that the wilful king is to arise after the Reformation, it is no less an assumption on Mr. Whitaker's part (an assumption on which alone the whole of his system depends*) that he is to arise long before the Reformation. Both then being assumptions, the question is, which is the most probable assumption. I have simply followed the stream of the prophecy, and suppose him to be manifested subsequent to the event last noticed, as the event last noticed chronologically succeeded the event noticed before it; and so on to the very beginning of the prophecy. Mr. Whitaker, on the contrary, when we have arrived, even according to Bp. Newton's own confession, at the persecution of the Protestants in the south of France which is beyond the time of the Reformation, would suddenly transport us back upwards of 15 centuries, thereby completely violating the regular succession of events detailed in the prophecy. Whether bis assumption, which necessarily involves such an immense retrogade chronological leap, or mine, which supposes the king to arise exactly in that part of the prophecy where he is first mentioned, be most probable, I chearfully leave to the reader to determine. As for my chronological leaps which Mr. Whitaker expatiates upon, they are but a mere type of his; and not one of them is retrogade-My other assumption, that the time of the end commences when the 1260 years expire, is not an assumption. I appeal to the reader whether I have not proved that point. What Mr. Whitaker indeed says *Here is another instance of his doing the very thing for which he blames me. What he assumes relative to the time of the wilful king's appearance, I flatly deny. respecting the time of the end is a mere assumption*. And now let us attend to the conclusion which, he says, I arrive at from my two assumptions. Since I make the wilful king to be one of the ten borns of the beast, since the beast ends his career at the conclusion of the 1260 days, since I make the time of the end to commence when those days terminate, and since the expedition of the wilful king begins at the time of the end; I make the wilful king begin to act after the date of his own destruction, which, says Mr. Whitaker, will make “a "terrible breach in the integrity of my system". I have doubtless not always expressed myself with absolutely strict accuracy respecting the termination of the 1260 years, for I have sometimes written as if I believed that God's enemies would be destroyed at Armageddon in the very last year of that period. This inaccuracy, and a few others of a similar nature which have escaped Mr. Whitaker's notice, I purposed to point out in a supplement to my Work long before I knew that so respectable an opponent would undertake my castigation. There are however various parts of my Work, where I enter specifically into detail, by which the verbal inaccuracy, that Mr. Whitaker thinks makes "such "a terrible breach in my system", might easily have been corrected; and perhaps would have been corrected by my antagonist himself, had he honoured my Dissertation with a more minute degree of attention. I state that the last vial, or the vial of 66 *Had he urged Mr. Mede's argument, I should not have called it an assumption; but, as Mr. Whitaker states the point, it is in his case a mere assumption. the the vintage, will be poured out as soon as the 1260 years expire; and that then the final judgments of God will begin to go abroad. This last vial synchronizes with the time of the end and the expedition of the wilful king to Palestine. Now, though the judgments of God begin to go abroad at the expiration of the 1260 years; though sentence is then pronounced upon his enemies; and though they are as it were dead in law, their last machinations serving only to precipitate them into destruction: it is obvious, that all the great events comprehended under the last vial cannot for physical reasons take place in a single day*. They will begin indeed to take place at the end of the 1260 years; but there is reason to think that at least thirty years will elapse before the Antichristian confederacy is finally broken, the tribe of Judab restored, and the sanctuary completely cleansed. Daniel represents 75 years as intervening between the end of the 1260 years and the commencement of the Millennium; and these he divides into 30 years and 45 years. I think it most probable, that the bestial confederacy will be destroyed at the end of the 30 years; and the whole 75 years I conceive to be designated by the name of the time of the end. It is observable, that it is no where positively said, that either the beast or his little born shall be destroyed exactly at the end of the 1260 years, but only that so long they shall be permitted to tyrannize with impunity over the saints. As for the word used by the Apostle in Rev. xiii. 5, as * Bp. Newton speaks much to the same purpose. See his Dissert. on Rev. xvi. 17-21. Bp. Newton rightly observes, and as I have more than once stated in my Dissertation, it ought to be rendered to practise prosperously, not to continue*. Where then is "the terrible breach" which Mr. Whitaker thinks he has made in my system? Mr. Whitaker draws his next specimen from "the plausible reasonings" which he says I use to establish my thesis that the ten-borned beast is the Carlovingian empiret As I have already stated that this is a gross misrepresentation of my opponent, it is superfluous to say any thing more on the subject. He next notices my making two powers of what he assumes, for he neither does nor can prove it, are only one and the same power; namely the ten-borned beast, and the little born. I still maintain; and I will venture to predict, from what I have hitherto seen of the cogency of his arguments, that he will not very soon confute me: I still maintain, that it is contrary to every principle of symbolical propriety, as the very able prelate to whom Mr. Whitaker alludes most justly remarked, that one of the horns of a beast should mean the same thing as the beast himself. As well might my antagonist assert, that * While I readily apologize to the reader for the verbal inaccuracy of which I have certainly been sometimes guilty, I beg to refer both him and Mr. Whitaker to the following passages in my Work, where they will find my sentiments in detail free from any of that contradictoriness which my opponent ascribes to them. Dissert. Vol. I. p. 50, 51, 103-106 -Vol. II. p. 319, 320, 321, 352, 353, 354, 356--360, 362, 363, 364, 365, 366, 376, 377, 378, 382, 396, 397, 398, 399, 400. Letter, p. 54, Letter, p. 55. the the little born of the be-goat is the be-goat himself, as that the little born of the Roman beast, is the Roman beast himself. As for his argumentum ad bominem, "that one of the horns of a symbolical beast may as well mean the same thing as the symbolical "beast himself, as one of his heads may", he must have paid very little attention to what I say on the subject to think of bringing forward such an argumentt. Can Mr. Whitaker then discover no difference between a born which denotes one out of many powers that arise out of a broken empire, and a bead which denotes a form of government that either does preside or has presided over the whole empire? The former, as such, never can be the same as the empire of which it constitutes only a part: the latter is, to all political intents and purposes, the very same; unless we are studiously to separate the government of a state from the state itself,agreeably to the principles of the modern Charlemagne. In all our relations to foreign powers, whether we say It is a curious circumstance, that, notwithstanding all that Mede and Newton have written on the subject, they find themselves perpetually obliged to speak of the apocalyptic tex-horned beast as being the secular Roman empire, which I believe it to be. I have already given an instance of Newton's phraseology, wherein he considers the slaying of the saints by the ten-horned beast to denote the legal murders perpetrated by the secular powers of the Roman empire at the instigation of the Romish church: and, as for Mede, after expressly calling the two apocalyptic beasts the secular beast and the ecclesiastical beast, he declares that the ten-horned beast is the ten-horned apostatic empire in opposition to the kingdom of the saints. Comment. Apoc. de Bestia decemcornupeta Comment. Minor, B. v. C. ii. p. 916. + The reader is requested to peruse the note at p. 150 of my 2d volume. that |