woman in the wilderness, should jointly constitute a period of 1260 years: I should then have thought that we were justified in understanding that period, as Bp. Lowth rightly understands the 70 years. But, when we find that a totally different mode of expression is adopted, when we are separately told that the times of each will amount to 1260 years; I can no more believe that we have a right to curtail at our pleasure the times of each, than I could believe that each one of those nations should not serve the king of Babylon precisely 70 years if the prophet had seriatim told me that each of them should.

To proceed however to more important matter. "For his positive assertion", says Mr. Whitaker, "that the holy city can be understood only in a figurative sense: by interpreting it of the visible "Church of Christ, he introduces into this book "no less than four images of that; the woman in the "wilderness, the holy city, the two witnesses, and "the company of 144,000: while, by the construc"tion he puts on the witnesses themselves, he most singularly makes the prechristian church (as he "terms it) prophesy 600 years after its own dura❝tion. This is symbolizing with a vengeance!"

To the first of these objections I answer, that Mr. Whitaker's two great oracles Mr. Mede and Bp. Newton, whom he affects on all occasions to bring forward against me and for whose talents he cannot have a higher respect than my self, do the very same. Like me, they both introduce into the little book no less than four images of the Church; and, what is

*Letter, p. 14, 15.

more,

I

more, the self-same images that I myself do*. Nor does the slightest confusion arise from this circumstance, for reasons which I have fully stated in my Dissertationt-To the second objection I answer, that he has most singularly misrepresented me. freely allow, that I should indeed have "symbolized with a vengeance", if I had ever represented the literal prechristian church as beginning to prophesy in sackcloth 600 years after the expiration of its existence: but, so far from making the assertion which Mr. Whitaker is pleased to put into my mouth, I made one diametrically opposite to it. I consider a simple reference as a sufficient answer to this objection.

In the case of the Euphrates, Mr. Whitaker sarcastically complimented me on my exposition: now he openly censures me. Yet in both cases I merely followed Mr. Mede. I shall soon begin to suspect, that it will be a knotty point to decide which of us is the most staunch friend to that great expositor, notwithstanding Mr. Whitaker refers us to "the proofs he "has given of being conversant with the works of the truly "venerable Mede". (Letter, p. 2.) I much fear, that, as Mr. Mede's avowal that the Pope is Antichrist "marred the "savour of his ointment" at court, so my avowal that the Pope is not Antichrist does the same good office for me with Mr. Whitaker. He surely must view my luckless Dissertation with a most jaundiced eye, or he would not find fault with me for saying the very same that Mede says.

+ Vol. I. p. 59, 60, 61.

See my Dissert. Vol. II. p. 52, 53, 54, 55, and parti cularly p. 54. Mr. Whitaker might just as well have asserted, that the second set of the men of understanding mentioned by Daniel were the first set arisen out of their graves. Dan. xi. 33, 35.

"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 illumina"tion, 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 advan. ced 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