ndly, to his religious profession.

1. Now then, as to the time of Antichrist’s rising,2 it was defined as following speedily after the breaking up of the old Roman empire. For, forasmuch as the let, or hindrance, which in St. Paul’s time prevented, and was still for some certain time after to continue to prevent, Antichrist’s manifestation, was understood by the early Church to be the then regnant Roman empire and emperors,3 (and for the correctness of this its understanding of the point, as of one avowedly revealed, there was almost apostolic voucher,4) the inference might seem sure, and to be depended on, that Antichrist would be a power elevated on their falling.—Again, next, as to Antichrist’s local and political relations, his Roman political origin and local connexion is a fact, as I have elsewhere more than once had occasion to observe, strongly and in various ways set forth in prophecy. First, if elevated on the old empire’s dissolution, as of that which before hindered his rising, then surely the probability might seem to be that he would rise in its place, as well as on its fall. Secondly, the fourth Beast of Daniel, from whose head in its last or ten-horned state the little horn of Antichrist was seen to sprout, could only (according either to the facts of history, or the declared judgment alike of the best classical writers and chief of the early Fathers) be construed of the Roman empire.1 Thirdly, the city of Antichrist, Apocalyptically called the great city and Babylon, and which he was depicted as supporting and upbearing, was by the indubitable marks of a seven-hilled locality, and a supremacy in St. John’s time over the kings of the earth, signified to be Rome; and moreover its transfer marked as all but immediate, from being the seat or capital of Paganism, to being that of Antichrist.2 Such, I say, was the triple Scriptural foreshadowing of Antichrist’s political relations and local connexion with Rome, from his first rise on the old Roman empire’s falling.

But what when the theory of a still future Antichrist (in opposition to that of the Papal Antichrist) is held at the present time? There is nothing, I think, that can more strikingly show the extent and insuperability of the difficulties with which these various prophecies encompass it, than the multiplied inconsistencies and self-contradictions which mark the attempt of him who, of all others of the literalist school, has set himself most fully and elaborately to meet them; and to whom Mr. Burgh refers with satisfaction, as furnishing important corroboration to his Scheme;3—I mean the Oxford Tractator of the Four Sermons on Antichrist.4 It may be well to exhibit this at some little length.

To begin then with the Thessalonian prophecy, and the difficulty from the fact of its let (which with the Fathers he feels constrained to interpret of the Roman empire)5 having full 13 centuries ago past away, and so too the time for Antichrist’s manifestation,6 our Tractator’s confident answer in his first Sermon is this,—that, whatever the apparent historic fact, in the eye of prophecy the Roman empire is regarded as not past away, but still existing, and the let with it; viz. in its predicted ten horns or kingdoms, the Romano-Gothic constituency of modern Western Christendom.7 But scarce has he made the answer than he contradicts it, forced by the strong facts of history: confessing in his third Sermon that the self-same breaking up of the Roman empire that was foretold did take place, at the time of the Gothic irruptions.

Which however being admitted by him; and the admission also made, as we have seen, and must well remark, of the ten Romano-Gothic kingdoms of modern Western Christendom answering to the ten horns of Daniel’s and the Apocalyptic prophecy,—not only does the first difficulty from the Thessalonian Epistle remain unanswered, but a new one rises out of these other prophecies before him. For nothing can be clearer from them than that Antichrist was to be a power contemporary with the ten horns of the symbolic Beast:—like a little horn (of rapid enlargement) ruffling it, as Mede says, among the ten; or a common head supporting, and furnishing a centre of union to them:—that is, according to these admissions, a power contemporary with the Western kingdoms of the middle and the modern age. Our author seems to feel the difficulty; and, reckless of the new contradictions that it involves, casts away both the one and the other of these previously-made admissions: asserts,—on the ground of the Romano-Gothic kingdoms of the 5th and 6th centuries not having been clearly and exactly ten,2—that the real decuple division intended by prophecy did not then take place, but is yet future;3 and further, as to the breaking up of the empire, that it was not then really effected, but only had a bare beginning:—the commencement of a long process of dissolution which has in fact been ever since going on; and which, after full thirteen centuries, is not yet completed.1—Is this a thing credible?

And then there is yet another difficulty that here meets him. For both Daniel’s and the Apocalyptic symbol depict the Roman empire as a bestial monster, as well until the precise predicted division into ten, as under the ten and Antichrist afterwards. And thus his interpretation seems to involve the consequence of Papal Rome (the object in no slight degree of his esteem and reverence) having been a Beast, or impious and persecuting Empire, in the view of inspired prophecy, even though not under Antichrist, throughout the long and (as he would have it)2 still uncompleted period before the grand predicted decem-regal division. As if to get rid of this difficulty, he cites the two Apocalyptic notices of the Beast in its last or anti-christian form, as “the Beast that was and is not and yet is,” and as that which had “received a deadly wound but revived:” intimating that it is the very interval of the “is not,”—the very death-state of the Beast from the deadly wound of the Gothic sword,—that has been filled up by the Papacy and its contemporary subject-kingdoms of Western Christendom; the bestial Roman Empire (I presume he means its bestial principle) being all the while torpid, prostrate, dying;1 and the long long protracted parenthesis of Papal rule one in character not bestial but Christian.2 In answer to any objections that might be raised as to the credibility of this torpor of the Beast’s dying, or death, extending through so many ages, he adds that it was the opinion of the early Church that the monster would lie torpid for centuries, and not revive or wake up again till near the end of the world.3 But what the authority of the early Church, unsupported by Scripture? And where moreover the early patristic authority to any such effect? Instead of patristic opinion on the matter being such as he has represented, the reader may sufficiently see, by reference to notices on the subject in other and earlier parts of this work,1 that, although the primitive Fathers slightly differed among themselves as to the nearness of Antichrist and the consummation,—some few thinking it a century distant, or perhaps two centuries, the rest much closer and even at the doors,—yet that, as to the idea of any long interval occurring, between the expected breaking up of the old Roman Empire and Antichrist’s revelation, during which the Roman Beast was to be torpid,—the thought seems never to have entered their imagination.2 And certainly just as little did they anticipate two breakings up of the Roman Empire before Antichrist’s coming: the first of their own imperial Rome into something very like ten kingdoms; the other, ages afterwards of those long-established decem-regal kingdoms into ten other kingdoms still more exactly defined.—As to Scripture prophecy, forasmuch as in Daniel the bestial character of the fourth Wild Beast, or Roman Empire, is represented symbolically as continuing uninterrupted even to the time of its destruction, and in the Apocalypse the transition-period between the empire in its Pagan draconic form and the empire in its anti-christian and bestial, (i.e. between the Beast as it “was,” and the Beast as it “is,”) is both declared to be brief,1 and also described as all filled up by the Pagan Dragon’s still persecuting the woman the Church, (albeit that he was then fallen,) in active hostility, and so driving her into the wilderness,2—it is evident that the Tractator’s hypothesis meets from it a negative altogether decisive, and one from which there can be no appeal.

Yet once more the difficulty meets him of Babylon the Great, the city of the seven hills, being the predicted seat of Antichrist:—which local connexion of Antichrist with Rome, as his capital, constitutes of course a most strong and palpable corroboration of the Protestant view of the Roman Pope’s being Antichrist. And what then our Tractator’s escape from it? Overlooking altogether the decisive fact of the woman sitting on the Beast when in its last and antichristian form,3 he first alludes to the circumstance of the Angel’s describing the woman-city symbolized to be one that was then in existence and power, as if probable evidence that it was simply Rome Pagan to which the guilt attached of the harlotry spoken of, and of being drunk with the blood of the saints,4—albeit declared a bloody harlot continuously from St. John’s time even to the very end of her career;1 and then passes to the Angel’s other statement about the ten kings hating and burning her with fire,2 as direct evidence that Rome could not be the city of Antichrist: the order of things being this, (so he states the prophecy,) that the ten kings were fated to rise first, and, after rising, to destroy Rome; then Antichrist to appear, and supersede or subdue the ten kings; and so Rome to have fallen before Antichrist’s manifestation.3—But how could Antichrist be altogether posterior to the ten kings, when they are declared, as the Tractator admits,4 to receive their power at one and the same time with the Beast Antichrist; and indeed depicted as rising together in the symbolization of Apoc. 13:1? Again, how could Antichrist be the restorer of the Roman empire, which the Tractator also confesses him to be, and bearer too of the Roman appellative Latinos,5 if locally altogether unconnected with Rome, and only rising after Rome’s final destruction? In fact he admits, a little after, both that Rome was to be his local seat;6 and, as to its final and total destruction, that it would not be by the ten kings’ agency, but according both to Scripture prophecy and the expectation of the Fathers, through the agency of earthquakes, lightnings, and the fury of the elements:1—an admission based on prophetic truth;2 and in which he furnishes his own refutation of his own argument.

Thus, look where he may to escape from the difficulties of his prophetic theory, and substitution of a personal Antichrist yet future for the Papal Antichrist of the old Protestant interpreters, the prophecy meets, and stops, and proves too strong for him. At last, in the spirit of the ancient Academy, he takes refuge in doubt and scepticism. Perhaps, he says, after all it may be that not Rome literally is intended in the prophecy, but rather the world, or some other great and wicked city;3—or perhaps, if Rome be the city intended, her sufferings from the Goths, &c., in time past may be considered sufficient punishment; or the Church within her may prove her preservative, and so the final threatened judgments be averted.4 Again, as regards Antichrist, and Antichrist’s persecution of the saints, Perhaps we may have been wrong in supposing such things to have been foretold; and they may, after all, never arise.5—Such I say is the conclusion of the writer;—a not unfit conclusion to a Treatise so marked by inconsistency and self-contradiction. Now it is mainly doubtless to the insuperable difficulties of the Tractator’s anti-protestant futurist theory about Antichrist, that these inconsistencies and self-contradictions with reference to Antichrist’s predicted time of rise after the old Roman Empire’s breaking up, and local Roman connexion afterwards, are to be attributed:1—a fact evidenced by the similar or equal inconsistencies, and self-contradictions, of all other expositors of the same school on the same point.2 And it is in this point of view that I have felt it my duty thus at length to exhibit them. At the same time, considering that it is no vulgar or inferior hand of the Tractarian school that has penned the Tract, and that the palpable failure of his attempt at diverting the prophecies respecting Antichrist from application to the Roman Papacy involves it in the most conclusive disproval and condemnation of the general Tractarian system of religious doctrine,—allied as it is so closely to that of Rome,—must not the thought also force itself on the mind, Is this the logic, this the theology, that half Oxford of late has been wondering after?1

2ndly, as to the Antichrist’s profest religion.

The triple Scriptural evidence in proof of the predicted Antichrist being a great professor of Christianity,—viz. that of his unrighteous system being defined as the deceivableness of unrighteousness, that of his chief agent and minister being figured as a lamb-like false prophet, and that of his designation by name as a Vice-Christ, (in his own profession, of course, as if of Christ’s appointment,)—is what my readers must now be familiar with.

But the Futurists’ representations on this head are altogether different from what we might thus have inferred from Scripture. According to them Antichrist’s profession is to be that of a downright open atheist:—a theory this all but necessary indeed to their system; for why, except on account of some such different and more horrid kind of irreligion, overlook the Papacy, and judge Antichrist? So Maitland; “The blasphemy of the Little Horn seems … to be downright barefaced infidelity: something more like what was exhibited in France during the Revolution, than like anything ever seen in the Church of Rome.”2 Also Dr. Todd; “We are to look for an individual Antichrist; … a power openly and avowedly professing atheism; and blaspheming the very name and semblance of Christianity.”3 And so too others.4 But then what explanation do they give of the passages just referred to, as indicating something so different in the Antichrist’s religious profession? In Dr. Maitland I observe no reference to them. As regards Dr. Todd, while overlooking that most striking symbol of the lamb-like two-horned Beast, that was prophetically set forth as Antichrist’s attendant and prime minister,1 and this down even to Antichrist’s last war against the gospel, and consequent destruction by Christ,2 he however notices, and seeks to set aside, the other two. St. Paul’s expression about the deceivableness of unrighteousness he explains away, as if meaning merely the deceivableness of false miracles, externally supporting the iniquitous moral system;3 though surely the expression seems to imply a deceivableness by great pretensions to religion in the moral system itself. Again, as to the designative term Antichrist, though quoting a criticism of Mr. Gresswell which explains the force of the word almost exactly as I have done, viz. as meaning “another Christ, a Vice-Christ, a pretender to the name of Christ, who in every circumstance or characteristic of personal distinction … appears to be, and sets himself up as, the counterpart of the true,”—I say, though he thus quotes Mr. Gresswell,4 defining the term so as to set aside, by the very force of it, all idea of the predicted Antichrist’s being an avowed atheist, yea, and confesses that “this is indeed the strictly etymological meaning of the word,” yet does he discard it by simply saying, “It is plain that John applied the name in the looser sense of enemies to Christ by false doctrine.” But how so? The statement in 1 John 2:22, “He is Antichrist that denieth the Father and the Son,” is the one grand New Testament passage on which his atheist counter-theory rests. But mark how the next verse, “He that denieth the Son hath not the Father,” shows that the denial of God the Father meant by St. John was only by denying Christ. And how denying Christ? Surely in Paul’s language, “While professing to know God, in works denying him.” The Gnostic application fixes this meaning on it. And so in truth the Oxford Tractator confesses;5 and gives it as an alternative explanation. How fully an apostle might apply the phrase to professedly Christian teachers appears from Jude 4; where he speaks of false teachers, who had come into the Christian body privily, “denying the only Master and Lord Jesus Christ:” men who were “spots in the Christians’ feasts of charity.” And so too 2 Pet. 2:1; “There shall be false teachers among you, who shall privily bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them.”

The same general notion about Antichrist that makes the Futurists paint him as an avowed infidel and atheist, leads them to paint him also as an open avowed anti-moralist: legalizing, and indeed enforcing, men’s renunciation of the obligations and restraints of marriage; agreeably, they say, with St. Paul’s prophetic notice to Timothy about the apostatizers in the last days, (for they explain this as meant in the way of a universal prohibition,) “forbidding to marry.”2 The anti-moral excesses and outrages at the first outbreak of the French Revolution are referred to by way of illustration. So Dr. Maitland:—“The plain language of Scripture warrants us to expect … that the same apostate power shall forbid to marry: and they who have any acquaintance with the real doctrines of apostates from Christianity, whether French philosophers, German illuminati, or liberal infidels of England, will require no proof that such a law may be expected, if an infidel apostasy should become dominant.”3 So too Dr. Maitland’s faithful follower, Dr. Todd: “This much seems beyond a doubt, that a total prohibition of marriage in itself, and not a restriction imposed upon some particular class or order of men, must be intended in the words.”1 And so again the Oxford Tractator.

Now the whole force of this argument, as corroborative of their own Futurist views of an individual Antichrist, and subversive of the common Protestant view explaining it of the Papacy, arises out of the idea just noticed of the predicted prohibition being one of universal application. But, to show the utter incorrectness of this idea, notwithstanding the learned Dublin Doctor’s declaration of its indubitableness, two considerations will, I believe, suffice: the one a probable argument drawn from the context of the prediction: the other an ex-absurdo proof drawn from the supposed thing predicted.

First then, and as regards the context which immediately precedes the verse in question,3 what find we to have been there St. Paul’s subject and argument? We find nearly the whole preceding Chapter occupied with the Apostle’s directions to Timothy as to what would be fitting, and should be required, in bishops and deacons:—including the remarkable particular, respecting both bishop and deacon, that each should be the husband of one wife;4 and also a reference to wine, as that which neither bishop nor deacon should use to excess:5 it being implied that in moderation they might both lawfully and properly use it; as he said to Timothy himself a little later,6 “Drink no longer water, but use a little wine, for thy stomach’s sake, and thy often infirmities.” Now it is after a prolonged series of directions to Timothy on this subject of the Church ministers and their wives, and next after the injunction, “Let the deacons be husbands of one wife, &c.,” that St. Paul digresses momentarily to intimate the necessity of his thus instructing Timothy by letter, (having been prevented from personal conference,) how he ought to act in his responsible office of a presiding bishop in the Church of God; that whose high object it was, like a pillar erect on its basement, to hold up and exhibit the great gospel truth of the mystery of godliness, of which the α and ω was God manifest in the flesh: and this the rather because the Spirit told expressly of a coming apostasy from the faith, in which there would be another rule of life and godliness; with forbidding to marry, and enjoining of abstinence from meats, though God had given them as his good creatures for man’s use. This noted he then resumes the thread of his general directions at verse 6; “Suggesting these things to the brethren, (viz. all that he had previously enjoined,) thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ.”—Such, I say, is the connexion and context of this brief but memorable prophecy; and thus does it intervene parenthetically in the course of St. Paul’s instructions to Timothy about ministers of the Church; including that of their being husbands of one wife, and not using wine in excess. All which being so, would it be reasonable to suppose that St. Paul digressed to a prophecy in no wise specially connected with his ministerial subject, but concerning alike all men; or, rather, to one closely connected with it, and having regard specially to ministers and functionaries in the visible Church? Surely the latter. In which case, and considering the far-famed Papal injunction of celibacy on the priesthood, (not to add also on the monastic orders,) and that of the forbidding of meats also, wine inclusive, to multitudinous ascetic orders, the prophecy becomes, just as Mede in the main expounded it,1 a prophecy that had most signal fulfilment in the Popedom; and so, instead of an argument for Futurists, furnishes an argument strong against them.2
Secondly, I should be glad to know, were there truth in Drs. Maitland and Todd’s universal anti-marriage theory respecting Antichrist, how it could consist with Christ’s own prophetic declaration in Matt. 24:38? For, according to these learned Doctors, the yet future Antichrist’s empire over the world is to be universal; and his power such that whosoever refuses to receive his mark, and obey his injunctions, is to be slain.1 Of course this must apply to the injunction about not marrying and not eating meats, just as well as to other injunctions. And since Antichrist’s reign is, as they rightly hold, to be only ended by Christ’s coming, this injunction must needs be in force, and acted on, even until then. Yet, behold, Christ tells us that, “as in the days before the flood men were eating and drinking, marrying, and giving in marriage, until the day when Noe entered into the ark, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.”—Just accordant with which is the further fact that on the tremendous destruction of Antichrist’s own city, the seven-hilled Babylon, by volcanic earthquake and fire, so as described in Apoc. 18, among the things mentioned as only then ceasing in Babylon is “the voice of the bridegroom and bride.”

And here I might fitly conclude this part of my critique, since on the only other great point of difference about Antichrist, viz. the year-day question, involving that of Antichrist’s duration, I have written very fully in my Chapter on it in the 3rd Volume.2—But I think it well, ere concluding, to add a few remarks in correction of certain representations by Futurists respecting the Papacy on the one hand, and the Antichrist on the other, on points which bear on may last head, and seem to me too important to pass in silence.
The first is Dr. M.’s representation of celibacy under the Popedom as if, first, it extended only to the parochial Clergy, and affected one sex only;—secondly, as if it was only enforced on the Clergy from the view (perhaps mistaken view, he says) of their so better performing their clerical functions.—This is not the way that Ranke speaks of it, in his History of the Popes.1 And assuredly that was not the master-motive which induced the Papal determinate enforcement of it at all hazards. In the view of making use of profest religion to subserve both irreligion and worldly policy, it was one of his measures the most characteristic, and most extraordinary. Extending not merely to the parochial clergy of Western Europe, but to the numberless communities of monks and nuns, its first effect was to consecrate, at the same time that with the strong arm of power it enforced upon them, that rule of celibacy which, under the semblance of purity and holiness, opened wide the way, and almost precipitated them into it, of licentiousness.2 And, when direct Papal rule was established over the convent, (not to speak of the priesthood,) then in those innumerable monasteries, male and female,—containing within their walls members from most of the high and considerable families in the several Western kingdoms, and absorbing in their domains no small proportion of the national territory, the accumulated result, it was said, of the piety, or rather of the superstition of successive generations,—I say in these monasteries, thus as an act of religion endowed, and thus as an act of religion peopled with devotees, it was found that he had formed, and held in his grasp, so many almost inexpugnable fortresses, filled with hostages for its fidelity, in the heart of each kingdom of Western Christendom.1 Was there ever such a “forbidding to marry,” in any other Church, or Sect, that Dr. M. has put forward for comparison on this head?—Nor must I omit to except strongly against what Dr. M. says of the abstinence from meats and fastings in the Romish Church, as if, like those in our own Church, good and praiseworthy.2 By the English Church the doctrine of justification through faith in Christ alone is laid down as its very foundation-stone. With the Romish Church the rule of fasting, as of celibacy, is laid down as a principle of merit and self-justification, in opposition to the gospel of Christ.

Next, and with reference to Dr. Todd3 and other Futurists’ view of Antichrist’s religious or rather anti-religious profession, as that of an openly avowed atheist, anti-religionist, and anti-moralist, let me express my deep conviction, that it is not merely unaccordant with the Apocalyptic and the other cognate prophecies of Antichrist, but appears, even intellectually speaking, a mere rude and common-place conception of Satan’s predicted master-piece of opposition to Christ, compared with what has been actually realized and exhibited in the Papacy. My opinion of the Pope’s being Antichrist is not indeed founded on any such à priori notion of the thing; but on the complete identification of the one and the other, after a rigid comparison of the Papal history, seat, character, doctrine, and doings with those of the Antichrist of prophecy. Having however shown this, let me now explain and justify the superadded sentiment just exprest respecting the Papal system; as being, beyond anything that the Futurists have imagined, or ever can imagine, the very perfection of anti-christianism. And I will do it by simply putting a case in point. Which then, I ask, Reader, would you view with the deeper amazement and abhorrence:—an avowed open desperate enemy, sworn against your life, family, friends, property:—or one that, while professing the utmost friendship, were by some strange impersonation of you, in your absence, to insinuate himself into your place in the family; seize your estate, seduce your wife to be as his wife,1 your children to look to him as their father; and, if yours be a king’s dignity, to seize your kingdom for himself; then to make use of his opportunities to train them (wife, children, and subjects) into unfaithfulness and rebellion against all your most solemn and cherished wishes and commands; falsifying your letters and forging your handwriting, in order the more effectually to carry out his plan; and even at length framing an image, and breathing voice into it, and by magic art and strong delusion making men believe that it was your own self speaking, in expression of perfect approval of his proceedings, as those of your chief friend, plenipotentiary, and chosen substitute?—Such is somewhat of the view of Antichrist, sketched in Scripture prophecy: such, what has been realized in the Popes and Popedom. And, horrid as was the atheism of the French revolutionists, yet must I beg leave to doubt whether in God’s view it was as horrid an abomination, even at its worst, as the blasphemous hypocrisies and betrayal of Christ in the polished Court and Church Councils of his usurping Vicar and impersonator at Rome. Sharp as were the thorns and nails and spear of the Pagan soldiery, they were surely less painful to the Saviour than the kiss of Judas.

§ 2. ON CERTAIN MODIFIED FUTURIST COUNTER-SCHEMES

There is something so monstrous in the Futurists’ primary and fundamental idea, as described in my preceding Section, of the Apocalyptic prophecy overleaping at once near 2000 years from St. John’s time, and plunging instantly, and without notice, into the distant future of the consummation,—something so contrary alike to the general rule of God’s prophetic revelations, and to the natural meaning of the revealing Angel’s own words to St. John about the commencing chronology of those of the Apocalypse,—that it could hardly be but that some at least among them should seek out for a way of softening the monstrosity. Moreover, if themselves really of Protestant feeling, the idea of its total overleaping of the great Papal apostasy, without forewarning against or notice of the divine wrath and judgment impending on it, has been a part of the theory painful even to themselves; and from which, if possible, they would fain set it free. So here and there the attempt has been made. Some ten or twelve years ago an imperfectly developed Scheme, partially to that effect, appeared in the Christian Examiner, written by R. D., a well-known and much-respected correspondent of the Journal; which, however, as being but partially developed, it may seem unfair to criticise.1 Besides this I may mention the scheme of modification propounded by the Rev. W. G. Barker, in a Letter printed in 1850 in the Quarterly Journal of Propheey;1 and another, with its own marked peculiarities, published quite recently by Mr. W. Kelly, of Guernsey.2 Of each of these I now proceed to offer a brief notice.

1. Mr. Barker

Mr. B.’s Paper, which is written in a kindly spirit is entitled, “An Apology for Moderate Futurism.” After stating at the outset his persuasion that the number of prophetie students who held moderate Futurist views is greatly on the increase, (a persuasion in which I suspect him to be mistaken,) he proceeds to express a hope that they who hold the “Protestant view will be constrained to admit that moderate Futurist views may be maintained together with the most consistent Protestantism: and may even be reconciled with a modified admission of the cherished views of the historical interpreters.” And then, and in evidence of this, he lays down the following several points on which, in a certain way, the Protestant Futurist and historical expositors have agreement:—viz. 1. in supposing that we are now near the time of the consummation;—2. in supposing the Apocalyptic Babylon to mean the Papacy;—3. in holding Daniel’s four great empires to be those of Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome;—4. in expecting a national restoration of the Jews to their own land;—besides that, in the 5th place, Moderate Futurists are inclined to admit that the Apocalyptic figures may have been so ordered as to have a resemblance to the various historic realities that historic interpreters have variously applied to them; insomuch that these realities may have been in a manner shadows of a more perfect fulfilment yet to come.—Together with the notices of which several points of agreement, there is insinuated on each topic a notice of the superior strength of the Futurists, where the two schools differ.—It is with the 2nd and 5th of these notices that I am alone directly concerned in this present Paper. On the others however, in consequence of the above-mentioned insinuation, I think it right to add a few remarks in the Note subjoined.

1. Now on Mr. B.’s attempt at Protestantizing, in a manner, the Futurist views of the Apocalyptic prophecy, there needs but very brief reply to show its futility. Says he; “Both parties admit that the Apocalyptic Babylon signifies the Papacy. If they (the Historical) think the Woman has mounted the Beast, we believe the Woman will mount the Beast: so we can both agree that the curse of God rests on that false system of religion.” But no! Not so. According to the Futurists (albeit in most manifest contradiction to Scripture prophecy)1 the Beast Antichrist’s religion (if I may use such a misnomer) is to be open avowed infidelity. And, while in such close alliance with Antichrist as the Apocalyptic figure of the Woman sitting on the Beast’ implies, we cannot suppose her avowed religion different: especially since Antichrist, according to all the Futurists, will allow no alternative but that of receiving his mark and worshipping his image, or death. Which being so, Babylon, on the Futurist view, must at the time depicted be professedly infidel: and this indeed not of compulsion, but heartily, and as herself a prime agent in the matter; since, whatever the false religion, she is herself the one to drug the nations with its philtre cup, and this even to the last.2 Now it is specially for Babylon’s sins committed during the time depicted in the Apocalyptic vision, of her riding the Beast, that God’s judgment is pronounced on her:3—i.e. (still on the Futurist hypothesis) for her final avowed infidelity, not for any other previously cherished sins. Whence it results that for Rome’s Papal errors there is no special judgment from God. And if so, and that there is not even a note of Apocalyptic protest or warning on God’s part against Rome’s previous Papal religion, simply and distinctively, what can be the inference but that, after all, in God’s eye, Popery is not a thing so very bad?—Thus I find myself forced to regard Mr. Barker’s attempt at Protestantizing the Futurist Apocalyptic Scheme as an utter failure. And let me further add on this head, that I think it ought to be viewed as a little suspicious in that system by every really Protestant eye, that three of its chief peculiarities, viz. that of making the Antichrist a single individual infidel man of 3½ literal years’ duration, that of regarding Rome’s primary empire as still unended, and that of making the city of the two witnesses’ death to be Jerusalem,—are all points borrowed (however vainly, thank God! and ineffectively) from some of the chief Romish antagonists of Protestant prophetic interpretations;—from Ribera, Bellarmine, Malvenda.

2. As to Mr. B.’s plan for mitigating the monstrosity of the Futurists’ imagined Apocalyptic instant plunge into the distant future of the consummation, viz. by supposing that the prophetic imagery may have been purposely so ordered as to bear a resemblance, though but imperfect, to the various historic facts to which historic expositors have variously applied them, and so, and by these imperfect fore-shadowings, not to leave wholly unrepresented the long interval between St. John and the consummation, it must surely be obvious to all intelligent persons that with such particularity in the prophecy’s multitudinous details, and order too in their arrangement, it is nothing less than impossible for the scheme to be true. What! the most opposite and different events to be all alike foreshadowed by these various and peculiar symbols! There is evidently satire in the very suggestion. No! there can only be one true fulfilment; and that one reaching from John’s time to the consummation.—As to what that fulfilment is, is another question. But until I see it overthrown I must believe the one given in the Horæ to be the true one. Mr. B. himself has already tried to break it down; but with what result? What, for example, has come of his attempted refutation of my exposition of the Seals? I have made a point of exhibiting whatever has appeared to me of force in Mr. B.’s as well as in other critics’ objections: and the reader has before him in this present edition a notification of them, and of the answers. Let him judge for himself. But, if unrefuted, can those various and most particular coincidences of fact and symbol shown by me, in regard of the horse, crown, (contradistinguished from diadem,) bow, sword-bearing, balance, notification about wheat, barley, wine, oil, and the price of the two former, with the horse’s significant successive colours of the white, red, black, and livid, and yet much more following,—I say, can all this be the mere effect of chance? Or, again, can there be any human probability of such and so particular a fulfilment ever again occurring; and this in some small fraction of the Futurists’ imagined 3½ years of the last crisis, or a little more, just before Christ’s coming?

So much as to the two points now before us.—I observe in his Paper that Mr. B. sagaciously deprecates Futurists conjecturing too particularly about things future; and so exposing themselves to the charge of discrepancies between members of their own body, and other pointed attacks, from “the skilful arrows of their prophetic antagonists.” But is it only in regard of conjectures about the future that there have been manifested such discrepancies among Futurists? Is the question whether the Roman empire, once ruled by Augustus and Constantine, has yet come to an ending, or not, a question of the coming future, or of the past? Or, again, whether the 70 weeks of Daniel are to be taken as weeks of years or days: and, further, whether the 70 were all fulfilled about the time of Christ’s first coming, or with the 70th (as Mr. B. in fact supposes) still left for fulfilment? And so too of sundry other questions.—While however thus deprecating conjectures about fulfilments of prophecies that are yet future, Mr. B. tells that there is one thing that he seems to himself really “to know.” Well! let us test our Futurist on this his own chosen ground. “All I know about the Seals is that they seem to foretell God’s four sore judgments, with persecution of his people, and his coming to judgment.” But how (as I asked in my preceding Section) the 3rd Seal figure famine with barley at 7½d per 5 lb, and wine and oil in abundance, so as is intimated in the Seal? Again, if the 6th Seal be Christ’s coming to judgment, where is there a single clear sign of it, supposing the elemental convulsions to be taken otherwise then literally? And, if they be taken literally, and the earth have been literally struck by stars falling from heaven, how in the very next following scene, under the same Seal, comes the earth to have its inhabitants upon it, just as before?—Mr. B. must have been perfectly aware of these objections when he wrote his Paper; for I have urged both the one and the other upon him myself.2 And what his reply? On the former point he has only replied by dead silence. On the latter his reply is that, though consecutive in arrangement, yet the second part of the 6th Seal must be considered prior in point of time to what precedes it; albeit without a single notification, or sign of any kind, that such is the case. Thus in regard of the former point he virtually allows judgment to go against him by default. In regard of the other he virtually confesses that, unless downright violence be permitted him in dealing with the Apocalyptic context, the Futurist Scheme in his own, as in other hands, must fall.

A Tabular Schedule is added on the following page, in illustration of his Scheme, so far as I have been able to make it out; he himself having declined to make one. For indeed such Schedules are most illustrative, and most necessary, in case of Futuristic Schemes, as well as of Historical.

2. W. Kelly

As regards Mr. Barker, in 1851, the manner in which he would apply his modifications to the older Maitlandic and Burghite Scheme of Futurism “pure et simple,” is altogether vague and indefinite. But not so,

2ndly, with his modern successor, Mr. W. Kelly, of Guernsey. Distinctly and expressly, and moreover in a certain way authoritatively, as if speaking as the organ of a not unimportant party in the Christian Church,1 he declares his belief that the protracted Protestant scheme has in it a certain measure of truth:2 that, in this scheme the seven Trumpets are the evolution of the 7th Seal, though he is not so sure of the Vials being the evolution of the 7th Trumpet:3 that in the general outline of the prophecy, so considered, God intended that his people should gather light from it in regard of the then future destinies of the Western and Eastern Roman Empire, first in its hostile Pagan state, next in its outwardly Christian profession and revolt against God in opposing Christ in his priestly character:4—more particularly, that he does not identify the meaning of the earlier Seals with the details of Christ’s prophecy in Matt. 24, but would rather explain them of some successive providential judgments, such as the conquests of some hostile conqueror, then a time of bloody warfare, then of dearth, then of pestilence and God’s other three sore judgments: (how fulfilled in past history Mr. K. does not say:)1—that, as regards the 6th Seal, he entirely repudiates the idea of its figuring the coming of Christ in judgment, or great day of the Lord, at the end of the present dispensation;2 but rather views it as some great political revolution, involving the overthrow of existing governmental authorities, such as in fact that of the overthrow of Heathenism in the Roman Empire, at the great Constantinian revolution:3 and that, as regards the four first Trumpets, he judges them to refer first to the Gothic invasions of Alaric and Rhadagaisus; secondly, to the depredations of Genseric and the Vandals; thirdly, to those of Attila and his Huns; fourthly, to “the memorable era of the extinction of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century.”4 Moreover “he doubts not that the common application of the locusts in the 5th Trumpet to the Saracens, and of the Euphratean horsemen of the sixth to the Turks, is well founded;”5 nor is disposed to question the general application of the subsequent vision of the light-bearing Angel of Apoc. 10 to “that wonderful divine intervention, the Reformation.”6—Yet, again, he sees not why the two Witnesses, Apoc. 11 may not symbolize many;7 is inclined to admit a reference in one of the Beasts of Apoc. 13 to Popery, regarding the great Antichrist of Prophecy as figured in the second Beast from the earth, or False Prophet:8 as regards this Antichrist agrees with me that “bare infidelity would be a meagre conception of his character, position, and doings;”9 and, once more, is ready to admit the applicability of the year-day scale in the great Apocalyptic periods, when considered thus historically.


It is to be observed, further, that Mr. W. K., like his friend Mr. Trotter of York, explains the seven Epistles to the seven Churches, not only as pictures of the actual state of those Asiatic Churches as existing in St. John’s day, but also (though certainly not very successful in answering my objections to Mr. T.’s specific view) as figuring the successive most characteristic phases of the Christian Church from Apostolic times to the consummation.

In order to the application of which theory of the prophecy in this historical sense to the history of the Church, and of the world as connected with it, there is required of course the use of human learning. And thus Mr. W. K. must be understood as utterly repudiating the axiom so often vaunted, and so much dwelt upon by the earlier Futurists, that human learning is altogether out of place in Apocalyptic interpretation; and that “Scripture is only to be judged of by comparison with Scripture.”

But how then, it will be asked, can Mr. W. K. be a Futurist at all? It is by the theory of a most curious double view; such a double view as, I must say, like as in physical cases of double sight, seems to me to imply a somewhat notable imperfection of sobriety in the expositor.

It seems to be a settled point in Mr. W. Kelly’s creed, and is continually referred to as such throughout his book, that there is to be some certain considerable interval of time between the rapture of the saints, to meet Christ in the air, and his descent with them, after the closing judgments of the consummation, in the brightness of the New Jerusalem.2 It is this interval of time that he supposes to be most specially referred to in the heavenly vision represented in Apoc. 4 and 5. The 24 crowned elders round the throne, being a complete number, taken from the 24 courses of the Jewish Priesthood, must figure, he considers, the whole company of the redeemed in their state of glorification1 after the resurrection; at least most properly so. But how then will this suit with what goes before in the seven Epistles to the Churches, and what comes after in the judgments, as successively unfolded of the seven-scaled book? In this way. 1st, the seven Epistles, regarded in their primary sense, as picturing the seven Asiatic Churches in St. John’s time, reach of course only to the time of St. John’s seeing the visions in Patmos: and consequently imply that as the stand-point of time in the heavenly vision of the Divine throne and the elders in chapters 4 and 5 immediately following. For so it is said in the 1st verse of chap. 4; “Come up, and I will now show thee what must happen after these things.” And, as seen from this point of time, the figurations subsequently evolved of the seven-sealed book depicted the subsequent history of the Church, and of the world, according to the more usual Protestant historical view, and very much as in the Horæ Apocalypticæ.2 But this only imperfectly: indeed with imperfection such as to show that some more perfect interpretation was further intended by the Divine Author of the Book.3—Which more perfect interpretation, 2ndly, is thus obtainable, in consistency with the other view of the seven Epistles advocated by Mr. K. as depicting the successive æras and phases of the Christian Church from St. John’s time to the consummation;—viz. by now regarding the stand-point of time indicated by the opening verse of chap, 4, “Come up, and I will show thee what must happen after these things,” as the epoch of the ending of the Christian Church’s history and existence on earth:4 in other words, the epoch of the rapture of the saints constituting it, and their enthronization in all the Church’s completeness, as figured in the 24 crowned elders before the throne of God and of the Lamb. For, viewed from this point, all the subsequent visions will depict simply and solely the judgments and other events of the great “day of the Lord,” at the close of the present dispensation.

A double view truly marvellous! And of which surely my more intelligent readers will think that the simple statement is a sufficient refutation. To make the matter clearer I have endeavoured to represent this double view in a Tabular Apocalyptic scheme. It is very obvious, even à priori, and sufficiently illustrated in Mr. W. K.’s Commentary, that the sacred figurations must, from the very nature of things, mean something each one quite different in the one view from what they mean in the other. And is this credible in Scripture prophecy? in Scripture prophecy, let me add, so full of particularity and detail, and stamped too with such marks of order as that of the Apocalypse? In fine, we may, I think, safely conclude to receive Mr. W. Kelly’s judgment, so far as it goes, in favour of the Protestant historical view of the Apocalyptic prophecy, as that forced upon a person originally altogether prejudiced against it; and, in regard of his very original modification of Apocalyptic Futurism, as an additional and very notable illustration of the impossibility of any such modification.

I should add that Mr. W. Kelly, like his friend Mr. Trotter, and like Mr. Molyneux and most other Futurists, explains the last of Daniel’s seventy hebdomads as the time of these judgments of consummation; and thereby complicates yet further his modified Futuristic system. So it will appear in the Schedule on the opposite page.

ADDENDUM.

In the course of his Work Mr. W. K. has from time to time made sundry strong animadversions on certain points in my Apocalyptic Exposition, by no means altogether in that spirit of fairness and candour which might have been anticipated from the courteous notice of myself and my Commentary in his Introduction. The chief of these it seems to me a duty not to pass over in silence; as he speaks very positively and dogmatically on them, and has moreover made my whole Book evidently a subject of careful study. I may fitly arrange them under the two heads;—1st, of my asserted errors in the adoption of certain wrong readings of the Apocalyptic Greek Text, or readings of quite insufficient authority; 2ndly, of asserted errors in certain of my renderings of the Greek, and of my historical applications of the prophecy.

I. Asserted erroneous readings of the Greek text preferred in the Horæ.—Of these there are four that seem chiefly to call for specification, as animadverted upon by Mr. Kelly; each having an important bearing on the interpretation, the two last specified most especially.

W. KELLY’S DOUBLE OR HISTORICO-FUTURIST APOCALYPTIC SCHEME

These 7 Epistles, taken prophetically, end at the rapture of the saints shortly before the judgments of the consummation; representing a period of about 1800 years; and, as in the next vision of Apoc. 4., 5., have, as their immediate sequel, μετα ταυτα (qu. about A. D. 1900) these saints in heaven, under symbol of The 7 Epistles, taken hislorically, represent the state of the 7 Asiatic Churches in the yuar A.D. 96, after which epoch (μετα ταυτα) begin the subjects of the Apocalyptic figurations shown, A.D. 96, to



1. “In Apoc. 11:8, Mr. E. repeatedly, but incorrectly, of course through oversight, represents the reading in the critical editions as επι της πλατειας της πολεως της μεγαλης” (contradistinctively, I presume, to πλ. πολ. της μεγ., without the της). So Mr. K., p. 198; referring specially to the H. A. Vol. ii. p. 396, and Vol. iv. p. 543.1 He seems (if I rightly understand him) to regard this as unduly adding weight to the idea of Rome being pointed at as the fated city of the Witnesses’ death, not Jerusalem.

In reply, I have simply to state that the text is as I give it in four out of the six critical Editions which I possess: viz. in Heinrichs, Tregelles (Ed. 1844), Wordsworth, and Alford. In Griesbach (Ed. 1818) and Scholz, the της is wanting before πολεως. Bishop Middleton, as I have observed Vol. ii. p. 433, speaks of the Greek as grammatically requiring the της prefix.

2. At page 203 Mr. K. animadverts on my preferring the reading, ηνοιγη ὁ ναος του Θεου εν τῳ ουρανῳ, in Apoc. 11:19, to ηνοιγη ὁ ναος του θ. ὁεν τῳ ουρ., which he regards as that of best MS. authority. In reply to which charge I have to say that what I prefer is the reading of Griesbach, Scholz, Heinrichs, Tregelles, Alford; Wordsworth alone of the critical editors by me preferring the other reading.

The importance of this reading, which arises primarily from the fact that the absence of the article precludes the idea of a second and heavenly temple being here indicated, different from that spoken of 11:1, 2, and elsewhere previously, is doubled by its parallelism (as so given) with the clause in Apoc. 15:5; και ηνοιγη ὁ ναος της σκηνης του μαρτυριου εν τῳ ουρανῳ: where the text, as I have just written it, is given in all the critical editions; alike by Griesbach, Heinrichs, Tregelles, Scholz, Wordsworth, Alford. Mr. Kelly, indeed, would here too read ὁ εν τῳ ουρανῳ; for he gives, as the English, “the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony in heaven was opened;” not “was opened in heaven.” But altogether, so far as I know, without authority. And why? It seems to be only because of its suiting his peculiar interpretation of the passage, and idea of the Apocalyptic scenery; the very fault he has so often, and wrongly, ascribed to me.

3rdly, comes my adoption in the fourth Seal (H. A., Vol. i. p. 189, 4th Ed., or, in this 5th Ed., p. 201) of a reading correspondent with Jerome’s well-known Latin translation in the Vulgate, super quatuor partes terrœ, “on the four parts of the earth;” instead of that found in our Greek MSS. all but universally, επι το τεταρτον της γης, “on the fourth part of the earth.” In justification of this, in addition to what I have urged in my discussion of the subject in loc.,1 let me refer to Mr. W. K.’s own principle of applying considerations of internal evidence in deciding between doubtful readings, e. g. at his p. 912 and elsewhere; and then remind my reader of the strong considerations of internal evidence which have led me to I adopt Jerome’s in the verse in question: premising, however, that Jerome does not stand quite alone in this matter; but that other Latin versions, independent of the Vulgate, represent by the same translation the same Greek reading.3—1st, then, no expositor has ever yet, on any system of Apocalyptic interpretation, been able to suggest any at all plausible reason for the limitation of this judgment of the 4th Seal, agreeably with the text of the Greek MSS., to the 4th part of the earth: it being an evidently more aggravated judgment than those of the two Seals preceding, which had attached to them no such local limitation;4 and, moreover, analogous to that spoken of in the proof-text of Ezek. 14:21, where no such local limitation attaches to the selfsame four sore judgments of God.5—2ndly, this argument from internal evidence acquires double force, if that be admitted for which I contend, that the horse in the four first Seals figures the Roman Empire, and its colours the Empire’s successive phases, correspondent with the state depicted in the Seal; seeing that in the 4th, just as in the three preceding Seals, the colour of the whole horse is seen to be that of the livid pallor of death. And against the strength of the evidence for the truth of this symbolization Mr. K.’s assertions and réchauffée of objections, borrowed from other and earlier critics, is really worthless.—3rdly, there is the evidence, from comparison of history and prophecy, that the indication in Jerome’s reading, when superadded to the 12 or 13 of the preceding Seals, completes, in respect of a very remarkable particular, a most exact and philosophic picturing of the successive phases and fortunes of the Roman Empire in the two centuries intervening between St. John and Diocletian:—and this, 4thly, in perfect consistency with what goes after, as well as with that which goes before, inclusive of that notice of a subsequent tripartition of the Empire which is set forth so prominently in the Trumpets; springing as that which was meant by the latter did, (in Mr. K.’s judgment as well as my own,) out of the previous quadripartition under Diocletian.

In fine, with Jerome’s reading all is, on my historic system of interpretation, explicable, consistent, harmonious: while, on the other hand, with the usual Greek reading all is inexplicable on any system of interpretation. Have I not then sufficient warrant for adopting it?
4. There is noticed by Mr. K. “the flagrant proof of my proneness to prefer a manifestly spurious reading where my hypothesis requires,” in my preference of επι το θηριον to και το θηρ. in Apoc. 17:16. So W. K., p. 304. And no doubt the evidence of Greek MSS. is very strong in favour of the και. Moreover, I have, in the course of this last revision of my book, found that I was mistaken in supposing that the early Greek Father Hippolytus read επι, in common with the early Latin Father Tertullian, and also probably with Jerome;1 being misled by the Latin translation of Hippolytus’ “De Christo et Antichristo.” Hence my confidence in so decidedly preferring the επι is less strong than before. But, admitting this, let me beg to apply considerations of internal evidence to the explanation of the passage with the alternative of either reading, on the two counter-systems the historical and the futuristic respectively. It is as clear, I think, as anything well can be, and absolutely forced upon our minds by the vivid and prolonged pictorial vision of Apoc. 18, that the ultimate destruction of the Apocalyptic Babylon, or (as Mr. K. and I both agree) Rome, is to be by direct judgment from Heaven:—a judgment like that of Sodom and Gomorrah, the smoke of which is to go up for ever and ever. This being so, it is equally evident that her destruction and desolation by the human agency specified in Apoc. 17:16, must have been only temporary; whether that of the Beast’s ten horns alone, as the επι might rather seem to imply, or that too of the Beast or Beast’s last ruling head, so as the επι would imply, as an ally and co-operator. Mr. K. himself virtually admits this.1 Now, then, let us, agreeably with Mr. K.’s judgment, suppose the και to be the reading adopted; in other words, that the Beast, or its last ruling head, that is, as we are also agreed, the great Antichrist, (whether the Roman Pope who long has been, or a personal Antichrist yet to come,) is to be an assisting party in the desolation of Rome, predicted in Apoc. 17:16. Then it is necessary that, in order to have become the flourishing city which is described as the object of God’s final judgment in Apoc. 18, Rome must have been in a marvellous manner resuscitated, and restored to her ancient power and glory, in the interval between the said Antichrist’s rise, with his supposed still future ten subject kings, and the final judgment from God. But, on Mr. K.’s and the Futurists’ system, this interval can be only about 3½ years. And really the idea of such a resuscitation in such an interval of time seems to me nothing less than an immense absurdity. On the other hand, even though receiving the reading και, let me beg my readers to understand that it is by no means, so as Mr. K. and the Futurists argue, inconsistent with that historical explanation which refers back the judgment of 17:16, to the times of the Gothic and Vandal desolations in the 5th and 6th centuries. In so far as the old heathen religion and political rule of ancient Imperial Rome were concerned, the Papal Antichrist, who in the 5th and 6th centuries gradually rose up as the city’s residentiary governor, did take his part in its desolation.1 After which, in the long 1260 years, assigned in Daniel and the Apocalypse, on the historic year-day system, Rome had abundant time for resuscitation: and, in fact, became again mother and mistress of the kingdoms and Churches of the Romano-Gothic world in its proud character of the seat of GOD’S VICE-GERENT ON EARTH; Antichrist being, as Hippolytus so strikingly anticipated, its great restorer.2 To which character it still raises its pretensions, even at this present time; albeit after the primary though imperfect ending of the 1260 years in 1790, and consequent passing away of much of its actual power: and doubtless will continue so to do, not without the ten horns’ continued recognition of it in these its spiritual pretensions,3 even to the consummation. So with the reading και. With the reading επι the prophecy was of course yet more exactly suited to the history.

In fine, with either reading the historic explanation is justified, consistently with the prefiguration in Apoc. 18: with neither reading does the Futurists’ seem possible.

II. My asserted errors in certain renderings of the Greek, and historical applications of the prophecy.

1. Says Mr. Kelly, “Mr. E. contends for the strangest possible version of εἰς, as = after, or at the expiration of, the aggregated period of the hour, day, month, and year in Apoc. 9:15.” So p. 150.—When Mr. K. has shown that the same Greek preposition placed before a time, times, and half a time in Dan. 12, as well as before the 1335 days in a verse immediately following, does not mean before, or at the expiration of, those aggregated periods,3 he will be in a better position for so expressing himself about my rendering of the clause in Apoc. 9:15. But, though he had these parallel passages before his eyes in my Commentary, as very mainly my justification in the rendering of Apoc. 9:15, Mr. K. makes no allusion to them. Nor does he make the slightest allusion to the extraordinary historical fact of the period hence resulting, when measured from the well-marked epoch of the Turks being loosed from Bagdad on the Euphrates, to make invasion of the Greek Empire, ending precisely at that fortieth day of the siege of Constantinople by Mahomet, on which Gibbon says that all hope of saving either city or empire was abandoned. This is just one specimen, out of innumerable others, of the unfairness with which objectors have been too apt to dwell on the supposed objectionable point in a question of large evidence; suppressing all notice of the evidence in favour, however remarkable. A plan of proceeding so directly contrary to that of the summing up of evidence by an English Judge, which ought in every such case to be the model remembered and followed by Christian critics.
2. “I utterly reject Mr. E.’s statement that ‘at one and the same time’ is the true rendering of the Greek phrase in Apoc. 17, of μιαν ὡραν μετα του θηριοου.” It should be, he says, for the same time; marking duration, not epoch or occasion.—So Mr. K., p. 300. But, as in the preceding case, so here let me say, when Mr. K. has succeeded in setting aside the parallels of John 4:52, Acts 10:3, and Rev. 3:3, adduced by me in loc., where the accusative of time is unquestionably in the sense of epoch at which, it will be time enough to reply to him further on this point.

3. “In Apoc. 10 it is a monstrous proposition that the seven thunders, which spoke in St. John’s ear, and which he was forbidden to write, should be explained as the voice of the Papal Antichrist from Rome’s seven hills, not as the voice of Christ.” So Mr. K., p. 171. Yet does he expressly shrink from denying that the whole vision of the rainbow-vested Angel in Apoc. 10 has an historic reference to the great Protestant Reformation;1 and moreover once, and again, and again admits that at each point of time prefigured St. John is to be regarded on the Apocalyptic scene as a representative man.2 In which character he would necessarily be the chief Apostle or Prophet of the Reformation, in all that prefiguration of Apoc. 10. Which admitted by way of premise, every indication both in the prophecy and in the history (the fittings are not less than ten or twelve) fixes the meaning of the seven thunders to be such as I have stated. Explained as Mr. K. would explain them, all would be vague and valueless that is said about them.
4. “When they shall have perfected their testimony, &c.”—Admitted that the proof in justification of this rendering of ὁταν τελεσωσι την μαρτυριαν αυτων, in Apoc. 11:7, was in my former editions unsatisfactory, and, as Mr. K. says p. 197, fairly liable to objection, it will not I trust be found so any longer in the present edition. If I mistake not, the rendering is established on a firm basis. See my Vol. ii. pp. 411–420.

5. On Apoc. 11:19, Mr. K. speaks of it as “extraordinary that I should say that ναος, or temple, is sometimes used more largely of the whole, including the altar-court; stranger still that I should cite Apoc. 11:1, 2 in proof, seeing that the altar and the outer court are so expressly distinguished there,” i. e. from ναος. Much more extraordinary surely is it that Mr. K. in so writing should have identified the temple’s altar-court with the Gentile outer-court; and overlooked the fact that in Apoc. 11:1, 2, referred to by me, all that is within the ναος is expressly spoken of as measured including the altar and altar-court, while the Gentile court alone is excluded as without the ναος.

6. At p. 287, objecting against my statement in reference to Apoc. 16:13, that three frogs were the old arms of France, Mr. K. says that “natural history comes in as an awkward witness against my statement; the fact being that the arms of France were, according to the Encyclop. Metropolitana, three toads, not three frogs.” Now the extract from the Encyclop. Metropolitana, which Mr. K. here cites from my book to justify his objurgation, is only one out of six explanatory and justificatory authorities. In the other four the device is spoken of as a frog, or three frogs. So Typotius, Upton, Schott, Garencières. Says the last, in explanation of the line, “Roi, rétirant à la rane et à l’aigle,” “By the eagle he means the Emperor, by the frog the King of France:—for, before he took the flower de luce, the French bore three frogs.” Elsewhere, I find, (agreeably with the double generic value of the Latin rana,) it is described indifferently as a frog, or toad.1 It is only Court de Gebelin and the Encyclop. Metropol. that speak distinctively of the device as a toad or crapaud.

7. At p. 246, Mr. K. insists on the right translation of ενεστηκεν in 2 Thess. 2:2 being “is present;” not as in our English authorized version, and as in the Horæ, “is at hand.” At p. 92 of my Vol. iii., in this Edition, my readers will find the point more fully argued out than before; and the latter rendering of the word, I may unhesitatingly I say, on the grounds of Greek criticism fully justified. Let me only here ask Mr. K. the question how he supposes the Thessalonian Christians could have believed that the day of the Lord was then actually present, when putting together the two facts, 1st, that they knew from St. Paul’s former Epistle that the primary event of the day of the Lord would be the gathering of Christ’s saints, both the dead and the living, to meet Christ in the air; 2ndly, that neither themselves nor even St. Paul had thus far been made the subjects of that promised blessed rapture? Will Mr. K. be agitated by the idea of the day of Christ having begun, so long as he is conscious that neither on himself, nor any of his most honoured Christian friends, has the change taken place?

§ 3. THE PATRISTIC VIEWS OF PROPHECY MAINLY NON-FUTURIST

In all questions as to the intent of Scripture prophecies, the truth must of course be inferred from examination primarily of those prophecies themselves; and then in comparison, of the historical events to which reference may have been made, as an actual fulfilment of the prophecies. Hence, in my preceding controversial critiques on the views of the various prophetic schools that differ fundamentally from me in the interpretation of the Apocalypse, I have confined my arguments within those limits; and avoided as much as possible all reference to the early Fathers. The opinions, however, which they held on these subjects cannot but be most interesting to us: and I have therefore from time to time in the earlier parts of my work made passing allusion to them;1 and also formally set them forth in the two first Sections of my History of Apocalyptic Interpretation.2 But it strikes me that it may be well, ere concluding my work, to add yet a few further remarks about them, in sequel to the two last critiques. In discussing the Futurist schemes it may have been remarked that the Futurists make appeal to the early Fathers not infrequently, as if of one mind with them in the view of Scripture prophecy; more especially on the prophecies concerning Antichrist. So Drs. Maitland and Todd: so the Oxford Tractator: so last, but not least, Mr. C. Maitland: who, indeed, claims credence for his scheme as “apostolic,” because of its being “primitive;” and affirms its primitiveness, as being that of all the early Fathers. Now in my recently concluded History of Apocalyptic Interpretation I have shown in a general way, that the early Fathers, and the modern Futurist School expositors, are by no means so much in accord as the latter would represent to us. But on the Fathers’ view of Antichrist’s religious character I have scarcely entered.1 I purpose therefore now to supply that omission: and, after premising just summarily, and by the way of reminiscence, whatever other main points in the patristic views have been already set forth by me in contrast with futurist views, then, and in regard of the great subject of Antichrist’s religion, to state the early Fathers’ very different notions from those of the school in question, fully and at large.

I. As to the general points of difference in prophetic views between the one and the other, already stated by me, let me note six more especially.

1. That the early Fathers expected Antichrist’s manifestation to follow speedily after the breaking up of Rome’s empire;—such a breaking up as Jerome thought he saw beginning through the agency of invading Goths: and had no notion whatsoever of ages intervening between that event and Antichrist’s manifestation, during which the symbolic Beast of Daniel and the Apocalypse was to lie dormant; so as the Oxford Tractator would have us believe.

2. That, in referring this event and consequent change to Daniel’s symbolic statue, as prefiguring it, they distinctly expected that there would be an answering therein to the passing of the iron legs of the 4th or Roman empire into its second and last form of the ten-toed feet, part iron, part clay: and had no notion whatsoever, either of those iron and iron-clay legs and feet of the statue not representing the Roman empire in its two successive forms, so as some Futurists like Drs. Maitland and Todd would have it, and that there was to be supposed a great break in the statue at the knee-joint between the brazen thighs and iron legs, in token of many unrepresented centuries, from after the great expected disruption of the Roman empire: nor again, in accordance with Bellarmine and Mr. Barker’s theory, that the iron legs, distinctively, above the ankle, would then still continue to represent it, just as before the disruption; or, as Mr. C. Maitland, the integral part alone of the iron-clay feet, between the ankle and the toes.

3. That, while expecting Antichrist’s duration in power, after his manifestation, to be 1260 days, literally, they also preserved among them the idea of the year-day principle being one legitimately referable to prophetic periods: (so Cyprian, Theodoret, Tichonius:)1 so that the principle might be considered applicable, not without patristic sanction, to the great prophetic periods of Antichrist, should the course of historic events afterwards furnish occasion for it.

4. That, in explaining the Apocalyptic prophecy, such an idea as that of the Lord’s day in which St. John was in the Spirit meaning the great future day of judgment, into which he was then rapt by the Spirit, together with the seven Churches of Asia addrest by him, seems never to have entered into their imagination; nor that of the Apocalyptic prophecy overleaping at once, and altogether, the time of the Christian Church preceding them, and time then present:—that, on the contrary, they expressly explained its earlier figurations as mainly figuring events of the time from St. John to themselves, and of their own times then current;2 the 1st Seal depicting the progress of the gospel, as it had been progressing from its first promulgation; the 5th Seal the persecutions under which Christians had previously suffered, and were even then suffering; and so on.

5. That a Christian sense was generally assigned by the primitive Fathers of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centuries, not only to the other Judaic symbols of the Apocalypse, but to its scaled Israel:3—and,

6thly, as to Antichrist’s political origin, and seat of empire, that though in some way Jewish and at Jerusalem, it would yet be some way Roman, and at Rome, also.4

II. Next, as to the patristic views of ANTICHRIST’S RELIGIOUS CHARACTER:—and on this, 1st, as regards the religious apostasy that was to introduce him; 2ndly, as regards his religion afterwards.

1st, then, the preparatory apostasy.—I say preparatory apostasy; for the Fathers considered the apostasy prophesied of by Paul, not without good reason, to be the προδρομος or preparative of Antichrist, as well as that which Antichrist on his manifestation would, as it were, sum up in himself, as its professor, inculcator, and head.2 And as to its nature, while preparing for him, instead of anticipating with Dr. Maitland that it would be “a falling away from all profession of Christianity, into open blasphemous and persecuting infidelity,”3 what find we? I find Irenæus, after heading his general sketch of heretics, (heretics that were to be regarded as precursors of Antichrist,) with note of their wearing the garb of Antichrist’s Apocalyptic associate, the wolf in sheep’s clothing, prominently setting forth their making a Christian profession,4 and their often inculcating their tenets under falsified words of Scripture; or, where Scripture failed, asserting a peculiar unwritten tradition committed to them as their authority.5 I find Clement of Alexandria, about the end of the 2nd century, objecting to Tatian and other heretics of the time, who on principles of asceticism, and as a Christian virtue, inculcated a rule of continency and celibacy, that in thus “forbidding to marry,” contrary to the liberty allowed in Holy Scripture, (so entirely does his view of that prophetic clause agree with the common Protestant interpretation of it,) they answered to the apostates of the last days described by St. Paul, and showed themselves to be of the spirit of Antichrist.1 I find Cyprian speaking of separatists that protest the Christian name, and appeared ministers of righteousness, as on Antichrist’s side, though under the name of Christ.2 I find Cyril insisting on the less palpable heresy of υἱοπατρια, or Sabellianism,3 as well as on the more palpable one of Arianism,4 and on errors secretly admitted in the Christian Church at the time, as well as those that were open and avowed,—moreover, on the then too general departure from the love of truth to the love of oratory and doctrines plausible and pleasing, and from the practice of good works to the mere semblance of goodness,—as altogether of the nature of the great predicted apostasy. “This is the apostasy,” he wrote; “and the enemy (Antichrist) is to be expected.”5—I find both Jerome and Augustine speaking of false teachers, and bad livers, as of Antichrist’s spirit, while professing to be servants of Christ:1 and Chrysostom (or a near contemporary who wrote under his name2) speaking of false teachers, such as he then discerned in the Church, (teachers with hidden deceit in their doctrine,) as forerunners of Antichrist: adding moreover these remarkable warning words; “When thou seest the Holy Scriptures regarded as an abomination by men that outwardly profess to be Christians, and them that teach God’s word hated,—when the people rush to hear fable-mongers, and genealogies, and teaching of dæmons, then bethink thee of the saying, In the last days there shall be an apostasy from the faith.’ ”3—In addition to all which I may remind the reader also even of Pope Gregory’s intimation, two centuries later, that in the ambitious pride and rapacity of the established Christian Clergy of his day there were discernible signs of that apostasy which was to be the immediate forerunner of Antichrist.

2. As to Antichrist’s own religion, after his manifestation,—besides the general fact of his adopting and heading the previously existing apostasy to which I before alluded, I find the following ideas thrown out by the Fathers:—that he would not at first unfold the true diabolical iniquity of his character, but for a while keep up a show of temperance and humility;6 coming as a lamb, though within a wolf; yea, with semblance of an angel of light; being, said Hilary, in profession a Christian;1 said Hippolytus, in everything affecting a likeness to our Lord Jesus Christ:—and would be professedly an enemy, not friend, (so as the Oxford Tractator would have it,4) to Paganism and avowed Pagan idolatry. And then, some thought that, attaching himself rather to Judaism, he would appear as a zealous vindicator of the Jewish law; would thus conciliate the Jews; and thereupon, showing himself as THE CHRIST, (a title the very assumption of which implied a recognition of the Old Testament as inspired Scripture,) would in that character sit in the reconstructed Jewish temple, and exact the divine worship due to the Christ:—or else (as Jerome, Chrysostom, and others preferred to interpret the prophecies) that his sitting and arrogating divine worship would be in the Christian Church:6 wherein he would claim the προεδρεια, or highest rank; and wherein he would show his Christ-superseding authority, by asserting his own voice to be the Word and the Truth,8 and by changing, too, and adding to the number of, the sacraments:1—that then at length2 (on either hypothesis of the temple of his enthronization) he would begin to display his real spirit of cruelty, as well as blasphemy; and commence that terrible persecution of the 1260 days against Christ’s two witnesses and the saints, which prophecy had so fearfully depicted, and which would be marked with the very energy of Satan.

Such, I believe, is a tolerably correct abstract of the general patristic expectations in regard of the religion of Antichrist:—expectations how different from the views of those of the Futurist school who, with Dr. Maitland, would represent it as the openly-avowed and legalized atheism and rejection of Christianity, and the as openly-avowed and legalized licentiousness of the French Revolution. Further,—after one important and evidently necessary correction,—how consistent both with Scripture prophecy as predicting, and with the Roman Papacy as fulfilling.

The point on which I conceive correction necessary has reference to the by some expected connexion of Antichrist with Judaism and the Jews;—his origin out of, and re-establishment of, it and them. And, considering its importance, it may perhaps be permitted me to deviate a few moments from my immediate controversy with the Futurists, (if indeed it be a deviation,) in order to its explanation.—It is justly observed by the Oxford Tractator, that there seems little in Scripture prophecy to sanction such an idea.3 In truth the whole tendency of the prophecies concerning Antichrist is to show that he was to be an enemy both springing out of, and reigning within, the pale of the professing Christian Church. For how could he be an apostate, and head of the apostasy, and antitype of the apostle Judas, (not to say how the Latin man also, and horn out of the old Roman Empire,)1 if by nation and profession a Jew? Or again, as before observed, how with a false prophet for his abettor that had horns like a lamb’s, unless professedly of Jesus Christ’s religion; the Messiah of Jewish expectation being the lion-like Messiah, and the lamb-like Messiah an abomination to them?—It is difficult fully to account for the patristic error on this matter. Did we judge simply from the statements of Irenæus and Hippolytus, it might seem to have originated, in part at least, from a singular misunderstanding of Christ’s prophecy respecting the abomination of desolation standing in the Holy Place at Jerusalem, (a prophecy which doubtless had reference to the time of the consummated iniquity of the Christ-rejecting Jerusalem, or to the Roman besieging army, with its idolatrous standards gathering into the sacred precinets of the Jewish city,2) as if intended of Antichrist’s later and very different abomination.3 Hence, it might be, their construction of the temple in which St. Paul said that Antichrist would exalt himself, as the Jewish temple: hence perhaps their supposition of his being himself a Jew; and that the exclusion of Dan, as one accursed, from the twelve tribes out of which God’s true servants were sealed in the Apocalypse, marked his tribe.—But the reasons for a different view of these prophecies were too strong and obvious to allow of a general concurrence in the misunderstanding of them. By Chrysostom, Jerome, Augustine, and others of the Fathers, the prophecy respecting the abomination of desolation was explained to have been then already fulfilled by the Roman armies that destroyed Jerusalem; and the temple in St. Paul’s prophecy construed, as a little while since said, of the Christian Church.1 Moreover a Christian explanation was given by others to the Apocalyptic symbol of the twelve tribes of Israel.2 So that on the whole there appears to have been nothing in these prophecies sufficiently Judaic, according even to patristic views, to account for the first origination of this idea of Antichrist being a Jew.

Which being so, and conjecture permissible in the want of a satisfactory explanation on historic testimony, I would venture to suggest one thing, upon conjecture, as a possible, probable, and I think I may say, adequate originating cause of the error. It is well known with how much earnestness and solemnity St. Paul warned the early Church of the Judaic heresies that were even then stealing into it;—the Judaist’s will-worship of asceticism and abstinence from meats and marriage, their observance of days, undue and erroneous views of the benefit of mere outward circumcision, attachment to the Levitical ritual, and worshipping of angels with voluntary humility;—the latter, I presume, under profession of unworthiness to make direct use of the mediatorship of Christ.3 Now one can hardly suppose but that St. Paul in all this spoke with reference to more than the dangers of the time then present: and denounced therein certain primary elements (Judaic elements) of the great apostasy of prophecy, and leaven of that deceivableness of unrighteousness which was first to prepare for, and then to constitute the religion of, Antichrist. If so, and this be the right account of the origin of the patristic notion respecting Antichrist’s Judaism, then there is a residuum of important truth hidden in it. And adopting the notion, so expounded, we shall find it to supply almost all that was wanting of correspondence between the patristic anticipations concerning the apostasy and Antichrist, on the one hand, and on the other the actual religious history and character of the Roman Papacy, as history afterwards evolved it.

For we know,—and indeed have traced in history,1 how, after the breaking up of the little Hebræo-Christian Church at Pella and elsewhere, on occasion of the great Jewish wars of Hadrian, these Judaizing errors past over from the platform of the Hebrew-Christian to that of the Gentile-Christian Church; and there increased continually, though under a changed and professedly more Christian form:2—including the veneration of that austerity, asceticism of life, and celibacy that Clement objected to Tatian; the corruption of the simplicity of the Christian ministry and service into resemblance to the Levitical priesthood and Levitical ritual; the unscriptural and exaggerated estimate of the sacramental grace and virtue attending outward baptism, just as before the Jews over-estimated that of outward circumcision; the perversion of Scripture, and substitution of the authority of an unwritten tradition in the priest’s keeping; and the looking into things unseen, and at length worshipping departed saints as mediators, to the supersession of Christ.—We know how, with all this, there was also more and more a departure on the part of the people from the love of gospel truth to the love of exciting pulpit oratory, and then of fables and legends about saints; as also from real holiness of life to a fictitious and mere ceremonial righteousness, somewhat like what Cyril and Chrysostom deprecated; and how a departure moreover, (according to Chrysostom’s forewarning,) on the part of priests and teachers, from love to neglect and dislike of the written word; together with a spirit of worldliness, lucre-loving, and ambition.3—We know once more that then, and thereby, a preparation having been made for him,—viz. by the establishment of this irreligious system of religion, this unchristian kind of Christianity, with all profession of righteousness, and much of the deceivableness of unrighteousness,—the Pope of Rome, at first prudent, respectable in morals, and professedly humble, yet crafty and politic, (e. g. the first Gregory,) adopting this whole system of apostasy as its head and patron, and so gathering round him as subjects the great body of the apostates of Christendom, did, conjointly with them, not only establish the Apostasy in the new Romano-Gothic kingdoms, which constituted the body of the Apocalyptic Beast, but as it were authoritatively consecrate it;1 proclaiming it, with its ceremonies of an almost Judaic ritual, to be the only orthodox Christianity, and Rome, (the Apocalyptic seven-hilled Babylon,) now vacated of its emperors and become the Papal capital, to be the Jerusalem of Christianity:2—at the same time that he established himself in its temples and churches, as not merely antitype to the High Priest of the Jews, but Christ’s appointed representative and Vicar for the rule of the Church on earth; and in this character claimed to himself, just what Chrysostom had anticipated of the Man of Sin,3 yea and received too, the fealty due to that King of kings, and worship due to Christ as God.


CHAPTER III

EXAMINATION AND REFUTATION OF DR. ARNOLD’S PROPHETIC INTERPRETATIVE PRINCIPLE

IN the two foregoing Chapters I have, I believe, considered all the main counter-systems of Apocalyptic Interpretation that have been actually drawn out, and that have attached to them any considerable number of adherents. It only remains to add a word or two on a fifth and different view from any of these, as well as from that given by me in the Horæ: a view not drawn up into detailed exposition, and which cannot consequently be said to advance pretensions to being regarded as an Apocalyptic system; but which, as directly affecting the most prominent point perhaps of all in the figurations of our prophecy, I mean the Apocalyptic Beast and Babylon, and as having had for its advocates names of no inconsiderable authority,—among others that of Tholuck in Germany,4 and in England, that of the late admirable though surely sometimes rash and speculative Dr. Arnold,1—it might seem unwise and wrong to pass over altogether without notice.

The prophetic interpretative principle asserted by these writers, and the declared grounds of it, are, as expounded by Dr. Arnold, to the effect following:—that there attaches uniformly to Prophecy a lower historical sense, and a higher spiritual sense, the latter only being its full and adequate accomplishment;2 insomuch that “it is a very misleading notion to regard Prophecy as an anticipation of History:”3 the proof of this arising out of the fact of many prophecies of promise, spoken in the first instance apparently of the national Israel, or of some one of its kings or prophets, e. g. David, being in the New Testament appropriated to Christ and his believing people, as their truest and chief owners; also of certain prophecies of judgment, for example those on Amalek, Edom, Moab, and the Chaldean Babylon, appearing from history to have been but inadequately fulfilled in the fortunes of those nations:5 and the reason being that whereas history deals with particular nations and persons, prophecy deals with the idea itself and principle of good and evil; which in either case is represented but imperfectly in any individual man or nation.6 Hence that, although a nation or individual man may be imperfectly the subject of prophetic promise or denunciation, as being imperfectly the representative of the idea, the only adequate fulfilment of prophetic promise is in Christ, who was the perfect personification of all good: (albeit embracing his true people, as being in Him, for his worthiness-sake, not their own:) while the only full and adequate accomplishment of the threatened judgments of prophecy is to be in the final destruction of the world, as opposed to the Church: for “the utter extremity of suffering, which belongs to God’s enemy, must be mitigated for those earthly evil-doers, whom God till the last great day has not yet wholly ceased to regard as his creatures.”1—This interpretative principle embraces of course the Apocalypse, as well as other prophecy. And, with respect to Papal Rome, since its character is “not one of such unmixt and intense evil,” Dr. A. considers, “as to answer to the features of the mystic Babylon of the Revelation,”2 he concludes that, as the ancient Chaldean Babylon was only partially the subject of the anti-Babylonish Old Testament denunciations of prophecy in the first instance, so Rome (Papal Rome) is only partially the subject of the Apocalyptic in the second instance; “as other places may be, and I believe are,” adds Dr. Arnold, “in the third instance:” “so that the prophecies will, as I believe, go on continually with the typical and imperfect fulfilment till the time of the end; when they will be fulfilled finally and completely in the destruction of the true prophetical Babylon, the world as opposed to the Church.”

It is to be observed that this prophetic view is put forward, not as one true only in certain cases, and of which the application, or non-application, is to be decided in each instance by the particular circumstances of the case; but as the “uniform”4 and only true general interpretative principle or “great law of prophecy:”5 insomuch that (notwithstanding certain admissions made here and there which might seem somewhat inconsistent with the statement6) Dr. Arnold declares “the tracing out of an historical fulfilment of the language of prophecy, with regard to various nations, to be a thing impossible;”7 and argues from it, (as well as from the supposed reason of it,) even as from an undoubted and established principle, to prophecies such as that concerning the Apocalyptic Babylon, of the primary and national fulfilment of which the time is even yet future.—This premised, let us proceed to test the soundness of his general prophetic law, and of its application; its application, 1st, to prophecies of promise; 2ndly, to prophecies of judgment: the one asserted reason for it being of course a prominent point for consideration; and then the bearing of the whole on the particular case with which we are ourselves more immediately concerned, of the Apocalyptic Babylon.

And surely, with reference to his prophetic law, or principle, it must already have occurred to the more considerate of my readers, that the data from which so important and large an induction has been drawn are quite inadequate. In order to its justification, especially considering how startling its nature, and how contrary to many literal and apparently express declarations of Scripture, it were clearly requisite that the mass of Scripture prophecy, or at least of its national and personal predictions, should have been brought under review; and the supposed law of interpretation shown to apply to them all, or nearly all: also, in the cases of exception, the cause of exception in such case should be proved such as not to affect the law. Instead of which, we have scarce any prophecies of a more general character set forth, but almost alone such as are directly prophecies of promise, or of judgment: and of the former those only concerning Israel, David, or some other of the prophets, of the latter those respecting Amalek, Moab, Edom, Egypt, the Chaldean Babylon, and Jerusalem; examples of which I shall have to speak presently, as exhibiting on the whole much more, I think, of exception to Dr. Arnold’s law than of exemplification. As to more general prophecies about things, persons, or nations, let but the reader note down such as occur in most of the Books of Scripture,—for example those in Genesis or in Daniel,1—and he will, I think, need nothing more to convince him that in the majority of examples the literal historical fulfilment, instead of being inadequate and partial, is the one and only fulfilment meant by the divine inditing Spirit; and that that which disregards them can by no right be called a “law of prophecy,” fit to be applied to the solution of predictions as yet confessedly and altogether unfulfilled.

But let us turn to those more direct prophecies of promise, or of judgment, to which Dr. A.’s theory chiefly refers.

And no doubt, as regards the former, in not a few instances where Israel, or David, or some Old Testament saint is the subject of prophetic promise, (whether promise simple and unmixt, or promise associated with the expression of the saints’ present suffering or spiritual breathings,) in many such cases there is a higher as well as lower sense; and with reference to some that would more adequately answer to the character of good than the nation Israel, or the individual David: yet not so, surely, as altogether to fall in with and exemplify his prophetic theory; but rather with such peculiarities in his best examples, and exceptions otherwise so obvious, as to show that even here his supposed universal solvent fails, and that other principles of explanation are needed also. Take the case of prophecies that pass onward in their meaning from a prophet or saint like David to Christ. Very true, and very beautiful, is much that Dr. Arnold has written on this head.1 But if, (to exemplify from the 22nd Psalm,) “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me,” might be both primarily said in one of his distresses by David, and secondarily and more perfectly by him, the Son of David,2 who was a more perfect representative of human suffering,—if too in the same Psalm the hopeful cry, “I will declare thy name unto my brethren, for thou hast not despised the affliction of the afflicted, &c.,” might be the language of David, in sure prophetic anticipation of his deliverance, as well as that of Christ afterwards,—yet what of the associated exclamations under suffering, “They pierced my hands and my feet, I may tell all my bones; they parted my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture;” or the triumphant anticipation of “all the ends of the world turning to the Lord,” as the result of the deliverance? It is of course admitted by Dr. A. that this, and yet more in the Psalm, so exclusively applies to Christ, that the. Psalmist was “in his words by the power of God’s Spirit enabled to be, so to speak, as Christ himself:”1—that is, that there exist certain prophecies of the class now spoken of wherein the prophet is not the imperfect type of the perfect antitype, but his impersonation; prophecies to which the spiritual and higher meaning alone attaches, and which consequently are not embraced by his law. This exceptional class is one very important to observe: not merely from its having a somewhat wide range, and including prophecies in Isaiah and Zechariah,2 as well as in David’s Psalms; but yet more from its setting aside even here that essential point in Dr. Arnold’s prophetic theory, that it is because of his being but imperfectly the representative of the idea of good, with which prophetic promise deals, that the promise or prediction attaches but imperfectly to the historic type or person. The prophet, we see, is here no historic type: the promise, or prediction, no extension of what primarily and partially belonged to him; but applicable in kind, solely and only, to one greater: and the needlessness of Dr. A.’s singular suggestion as to the ex abundanti character of the most specific of the prophetic details in this Psalm made, I think, very evident.

Pass we now to the cases where Israel is the subject of Scripture promise. And here, as before said, I of course admit that there is often a higher sense in the promised blessing than ever attached to the ancient historic Israel. But wherefore? In great part no doubt, as says Dr. Arnold, to the fact of the ancient Israel having but very imperfectly answered to the idea which it should have represented, viz. of the people of God; and the fulness of the highest promise having reference to the spiritual blessings of those who (as accepted to the Beloved) more truly represented that idea, viz. God’s spiritual and true Israel. This distinction indeed, as all know, is strongly laid down in Scripture. So, in regard of the ancient Jews, by St. Paul. So, in regard of the Christian Church, (which under the New Testament dispensation very much took the place of the ancient Jewish people,) in the Apocalypse.1—Nor let it he forgotten that there seems to have been announced from the very first this double Abrahamic covenant, of higher and of lower blessing, the spiritual and the temporal, due to Abraham’s spiritual and natural seed respectively; which centering both alike in his grandson Jacob, surnamed Israel, were through him transmitted, each and either, to the two lines of Israelites severally interested in them.2 In the further prophetical development of which there is strong intimation, if I mistake not, of the ultimate and fullest fulfilment of both the one and the other chronologically coinciding together; as they also chronologically coincided in the date of their commencement.3 In which case, the full specific national accomplishment being effected of the specific national promises to the national converted and restored Israel, all argument from Israel’s case in favour of Dr. Arnold’s “prophetic law” will be set aside:4 a law which lays down that, however specifically appropriate may be a prophetic promise to any nation or race, the fulfilment is not to be regarded as tied down to that race or nation, but only to the idea which it very imperfectly typified. More especially, when applied to scriptural prophecies of judgment, it is plain that the supposed law must be left to its own independent evidence in that application to bear it out; above all when applied to the exemption of Papal Rome from all proper and peculiar interest in the symbolization of, and the judgments denounced on, the Apocalyptic Babylon.

Pass we next then, as proposed, to this second class of prophecies, the prophecies of judgment.

And let me here first justify the passing opinion expressed under my former head, to the effect that the very cases selected by Dr. Arnold in proof of his prophetic theory, seem to me rather to disprove it. For, turning to the two most circumstantial of these prophecies, and those consequently which may best serve as tests, the prophecy concerning the Chaldean Babylon’s destruction, and that concerning Jerusalem’s, what find we? That the predicted circumstantials concerning Babylon’s fall were with most remarkable particularity historically and nationally accomplished:—her river dried up from its channel, to give the enemy entrance; her gates of brass opened; the time that of a festival night’s carousal and drunkenness; the manner a surprise; the instruments the Medes and Persians; the period that of Israel’s preparation for returning from captivity; the result, first Babylon’s utter and final overthrow from her imperial supremacy, next that of her becoming a desolation, and heap, and burnt mountain, and the river-waters coming up and stagnating upon her, and wild beasts becoming her only inhabitants.1 All which Dr. Arnold allows; though most strangely he would have us regard it as fulfilment altogether ex abundanti,2 and which might have been dispensed with; the simple fact of Babylon’s fall from supremacy being sufficient to satisfy the requirements of the prophecy. And against it all what has he to except? Only this, that the fulfilment of the latter part of the prediction was delayed for centuries, after other races had mingled among her inhabitants,3 though then at last accomplished: an exception in regard of which let it be remembered that the time of the completeness of Babylon’s desolation was not a thing predicted.—And so too as to Jerusalem’s predicted destruction, how striking the fulfilment! The Roman eagles gathered round her, as to the carcase of prey; the abomination of heathen idolatrous standards planted in her holy precinets outside the city, in meet response to the abomination of sin within; the trench cast about her; the fencing her in on every side; the fearful tribulation of the siege; the overthrow of the glorious temple, one stone not left upon another; the dispersion of the Jews into all nations; and Jerusalem having been subsequently (as Christ said it would be until the return of the Jewish captivity, an event as yet unaccomplished) not a desolation like Babylon, but a place trodden by Gentiles, a Gentile city. Against all which, if we ask again what Dr. Arnold has to except,—the answer is simply what Origen more early said:1—viz. that there had appeared few false Christs up to his time, though some had, he admits; (and indeed the indisputable authority of Josephus assures us of the fact;2) that few false prophets had so far risen up in the Church; (whereas the apostles assure us that many had even in their time;3) and that the gospel had not even then been preached in all the world; i. e. taking the word world in its largest sense: a sense by no means requisite; and in regard of which, construed as elsewhere to mean the Roman world, St. Paul is our witness that the prophecy had had its fulfilment even in his time,4 and so before the fall of Jerusalem. In a noble passage, which I take pleasure in subjoining, Dr. A. argues the fact of Christ’s passing from the particular prediction of the judgment on Jerusalem into the prediction of the world’s greater judgment.5 But, instead of this helping Dr. Arnold’s prophetic theory, it needs, I think, but attention to two things to see that it has no bearing whatever upon it. The first is the fact of a twofold question having been put to Christ by the disciples, as he sate with them on Mount Olivet overlooking Jerusalem: viz. 1st, “When shall these things be?” 2ndly, “What shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?” Questions these about events which they supposed to synchronize, but which Christ knew to be separated by a large interval of time: though, for reasons elsewhere enlarged on by me,1 he would not on this point undeceive them. The second is St. Luke’s distinct separation of Christ’s answers to the two questions;2 by his statement of “Jerusalem’s being trodden down by the nations till the times of the Gentiles were fulfilled,” as what would mark the interval between the judgment on Jerusalem, and that on the world at his second coming. Of course, if this be correct, and the two parts of the prophecy be thus distinct, the case has no bearing on Dr. Arnold’s prophetic theory: the essence of which consists in the supposition of the same prediction having a lower historical or national sense, and a higher spiritual one.

It is as being imperfect representatives of certain ideas of evil, says Dr. A., that the nation on whom judgments are denounced, are imperfectly and partially to suffer those judgments. Such is his assigned reason for their partial inclusion in the denunciations. Accordingly, let me observe in passing, he seeks out the particular idea of evil attaching to each of these nations; though not without difficulty, as might be expected. “In the case of Babylon,” he says, “it is easy to perceive the prophetical idea of which the historical Babylon is made the representative.”3 I presume he means that of the opposing and persecuting of the profest people of God. In the cases of Amalek and Edom he deems it to be that of offending one of Christ’s little ones:4 in that of Egypt, to be the idea of “the world in a milder sense; needing God’s grace, but not resisting or opposing it.”5 All which surely is very fanciful.—But I pass from it to something more important. It is because of the nations having so imperfectly represented the idea of evil, to which idea, pure and unmixt, the perfection of the judgments alone attaches, that Dr. Arnold judges an imperfect and mitigated national fulfilment of judgment to be in each case alone admissible: and for the same reason the notion to be inadmissible of any perpetual curse attaching to the locality and soil of the nation’s habitation.6 Let us then consider, what the bearing of this on the past, and what on the future.—And first the past. Man fell under Satan’s strong temptations in Paradise; and, we read, the ground was cursed for his sake. Would not Dr. A.’s theory require the fact of man’s inexperience and strong temptation to be taken into account? But perhaps, notwithstanding, he might say that there was here pure and unmixt evil. Let us then go on. Before the flood, man’s wickedness was great. But was it pure and unmixt evil? Was there at the time no admixture at all of servants of God? nothing of the more amiable and kindly affections in any of the world’s myriads? nothing of any mitigating circumstance? but evil only, and evil pure and unmixt, as in Satan’s own breast? I know not what Dr. A. would have replied. So it was, however, that there followed no imperfect fulfilment of the judgment predicted through Noah. The world, so soon as Noah and his family had been provided for, was overwhelmed with a flood of waters; and the very earth’s crust bears still over it the impress of the diluvial judgment. So yet again in the case of Sodom and the cities of the plain; which, one and all, remain to this day covered by the sulphureous waters of the Dead Sea. Surely these past facts do raise no dubious voice of protest against the reasoning in Dr. Arnold’s theory.—And then as regards the future. Says our expositor; “These several prophecies of judgment are to go on, meeting only a typical and imperfect fulfilment till the time of the end; when they will be fulfilled finally and completely in the destruction of the true prophetical Babylon (and true apostate Jerusalem also),1 the world as opposed to the Church.”2 And will the world then, i. e. this our earth’s inhabitants, be at that time of a character of evil altogether worse than that which any evil people have ever yet exhibited in the world; so as to be no longer imperfectly the representatives of the idea of evil, but its representatives (even as Satan himself might be) purely and perfectly? I know no Scripture warrant for so supposing; but the contrary.3 And if mankind are likely to be then very much what we have already seen them, in respect of their devotedness to evil, and moreover then as now to have a seed of true believers among them, it seems to me that they will still be imperfectly the representatives of the idea of evil; and, by consequence, such as should only imperfectly (according to Dr. A.’s theory) suffer God’s judgment. A conclusion this which, it is evident from these very sermons, Dr. Arnold himself would have repudiated: and yet I know not how he could have escaped it, as a necessary inference from his prophetic theory.

After the observations just made on the general theory, it will not, I think, be deemed necessary that much should be added in refutation of his particular application of it to the case of Papal Rome, the Apocalyptic Babylon. “Grant that Rome is in some sense, and in some degree, the Babylon of Christ’s prophecy, yet who that knows the history of the Roman Church can pretend that its character is of such unmixt or intense evil as to answer to the features of the mystic Babylon of the Revelation?”1 So he concludes, as we saw long since, that Rome’s part in the Apocalyptically-prefigured judgment is to be only a partial, imperfect, and typical one; partial, because of other places as well as Rome, being equally included; and typical, that is, of the final judgment.2 A word then on Papal Rome’s asserted mere partial and typical concern in the judgment: a word too on the reason for it; viz. its freedom from the intense evil which might alone justify the full judgment.

And 1st, let me observe, that, as if purposely to prevent the prophecy being applied to anything but Papal Rome, Rome is not itself exhibited, as if perhaps a symbol of something else: but another symbol exhibited, viz. a Woman sitting on a Beast; and this expressly explained by the Angel to mean Rome only. So that Dr. A. has to deal not with a symbol, but with the Angel’s explanation of a symbol. And if the very thing that a prophetic symbol is explained by an Angel to mean be itself expounded to mean, principally at least, something quite different, then there is really an end to all certainty, I might almost say to all truth, in Scripture. As well might it be said that the seven years of plenty and of famine, which the seven fat and lean kine seen by Pharaoh were declared to signify, was only the symbol’s lowest sense, and that something quite different was chiefly meant by it; that the three baskets and three vine branches, seen by Pharaoh’s butler and baker, meant mainly something altogether different from the explanation assigned to them by Joseph; and the golden head of the symbolic statue, in its highest sense, something quite other than what Daniel explained it to mean, viz. Nebuchadnezzar’s empire of the Euphratean Babylon.

2ndly, and with reference to the ground of Dr. Arnold’s thus excepting Papal Rome from the curse assigned to the Apocalyptic Babylon, viz. that the intense evil attached to that Babylon cannot be deemed to have attached to the Romish Church, the question must be asked, Does Dr. A. refer in this his plea of mitigation to the system as less evil in itself; or to there being many individuals of a different spirit from the system, professedly, included in it? If to the system, I think I may say that I have shown from the recognized and most authoritative exponents of Papal doctrine,—its Papal Bulls, Canon Law, Decrees of Councils,—doctrine not proclaimed in idle theory only, but practically acted out, that the system is one marked, so as no other professedly religious system ever has been, by that which must needs be of all things the most hateful to God; I mean the commixture of the foulest corruption of Christ’s religion, and blasphemy of Christ himself, with the most systematized hypocrisy.—If, on the other hand, it be because of individuals professedly belonging to antichristian Rome who yet partake not of an antichristian spirit, the very voice of the Angel, “Come out of her, my people,” just before the destruction of the Apocalyptic Babylon, shows that up to the very eve of her destruction there would also be in what was meant by the Apocalyptic Babylon, just similarly, some of a different spirit, some of God’s people. So that the characteristic is one to fit the symbol to, not to separate it from, Papal Rome.

No! the existence of some of his own people in a guilty nation may make the Lord spare it for a while for their sake. But at length their very presence and protest, by life at least, if not profession, but all vainly, will be judged by Him to be only an aggravation. And while He will know how to deliver those godly ones from the judgment, yet it will not then any longer prevent the fate of the guilty people. So it was in the case of the old world, when the destroying flood came, as predicted. So in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah. So again in that of Jerusalem. And so too (may we not undoubtedly anticipate) will it be in the case yet future of Papal Rome, the antitype, the only proper antitype, to the Apocalyptic Babylon. For, as the symbol has been so tied to it by God’s infinite wisdom, that no human ingenuity can ever put them asunder, so most assuredly the fate predicted on the same Apocalyptic Babylon shall in Papal Rome have its fulfilment. Nor can I see any reason to alter my exprest conviction, that even when a better state of this earth shall have succeeded to the present, the ruined site of that antichristian city and empire will remain a monument to the future inhabitants of our planet of the most astonishing system of human ingratitude, and perversion of God’s best gift, that the old world ever saw: the smoke of its burning going up for ever; and its volcanic crust resting like an ulcer, agreeably with Isaiah’s awful prophecy, on the face of the new creation.

Since the above was written I have read Dr. Arnold’s very interesting “Life and Correspondence” by Dr. Stanley; and am thankful to learn from it that on the subject last touched on by me, viz. the measure of evil in the Apocalyptic Babylon, or Romish Church, that that great and good man was by no means consistent with himself in at all extenuating it.

With regard to the nature of the apostasy, of which the man of sin predicted by St. Paul was to be the head, he in the strongest terms, as appears from that Biography, again and again declares it to be just that system of priestcraft which was perfected in Popery.2 The difficulties felt by him in the way of his fully carrying out the Papal application of the prophecy, alike as regards the time of the heading of the apostasy, and the measure of its universality when dominant, as if (in the old Protestant view) embracing all but the Waldensian witnesses,1 were founded on entire mistake.2 And whereas, in his Sermons on Prophecy, he had argued that in the Romish Church there “is not such unmixt or intense evil as to answer to the features of the mystic Babylon of the Apocalypse,” yet in his Correspondence we find him declaring that he cannot imagine to himself anything more wicked than the Papal system, at least as exhibited at Rome and in Italy.

I therefore rejoice to appeal on this point from Dr. Arnold to Dr. A. himself; from Arnold under misapprehension to Arnold self-corrected: and to regard him as in reality much more a witness this Book, than against, the great Protestant view advocated in these Lectures, after Bishop Warburton and all the fathers of the English Reformation; to the effect that the Pope of Rome is distinctively the Antichrist of prophecy, and Papal Rome the Apocalyptic Babylon.

Elliott, E. B. (1862). Horæ Apocalypticæ; or, A Commentary on the Apocalypse, Critical and Historical (Fifth Edition, Vol. 4, pp. 564–679). Seeley, Jackson, and Halliday.