A NEW SOLUTION OF THE Contemporaneous Symbols OF THE REVELATION OF ST. JOHN; SHOWING THAT THE FIRST SERIES DESCRIBES THE APOSTASY, THE SECOND, THE TRUE CHURCH, AND THAT THE CONSTANTINIAN CHURCH OF THE FOURTH THE RUPTURE OF THE SEALS ITS DEVELOPMENT UNDER AND THE BLAST OF THE SEVENTH TRUMPET, OR THE DISCHARGE BY REV. R. GASCOYNE, M.A., MICKLETON, GLOUCESTERSHIRE. Second Edition, corrected, and nearly re-written. LONDON: WERTHEIM AND MACINTOSH, 1855. Adv. Bib. PREFACE. Nor long after I had published my solution of the Apocalypse, I saw reason to modify very considerably the conclusions to which I had arrived. And it so happened that my work was rendered, by the change, more consistent with itself by further carrying out the theory I had adopted of making the heavens into which St. John was introduced, neither more nor less than the visible Church. About the same time, also, I carefully examined such symbols in Holy Scripture as are confessedly fulfilled or explained, in order to determine whether they are regulated by fixed and cognisable laws. My conclusion is, that they are, by adherence to which we shall alone travel in the right path of discovery, whilst deviation from them will leave us the dupes of conjecture or a prey to our own ingenious or fond speculations. I have also laid down other canons which I think are equally founded upon correct interpretations of Scripture. Though symbols and symbolical scenes are scattered over almost every part of the Bible, yet some books, as Zechariah, Daniel, and St. John's Apocalypse, especially the last, hardly contain any thing else. And by symbols and symbolical scenes are meant things which, though presented to the senses of the prophets, had no literal meaning. The seven |