Pope to be Antichrist. I can assure him, that no less than himself do I deprecate the idea of any union, civil or ecclesiastical, with the Papists; and that I believe that such an union would far more endanger our safety than the armies of Buonaparté, because it must be utterly offensive in the eyes of Him who hath solemnly warned us at our peril to come out of the mystic Babylon*. Though I do not allow the Pope to be the Antichrist described by St. John, who is the only inspired writer that uses the term; I have said amply sufficient to shew, that I entertain no very violent partiality for that apostate religion of which he is the head. If ever the Papists be in a condition to persecute Mr. Whitaker, I shall have abundant reason to tremble for my own safety. Proximus ardet Ucalegon. I trust however that the same good Providence, which hath hitherto preserved us, will continue to preserve us to the very time of the end. But, however this may be, Mr. Whitaker has said nothing to dissuade me from declaring in the language of a justly eminent prelate, "I fear I see too clearly the rise, instead of the fall, "of the Antichrist of the West. Or rather I fear,

* "Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers "of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues". (Rev. xviii. 4.) I know not what conclusion the believer can draw from these awful words, but this; that they, who do not come out of her, or (what is at least as bad) who return to her after they have come out of her, will receive of her plagues. So thought our pious reformers; who, cautious as they are in advancing any matter of doubtful disputation, scrupled not to apply the mystic character of the apocalyptic harlot to the Church of Rome. See the 3d part of the Homily against peril of idolatry. p. 216. Edit. Oxon.

"I see him rapidly advancing to full stature and ripe age. His rise, strictly speaking, the begin "ning of the monster, was in the apostolic age*. "For it were easy to trace the pedigree of French philosophy, Jacobinism, and Bavarian illumination, up to the first heresies. But it is now we "see his adolescence❞t.

2. Mr. Whitaker next answers my charge against him of explaining the prophecies of the Apocalypse sometimes figuratively and sometimes literally. He begins his answer in this manner. "When "Mr. Faber says, that in supposing that the turning "of the seas and rivers into blood by pouring out "the second and third vials on them describes a "series of wars carried on by sea and land, I give "to the effusion of them an absolutely literal "meaning, I confess that I am at a considerable "loss to comprehend what he intends; for surely

an absolutely literal meaning would be, that the "waters themselves were really changed into blood, "not merely dyed with it by the multitudes slain. "But, if I have not given it this literal application, "then must my interpretation be figurative, and "the charge, in this instance, at least, groundless". -Were not Mr. Whitaker's pamphlet now open before me, I could scarcely have believed that a

* See the prophecies relative to the last times of Antichrist collected together in the 3d chap. of my Dissertation.

+ With what fearfully rapid strides has the monster advanced to maturity, if indeed he be yet advanced to full maturity, since this declaration was first made in the year 1799.

Letter, p. 7.

writer of his talents would have condescended to use so mere a quibble. He must surely have known that my charge of literal interpretation related to his supposing the sea and the rivers to mean the natural sea and the natural rivers instead of the symbolical sea and the symbolical rivers, not to the turning of the sea and the rivers into blood. I repeat therefore, that the commentator, who explains the changing of the sea into blood to denote a period remarkable for such furious sea-fights that the sea was deeply tinged with the blood of the slain, does to all intents and purposes explain it in an absolutely literal manner. Mr. Whitaker might as well deny that he explains it literally, because the sea is neither a ship nor a battle nor yet a period of time remarkable for bloody sea-fights, as because the sea was not literally changed into blood at the battle of Lepanto, but only tinged with blood.

He confesses, that, in addition to the accomplishment of the predictions in a figurative sense, he has sometimes given proofs of its having taken place in a literal sense too; and observes that others have done so before him-I know they have, and (in my own opinion) most injudiciously. With respect to Mr. Whitaker himself, he interprets the sounding of some of the seven trumpets in this double manner: but the second and third vials he interprets literally alone; at least I have not been able to discover in any part of his work an additional symbolical interpretation of them. The reader will probably be surprized after what I have written on the subject, that Mr. Whitaker should bring me forward to prove against myself the propriety of this symbolico-literal mode

of

of exposition. He says, that I "acknowledge the "double sense of prophecy, which certainly "includes the possibility of its being accomplished "both figuratively and literally”: and for this he refers me to P. 373 of my second volume. I confess I turned to the page in question with huge dismay and astonishment, prepared to take shame to myself for having been guilty of so palpable a contradiction. But I soon found, that I had merely declared a part of a prophecy of Joel to relate primarily to the effusion of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, and ultimately to the yet greater effusion of the Spirit in the period when all nations shall be converted unto Christ. To this I will now add, that I believe there is scarcely a single prophecy in the Old Testament which treats of the first advent of the Messiah, that does not ultimately more or less relate to his second advent. How the avowal of such an opinion can be wire-drawn into any acknowledgment on my part, direct or indirect, explicit or implied, that the prophecies of Daniel and St. John* may be interpreted both literally and symbolically, or sometimes literally and sometimes symbolically according to the humour of the expositor, I am utterly at a loss to comprehend.

Mr. Whitaker however will not allow the validity of my objection to such a mode of interpre

* I say, with cautious accuracy, Daniel and St. John. As for the other prophets, they continually mix the imagery of symbols with literal predictions: yet even in them when we are told of the sea roaring and the heavenly bodies being darkened, we are not at liberty to say that the sea means both the natural sea and the symbolical sea, or that the heavenly bodies mean both the natural heavenly bodies and the symbolical heavenly bodies.

tation:

1

tation: namely," that, if we interpret some of these "predictions figuratively and some literally, we thereby introduce indecision and uncertainty": and the reason he gives is this, that the ambiguity of many words in every language is not found to produce either uncertainty or confusion. Thus, if Mr. Whitaker use the word sow*, the context will always determine without a possibility of error whether the verb, or the animal of that name, be intended-And can he rest satisfied with this argument? Will he pretend to say, that there is any context which authorizes him to explain the second and third vials literally, and the first, the fourth, and the fifth symbolically, in a manner even most remotely approximating to the absolute certainty with which the context always teaches us whether sow is to be understood as a verb or a substantive? With what face then can he assert, that "there is "scarcely a single passage throughout the prophetic "writings, in which, if it may not consistently with "the accomplishment be understood in both, a

man of common sense and unbiassed mind can be "at a loss in which sense it ought to be taken”? admit Mr. Whitaker's principle, and you open the door to the wildest speculations of the most visionary commentator; you make the Apocalypse a mere nose of wax.

But Mr. Whitaker asserts, that the term fornication is sometimes used figuratively and sometimes literally in the Apocalypse; and thence infers that his system is perfectly defensible-It is in one

*This word is one of the examples which Mr. Whitaker adduces.

passage,