crown only like gold, an authority but the shadow of reality. Gibbon Ix. 1. n. n. 29.

CRUCIFY.-To crucify Christ. To apostatize, or persecute true Christians. Rev. xi. 8. The great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified. Heb. vi. 4, 6. It is impossibleif they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put them to an open shame. Acts, ix.4. Saul, Saul, why persecutest me?

CUP.-). Afflictions and sufferings which drive to madness. Rev. xiv. 10; xvi. 19.

DARKNESS. Extinction of power and subjugation.Rev. xvi. 10. And his kingdom was full of darkness (Gr. became darkened) -The sun had scorched with great heat, but now his kingdom became darkened; the sun was eclipsed.

DAY.-1. A year, in prophetical language. Numbers, xiv. 34. After the number of the days in which ye searched the land, even forty days, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years. Ezek. iv. 6. Thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days: I have appointed thee each day for a year. Dan. viii. 14; xii. 12; Rev. xi. 3, 9, 11; xii. 6. That a day means a year, is proved from the fulfilment of the prophecy of the seventy weeks which are 490 prophetic days, i. e. literal years.

2. The four hundred and ninety days or seventy weeks. a) The four hundred and ninety years from the seventh year of Artaxerxes, B. C. 457, to A. D. 33, the

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crucifixion of our Lord. b) The four hundred and ninety years from the preaching of John the Baptist, the Messenger, A. D. 26, to the spiritual crucifixion of our Lord, the Roman Christ or seed of the Christo-Judaic Church, "in the great city which spritually is called Sodom and Egypt," by the completing of the apostacy of the church in the Roman Empire, A. D. 516, when added to its extreme corruption and wickedness, it filled up the measure of its iniquity by a religious war, "the first," says Gibbon, "which was waged in the name, and by the disciples of the God of Peace," in which 55,000 were slain. A. D. 514. Gibbon, vIII. xlvii. n. n. 79.-Dan. ix. 23-27. At the beginning of thy supplications sentence was passed, and I am come to shew thee; for thou art greatly beloved: therefore understand the matter and consider the vision. Seventy weeks are decided upon thy people and upon thy holy city to finish the apostacy, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up vision and prophet, and to anoint a most Holy. Know therefore, and understand from passing of sentence, that on the restoring of Jerusalem, so long as Messiah is Leader, there shall be seven weeks and threescore and two weeks it shall be restored, street and lane, and in the straitness of times. But after the threescore and two weeks Messiah shall make a covenant that shall not be with it: and the future people of the Leader shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and its destruction shall be overwhelming, and until the destruction war is the sentence of desolations. Yet will he establish the covenant with many for one week: and on the division of the week, he will cause sacrifice and meatoffering to cease, and upon the wing of the temple there shall be abominations of desolation, even until the sen

tenced extirpation be poured upon the desolation. All which exactly came to pass. For after the Jews were reinstated, on the restoration of their city, from being in a state of servitude to the Persian monarchs, paying toll and tribute, in all their former rights, both civil and religious, by Artaxerxes, B. C. 457. Ezra, vii. 24-26, and Messiah thus became again the sole Prince of the host, i.e. head of the Jewish theocracy; he only remained so for the space of seven weeks and sixty-two weeks, i. e. for 483 years. For at the expiration of them, he opened a new covenant or dispensation by the preaching of John the Baptist A. D. 26; and on the division of the week, i. e. in the middle of the last seven years of the 490, A. D. 30, having been inaugurated to his office by the anointing of the Holy Ghost, Acts, x. 38, he virtually put a stop to all sacrifices by causing himself to be proclaimed "the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world," John, i. 29, 36, whom God, the Father, had sealed as a victim for that purpose. John. vi. 27. The last week, or seven years, of the 490, he employed in establishing in conjunction with John the Baptist, his precursor, this new covenant with many of the better sort of Jews; and at the end of them, he was himself offered up as a full, and perfect sacrifice for sin and reconciliation for iniquity, and brought in the promised reign of everlasting righteousness. By being the chief instruments in causing his death, the Jews brought the measure of their transgressions to the full; and the Roman Gentiles, the adopted people of Christ, were sent by him as his armies under Cæsar, (whose government the Jews preferred to that of their only legal prince, whom they denied in the presence of Pontius Pilate,) to destroy those murderers, to inflict upon them the just punishment of their accumulated iniquities, by destroy

ing their city and their sanctuary, A. D. 70, thirty-seven years after the expiration of the 490. By the death of our blessed Lord a key was afforded to the vision of the prophet; and by tracing 490 years back from that event, the year B. C. 457, in which the Jews were emancipated from their Persian yoke, discovered the commencement of the last renewed sovereignty of Him over them. But the prophecy does not stop here. The mention of a setting up of an abomination of desolation, Dan. xi. 31, xii. 11, which cannot entirely refer to the pollution of Jerusalem by the Roman armies as in the above caseof the crucifixion of our Lord in the great city, which must be in the ten kingdoms of the Roman empire, one of which Judea was not, Rev. xi. 8-of the birth of a man-child of the woman, which, though he must be Christ, cannot relate to his birth of the Virgin Mary, Rev. xii. 5-of the treading of the holy city by the Gentiles, Rev. xi. 2, which can relate only to the treading in the Christian Church-must require another construction to be put on this prophecy, as far as will satisfy these fresh phenomena: and we have accordingly dated a fresh period of 490 years from the commencement of the new covenant, A. D. 26 to A. D. 516, for the completion of a spiritual crucifixion of the Roman Christ by the apostacy of the church in the Roman empire, which was at the full about that period (see Mosheim. Cent. 5); and we have added the thirty-seven years, which intervened between the first crucifixion and the planting of the first abomination for the time of the setting up of the second abomination, A. D. 553. Closer than this there is no occasion to go to the examination of the prophecy for the secondary fulfilment; as there are no more phencmena, which teach us to expect more accuracy. For translating the sentence was passed (see Deut. xvii. 9,

10.) we appeal to the authoritative judiciary-like tone of the prophecy, and the words decided upon and sentence therein used. The sentence (27) mentioned in one verse must by construction be the sentence mentioned in the other verse. For the translation " "so long as Messiah is leader," we refer to 2 Kings, ix. 22, and Gesenius and Parkhurst's Lexicon, and to its contrast with the ensuing verse, when Messiah is no longer Leader, i. e. of the Jews; and for "Messiah is Leader;" we appeal to the absence of the article before Leader, which shows Leader to be the predicate of Messiah, and not in apposition to it. Compare Gesen. Lehrgebäude der Hebr. Spr. sec. 167, 4, with sec. 172, 1. So long as Messiah is Prince limits the period of the restoration of Jerusalem to the time when Artaxerxes relieved the Jews from paying toll and tribute to him, and left them in full exercise of their own laws. For when the Jews were subject to foreign masters, they were never considered to serve God but to serve them, Deut. xxviii. 47, 48; Jerem. v. 19; xvii. 4; xxv, 6-11; Ezra, ix. 8, 9; and consequently Messiah could not. be Leader of the Host or Head of the Jewish polity, till they were released from such servitude. That Messiah was the Leader appears from St. Paul, 1 Cor. x. 4, who says that Christ, the Rock, went with the Jews through the wilderness, and the Targum of Jonathan, on Is. xvi. 1. says, that Christ was the Rock in the wilderness. John, viii. 56. But Michael, who can be no other than Christ, is called the Prince of the Jews, Dan. x. 21, the great Prince which standeth up for them, xii. 1, and it was to the Prince of the host, i. e. Jews, that the Romano-Greek Horn magnified itself, and that Prince can then be no other than the Prince of Princes and High-Priest, Christ; for any other high-priest existing at the siege of Jerusalem