&c, "when they shall have finished, or completed their testimony," Daubuz construes most illegitimately, "whilst they shall be accomplishing it :" and so the 3 days of their apparent death as equivalent to the 1260 days, or whole period of their prophesying in sackcloth. Hence there is no special historical explanation offered, so as by Foxe, Brightman, or Jurieu, of the Witnesses' death and resurrection." And the same hour there was a great earthquake, &c :" he interprets to mean the same hour as that of the measuring the temple; in other words that of the Lutheran Reformation. And its solution is sought in the fall of the Greek State and Churches under the Ottoman Turks; begun indeed A.D. 1453, but advancing to completion by the Turks' subjugation of Rhodes and Cyprus, in the years 1522, 1570; as also of Candia much later, A.D. 1669.-The 7th Trumpet, yet future, Daubuz explains as that which would introduce a time when God's true worship would be seen in perfection, the ark of the covenant then appearing; evidently with reference to the time of the Millennium.

In Apoc. xii he interprets the vision of the travailing Woman and Dragon, much as others before him; with reference to the crisis of the Diocletian persecution, and Constantine's immediately following elevation to a Christian throne, and casting down of Paganism from its supremacy in the Roman empire. Only of the Dragon's seven heads he offers a peculiar solution. These were the chief subjugated kingdoms, or rather their capital cities, which then constituted the Roman empire: the metropoles of Italy, of the Carthaginian empire, of the kingdom of Greece, of that of Mithridates, of that of Gaul and Britain, of Egypt, and finally of Thrace; this last Byzantium.-The flood out of the Dragon's mouth he explains to be the Goths; the two eagle's wings helping the Woman, the Roman Christianized Eastern and Western empires.-Then in Apoc. xiii the first Beast is the decemregal Republic of Western Christendom,' under Rome as its head; Rome the earliest head of the Dragon, excised by the Gothic invaders, but revived under the Popes. The Beast's 42 months of supremacy Daubuz reckons from the fall of the Western emperor, A.D. 476, and consequently as to end in 1736. The second Beast is the Beast Ecclesiastical, or False Prophet; its two horns being the Ro

1

Here, p. 556, he notes Whiston's list of the ten kings, as one that had preceded his.

man Popes, and the Constantinopolitan Patriarchs. The Pope himself is the Beast's image, as representing the Beast's power; the name and number 7, in the feminine; i.e. the Roman Church.

In Apoc. xiv Daubuz interprets its primary vision of the 144,000 to mean the Constantinian Church, especially as gathered together at Nice in Council: and explains the 1st flying Angel of Vigilantius' and Augustine's warnings against the increasing superstitions and coming judgments; the 2nd of the cry on the actual destruction of old Rome by the Goths; the 3rd of warnings against the Beast, whose empire was now about to be established, especially that by Gregory I also the harvest as meaning the Reformation; the vintage, of the wars and victories in Queen Anne's time over the Papists.-Then in the Vials there was, he thought, a retrogression again to early times. The plague of Vial 1 was the noisome sore of outbreaking superstition in the image-worship that more and more established itself, from the seventh to the tenth century; Vial 2 the earlier crusades; Vial 3 the later; Vial 4 the wars of Popes and Emperors; Vial 5 the taking of Constantinople by the Latins, and the Popes' removal from Rome to Avignon; Vial 6 the drying up of the power of the Eastern empire, which was, as it were, the Euphratean barrier to Christendom, and thereby a preparation for the kings from the East, or Turks. The three frogs, issuing forth coincidently, are explained of the monks and Papal clergy of the time. Vial 7 on the air, or power of the Devil, depicted the Reformation by Luther.

Finally, in Apoc. xix Daubuz interprets the hallelujahs and thundering heard on the fall of Babylon, i. e. of Papal Rome, to indicate the conversion of the Jews, and incoming of the fulness of the Gentiles explains the first resurrection in Apoc. xx literally, of the saints and martyrs rising from the dead, and millennial reign with Christ; also the New Jerusalem as the habitation and state of the Church after the resurrection of the saints, both during the millennium and afterwards the Church being in the saints' mortal state betrothed to Christ; but after the resurrection his yun, or wife.1

:

1 In speaking of the New Jerusalem Daubuz abstracts, as Mede had before him, Potter's argument on the equal circuit of the Apocalyptic city and Ezekiel's city, described Ezek. xlviii. 16. Of the latter "the north side, we read, was 4500 measures, the south 4500, the east 4500, and the west side 4500;" in all 18000. And these measures appear to be cubits from Ezek. xliii. 13; where the cubit is also

5. In concluding this first Part of my last æra, I must say a few passing words on three briefer Comments, published in the interval between Bossuet's and that of Daubuz; and which, though less elaborate than the four preceding, are too important to be altogether overlooked: I mean those by Cressener, Sir I. Newton, and Whiston.

That by Dr. Cressener, entitled A Demonstration of the First Principles of the Protestant Applications of the Apocalypse," and first published A.D. 1690, well answered to its Title. Its one grand subject is the Apocalyptic Beast of Apoc. xiii and xvii. And in a series of connected propositions he incontrovertibly establishes, against Ribera, Alcasar, Malvenda, Maldonatus, and Bellarmine, that the Apocalyptic Babylon is not Rome Pagan, as it existed under the old Pagan Emperors; nor Rome repaganised, as Ribera would have it to be at the end of the world: but Rome idolatrous and antichristian, as connected with the Beast, or Roman Empire in its last form, and under its last head; which last head is the seventh head revived, after its deadly wound with a sword: with and under which the Beast exists all through the time of the Witnesses; in other words from the date of the breaking up of the old Empire into ten kingdoms, until Christ's second coming to take the kingdom. The 6th, or Imperial head ruling in St. John's time, must, he argues, have fallen at the latest at the time of the Herulian chief Odoacer, and Ostrogothic king Theodoric, reigning in the 5th century: and he concludes (here exception might be taken I conceive against him) that the 7th head was the Herulian and Ostrogothic, which continued but a short time; the 8th being the revived secular imperial, confederated with

66 a cubit and a hand breadth :"

1125 X 5 X 5
2

described as one larger than the common cubit, being which common cubit Potter, after Villapandus, makes to be 23 feet. This admitted, and that the proportion of the large cubit to the common is as 5 to 4, then the length of each side of Ezekiel's city will be 4500 × 5 × 24 feet 94 or 14012 feet. On the other hand, as St. John's 12,000 furlongs are to be considered as giving the cubic dimensions of the Apocalyptic New Jerusalem," its length and breadth and height being equal," therefore the cubic root of 12,000, which is 23 nearly, (for 23×23 × 23—12,167) gives the length of one of the sides which 23 furlongs being 23 × 625-14375 feet, this measure will only by just a little exceed the length of one of the sides of the Apocalyptic City.-The coincidence is remarkable. But there is this objection, that the assumed size of Ezekiel's cubit is by no means certain; it being generally deemed of much smaller dimensions. So Calmet; who computes it at 14 feet instead of 23.

a Roman ecclesiastical head, (somewhat as under the old Emperors :') i. e. the secular Western Emperors combined with the Popes. And he argues for Justinian's æra as that of the commencement of the last head. Altogether Cressener's Book was an important accession to the Protestant cause and Protestant argument, against the Romanists.

Sir I. Newton's brief Apocalyptic Comment, appended to his Treatise on Daniel, was not published, I believe, till the year 1733; six years after his death. It seems, however, to have been written some considerable time before: his thoughts having been seriously directed to these prophecies as early as 1691.2 Brief as is the Comment, being of not much more than seventy pages, it yet contains much valuable matter, and exhibits much careful and original thought; so as might have been expected from such an author. Alike on the Seals and Trumpets he expresses his general agreement with Mede. But the following differences occur. 1. He expounds the first Seal, as well as the three next, not of Christ, but of Roman Emperors: 3 (I presume with reference to the triumphs of Vespasian and Titus, as I shall have to observe again presently; for the difference involves matter of importance :) also to Mede's view of the seventh Seal, as comprehending the seven Trumpets, Sir Isaac adds, "and also the half-hour's previous stillness from the threatened four winds of heaven;" (the same that were let loose afterwards under the four first Trumpets :) which stillness he explains historically of the respite during Theodo

1 The Emperor being Pontifex as well as Imperator.

2 In the biographical Notice of Sir I. Newton in the British Cyclopædia, a letter of his is given, dated Cambridge, Feb. 7, 1690-1, containing the following extract: "I should be glad to have your judgment on some of my mystical fancies. The Son of Man, Dan. vii, I take to be the same with the Word of God upon the white horse in heaven, Apoc. xix: for both are to rule the nations with a rod of iron. But whence are you certain that the Ancient of Days is Christ ?"

He says indeed at p. 278, (of Edit. 1733;) The four horsemen, at the opening of the four first seals, have been well explained by Mr. Mede :" who made, we have seen, the first horseman to be Christ. But this was a mere lapse of the pen. For Sir I. expressly elsewhere gives to the first Seal, as well as to the other three, a Roman solution. So p. 256; "The visions at the opening of these (the first four) seals relate only to the civil affairs of the heathen Roman Empire." At. p. 274 he speaks of "the wars of the Roman Empire, during the reign of the four horsemen that appeared on opening the first four seals:" and at p. 277; "The Dragon's heads are seven successive kings; four of them being the four horsemen, which appeared at the opening of the four first seals."

sius's reign, from 380 A.D. to 395; an important approximation, I conceive, to the true meaning.2-2. Dissatisfied with Mede's particular and somewhat fanciful distribution of the Gothic ravages over the four first Trumpets, he makes the distinction of the four winds the principle of distinction in them; 1st as figuring Alaric's ravages on the Greek provinces East of Rome; 2nd as the Visigoths' and Vandals' on the Western Gallic and Spanish provinces; 3rd as the desolations of Southern Africa by the Vandal wars, from Genseric down to Belisarius; 4th as the Lombard wars in Northern Italy.3-3. In the 5th Trumpet he thinks the double mention of the locusts' quinquemensal period of tormenting, in verses 5 and 10 of Apoc. ix, may be meant to signify two periods of 150 years each, as the times of the Saracens.4-4. The Turks' hour day month and year, he calculates as 391 years, not 396, as Mede; viz. from Alp Arslan's first conquering on the Euphrates, A.D. 1062, to the fall of Constantinople, in 1453.

In Apoc. xii and xiii Sir I. Newton generally agrees with Mede; explaining Apoc. xii of the times of Diocletian and Constantine, Apoc. xiii of those of the Latin Papal empire: the first Beast being this Latin Papal decem-regal empire, its name and number AaTE1905; the second Beast however (a singular explanation!) the Greek Church."— And then he intimates peculiar views on the Little Book, seven Epistles, and seven Vials. The Vials Mede ought, he judges, to have made correspondent with, and explanatory of, the Trumpets. The

1 "These wars (in which Valens perished) were not fully stopped on all sides till the beginning of the reign of Theodosius, A.D. 379, 380; but henceforward the Empire remained quiet from foreign enemies, till his death A.D. 395. So long the four winds were held; and so long there was silence in heaven." He adds; “And the 7th Seal was opened when this silence began." Pp. 294, 295.

2 Till my present abstracting of Sir I. Newton's Treatise, I had not been aware of the very near resemblance of my own views on the holding of the winds, and the halfhour's silence, to Sir I. Newton's. See my Vol. i. pp, 227, 299.

3 Sir I. Newton, p. 296-302.

"About five months," he says, "at Damascus, and five at Bagdad :" altogether 300 years, from A.D. 637-936 inclusive. Ib. 305.

Pp. 282-284.-Sir I. Newton gives us in his connected Treatise on Daniel historical abstracts illustrating the division of the ten kingdoms, and progress of the Papal power in respect of imperial law and historic fact, so careful and valuable, that no Apocalyptic student should be without them. I have referred to them in my Vol. iii. at p. 135 and elsewhere.

6"The second Beast which rose up out of the earth, was the Church of the Greek Empire." P. 283. In the distinction of earth and sea, he makes the earth the Greek Empire. So p. 281.