enemies in two modes as different from each other, as it is almost possible to conceive. The king was to speak marvellous things against the God of gods; to magnify himself above every god; to regard neither the god of his fathers, nor the Desire of women, nor any other god. These expressions, than which nothing can be at once more definite and more comprehensive, plainly intimate, that the king should make an open and undisguised profession of atheism. He should neither regard the true God, nor any false god; neither the god of his fathers (whoever his fathers were), nor Messiah the Desire of women, nor any other god: but he should at once speak marvellous things against the God of gods, and magnify himself above all the vanities of the Gentiles. Now it is utterly impossible to conceive, how such strong, such varied, and yet such determinate, language could ever have been intended to describe the conduct of the Popes. They doubtless, in strict harmony with the prophecy of the man of sin, " did exalt themselves above all laws divine and human, dispense with the most solemn and sacred obligations, and in many respects enjoin what God had forbidden, and forbid what God had commanded." They have moreover, still in harmony with the prophecy, advanced a step further; have blasphemously assumed the divine titles and attributes; and have sat as God in the very temple of God. But, when we consider the manner in which they thus conducted themselves, we shall discover no great resemblance between their behavjour and that of the king predicted by Daniel. Instead of speaking marvellous things against the God of gods ;* they professed to do all to his honour and glory. Instead of disowning his authority; they affected, with much importunity, to act in his name. Instead of throwing off their allegiance to the Desire of women, and totally

*The papal little born is said in our translation to speak great words against the Most High but, as I have already observed, the passage when rendered literally imports, that the little born shall speak great words by the side of the Most High, placing his decrees upon an equality with Scripture, and shewing himself in the temple of God that he is God. The king, on the contrary, is represented by Daniel as speaking marvellous things by against, or above, the God of gods. Thus accurately has Daniel drawn the line of distinction between these two powers, by the use of two entirely different expressions, which our translators have injudiciously confounded together by rendering them as if they were in the original one and the same expression.

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disregarding him; they delighted to style themselves the Vicar of Christ, the husband of the Church, the representative of God upon earth, the immediate delegate of heav

en.

Highly tyrannical as their actions were, and utterly offensive in the eyes of God; still they were not done professedly to affront him to his face. The thin garb of piety with which they were clothed, but ill concealed their native deformity; yet, throughout all the papal persecutions, the saints of God were never put to death as the saints of God, but as his enemies. The preaching of the bloody crusades against the Waldenses was termed, in a perverted sense indeed, the preaching of the cross of Christ: Pope Martin the fifth exhorted the Emperor, and the other European sovereigns, to extirpate heretics, by the wounds of Christ and by the salvation of Christ : and even the diabolical murders of the Inquisition are dignified with the Christian appellation of acts of faith.*

Let us however compare the character of the man of sin with that of the king, and we shall find that their imagined resemblance will rapidly fade away, till there be scarcely any similarity between the two portraits.

The man of sin was to be revealed, when he that letted, by which the general tradition of the Church has always understood the imperial authority in Rome, was taken out of the way: the king was not to make his appearance till after the second or papal persecution of the men of understanding at the time of the Reformation. The man of sin was to cause himself to be worshipped in the temple of God: the king was to venerate a foreign god and along with him certain tutelary deities; no mention is made of his causing himself to be worshipped. The man of sin was to work pretended miracles: no hint is given, that the king should so much as even lay claim to supernatural powers. So again: it is said, that the king should divide the land among the champions of his tutelary deities for a price: no similar action is ascribed to the man of sin, nor was ever performed by the Pope.†

*Auto da Fe.

† Mr. Mede explains this dividing of the land by the king to mean, that his tutelary gods should have different kingdoms assigned to them to preside over. "St. George shall have England; St. Andrew, Scotland; St. Denis, France; St. James, Spain; St.

The king was to be engaged in wars with the kings of the South and the North: here the parallel entirely fails; no similar exploits of the man of sin are predicted. Bp. Newton therefore is obliged to have recourse to the expedient of making the king, not only the Western Pope, but likewise the Eastern Emperor. Still however even this sudden transition is insufficient: for the predicted wars, which he applies to the Saracenic and Turkish invasions of the Empire, are to take place at the time of the end, or at the close of the 1260 years; and that time is not yet come. Surely then, with so great a discrepance of character both chronological and circumstantial, the man of sin can scarcely have been designed to represent the same power as the king. The man of sin however has, I think, been amply shewn by the Bishop himself to be the Pope. The natural conclusion therefore is, that the king cannot have any connection with the Pope, but must prefigure some entirely different power.

Mr. Kett's mode of interpreting this prophecy is liable to the very same objection, as his method of explaining

Mark, Venice; and bear rule as presidents and patrons of their several countries." (Apost. of the latter times Part I. Chap. xvii.) Bp. Newton rejects this explanation; and supposes (very justly, I think,) that the land was to be divided not among the Mabuzzim, but among the champions of the Mabuzzim. Conceiving however, agreeably to his general plan of exposition, that the Mabuzzim mean the tutelary saints and angels of Popery, he of course understands their champions to be the Romish Hierarchy. Hence he conjectures, that the dividing of the land among the champions of the Mabuzzim means, "that they have been honoured, and reverenced, and almost adored, in former ages; that their authority and jurisdiction have extended over the purses and consciences of men; that they have been enriched with noble buildings and large endowments, and have had the choicest of the lands appropriated for church-lands." (Dissert. xvii.) Both Mr. Mede and Bishop Newton seem to have forgotten a very material word in this part of the prophecy. The land was not only to be divided, but it was to be divided for a price. Our translation reads for gain, but in the margin it retains the proper import of the original for a price. Now, in whatever manner the Pope might contrive to divide the land among his adherents, he certainly did not divide it among them for a price: that is to say, baving an equivalent paid for value received. Fie induced the laity to make large grants of their lands to the Church, and thus in some sort may perhaps be said to have divided the land among the champions of Mabuzzim; but I much doubt whether it can be shewn, that he ever received any price from those supposed champions of Mabuzzim for thus dividing the land among them. The word, here used, denotes something given in exchange, the price or value of a thing. Hence it is not enough for the king merely to have divided the land, if that king mean the Pope; it must be shewn that he has divided the land for value received. "And the king said unto Araunah, Nay, but I will surely buy it of thee at a price: neither will I offer burnt offerings unto the Lord my God of that which cost me nothing. So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver." (2 Sam. xxiv. 24.) The word, here used to express a price, is

VOL. I.

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30

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the histories of the two little horns; a needless perplexity and confusion. A chronological prophecy is, from its very nature, absolutely incapable of a double accomplishment. The series of events, which such a prophecy foretells, succeed each other in the same regular order as when subsequently detailed in history: hence it is obviously impossible, that any particular link in the chain should be what Mr. Kett terms a double link. If the abomination of desolation, predicted in the present prophecy, relate to the sacking of Jerusalem by the Romans, (and that it does, cannot be doubted) every thing, that is mentioned after it, must necessarily be posterior to that event; and, as such, can have no primary relation, as Mr. Kett supposes, to the times of the Maccabees and Antiochus Epiphanes. On the same grounds, we may safely venture to assert, that it is utterly incompatible with the nature of a professedly historico-chronological prophecy, that the king, predicted in Daniel's last vision, should be not only the Papacy, but a double type of Antichrist, either Infidel or Mohammedan, likewise.† Each link in a chain of historicul predictions must be referred to one corresponding event, and only one; each of the little horns therefore, and the king who was to exalt himself above every god, must be understood as respectively symbolizing a single power. I have already endeavoured to prove, that the two horns were designed by the spirit of God to typify the Papal and Mohammedan apostacies: I shall now attempt to ascertain what state is predicted under the character of the king.

*Hist. the Interp. Vol. i. p. 363.

+ I cannot find, that Mr. Kett any where attempts to shew, that the king is a double type of Antichrist. He dwells strongly upon his being the Pope; but he advances the idea of his being likewise a double type, rather as a random conjecture, than as a fact which he designed to prove. (See Vol. i. p. 368, 374, and Vol. ii. p. 301, 302.) Accordingly, in the table of contents to his second volume, he speaks of the king as being solely the papal power; of the little born of the be-goat, as being solely the Mohammedan power; and of the little born of the fourth beast, as being solely the Infidel power. I should be sorry to appear captious in these remarks upon Mr. Kett's work, which contains some very valuable and important matter: but I certainly am not conscious, that I have wilfully at least misrepresented the sentiments of its respectable author. An attentive perusal of his treatise, many times repeated, induces me to hope that I have not mistaken his meaning: and, in order that the reader may be able satisfactorily to follow me in my observations, I have carefully given him accurate references to the third edition of that work. The bane of Mr. Kett's interpretation of the prophecies of Daniel is his scheme of primary, secondary, and even ultimate, accomplishments of one and the same chronological prediction

I. The same chronological series of events, which shewed us, I had almost said to demonstration, that this formidable power cannot be either Popery or Mohammedism, will lead us, in these last days, to point out with considerable precision the state intended by it. We have seen, that we are to look for the rise of this impious tyrant after the reformation: and, unless I be much mistaken in the preceding remarks upon the numbers of Daniel and St. John, we are now removed but little more than sixty years from the end of the great period of the 1260 prophetic days: consequently it is but reasonable to conclude, that we are now living, not merely in the latter times, but in the last times. Existing facts amply tend to prove, that this conjecture is but too well founded.* The superstition of the latter days is now supported, rather from motives of policy, than of religion. The distinguishing feature of the present age is certainly not that of giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of tutelary saints; of speaking religious lies in pious hypocrisy; of forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats; of attending to old wives' fables, and bodily mortifications; of worshipping idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and wood; and of voluntary humiliation in the worship of angels. All these mummeries of the latter days are indeed still in existence, and will continue to be so to the end of the 1260 years but they no longer, as formerly, constitute the distinguishing feature of the age. It is an equally evident truth, that the impieties of the last times have for some years been the most prominent characteristic of the present period. Perilous times are come: men are now professedly lovers of their own selves; insatiably covetous of the territories of their neighbours; boasters, proud, blasphemers; disobedient even by system to their par

* I mean the conjecture, that we are living in the last days. This is proved by existing facts, whether the year 606 be the proper date of the 1260 years, or not.

Such, I doubt not, will be the case with the king's holy war at the time of the end. Religion will be the pretext; hence his union with the false prophet: but the real cause will be the crooked policy of an insatiable ambition.

"The command to love one's parents is more the work of education than

of nature." Earruel.