which it certainly must be, unless we suppose the 1260 days to have two different commencements, and the woman to take two flights into the wilderness. As for the real commencement of the 1260 days, the Apostle plainly fixes it to the era of the woman's flight from the dragon, and represents it as preceding the war in heaven. To these arguments let the reader add the following one, and I think the question of the prolepsis will be decided for ever. Both Bp. Newton and Mr. Whitaker allow, that the little book contains the 11th, 12th, 13th, and 14th chapters of the Revelation. Now it is hard to say why this little book should be distinguished from the greater book except for the purpose of preserving strict unity of action, and describing the events of some one particular period. But both Bp. Newton and Mr. Whitaker acknowledge, that the 11th, 13th, and 14th chapters relate exclusively to the period of 1260 days; although the latter of these writers differs (as we have seen) froin every respectable commentator in laying the scene of the 11th chapter in the literal Jerusalem. Such being the case, is it not evident, that the whole symmetry and arrangementof the little book is completely distorted and violated, by referring the second of its four chapters to the days of primitive Christianity and the age of Constantine; and the first, the third, and the fourth, to the period of the 1260 days? I maintain, that this objection would have applied with very great force to the system of these authors, even supposing the 1260 days had never once been mentioned in the second chapter of the little book ; but, when we find them most expressly mentioned, and when the general context and arrangement of the the little book plainly require that this second chapter should be referred to the same period as the one which precedes it and the two which succeed it, the objection then applies with ten-fold force; and seems to me to quash most completely the arbitrary notion of the prolepsis*-My fifth objection was, that * It may not be amiss to observe, that, even if we allow the flight of the woman to be first mentioned proleptically, the scheme of my antagonist will only be rid of half its difficulties. Mr. Whitaker says, that the woman fled into the wilderness in consequence of the dragon's (second) persecution, and that he persecuted her when he saw that he was cast to the earth, which was the event of his war with Michael. For this he refers me to ver. 13, 14; which he tauntingly supposes must have slipped out of the copy which I used. Arguing then with him for a moment according to his own statement, we shall soon see what will be the consequence of it. If the prophet meant to intimate, that the woman fled into the wilderness in the 14th verse and not in the 6th verse, then the 1260 days must commence in the 14th verse. And if they commence in the 14th verse, then the events predicted in the three succeeding verses, must be posterior to their com mencement. But Mr. Whitaker says, that the 1260 days commenced in the year 606: and yet he maintains that the flood which the devil cast out of his mouth, subsequent by his own account to the flight of the woman into the wilderness, means the irruption of the northern nations which ruined the empire. This irruption however, so far from taking place after the woman's flight into the wilderness in the year 606 and at the commencement of the 1260 days, took place long before it. For the Goths burst into the empire at the death of Theodosius in the year 395, and completely effected the downfall of its western half in the year 476. Now in his letter (p. 20. line 8, 9.) he expressly says, that it is the first mention of the woman's flight that is proleptical: whence we must infer, that he esteems the second mention of it to be not proleptical. What right then, even upon his own principles, has he to apply the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth to the irruption of the northern nations? Is this difficulty to be salved by a second prolepsis? Are that Both the woman and the dragon are said to be in beaven at the same time; that heaven is the symbol of either temporal or spiritual polity; and that, take it in whichever sense we please, the woman and the devil acting through the pagan empire, were not in heaven together at the period when Bp. Newton supposes the vision to commence. For, so long as the empire continued pagan, the woman was in the ecclesiastical heaven, but not in the temporal heaven; and the agent, through which Mr. Whitaker supposes the devil to act namely the pagan empire, was in the temporal beaven but not in the ecclesiastical heaven. Hence it is plain, that at the period assigned by him for the opening of the vision, the woman and the dragon were not together in the same heaven, as the apostle represents them to be*. To this objection Mr. Whitaker attempts not to give an answer, because truly he has gone so deeply into my former objections that he thinks it quite unnecessary. It appears however, that not one of those objections has he been able to remove; and I incline to believe that the present will prove equally refractory. We must plainly seek for a time when the woman, and the power which the dragon uses as his agent, were in one and the same beaven. The power however is indisputably the Are we to be told, that both in the 6th verse and the 14th verse the flight of the woman "is mentioned by anticipation?" I cannot help thinking, that this savours very much of what Mr. Whitaker not improperly calls an interpretation graffed on the prediction. Letter, p. 83. * See this argument drawn out at length in my Dissert. Vol. II. p. 103, 104. Roman Roman empire. But the woman and the Roman empire were never in the same heaven together till the days of Constantine: therefore the pagan Roman empire is necessarily excluded, and consequently the Christian Roman empire is as necessarily intended. This empire, thus in the same heaven with the woman, Satan did not begin to use as his tool till the commencement of the 1260 days: therefore the vision opens with his attack upon the woman at that period, and with his casting down from heaven a third part of the stars, or the bishops of the Roman empire. Thus it is, I think, indisputable, that the second chapter of the little book relates to the events of the 1260 days, and consequently synchronizes, as I had supposed it to do, with the three other chapters of the little book. In short, whatever difficulty there may be respecting the interpretation of the man-child (and there are wonderful difficulties), every other symbol and every other particular in this vision are sufficiently plain. It relates to the persecution of the true church, by the papal Roman empire under the influence of the devil, during the allotted period of three times and a half or 1260 days. 9. I shall begin my answer to what Mr. Whitaker says respecting the wounded head of the beast* with apologizing to him for having represented him as saying, that the fifth or dictatorial head is a distinct head from the Papacy, and that the wound which the one received was healed by the rise of the other. I have certainly, though very undesignedly, misunderstood him. Had he expressed himself with the Letter, p. 27. same same precision in his Commentary that he has done in his Letter, the mistake would never have been made. In fact, the very passage, which he cites from his Commentary, was that which misled me. The passage is this: "The eighth, it was declared, "should be the beast itself, but who, considered as a head, was one of the seven recovered from his "deadly wound". By these words I thought Mr Whitaker designed to teach us, that, although the Pope was, strictly speaking, the eighth, yet from his strong resemblance to a Dictator he might in some sort be considered as the Dictatorial bead revived; and thus that the beast might in one sense be said to have eight beads, and in another sense only seven. That Mr. Whitaker intended absolutely and literally to maintain, that the Papacy was the Dictatorship, did indeed never once occur to me: nor could I have believed that any man would have seriously made such an assertion, were not that part of his Letter now open before me wherein he accuses me of saying, that be considers the Papacy as a distinct bead from the Dictatorship; whereas he considers them all the while as one and the same bead, and allows the Papacy to be a bead only as being the Dictatorship. While I very sincerely apologize for my first mistake, I may be allowed to express a hope that I have not again misunderstood him. To the best of my judgment, he means to say, that the Papacy and the Dictatorship are one and the same bead; and that the Dictatorship was restored when the Papacy arose: so that, in reality, the Papacy is the fifth bead of the beast. On these grounds I am prepared to argue with him: and, if I thought his supposed former opinion untenable, and the arguments |