power commence together, and the whole duration of the flight synchronize with the whole duration of the tyranny. But, if any thing is of clear interpretation in the whole train of prophecy, in the book of Daniel and the Apocalypse, it is the vision of the 12th chap. of the latter. The woman, clothed with the sun, is so natural an image of revealed truth, and of the church as the depository of that truth, that it is folly to understand it of any thing else. The wilderness is so familiar an image in prophecy for the Pagan world, as opposed to the Jews, God's cultivated vineyard, that the flight of the woman can be nothing but the removal of the church into this wilderness. Michael's war can be nothing but the struggles of the first Christians with persecution, from about the time of the destruction of Jerusalem to the establishment of Christianity in the empire, and the suppression of idolatry by Constantine the Great. This exposition of the 12th chap. of the Apocalypse is so clear and certain, that it is not to be abandoned for any intractability of these mystic_numbers; number being always the last thing in prophecy to be understood. The exposition, therefore, of this vision of Apocalypse, 12th chap., [is not to be adjusted to any previous theory for the explication of these numbers, but the explication of the numbers must be adjusted to the clear sense of this vision; and if that cannot be done, the numbers must remain a mystery for time to unravel. In Mede's scheme of interpretation every thing depends upon the numbers, and nothing is plausible but the supputation. And that plausibility is nothing more than a delusive appearance produced by gratuitous assumptions, by irregular arbitrary applications of the prophetic images, not warranted by the usage of the prophetic style; and, in many instances, dependant upon facts of doubtful history, and, above all, upon that unwarrantable, monstrous supposition, that Christian Rome is Antichrist, and all who have at any time opposed her, however wild and fanatical in their opposition, saints! The difficulty, however, arising from the application of the period of time, times, and half a time, in the seventh chapter of Daniel, is not so great as to leave us no other refuge but what the obscurity of these numbers might afford, were that obscurity in truth inexplicable. The obscurity is great, but it is not total darkness; the difficulty is very great, but not insurmountable.

Upon comparing those parts of the book of Daniel, and the Apocalypse, which evidently relate to the same matters, it will be found, that what may be called the prophetic chronology is far more general in Daniel than in St. John. They agree in the intervals of the principal events, but St. John expands what Daniel concentrates. St. John subdivides the great intervals, which Daniel has not distributed. Thus St. John clearly describes a long interval between the fall of Antichrist and the final judg

ment. He seems to distinguish between the extinction of Antichrist's power and his utter destruction. He tells how long the witnesses shall lie dead; and he clearly puts an interval between their ascension into heaven and our Lord's coming to execute judgment upon Antichrist and his followers; for the sounding of the seventh trumpet intervenes. The fourth beast of Daniel's seventh chapter is, unquestionably, the ten-horned Apocalyptic beast; but described in Daniel with less particularity, and with little distribution of time. The different states of the beast, marked by different heads in St. John, are not noticed by Daniel. The temporary destruction of the beast which had taken place in the time present in vision in the seventeenth chapter of the Apocalypse, is not mentioned by Daniel. Daniel makes no distinction between the scarlet coloured beast ridden by the woman, which was killed before judgment was executed upon the whore, and the same beast raised again from the abyss. He takes no notice of the killing and the healing of one of the heads. He exhibits not the beast, first with his heads crowned, and his horns. uncrowned, and afterwards with the crowns upon the horns, and no crowns upon the heads. His vision of the beast evidently goes on to his final destruction, but the history of the beast is not divided into its successive periods. And, according to this plan of indiscrimination, I think the persecutions of the beast, the first and the last, are considered as one continued persecution. The persecutions in the primitive ages, as well as those that will take place in the times of the end, were persecutions of the beast, and of the same beast. Those prior to Michael's victory, of the beast in his first state. Those of the latter ages, of the beast revived. The angel, in Daniel, considers them both as one, taking no notice of the respite in the interval between Michael's victory and the renewed persecution of the beast revived. Considering all the persecutions of the beast, from the first to the last, as one thing, he describes them as occupying the whole period of time, times, and a half time; not that they will be raging the whole time, without abatement or intermission, but because they will be distributed over it from beginning to end. And because the cruelty of the persecution of the little horn will far exceed that of the primitive persecutions of all the different agents in different periods, the little horn is the only one who has the honour to be mentioned in this synoptic vision of the struggles of the true religion with the Atheistic faction to the end of time. Upon the whole, were this seventh chapter of Daniel the only prophecy of the antichristian persecution, it would be natural to conclude that time, times, and half a time, was the duration of the single tyranny of the little horn. But, comparing this with the other parts of the book of Daniel, and with the more detailed revelation of St. John, it appears that this is the whole period of a business, not broken into

its parts by the angel which instructed Daniel, in the execution of which the little horn would indeed have the principal share. And no conclusion can be drawn from this text against the principles we have laid down, or the results we have drawn from them for the explication of the mystic numbers, since the apparent inconsistency is reconciled by an interpretation of the text perfectly agreeable to the style and method of prophecy, and to the style of Daniel's prophecies in particular.

Of the 2300 days of Daniel.

This period seems to have no immediate relation to any of those we have yet considered, except so far as it is composed of days of the same length: so that the whole space of time contained in it will be 447 y + 80_D = 441 I + 210 D = 440 I + 1 E + 211 D.

Antichrist, according to the Fathers, is to consist of two branches-an eastern and a western. In the 7th chapter of Daniel the persecuting power of the west is exhibited under the image of the little horn of the fourth beast. The little horn of the he-goat, or king of the fierce countenance of the eight chapter (9, 23), is the persecuting power of the East. And the wilful king of chapter xi. 36-45, I take to be the finished Antichrist formed by a coalition of the two in one government, extending over the whole tract of the ancient Roman Empire. When this takes place the whole of the ten-horned apocalyptic beasts will be risen. The persecuting power of the East is certainly the Turk, who became a horn of the goat when he took Constantinople, and became master of the Eastern Empire. The capture of Constantinople, therefore, May the 29th, A.D. 1453, is the epoch from which these 2300 days are to be counted. The profanation of the daily sacrifice, the casting down of the sanctuary, the treading the host under foot by this little horn, is the institution of the Mahomedan religion, the suppression of the Christian worship, and the ill-usage of the Christians in those countries which fell under the dominion of the Turk. For the sanctuary is the Christian church, the daily sacrifice is the Christian worship, and the host is the band of Christian worshippers. They are given up to the tyranny of this little horn because of transgression. His persecution, therefore, is a judgment upon the Eastern churches for the purpose of clearing the sanctuary (v. 14), that is, of ridding the Christian church in those parts, by the fire of persecution, of all merely nominal hypocritical professors. At the end of 2300 days this cleansing of the sanctuary will be effected (v. 14); not that the Antichristian persecution will then come to an end, but the church in the East will at that time be purged of all insincere Christians, and reduced to a small, afflicted, but not despairing, band of sincere members. The precise epoch of this event will be found by adding the space of the 2300 days to the

epoch of the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, May 29th, A. D. 1453.

which places the end of the 2300 ▲ upon Dec. 6th (St. Jul.), A. D. 1894.

It is very remarkable that in describing this period of 2300 ▲, a very singular phrase is used instead of the common word for day, which is not applied to any of the other periods: viz., pay, evening, morning. "How long the vision concerning the daily sacrifice?" &c. The answer is "" Unto evening, morning, two thousand and three

hundred."

עד ערב בקר אלפים

once

Mr. Wintle forms a conjecture upon this singularity of expression, that the days intended must be different from those which compose the other periods; and he thinks natural days may be meant; and that, to point to that meaning, the day is described by the two parts which compose the natural day, and by which that day is described by Moses in the history of the creation. But I rather think that this expression is used in this prophecy as alluding to the stated seasons of the daily sacrifice, the morning and the evening. The Christian worship is described under the image of the Tan, or continual burnt-offering of the Jewish Tabernacle ;-the Mahomedan worship, as a profanation of the continual burntoffering; which burnt-offering was offered twice every day, in the morning and once in the evening. (Exod. xxix. 38-42.) The question is put, how long this profanation, with the concomitant circumstances, is to last. The answer is-Till the stated season of the morning sacrifice, and again of the evening sacrifice, has passed by two thousand and three hundred times. By the use of this expression, in describing the time of the profanation, the image of the profanation itself is pursued; but still the mystic day of prophecy is intended. That this is the true account of this singular phrase, seems in some measure confirmed by the 26th versa, where the same expression occurs, not as descriptive of time, but of that which marked the time-the double daily offering. "And the vision of the evening and the morning, which was told, is true." The vision of the evening and the morning can be nothing but the vision relating to the evening and the morning sacrifice.

VOL. IV.-Dec. 1833.

5 c

A LETTER FROM THE BISHOP OF LEIGHLIN AND FERNS TO THE CLERGY OF THE UNITED DIOCESES, ON THE CHURCH TEMPORALITIES ACT.*

MY REVEREND BRETHREN,-You have been called upon to enter into resolutions relative to a late act of the legislature, in an Address calculated to make a strong impression by the sincerity and zeal with which it is written. The subject is of such importance that I feel I should be wanting in my duty towards you, were I not to direct your attention to such of the principles on which our church is founded, and such of the laws by which it is governed, as appear to me to point out the line of conduct which you ought to pursue.

The situation in which you are placed by the law to which I allude, The Act relating to the Temporalities of the Church in Ireland, renders it particularly necessary that you should make yourselves acquainted with the nature and the extent of the obligations it imposes, that no doubts should remain upon your minds as to the manner in which it would be your duty to act, were my death to bring it into operation with respect to you.

The question appears to me to be confined within very narrow limits, and amounts merely to this. Ought the clergy of a diocese which an act of the legislature has, prospectively upon its becoming vacant, annexed to another, to submit themselves, when the vacancy does happen, to the bishop of that diocese to which they have been so joined ?

The case is analagous to one which occurred not long since. The crown appointed a coadjutor to an Archbishop of Dublin, incapacitated from performing the duty of his office by a lamentable malady, and no man doubted the power so to appoint, nor the duty of the clergy to obey. That the appointment was temporary, certainly was not an essential circumstance, as will appear by supposing that a layman had been appointed coadjutor, and that a clause had been introduced in the appointment, directing that he should hold confirmations in the diocese. Will it be doubted that obedience to such a clause would have been criminal?

The 37th article makes the distinction clear between " ruling all estates, whether ecclesiastical or temporal, and the ministering of God's word, or of the sacraments," and expressly denies the right of the crown to the latter.

It is this distinction which has been lost sight of in the Address, and which has occasioned my writing these observations. We

*The Letter of the Lord Bishop of Leighlin and Ferns, on certain matters frequently treated of in this Magazine, is of such importance that the Editor trusts his Lordship will pardon him for reprinting it entire.