that will warrant such a gloss*. Let the careful reader however turn to the passage in question, and judge for himself. Mr. Whitaker says, he “would "heartily thank me for having induced him to "reconsider so closely the passage, and thence "discover both so incontrovertible a proof of the period to which these words are to be referred, "and such a confirmation of his own interpretation, "but that it might look as if he exulted in the explosion of mine". It would have been better, for more reasons than one, if this ill-judged sarcasm had been omitted.

66

I have one more point to settle, before this part of the subject is dismissed. Mr. Whitaker positively asserts, that the Papacy and the Dictatorship constitute jointly only one bead, and, in short, that the Papacy is only a bead as being the Dictatorship. How does he prove this extraordinary assertion? He says, that "a most striking similitude is proved "between the head that was formerly wounded,

Mr. Mede's gloss is somewhat similar to Mr. Whitaker's and as little warranted by the text. He supposes, that the beast was, because when the apostle wrote he had ceased to exist under his five first heads; is not, because not under his yet future last head; and is, because then under his sixth head. See his Works, B. v. C. 12.

+ Letter, p. 30, 31.

It was in consequence of my never dreaming that he had made such an assertion, and my supposing on the contrary that he considered the Papacy as one head and the Dictatorship as another, that he complains of my having misrepresented him. I have already apologized for my innocent and (1 am sure) my undesigned mistake.

"and

" and that which has for many ages despotically "ruled at Rome"* That there is a considerable degree of resemblance between the power exercised by the Dictator and the power claimed (be it observedt) by the Pope, I am by no means disposed to deny. But, even if the Pope had been allowed to exercise the dictatorial power (which he never was), I should still have to learn how similitude can constitute identity. C is very like G, yet C is not G. Still less can the Papacy be the Dictator, ship, merely because the power claimed by the one is like the power exercised by the other. So thought the more judicious Bp. Newton. "Pope", says he, "is the most perfect likeness and "resemblance of the ancient Roman emperors". Hence, supposing the image of the beast to mean the effigies of the beast, he supposed the Pope to be that image. Yet he never fancied, that this similitude authorized him to say, that the Pope was an Emperor; or that the Papal head was the Imperial bead recovered from its deadly wound, so that the Emperorship and the Papacy constituted jointly only one bead.

"The

On the whole, I think that Mr. Whitaker has not been able to establish either of his positions.

* Comment. p. 216.

Mr. Whitaker, and all those writers who will make the Papacy a head of the beast, perpetually tell us of the extravagant claims made by the Popes to universal temporal dominion: I want to see the proofs of the power claimed, being allowed and exercised. Respecting all that I have written on this subject, Mr. Whitaker preserves a most profound silence. See my Dissert. Vol. II. p. 142-148.

He

He seems to me neither to have proved that the Dictatorship is the bead that was slain by the sword, nor that the Papacy and the Dictatorship constitute jointly one bead of the beast. To this I will venture to add, that he will find it no easy matter to prove from history, that the Papacy can, with any degree of propriety, be at all accounted a bead.

10. Respecting the meaning of the apocalyptic barvest, Mr. Whitaker has not quoted all that I said upon his opinion of it*. I did not represent him as only supposing that the barvest and the vintage designate a further harvest to the Gospel by the call of the Jews, and the coming in of the Gentilest. I have turned to the passage in his Commentary to which he refers me, and find that it wasthe ambiguity of its expression which led me to conclude that he jointly spoke of the barvest and the vintage as designating "a further harvest to the Gospel by the "call of the Jews, and the coming in of the fulness "of the Gentiles, and the vengeance of heaven "wrecked, in the land of Judéa itself, on those "who have apostatized from the truth". From his manner of punctuation I thought that he meant to refer all the three clauses jointly to the barvest and the vintage. Had he placed a semicolon instead of a comma between the Gentiles and and the vengeance of beaven, thus ascribing the two first clauses to the harvest exclusively, and the third to the vintage exclusively, I should not have misunderstood him. I think no other apology than this necessary to a man who can charge me with intentional misrepresentation by warning his

* Letter, p. 31. Dissert. Vol. II. p. 313.

correspondent

correspondent "of my habit of assuming much "more than my premises will warrant".

Mr. Whitaker does not seem to be aware, that one of the ablest critics either of this or of any other age has positively declared that a barvest never symbolizes a judgment; or, I think, he would have strengthened himself with such very great authority. I will briefly state the grounds of my believing, with Mede, Newton, Lowman, and other writers, that the apocalyptic harvest denotes a judgment.

Mr. Mede, who has elaborately and minutely discussed the point, observes, that the idea of a barvest includes three things; the reaping of the corn, the gathering of it in, and the threshing of it: whence it is made a type in Scripture of two direct opposites; of destruction, when the reaping and the threshing are considered; of restitution and salvation, when the in-gathering is considered*. The great critic from whom I have presumed to differ, separates the threshing from the harvest, in Jerem. li. 33; allowing that the threshing denotes judgment, but denying that the barvest has ever such a signification. The text in question does not appear to me to warrant this separation. "The "daughter of Babylon is like a threshing floor, it "is time to thresh her: yet a little while and the "time of her harvest shall come". Here the time

of her harvest seems to be used as synonymous with the threshing of her: and, if this be the case, ber barvest is a harvest of wrath. Or, if we deny that they are synonymous, and separate them from each other, shall we be authorized by the plain import

Mede's Works, B. iii. p. 520.

of the text to say, that the threshing of Babylon denotes indeed a signal judgment about to befall ber; but that her barvest, which in a little while is coming, means some signal mercy about to be, vouchsafed to ber? Does not the text, on the contrary, force us to think with Mede, that the threshing is considered as a part of the harvest; and that they both alike typify God's vengeance upon Babylon? But, however this may be, there is another passage, in which both the reaping and the in-gathering of the harvest are used to symbolize an act, not of mercy, but of judgment. Speaking of the dispersion of the house of Israel, and of the very small remnant that should be left in the land, Isaiah uses the allegory both of the harvest, and of the conclusion of the vintage and olive-season*. "In "that day it shall come to pass, that the glory of Jacob shall be made thin, and the fatness of his "flesh shall wax lean: and it shall be, as when the "harvest-man gathereth the corn, and his arm reapeth the ears; and it shall be as he that gathereth ears in the valley of Rephaim. Yet gleaning grapes shall be left in it, as the shaking "of an olive-tree, two or three berries in the top of "the uppermost bough, four or five in the outmost "branches of its fruitfulness".

Thus, I think, it appears in the general, that a harvest symbolizes,agreeably to Mr.Mede's opinion,

*It was precisely in this manner that 1 thought Mr. Whitaker understood the harvest and the vintage as a joint double type both of conversion and destruction, for which unintentional mistake I received so merciless a castigation from him.

+ Isaiah, xvii. 4, 5, 6.

the