be deriv'd into it and so make the much greater River and having made their way as so united some Leagues the Old River its Name and Memory are swallow'd up in the New so are the Gentiles forty two months merg'd in the Forty two months of the Beast and both coextend the Twelve hundred sixty days and no more SECT II. Of the two Communities and their two-fold state described within this Line of Time viz. The Church of Christ and its Sufferings the Kingdom of the Beast and its Tyranny shewing also there must be Season or intimate Time within Time at large I Have thus far settled the General Sciagraphy or Land-Scaph of this Prophetical Line of Time and shall now endeavour to make a farther penetration into the understanding of it and its several Characters by enquiry into its signification its extent in every one of these Characters and the Balance of every one of them each with the other and that not by an over-critical restraint of the following Disscourse to every Head but in such a communication of the Extent the balance of the Characters one with another that the most perfect knowledge of the whole may arise from them together as they most naturally fall one into the other It is then to be known in the Second General There are two states of Things and two kinds of Personages Second General and in successive Communities and Incorporations each of them are to be found both which appertain to this Line of Time and the Characters of Time are distinctly suited to each viz. to the tyranny of that King the Scripture-Prophecy calls the Beast and his Gentiles and to the Sufferings of the true Church and Servants of God under that Tyranny The whole mass of Time is therefore divided into the Time of the Night under the Conduct of the Moon the Governess as hath been said of the Night and into the Time of the Day and the Light under the Government of the Sun the Prince of the Day And this is agreeable to that long Line of Time Dan. 8. 14. viz. The twenty three hundred Evening-Morning for so they are expressed in the Hebrew that while the twenty three hundred notes by such a number the length of the space the Evening-Morning is all but one Evening and one Morning and so it is call'd The Vision of the Evening and of the Morning verse 26. As then it is called the Vision of the Evening and the Morning so the Evening is but One and the Morning but One. As they are 2300 Evening-Morning ver 14. it is signified the lesser portions of Time are taken out of that great Number Again As they are One Evening and One Morning it speaks the Time One continued Evening with a bright Morning at the end of it As they are twenty three hundred Evening-Morning it signifies so many Nights and Days or natural Nycthemers or prophetical Years in which the Children of darkness take the Evenings or Night under the Moon and the Children of Light have the Mornings or Dayes for their portion under the Sun of Righteousness with which the Church is cloath'd and hath the Moon even when it seems most to have the Ascendent under its Feet but their Morning or Day does not appear in its Brightness till All night's past and the bright Morning-Star shall appear The whole Mass of Time I say then or the Time Times Half Time is distributed into twelve hundred sixty dayes twice nam'd but can be but one and the same Twelve hundred and sixty and twice forty two months which taken as Lunar Time and single cannot be equal to Twelve hundred sixty dayes or so much Solar Time and taken double exceeds it and therefore must as hath been said and shall be prov'd coalesce and knit one into another as a due Point and so may be Two forty two Months and this as proper to the Children of the Night must be peculiar to the Beasts Tyranny and the Days distinct to the Children of Light and their Holy Martyry or Testimony though under Sufferings and Death it self The first of these or the Tyranny of the Beast is expressed by changing Laws and Times and wearing out the Saints of the most High by accomplishing to scatter the power of the Holy People by the Gentiles treading the Court and the Holy City under foot whereby the Tammith viz. the daily or continual Publick Service of God is taken away by making War with the Witnesses and Saints the Womans Seed and overcoming and killing them as may be seen by a compare of Dan. c. 7. c. 8. c. 11. c. 12. and Apocal. c. 11. c. 12. c. 13. The second State of Things or the Sufferings of the Church and Servants of God is expressed by the Witnesses and Servants of God worn out given into the Hand of the little Horn or Beast for he is call'd both Dan. 7. v. 8. 12. 25. compar'd lying dead cast down stamped upon scattered the Witnesses in Sackcloth and the Woman in the Wilderness so as to be hid from the Face of the Serpent All which appears in the places fore-cited Now that we may see how these States and so the Characters of Time are Implex'd and Enfolded one within the other First the Time Times Half Time are the common Womb and Continent of the whole Time And this Character is therefore given first Dan. 7. 25. And that it might be the more observable it is given again the second time Dan. 12. 7. And then to give a farther notice to it it is given a third time in the Revelation Apoc. 12. 14. But because the just space and duration of time times semi time cannot be concluded certainly by themselves they are slid into twelve hundred sixty dayes lying as I have said in the Bosome of twelve hundred ninety dayes as the just size and exact standard of the whole Time so that in its utmost Extent It and all its Characters must be equal and they can neither exceed nor fall short of Twelve hundred sixty Prophetical Days or Years that is neither the Time Times Semi or Half Time nor the three Dayes and a half which are but other words as we shall see for the Three Times and a Half Nor the twice Forty two Months can be either longer or shorter than the Twelve hundred sixty Years because therefore Fourty two Months of Lunar Time as they ought to be interpreted as hath been shewn are not equal to twelve hundred sixty Days or Years and that twice Forty two Months will much more exceed therefore the Forty two Months twice given must be two Forty two Months which by the Characters we shall be guided to we shall find at an exact Point coalescing or uniting into One as hath been already said And because Time Times Semi Time are both as long and as broad as the twelve hundred and sixty dayes and yet have a more pregnant Intimate part viz. the Season within the Time in
and this Time is fairly resolved into 75 years and then the 490 years of the 70 Weeks agreed by all Christians after which the 1335 must needs be and they must be the last of the 2300. So there is onely space for 400 necessary which during the Seals opening until the Trumpets sounding viz. from three years and a half or the last half week so long after the Resurrection to the Vulgar Year of our Lord 437. when the Western Empire under Valentinian the Son of Placidia began to be violently shaken by the Wind of the Trumpets and its Flourish blasted by the Fire and Hail of the first Trumpet mingled with Blood by the agreement of all History was four hundred years By all which Account we must needs be in or about the Twelve hundred and fiftieth year of those dark Twelve hundred and sixty and no more of them then about Ten remain when Christianity shall grow much brighter and clearer till the full cleansing of the Sanctuary or the New Jerusalem at 1772. Let us now then proceed to the Apocalyptical Account of this Line and the first Note of the Time is the Forty two Months and that is first given that it might exactly touch the taking away the Daily For whereas the Priests of Jesus Christ even all his pure Worshippers were to come into the Outward Court the Type of Publick Evangelical Worship or Spiritual Sacrifice and to fill it and his Kings under his Universal Kingdom or Monarchy were to Reign They were all seal'd up into a Beginning Retirement immediately after the Christian Empire of Constantine and the desolation of Heathenism by him in signification that that perfectly cleans'd Sanctuary nor that Kingdom should not yet appear in Glory but at the first Trumpet the Paganiz'd Antichristians crowded in under the very Title of Christs Priests or Servants and so took away the Daily and prepar'd the way to the Beasts surprisal of the Kingdom upon which the Witnesses put on Sack-cloth and the Woman or Church fled into the wilderness so that the Forty two months and the twelve hundred sixty dayes began together at the daily taking away as that Divine Person Jesus Christ the man in linnen had declared to the Prophet Daniel Dan. 12. and Apoc. 11. 2 3. And whereas there is in Daniel no mention of the Forty two months of the Gentiles nor of the Beasts forty two months which we shall be to consider in this Line also it is with admirable contrivance of the Divine Prophetick Spirit For in as much as the Time Times Semi-Time are so appropriated to the Beast as that they are never alienated from his Action and the Servants of God suffering under him and are as descriptive of him as the very Name Beast for Times in some cases are as descriptive of Persons and Things as Names as we all know what is meant by our last 41 or 71 apply'd either to Persons or Things Further in that Season Seasons Half-Season are absolutely proper to the Beast and that yet they respect principally the intimate part Time of which hath been spoken therefore Time Times Half Time could not be attributed to the Gentiles or the other Beast Rev. 13. For that had been an Entrenchment upon the Grand Beast And yet because the Beasts time of duration much more of his Regnancy was not so early as the Twelve hundred sixty dayes begun in the Sufferings of the Servants of God and that the Daily Service is no where said to be taken away by him but rather from him or before him and as in preparation to Dan. 8. 11. Marg. his rising there is of necessity some additional Character of Time to coextend the Time Times Semi Time as at large and equal to the 1260 dayes when the Line comes into so distinct a Fixation and none so fit as taken out of the 2300 Even and so declaring their Linage as these Forty two months of the Gentiles under the Influence of him whom the Scripture calls the other Beast both of the Eastern and Western Empire of which two Horns for the sake of that so notorious Dicholomy or Division of the Roman Empire into those two parts and of a Lamb for the pretensions they made to Christ are the Embleme of which Beast more is after to be spoken and whereof the Beast himself was no small part before from the first till his Regnancy Ap◠13. 10. Now these Gentiles and this other Beast which were to be Subjects of the Grand Beast have these Forty two months assign'd to them to prepare for this Grand Beast till his Rising to cause an Image to be made to him and to give Life to the Image that so the Beast that had been wounded in its sixth head might recover and live in its seventh head although it did not appear in his Infancy nor till He came to his Number or manly Age viz. at 666. when He took upon him as Prince and Lord of the intimate part of Time which is most precisely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Season Seasons Half Season All which is a full Answer to any Objection that the Universal Monarchy of the Beast cannot be trac'd so early as the Prophecy supposes Thus therefore the Gentiles tread the Court and Holy City the first Forty two months that is so long of them as till the Beasts Existence especially and indeed till his Time of Regnancy and that as Principals in the Apostacy After that their Forty two months are merg'd in the Beasts forty two months although for the Decorum or Grace of the Type they are given intire Forty two months And because the Beasts intimate Time or Season will be spent and exhausted and the Gentiles forty two months also expired before the 1260 dayes be expir'd He the Beast hath therefore full Forty two months power of duration Revel 13. 5. into which as was said the Gentiles forty two months fall and subside at the Beasts Regnant Time And by these is the Time at large furnished out for his Action to keep the Witnesses in Sack-cloth and the Woman in the Wilderness and also to continue the Gentiles treading the Holy Court and that the Daily Service may remain Taken away and to do many great Acts of Cruelty upon the Servants of God even after his intimate Time and possibly to give in little and as in Epitome a Recollection of the 1260 years in the last three years and half or some such proportion of Time when the Time of the Witnesses Testimony is so near finished and all this by vertue of his large permissory Commission given to him by God above that given to his Gentiles though He cannot expand or spread nor culminate or rise any more to the height of his intimate Time when it is once past And if there be such a Prince whom the Scripture calls a Beast that is a Paganiz'd Idolatrous Monarch the Gentiles must needs be his People and in his Service else he must
therefore there are so many Types so very proportionable to Events so agreeable to the Notes of Time and even so scituated in the Course and Series of the Revelation except that in some Chapters as 11 12 13 17 21 there are on great occasions Recollections and yet even those in order to going on as I have abandantly shewn I cannot understand why these things and their Explications should appear so strange and unreasonable to us But however the Glory of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ shall be unspeakably Great when the whole Administration of his Kingdom delay'd shall be drawn out of what he had so curiously depainted in the Prophecy of the beloved Daniel and the Apocalypse of the beloved Apostle John and with Admiration and Ravishment His Servants shall behold the one in the other Let all this perswade us to have kinder and more benign Inclinations to the Interpretation of this Prophecy which if we are the true Servants and Lovers of Christs Kingdom we have no reason to fear only the Apostasie and Enemies of it have reason to fear it And they indeed have and do still operate against its Exposition as knowing it speaks no good of them nor to them and which is wonderful convey inject and insinuate the same Disgust into the minds of many good men Seeing one great Reason of the unholiness of Life among Remark 7 the generality of Christians is the Apostasie prevailing against the Power of Christianity and Godliness under the Form of it in this we ought above all to overcome it It is impossible so excellent a Doctrine as of the Gospel should be environed and cover'd with such an outrage of Prophaneness and Wickedness if the force of its Beams were not intercepted and eclipsed In this therefore I say we ought most particularly to overcome in all the lustre of Christian Graces whereby we may shine as Lights in the midst of a crooked and perverse Generation For to this Overcomming all the Promises are made Rev. 21. 7. If we do not overcome the Apostasie in this we do not overcome it at all but sink into it while we never so much profess to abhorr it but if we overcome it by sincere Faith and Repentance and Fruits meet for those Graces so that we thus wash our Robes white in the Blood of the Lamb we may notwithstanding darkness and mistake in some things have right to enter through the Gates into the City to eat of the Tree of Life in the midst of the Paradice of God to drink of the Water of Life that runs through the midst of it but if we are in the foul Impurities of the Apostasie our dreadful doom is to be without the City as Dogs and to have our part in the Lake that burns with Fire and Brimstone where the Beast and the false Prophet are and the Devil that deceived them is at the end of all cast for ever Rev. 20. 10. ch 21. 8. SECT IV. A more particular Allocation or just placing of the States and Times one to another shewing the necessity of their enfolded Equality to and with one another I Have thus far in a more general view of the Particulars of this Line presented the compute of the Times and of each of their Characters with the correspondent States I will now more amply and particularly remonstrate upon the States and so adjust them to the Times and their Characters as may fully evince their close Connexion and the absolute and most necessary equality of all the States and Characters of this Line one to and with another And that we may plainly have together and under one Glance that which hath been spoken of and is farther to be spoken of and made good I thus delineate it The States are the Beasts Tyranny and the Sufferings of the Servants of God under it distinguish'd by various lively Remarks The Characters are those Notes of Time God hath affix'd to and determin'd upon these States making up one Line of Continuance or Duration of those States These two the States and the Characters are thus to be suited one to the other There is one common Continent or Womb of Time that incloses each State and all the Characters of Time given to each State that is Time Times half a Time with three days and a half declaring Time at large and intimate Time or Seasons There is one equal Standard-Line making certain and definite the space of that common Continent taken out of the 2300 Ev. Morn viz. 1260 going on to 1290. The State fitted to it is the taking away of the Daily Dan. 12. v. 11. Intimate Time taken out of that common Continent is twice given on the Beast's side viz. Season Seasons Half Season The States fitted to each are wearing out the Saints of the most High changing Times and Laws given into his hand Dan. 7. 25. scattering the Power of the holy People Dan. 12. 7. doing all these to the utmost or accomplishing to do them in the highest degree The same intimate Time is twice given to the Servants of God also viz. Three days and half to the Witnesses The State fitted to it is to be kill'd and to lye dead but not to be suffer'd to be buried or extinguish'd Revel 11. 7 8 9. and three Times and a half to the Woman whose State fitted to it is to be so in the Wilderness as to be hid from the Face of the Serpent but yet to be nourished Rev. 12. 14. The Time at large is twice assign'd on the Beasts part Forty two Months taken out of the 2300 Even or Nights given to the Gentiles The State fitted to them is treading the outward Court and Holy City whereby the Daily is taken away at the very Beginning of the 1260 lying in 1290 according to Dan. 12. 11. compar'd with Revel 11. 2 3. The second Time Forty two Months to the Beast himself Doing all he does to the last Continuance or Accomplishment to the last Moment is the State fitted to them Revel 13. 5. and both these Forty two Months twist into one Space equal to 1260 Days The same Time at large is twice adjusted to the Servants of God in twelve hundred sixty Days taken out of the 2300 Morn or Days once to the Witnesses and the State fitted to it is Prophecy in Sackcloth yet with great Vertues and Powers resident in them Revel 11. 3 4 5 6 7. and once to the Woman in the Wilderness yet as in a Place prepared by God where they should feed her Revel 12. 6. And these two 1260 Days are perfectly both one neither longer nor shorter than themselves Between the Time at large and Intimate Time or Season there is a Pillar erected to shew where Season begins and by proportion where it ends viz. The Beasts Number as Lord of the intimate Time especially and it is 666 from its Root 25 after the Resurrection to 725 and the State of it is That no man may buy
did not appear to be hurt during the time times half a time according to the Oath of Christ immediately therefore in pursuance of the former Symbol the Servants of God are seal'd the Worshippers worship not in an open but reserv'd Temple the Witnesses do not enjoy but prophecy and that in Sackcloth the Woman flies to her close Receptacle in the Wilderness and even in pursuance of this same Symbol the seven thunders are seal'd as we shall see Cap. 10. And all this to that very purpose that the Beast may have his time times till the Morning of the half-time when in Declaration of the Right of Christ even then to take the Kingdom because the half-time was entred as the third Day was in the Morning of Christ's Resurrection the Thunders began But that the Beast might have his whole half-time also the Thunders were again seal'd down For were not the Kingdom of Christ thus under Seal its Brightness would immediately consume the man of Sin and his Bestian Kingdom as will be seen at the end of the 1260 Days viz. Ann. 1697 in the first appearance of Christ's Kingdom and more fully at the Appearance it self 75 Years after Let us now inquire when this sealing had its Efficacy and we shall find it hath its Efficacy distinguishingly as to the fixing its Epoch or Beginning at the first of the first Trumpet and so on during the whole Time of the first and second Trumpets until the falling of the Star in the third Trumpet So that the Trumpets and the sealing necessarily begin together as they ought For we find it is thus expresly determin'd to the first of the first two Trumpets for nothing that was hurt in those two first Trumpets viz. the Earth nor the Sea nor any Tree was to be hurt till the sealing past And why was it so but that the Seal might have its defensive Vertue on the sealed which Defence was certainly as early as the hurt else it could not defend It is expresly continu'd all the first and second Trumpet by naming the Earth Sea and Trees for all these were hurt in the two first Trumpets But the Fountains are not nam'd nor the Sun c. not because the sealing did not continue for we find the express mention of it rising within the Time of the first woe Trumpet Revel 9. 4. as of a thing suppos'd to have continued all along But because the Spirit of God would lead us to the new date of Time viz. the Beasts forty two Months negotiated by the event of the third Trumpet or the Imperial Star falling which Star as all History knows fell at 475 immediately on which the Beast in prophetical Account succeeded as the eighth King So that then in the very space of the third Trumpet those Months began and the fourth Trumpet ran upon that new Line of the forty two Months concurrent with the 1260 Days and so forward till Both end at 1697 the one as Time of the Moon or Months the other as Time of the Sun or Days by which we know also when the 1260 days began viz. by computing and adjusting the Lunar Time of forty two months to the Solar Time 1260 days If the months began so famously at 475 The days that both may end together within time times half a time must begin thirty eight Years before or at 437 as hath been before intimated so as to be plainly understood but shall be fully proved Now because of all this the Spirit of God comprehends only what pertain'd to the first two Trumpets within the express security of not being hurt viz. the Earth and Trees of the first Trumpet and the Sea of the second Trumpet till the Servants of God were seal'd Revel 7. 2 3. shewing plainly that then the Efficacy of the sealing began where first the Earth and all green things were hurt in the first and the Sea in the second Trumpet and as it were to hint the Beasts forty two months falling within the third Trumpet and so going on in the fourth There is no mention of the securing the Fountains nor the Lights of Heaven until the Servants of God were seal'd which the Beast could not yet surrogate for being in his Infancy till a Star fell to the Earth Revel 9. 1. which by all Count was at the Time Phocas gave Universality to the Bishop of Rome Then Rome seems to be again enlightned not long before the Mahometan Hegire when the Locusts came forth and therefore then Divine Judgment pursues by three woe Trumpets because then the surprise of the Kingdom of Christ by the cheat of Antichrist reigning more appear'd But after another concurrent date of Time viz. the Five and five Months of the Locusts Revel 9. 15. 10. given new in the fifth Trumpet the sealing is there mention'd again and in the sixth Trumpet where the Hour Day Month and Year of the Horsemen began there is a parallel Symbol of Secresie and Security with the sealing viz. the true Worshippers crying out from the Altar of Incense where they were hid Revel 9. 13. within the first of which viz. of the Locusts fell in the Beasts intimate Time or Season with his Number 666 as shall be shewn Revel 13. ult Now by all these the Spirit of God does interpoint and distinguish the beginning of the Lines of several Times that fall in with the great entire Line of the 1260 Days and notes when they began which new Lines do some way or other note when that great Line began and when it shall end viz. by the Proportion those other Lines however beginning after hold to it all joyning with it when they are once begun and by that Proportion The Beginning must be 437 and the end of it 1697 as shall be shewn upon all of them Wherein also the Time remark'd with the Voices of the seven Thunders seal'd will admirably shew it self at 1517 when the last 180 Years or Half-time began at which Time the Division of so many States from Rome first appear'd also And the End of all at 1697 will declare it self So strongly although requiring strict Attention and Observation hath God secur'd the fixing of this Line both in its Beginning and End as shall be all along by Gods gracious permission to proceed made evident I shall but just salute the Third Enquiry and finish the first Point discours'd viz. its Beginning And because it joyns in assuring this Beginning I must as I say salute it And this Third Enquiry is to Research what is the meaning Enquiry 3 of this Grand Apocalyptical Symbol the Trumpets Now from the general Use and universal Signification of a Trumpet as an Alarm to War and the dismal consequences of it these Trumpets certainly signifie the same as appears by the course of the Trumpets for every Trumpet calls to some War and the seventh to the Battel of Armageddon They are therefore so many loud Sounds of the Indignation of God upon those
still preserv'd on the other side that the Imperial Torch however Flaming yet falling into the Water would be soon quenched while a burning Mountain resisted the contrary Element so Rome liv'd but the Emperour dy'd Rome Burns as a Mountain in the Sea and though it turn'd the Waters into Blood yet it surviv'd to ride aloft upon a new Universality The Flaming Taper did hurt while it flam'd but falling into Water must needs be short-liv'd And it was to dye that another sort of Principality might succeed it upon which Romes Grandeur a City Reigning over the Kings of the Earth might have the Guaranty of Prophecy even as of Providence to secure it for a longer time than by all Computation it had made the Epoch of Vrbs Condita or it had been Built I am yet to state justly and more at large what the Dragon Enquiry 5 means and how his Persecution of the Woman can agree with the Explanation of the Trumpets seeing both must be at the beginning of the Line because then was the Woman's first flight into the Wilderness when the Dragon persecuted her from whence arise these two Doubts How can these Trumpets that are the Alarms of Divine Doubt 1 Judgment and Displeasure upon the Antichristianiz'd Empire as was before declared be the Dragons Persecution of the Woman When the Beast or his Gentiles have the whole Time Doubt 2 Times Half Time and so the 1260 of the Womans Wilderness-state under their Domination and Tyranny does not the Dragons Persecution of the Woman and then of the Seed contradict the Assertion of this Time to the Beast That these two Doubts may be substantially resolved and so as to clear the whole progress of this Time with Relation to the Beast we must understand aright concerning the Dragon for a mistake in that confounds the whole order of the Prophecy The Dragon then as it is presented Revel 12. 3. with Seven Heads and Ten Horns hath a double meaning One proper to it as the sixth or Imperial Head of the Roman Empire which headship is always accounted to the whole Roman Beast in this Prophecy But when the Christian Emperour arose That Head became wounded and by degrees the Power and Conduct of it Transmigrated from the sixth to the seventh Head and Eighth King as is to be shewn upon the Symbols of the Beast But in all this it is of great Influence to the right understanding of this Prophecy to be known there is a more abstract signification of Draconism or of the Dragon viz. the Old Serpent deceiving the Nations into the Worship of himself under the disguise of those many Idol Gods and Demons they sacrificed and did service to when therefore this Idolatry and Demonolatry was demolished by Constantine and the Christian Emperours and the only True God in Jesus Christ and his Kingdom acknowledg'd at the Head of the Roman Empire Satan that Old Serpent was cast down from Heaven and Christ the manly Birth caught up thither Satan therefore as an Intelligence within at the Head and Spring of all is to be understood in this Dragon Revel 12. 7. The Roman Cesars as having the Imperial Monarchick Government of so great a part of the World at the Birth of Christ so along in the first Times of Christianity lay indeed in the midst of Nations and People and watched all the effects of the Kingdom of Christ and were ready to devour the manly Birth that was to rule the Nations with a rod of Iron and who had right to do so at his Resurrection and all along since But at the Time this Cesarian Dragon was acted by that Satan that invisible Spiritual Dragon and his Angels who made War against Christ who carried the Cesarian Dragon in a perpetual Hostility to the Kingdom of Christ and also most devoted to Idolatry While therefore Devils were worshipped under those several Names of Jupiter Mars c. and an Idolatrous Power was at the Head of the Roman Power Satan is accounted in Heaven and the rather so because the Title of Satan is not reckon'd purely of Fraud and Usurpation but By Permission and not only so but even in regard of Justice and divine displeasure against the Apostacy of humane Nature as it were of Commission so that he was overcome and cast down by the Blood of the Lamb as the true meritorious Cause appeasing that Wrath satisfying that Justice expiating the World by the Word of his Testimony as the Grand instrumental Cause and by the Martyrdom of Christians who loved not their Lives unto Death as a subordinate dispose of God in honour to his Justice against the horrible degeneracy of Mankind From hence whatever Power acted by Sathan to an aspiring to a supreme Residency in the Fourth or Roman Monarchy in the days of which Christ's Kingdom was foretold to be set up and of all Right ought to have been so speaking as to the Duty and Obligation of all Mankind because of his Sovereign Resurrection after his Death and Sacrifice of himself for the Life of the World and that then the Roman Monarchy was the Monarchy of the Oecumene or habitable Earth in Symbol of Prophecy whatever Power therefore did not then acknowledge that Kingdom nor that Truth of Christianity any way either seated in or attempting that Monarchy is under a Character of Draconick the Notion of which came into especial date since that Resurrection of Christ and his Right thereby to an universal Monarchy at which Time the Roman Cesareate arisen to that universal Monarchy from the Time of the more publick Notices of the Right of Christ inspir'd by Sathan with a Draconick Subtilty and watchfulness waited to devour that princely Birth of which Pharaoh's Cruelty to Gods typical first-born lying as a Dragon in the Egyptian Nile was a Type and was therefore by the most notable signancy of the Symbol invested with the Draconick Title But when the Acknowledgment of Jesus as Christ and Lord was made by the Christian Roman Emperour Constantine and his Successors Christ was then in eminent Type caught up to the Throne of God never to be dethron'd as we see he is not to this day notwithstanding the Combat of the Dragon and his Angels by Julian Argobastes the Roman Senate and others with Michael and his Angels But for all this the Woman the Church was persecuted by the rolling of the barbarous Nations upon that Empire who were Enemies to the Profession of Christianity at the first and so to the Kingdom of Christ and their Invasion upon the Rights of the Empire as Christs and on the Roman Church as eminent in the Profession of Christianity and having produc'd the Christian Emperour was both as design'd by Satan and reputed by God a Draconick Persecution of the Woman even as after the Mahometan Flood which came out of the Dragon's mouth to have swallowed up Christianity and that Empire together as it were wherever it could be found was on the very
now the Church was indeed out of view by the Apostasie introduc'd by the Gentiles the Beasts people under the other Beast so that the False Church hid the True as in a wilderness The Gentiles crowded the True worshippers into a clos'd Temple The Daily was taken away The witnesses were in Sackcloth where then could the True Church be seen All was scatter'd no Body of a Church appear'd but the Antichristian to this state things grew more and more under the Regnancy of the Beast till the Woman was fled from the Serpent himself All this is then to be accounted to the Beast serving the True Church by Gods overruling Hand so far as that it was out of the Dragons reach who was deceived thinking to strike the True but the False lay bleeding In the mean time Satan however in his Serpentine and draconick Nature jealous of any thing of Christ even in his own Kingdom first persecutes the Empire by the Barbarians where He knew the woman very lately was by her bringing forth the Manly Birth He struck at it by way of distinction in his own Aym but finding He could not reach it by the rude strokes of the Barbarians but the Eagles wings had convey'd it away and finding that those Barbarous Nations setled by degrees into the Antichristian Christianity and so help'd it forward into the wilderness He then resolved to be sure of it attempted to swallow it by the Mahometan Flood But This neither distinguishing it nor succeeding because the Bestian Earth drunk up the Flood not only receiving it upon it self but maintaining the name Doctrine Profession and Church state of Christianity so far as is necessary absolutely to Antichristianisme and its Kingdom so drunk up the Flood by setting it self against the blasphemous monstrous Mahometan Imposture and with a deadly hate because Mahometanism is no less against Antichristianity than Christianity so the Serpent disappointed is wroth and as so necessitated determines now to sift for his Ends by Draconism refin'd into Beastianism Heathenism guilded with Christianity but pointed and edg'd with Antichristianisme which is a compound of the Dragon and the Beast And because this Antichristian state allowed such a thing as a Christian Church tho but it self only He can make war only with the womans seed And to the purpose and as we say with a Vengeance He makes War with the womans seed who keep the Commandments God and hold as witnesses the Martyry of Jesus that is by the Beast whose History immediately follows cap. 13. and to whom the Dragon deputed his power and seat even Great Authority which Delegation the other Beast that spake as a Dragon viz. the False Prophecy received and managed for him the Grand Beast until He came to his Image and Number and so the Dragon and the Beast continue together till the Beast is taken and cast into the Lake and the Dragon and all his Draconism bound Chain'd and Seal'd up by the Kingdom of Christ appearing Rev. c. 19. c. 20. v. 1. And this is the True History of Draconism as entred into Bestianism by which it plainly appears the scattering of the Power of the Holy People or the state of the Woman in the Wilderness is wholly owing to the Beast and his Bestianism whose are Time Times Half Time and that the Dragon and his Persecution were wholly defeated by the Bestian Apostacy conveying the Church from the Serpent till He wrought by the Beast and made over his Power to Him in revenge upon the Womans Seed it self being still safe Now how admirable is all this according to the Symbols the Beast still in all appearance and semblance secures Christ on the Throne while it supplants his true Kingdom and Power for how could Antichrist's Kingdom stand if Christ were not in Title upon the Throne But how could it stand if Christ did indeed reign No it presently falls then or rather vanisheth away Again the Wings of the Apostatiz'd Empire while they convey the true Church out of all ordinary Visibility yet secure it in the Name and Notion of a Church the Beast's Earth thus helps it for a Christian Church is his Claim and Title to his Kingdom but it must be hidden for a true Christian Church visible destroys his Kingdom Thus all things even to Astonishment at the divine Prophetick Wisdom have a Harmony in Truth greater than that of the Spheres in Imagination Mahometans and Pagan Infidels by subverting Christianity necessarily overthrow Antichrist's Kingdom also it is in indispensable need of Christianity so far as a Pretence goes but the Brightness and native Glory consumes it while Christianity under a false mask supports it true Christianity scorches it to nothing as will be seen at the Vial pour'd into the Sun true Christianity and the Church therefore must be hidden and in the Wilderness and its Seed persecuted as if not of the Church that false Christianity and the false Church may reign in its Absence under its Name and Appearance Thus while the Dragon persecutes in his Aim and Intention the Christian Church the Apostacy pretending it self the Vniversal Church conveys the true Church into a Wilderness and so befriends the Notion of a Church while it conveys it out of sight the Dragon by the Beast makes War with the Seed and scatters them that they could not possibly be found in the Body of a Church not but that the Church was truly visible in the single Witnesses however anathematiz'd but it could not be reach'd in a Body even by the Serpent himself for it was not in a Body and yet the Notion of a Church was dear to the Antichristians for They and the Beast usurp'd it At this Time therefore according to this Prophecy it could be no Argument against the Church Where was it or It was not visible in a Body for it was not to be visible in a Body but in the Suffering scatter'd Seed So that it was hid from the very Serpent And yet even to the end of the 1260 Days there is a Mahometan Draconism levelling at Christ Christianity and the true Church but falling almost wholly upon the false Church and the Antichristian King and his Subjects who is therefore always principally concern'd to drink up this Flood and so helps the true Church by his Earth There is nothing at the present I can think necessary to add to this Explication of the Apocalyptical Dragon but that the whole Vision Rev. 12. to v. 13. is presented as in Heaven so that the Assumption of the manly Birth the Joy upon the Dragon 's casting down upon the Kingdom of our God being come c. is given as in Heaven and is reserved also in Heaven till the glorious Appearance of Christ and there is no more but such an imperfect cognisance of those great Things upon Earth as was given by the Christian short Empire to be expected till that glorious Kingdom of Christ at the end of the Beast's Reign which may
their Corrupt Antichristian state and utterly abolished and an Apocalyptical Evangelical seven shall take their Room so that the Successours in their Places shall have such a Sense of this Great Judgment on them as to Give Glory to God For that at this Time the whole Antichristian State was converted and repented I cannot understand because of the after course of this Prophecy But a great alteraiion in the Posture of the Christian World will then be made It will be of another Model as great a change as seven thousand Orders of Men falling under the sense and influence of this Apocalyptical Prophecy and modelled according to that can make shall then be so that in the whole Succession to the Kingdom of Christ signified by the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 They shall give Glory to God the God of Heaven in place of the Man of Sin who sat in the Temple of God shewing himself that He is God and in place of Idols of Gold and Silver Then the second Woe shall pass away Mahometanism whatever Existence it may have in the World shall no longer remain the Woe of the Christian World because when Antichristianity the Provocation of so great a Judgment is fallen the Judgment it self shall also remove although Euphrates may yet continue a River till at the sixth Vial it is dried up yet it shall not so overflow as hitherto it hath done And this Woe is always to be esteem'd the Boundary of the 1260 Days for their ending for till that Woe is past they cannot end for till then the Witnesses do not rise perfectly nor come out of Sackcloth till then the Beasts forty two Months of being a Bestian Power do not end nor the 1260 of the Woman in the Wilderness but then they shall all end together Therefore the Crashings and Smoaking of the Mahometan Mountain at this Time gives an alarm to the Expectation of these things and however the Antichristian Power by its Contributions concurr with the Ten Kings to the passing away of that Woe yet let it certainly know that at that very same time and by those very Ten Kings falling off from it it s own Decarchy or Ten-horn'd Supremacy shall fall into the Dust also For as we may be assured The Reformation the rising of the Witnesses are not yet at their top because that Woe is not yet pass'd so we may be assur'd All the Symbols and Emblems of the Antichristian City and Prince as roll'd down from their height and of the Kingdom of Christ rising although being future we cannot so certainly expound them yet they shall in their significancy be fulfill'd and made good to the utmost as those have been before them which we more fully comprehend by History And that all must be fulfill'd within the 180 Years from 1517 or from the Reformation begun then which must be by 1697. For that so the mouth of the Lord hath spoken by this Prophecy I now proceed to argue I must rely upon the proof I have already offer'd along this Line That I have made true motions and progresses upon it in Events of so great Concernment and universal Notoriety to the Christian World as to be most worthy to be the Discoveries of so Sovereign and Imperial a Prophecy given by the Prince of the Kings of the Earth receiv'd from his Father to shew to his Servants digested into a methâ—â—â— and Series of Time most exact and contriv'd into such â—onderful and self-demonstrating Symbols as that they may be found out by them that are stirr'd up by God to Read and so propos'd to those whom God enclines to Hear that Both may come to the Blessedness promis'd by understanding them aright Rev. 1. 3. In comparison of which Events and their order and series as I have presented them the little and close the private and particular points of Story without an equal and just Admensuration to Apocalyptical Time upon which some Names so great that for Reverence I dare not Name have fallen are but as Relations fit for private Discourse and unfit for a grave History or like the Description of small Rivers Hills or Vills unworthy the Title of a Geography and yet such a Prophecy so much below its own Majesty do such Interpretations make it Now according to this so illustrious so orderly Series of Events it will easily appear by Reflection on what is written The Reformation must necessarily be determin'd to the last 180 of the 1260 Years so as to determine at 1697. But I shall yet offer these two particular Arguments The very Time of the Pillar of the Beasts Number erected Argu. 1 I date to 725 or 26 as the solemn Representation of it by the beginning of the Iconoclastick War and so of the Beasts War with the Witnesses The very Time of the Death of the Witnesses I date to 787 represented by the second Council of Nice damning all that refus'd to worship Images the one 72 Years before the two Times of 360 Years a-piece the other only ten Years before Let us now by proportion of the three Years and a half of Elijah's Drought and the three days of our Lord's Death adjust the Expiration of the Intimate Time Times half a Time and as near Ten years after the two whole Times of intimate Time expir'd at 1517 we find the Witnesses standing on their Feet so eminently as that they began to esteem the Thunderbolts of Antichristian Excommunication brutish and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in a solemn and Oracular manner as from this very Prophecy to be called Protestants Which Appellation however it began on particular occasion and as only in a providential Representation to agree History with Prophecy as I all along observe yet it hath been espous'd by the whole Reformation and it is by secret instinct derived probably beyond their Intention from these two Apocalyptical Witnesses For what is Protestation or Protestancy but a publick avowed Witness against the Tyranny of the Beast And that so solemn a Denomination is of no small Account appears by that so great Memorial of the Disciples being call'd Christians Acts 11. 26. And as the Pillar of Intimate Time was erected at 725 or 26 71 or 72 Years before the two whole Times so seventy one or seventy two Years after the two whole Times at 1517 lead us to the famous 1588 from which Time the most Catholick Kingdoms so call'd decay'd in Pomp and Reputation not to say the whole Austrian Family And had not the Thunders been seal'd and the Book retired into Prophecy the Parallels had been more illustrious but Sixteen hundred ninety seven shall I am fully assur'd answer for all The Disposal of this Time of the Reformation as it hath Argu. 2 been given is so demonstrative as not to be avoided for the Witnesses Prophecy in Sackcloth 1260 days Twelve hundred sixty days we are assur'd are three times and a half at their full extent for so long the Woman is in the
Wilderness coequally in both Whenever the 1260 Days end the Witnesses Apoc. 12. 6. v. 14. Apoc. 11. 14. ascend then the sixth Trumpet and its Woe passes away Then the seventh Trumpet sounds Let us lay all this to the Oath of Christ Dan. 12. 7. There shall be Time Times half a Time and all these things shall be finish'd and to the Oath Revel 10. 6. Time shall be no more but till the seventh Trumpet then the Mystery of Christ's Kingdom succeeding shall be finish'd These two Oaths so solemn as to have no parallels so equal and even in all their aweful Rites except we observe a difference in the mention of only Hand in the Apocal and the Right and Left in Dan. as if signifying in the Apocal The half-time was yet remaining These two so solemn Oaths can by no means contradict but must confirm one another one looks forward on Time to come and assures there shall be Time Times half a Time and all things shall be finish'd the second looks back on all but the half-time already past and assures there shall be no more whole Time but at the seventh Trumpet to which there remain'd only half time All should be finish'd So the Half-time is secur'd to the Beast in a Party-Kingdom 1. By sealing the Thunders for while they were seal'd the Kingdom of Christ could not perfectly appear seeing their sealing continues that Delay of it all along signified by sealing 2. By the express Allowance of time at large till the seventh Trumpet For when it is said Time shall be no more But in the days of the seventh Trumpet All shall be finished It is a certain Implication Till then there shall be some Allowance of Time although not a whole Time nor so much as a whole Half time nor any Time at all of the Elevation Intimate Time was of or of a Kingdom so entire to the Beast Whoever then knows these two Oaths will compare them whoever compares them will conclude There must have been before the last Oath Time Times and some part of Half-time that the first Oath may be true he will also conclude There can be no more than Half-time and not that whole for there can be only an imperfect Remnant of time after this last Oath else How can this last Oath be true And yet it is impossible any part of the 1260 Days or three times and a half equal to them should run beyond the end of the sixth or the very entrance of the seventh Trumpet for it is expresly said when the Witnesses ascended which they could not do till the end of the 1260 Days Prophecy in Sackcloth the seventh Trumpet immediately sounded Thus these 1260 Days are every way bounded by the seventh Trumpet they cannot end sooner for then there would be Time after the Oath more than the Half-time and the seventh Trumpet not sound which must not be And they cannot run beyond the first of the seventh Trumpet because they must needs end when the VVitnesses so perfectly rise as to ascend as before said which is before the seventh Trumpet or 1697. Whither then must these 1260 days reflow from the seventh trumpet beginning to sound Into the spaces of what trumpet or trumpets as into their proper Channel Into the sixth trumpet they certainly do but that cannot receive them all for allowing after the taking of Constantinople sixty four Years for the making the Experiment of the Impenitency of the rest of Men the half-day immediately appear'd joyning then the half-time or day of 180 Years to 64 that Space receives only 244 by vertue of the Mahometan Hour or a defined Space allowed them beyond their Day Month and Year To which day month year being 395 add the 244 and they are 639 which is the whole and that a very long space of the sixth trumpet delaying the seventh also that comes and quickly dispatches to hereafter But seeing this trumpet holds but 639 somewhat above half of the 1260 Days they must be thrown back into the fifth trumpet which having room but for 435 as we have before found from the Hegira 622 the remaining 186 must regurgitate into the four first trumpets where they find just entertainment to 437 even as all these accounting forward determine from space to space at the same 1697. Turning things thus every way then we may find how the order of this Apocalyptical Prophecy lies upon this Line of Time and how and with what secret Invitations the Characters or Dates of Time are call'd after the Voice of the Lyon and the Thunders-Voices at the Reformation to every prophetical Symbol either of the Sufferings of the Servants of God or of the Apostacy and Tyranny of the Bestian Kingdom engraven with them and first why although the Characters of Time began at the Beginning of the trumpets they are not given till after the Vision of the Reformation Chapt. 10. 1. First then till after the opening of the Kingdom of Christ at the Reformation it was neither Condecent to the prophetical types of either the dark obscure and conceal'd state of the Servants of God nor the entireness of the Beast's Kingdom that either the Servants of God should be rescued from their Death and Condemnation nor the Beast discover'd to be the Beast as he was at the Reformation for how then should his Kingdom stand or the VVitnesses lye dead each their Time Prophecy therefore observes the order of the Events themselves foreseen and foretold even as the Beast was believ'd to be no Beast but the Vicar of Christ all the Time of his Kingdom entire and the VVitnesses Hereticks and no VVitnesses so in the Prophecy till the Book of the Kingdom open'd by the Claim of Christ we neither read of the Beast nor of the VVitnesses nor of the Gentiles nor of the Woman in the Wilderness but by some very silent Intimations This Order became the Prophecy and its Emblems 2. The History of the trumpets taking in in the sixth trumpet the entire History of the 1260 Days goes on to the end of the sixth trumpet in particular and of all the trumpets in general even to the end of the seventh and that grand Scope or Aim in its Eye the history of the Witnesses comes hereby to be deliver'd whole and entire also as also of the Bestian Kingdom in one summary Platform very agreeable to the Composure of the best histories that delay any principal Subject its Treaty till the due season whereas the end of the 1260 Days of the VVitnesses and of the Bestian Fall could not have been given as the end of the 1260 Days if the whole had not been taken and comprehended together seeing till the end of that sixth trumpet that end proper to each did not appear and yet something like it did appear before at the Reformation 3. The end of the sixth trumpets Woe as it joyns the end of the witnesses Sackcloth the Fall of the great City and makes one the
bound to the other had not been set with so great advantage so interlocking part of the 1260 with the sixth trumpet and especially the Reformation singled out as so distinct a Time from both the time and times or the 1080 of the 1260 Days and so made a half-time or 180 to it self glorious in the Beginning seal'd in the Middle and glorious again in the End if it had not been thus before the whole 1260 Days given together For either there must have been more open and declar'd Distributions of the time by it self of the two times by themselves of the half-time by it self than agrees with the admirable Contrivance and Mysticness of this Prophecy or else the distinction could not have been understood nor made out as now it may But the Appearance of Christ the Lyon roaring the Thunders proclaiming What but Christ's Kingdom The Book open'd and above all the Oath time should be no more could no way comport with the former Oath till the half-time dawning The Beast's Kingdom could bear no such shock sooner for how should he then have had time times half-time viz. a part of the first and last and the whole of the middle in entire Regnancy So that Reading afterwards of 1260 Days call'd also three days and a half so significantly to this purpose and three times and a half we know assuredly what Time of the Day it must be when such a roaring of the Lyon was and of the Thunders and such an Oath that Time should be no more and so much of the Beast's Kingdom torn from him as a Pledge and Earnest of the whole to be so rent from him It must be at the Half-time And had there not been a sealing of the Thunders and an enclosing the Book in the Prophet's Belly we might have suppos'd Then had been the end of those Days and the Reformation to have been all that was to be expected of Christ's Kingdom till Eternity But by both these determin'd before the 1260 Days or other Characters of Time given we have a most certain Gauge of the half-time of the Reformation and of the end of that ten-folded Kingdom of the Turkish Woe of the Witnesses Sackcloth together so that if the Beginning was at 1517 The end must be at 1697 which is the Thing undertaken to be shown To shew now in the second Place how in the just order of the Prophecy each Character or Date of Time may be assign'd to each State of the Servants of God in their Sufferings under the Bestian Kingdom It may thus be made not only plain and intelligible but admirably harmonious and the interweaving of the Prophecy with it self and with the Prophecy of Daniel be clearly understood After Christ's Claim of his Kingdom at the Reformation as describ'd Chap. 10. The Vision of the Temple measured and Chap. 11. of the Witnesses in Sack-cloth and dying under the victorious Beast and so rising is given entire in signification that the Beasts Kingdom could not be disturb'd nor his Time and two Times interrupted with any part of such a Vision till the half Time appearing when that and the Vision of that had been given and the first Glory of it seal'd Then things were ripe for this after Vision for any part of which they were before unripe unripe as to the Condemnation of the Beast and the Vindication of the Witnesses before the half Time Unripe as to the rising of the Witnesses till the seal'd Thunders had Post-pond that rising And so the Angel that had bidden John Eate the Book Ordered him a Reed bids him arise and measure the Temple of God c. For the outward Court and City the Gentiles should tread under foot forty two Months and then saith the Lord I will give Power to my two Witnesses and they shall Prophecy 1260 days c. Thus the Altar of Incense necessarily here intended being the only Altar in the Temple leads us back to the Altar of Incense just before the Trumpets where the Prayers of All Saints were sent up and where attending without in the publick Worship yet pure They were commanded into the Temple shut up at the First Trumpet as from that Time the 1260 Rev. 8. 4. days Hereupon the Daily Service was Taken away at the very 1260 Beginning joyn'd with the 30 more in the 1290 and so the 42 Months and 1260 Days are related to so many Evenings and Mornings of the 2300 Evenings Mornings Dan. 12. 11. Dan. 8. 13 14. of the Vision of the daily taken away and the entring in of the Gentiles first by Constantines Conversion then by Theodosius's Victory over them forcing them into the Profession of Christianity and completed by the Barbarians inrode into the Empire at the first Trumpet semblanc'd gentiliz'd Christianity At the same Time and for the same Time of 1260 days the Woman the Church after the deliverance from the Pharaoh-like Dragon goes into the Wilderness Her Seed the 144000 of the twelve Tribes and Apostolical Church being Revel 7. seal'd under the Witnesses herein like Moses and Aaron also But That Prophetick History being before this systeme of the Trumpets is deriv'd higher from the Dragon as necessary to Revel 12. introduce and to derive down the History of the Beast that follows Chap. 13. And having shewed both by the early sealing As deriv'd from the Dragon and the sudden Account of the Woman flying into the Wilderness the violent Inclination of things to the Apostacy after the Gentiles coming into the Profession of Christianity with their Emperour The very entrance into the Wilderness is just at the first Trumpet where another sort of Gentiles were crowding also as well upon the Empire as the Church For then as hath been made out the sealing first obtain'd its Effect although declar'd before At the Third Trumpets Complement of Effect the Imperial Power ceasing The Beast enters his Existence and hath his forty two Months assign'd for that Existence from first to Rev. 8. 10. with chap. 13 5. last which forty two Months uniting with those of the Gentiles run parallel with the 1260 days All which hath been fully Argued At the Beasts Number 666. Intimate Time enters and conjoyns it self with the Witnesses three days and a Half with Revel 11. 9. c. 12. 14. c. 7. 25. Dan. c. 12. 7. the Womans Time Times and half Time with Daniels Time Times half Time of wearing out the Saints of the most high and scattering the Power of the holy People At this Intimate Time or Hour as it is also call'd Emphatickly The Ten Kings as his Horns receive Power with him Rev. 17. 2. He fulfils all Types of himself both in Dan. and the Revelation Arm'd with their Power He commands Himself and his Revel 13. Image to be worshiped by an Idolatry or Image Worship so blasphemous to God and his Saints makes War with the Saints and kills them Now in each of these Particulars
four Beasts in the third Seal in the very Reign of that Mirror of Magistratical Justice Alexander Severus presented with the Ballances in his Hand weighing out this Time just at the half Time or 202 years from the Resurrection or 237 of Vulgar Account from the Incarnation to which 202 Years added as the other half Time the Apostacy enter'd at 437 and then the Trumpets sounded to the Empires Ruine And how fitly is the daily Service at its just and even Ballance symbol'd by the exact care of just Weight and Measure according to the Charge on the Prince in the Prophet Ezek. without any Injury to the Wheat Barley Oyl and by Concomitancy no daily Oblation being without it Wine and as it were on purpose to shew us it was not the Levitical but according to the Unceremonial Simplicity of Gospel Worship the spiritual Sacrifice that is intended Barley is added which had no Place in the daily Levitical Oblation Now to explain this Symbol I desire a diligent Compare of Rev. 6. 6. Exod. 29. 40. Numb 28. 7. Ezek. 45. 9 10. c. Oh infinite and supream Dispose that changes Times and Remark Seasons as it pleases having first drawn them in an entire Table lying always before it where every Thing is beautiful in its own season and so every thing shall at last appear before Holy Angels and Saints and even extort the Confessions of Angry and Male-content Spirits How admirably hath it seal'd and open'd in this course of Seals and for his own Glory suffer'd a new sealing by surprise upon his Kingdom when that first sealing was taken off that he might bring Good out of Evil Light out of so long obscurity of the Apostacy that even then when the Empire or Vniversal Monarchy of the World was risen out of Heathenism into the Acknowledgment of the only true God and the one Mediator Jesus Christ suffered it to relapse into the new Heathenism of Antichristianism Even so Father who hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to Babes it seemed good in thy sight For thou hast what Time thou pleasest to whom a Day and a thousand Years are equal to display thy Kingdom in within the most perfect Measure of Time viz. a cubical thousand Years and then in a boundless Eternity To him then who sits on the Throne and to the Lamb who hath the sealed Book yet in his Hand and is even ready to unseal it into his Kingdom within Ten Years to be proclaim'd be Glory Blessing Salvation Dominion Obedience for ever and ever Amen An Explication of Daniel 's Grand Line of Time as given in his four last Chapters SECT I. OF the Vision of the Daily taken away and therein of the 2300 Ev. Morn or the Vision call'd the Vision of the Ev. Morn in general on Dan. chap. 8. Page 1. SECT II. That this Vision begins at the Persian Monarchy and the Proof of it Page 8. SECT III. In which a Line of 75 Years precedent to the 70 Weeks is asserted and endeavour'd to be proved Dan. 9. Page 24. SECT IV. Gives the Proof that the Time of the Words going forth was the first 75 Years of the 2300 Ev. Mor. Page 28. SECT V. Of the 70 Weeks themselves in brief the second Line of the 2300 Even Morn Page 32. SECT VI. Brief Remarks on Daniel's last and longest Vision are made from Part to Part. Page 35. SECT VII Of the whole Line of Time from the Resurrection of Messiah unto the Time of Blessedness in the Lotts of the New Jerusalem and its Royal Priesthood on Dan. 12. v. 4. c. to the end Page 45. SECT VIII Wherein is given a Prefatory Survey of the whole Apocalyptical Prophecy Page 52. SECT IX Wherein a Proof is given The seven Churches carry with them a Line of Time contemporizing with the whole Apocalyptick Time Page 62. SECT X. Of the third Line of Time in the Grand Line of 2300 Even Morn or of the seven Seals from the Resurrection shewing it extends to a space of 400 Years Apoc. c. 4 c. 5. c. 6. c. 7. c. 8. Page 72. Of the Great LINE OF Prophetical Time In XXII Sections viz. The 1260 Days of the Witnesses and the Woman in the Wilderness Apoc. c. 11. 3. 12. 6. SECT I. Of the Ninefold Repetition of this Line and its several Characters shewing 1. That Time Times Half a Time must each signifie first Years then Years of Years 2. That Days must signifie either first Days of Years in the 1260 Days and then each of the three Days a Year of Years and proportionably in the Half Time and Half Day 3. The Months can be no other than Lunar Months and so must signifie such Months of Lunar Years as are proportion'd to the 1260 Days as Lunar Time is to Solar THE Great Line of Time in the Eye of Prophecy Position and upon which it is most intent as drawn for the latter Times and approaching so near the final Accomplishment of all Prophecy at this very Time is the Time Times and Half Time call'd also Three Days and a half Twelve hundred Sixty Days and Forty two Months All of which even as each of them concurr though in different manner as shall be seen into One Line of Twelve Hundred and sixty Years and are coeval to the space of the six first Apocalyptical Trumpets That this Line may be better understood and Apprehended It is first to be well observ'd in these following Grand Heads or Generals of Discourse This Line of Time is nine times to be found in Sacred First General Prophecy Twice in Daniel it is called Time Times Half a Time once 1260 Days though concealed somewhat by Dan. 7. 25. and Dan. 12. 7. Dan. 12. 11. joyning it with Thirty more for twelve hundred and sixty are made to lye in the complex of Twelve hundred ninety Dayes In the Apocalyptick Prophecy it is first made known by Forty two Months* then by Twelve hundred sixty Days* Apoc. 11. 2. Apoc. 11. 3. Apoc. 11. 9. Apoc. 12. 6. Apo. 12. 14. Apoc. 13. 5. then by Three dayes and a half* then again by Twelve hundred sixty Dayes* then is again reassum'd the Time Times Half a Time* and lastly the Forty two Months are the second time assign'd the observation of which Repetition and Variation and Order of both in giving this space of Time is of great Instruction as we shall see in its proper place for the understanding Prophecy That then which I shall first address our Thoughts unto shall be to consider every Character of Time given us in Prophecy by its self with its Signification and Extent and the Assurances it is of such signification and Extent then the Balances of the Characters one with another and lastly their several Epochs and Periods The first Character of Prophetick Time is Time Times Half a Time or if translated exactly either according to the Character first
the beginning of this Line which is one great Confirmation that we are upon the true Time of it for to declare this as it were with Industry there are even thirty joyn'd to the 1260 and more openly Three Fifteens or Forty Five to the 1290 that we may thereby be engag'd to look back upon the whole Line and find it throughout so compacted as may be easily computed and hath been before observ'd on Daniel's Vision 3. Each Community hath its just share in the intimate and full extended Time of this Line and each twice given The Beast hath first his intimate Time twice given in Daniel and by two forty two months given first to his Gentiles till his own rising and then forty two Months to himself he hath the utmost extent of Time Times half time as before declared and drawn out of the 2300 Evenings In just correspondence with which the Servants of God as collected and congregated in the Woman the Church that they might not be accused as having Relation to no Church and single in the Witnesses and the Seed who have the Witness that Apo. 12. 17. the Church might not seem a Notion onely have each one and the same 1260 da. drawn out of the 2300 mornings assign'd to them and the Witnesses three dayes and a half and the Woman three times and a half or season or intimate Time answering the Beasts intimate Time who must have the Servants of God as a subject to work upon while his Tyranny lasts Now that the Time at large or the Twice 1260 Days must needs be the same and differ only in notion as the Church and the Witnesses or the Seed that have the Witness of Jesus do is most evident because lying within the same Continent of Time Times Semi Time and being both of the longest reach and exactly of the same size it is not possible they should begin or end sooner one than another as we have found it possible the Gentiles and the Beasts months may do For neither are they so united as the Woman and the Witnesses And their months though of the same size one with another are yet not of an equal extent to time times half time at their full length nor to the 1260 dayes the just measure of the three times and half although both the Forty two months uniting as we have said are neither longer nor shorter than the 1260 dayes nor than the Three Times and half the common Womb of all And even so the three Times and half of the Woman and the three dayes and half of the Witnesses must be the same also seeing the Witnesses and the Woman are the same and the 1260 dayes the same and no difference but only notional as was explain'd For if they were different the Woman should have no parallel to the three dayes and half of the Witnesses nor the Witnesses have any parallel with the three times and half of the Witnesses which as most unbecoming so Uniform a Type are impossible also in such a sameness Thus the Marches or Out-lying Borders as well as the Intimate Time are full on the side of both Communities the Beasts Tyranny and the Sufferings of the Servants of God The last Seventy five years by the Voices Revel 14. and by the Vials Rev. 16. move on to the two utmost Pillars of Time It is done It is done Rev. 16. 17. Rev. 21. 6. Object In the former or after Parts of this Discourse I offer as I hope most Convictive Proofs of all these things in particular and answer all Objections I shall only at this time remove this one viz. There seems no more reason to understand the forty two Months as Lunar Months than the days of Years as Lunar Years Answ There is very great difference for if we look throughout the Scripture and the whole manner of Jewish Computation of Time we shall find They always understood Months Lunar Months and the very Solemnity of their New Moons absolutely requir'd it so that to understand them otherwise must needs be to understand against that constant use of Scripture and the Importance of the Name of their Months Scripture uses But now their Years were so necessarily Solar Years for there can indeed be no Year but strictly Solar that they most industriously provided to Adequate their Lunar Time to their Solar by Intercalations and Inserted Months or a double Adar which was their last Month of the Year we every Leap-Year by a double Twenty Eighth of February As may be seen by the Learned in that Excellent Tract of Maimonides of Intercalations which gives great light to this whole Matter As shall be farther taken notice of in the after Management of this Discourse Having given this general View of this Grand Prophetical Line of Time which appears to be of sovereign Use to the Church of God by the so often Repetition of it I think it necessary to make these Practical Remarks upon it for the universal profit of all that read it It ought to administer no Scandal to us that Christianity Remark 1 hath yet had no greater Effect in the Universe upon Jews Mahometans Pagans That it hath not won upon the world to an universal Conversion to it That it hath not prevail'd upon Christians themselves to higher degrees of Religious and Holy Affections and Actions That it hath not reconcil'd Men more to one another and made the Wolf and the Lamb to lye down together That it hath not fill'd the Earth with the knowledge of God as the Waters cover the Sea That it hath not deriv'd down a more universal state of outward Blessing Prosperity Peace and Happiness For these are the great Promises and Pretentions of the Kingdom Christ design'd to erect in the World now an Enemy hath done all this in the Wisdom of God and Christ the old Dragon the Serpent Satan hath inhabited and acted a Bestian Empire first as Pagan and in the very appearance of a Dragon watching to devour the manly Birth of Christianity and since That Empire became Christian in a Bestian Kingdom of Apostasie and this hath surpris'd and cut off the blessed Emanations of Christianity and the Gospel and made the Christian World except in some small chosen Parts of it like the Wilderness like Heathen Pagan Nations and Kingdoms full of Scandals to the great hinderance of the other parts of the World from submission to the Scepter of Christ or taking upon them his Name and Profession and made ineffectual this Profession to the very Professors of it And this hath been lo these twelve hundred and fifty years wait only till the ten are run out also and you shall see a greater change in the World than ever yet it hath known Christianity shall then prevail more in a little time than it hath done ever yet The Light of one day shall be as the Light of seven till it grows brighter and brighter to the perfect Day of Christs Kingdom the first
or sell that hath not the Mark or Name on his Right-hand or on his Fore-head or the Name or the Number of the Name nor so much as live if he doth not worship the Image The end of which intimate Time is by Proportion 1517 and so on Rev. 13. 15. to the end But now besides this measure of intimate Time because the Beast is Lord of Time Times Half a Time and so constituted by God his Forty two Months are an exact Measure also of the whole Line beginning at that most famous Epoch so well known to History the Cessation of the Western Empire 475 whence his Forty two Months to be set as Lunar Time to the 1260 Days of Solar Time must be 1222 and so beginning at 475 must end at 1697 with the 1260 Days beginning 437 thirty eight Years before them with the Gentiles Forty two Months according to the Laws of this Line of Time and of the Sun 's and Moon 's Motion collated one with another And to confirm the right Calculation of this whole Time to us Imperial Time is adjusted to it by the Emblems of the falling Empire in the West till the vulgar 606 when the Beast as a Star falling to the Earth enlightned that Western Empire so darkned before that neither Sun nor Moon or Stars shined in its third part and presently after arose the Mahometan Hegira or Account of Time at 626 the which Imperial Time is accounted till the Fall of the Eastern Empire under the same Emblem of the third part of Men which also is to be cleared within seventy Years of which intimate Time ceases and that Change we call the Reformation ensu'd at 1517 represented by its most significant Emblems and the Mahometan Power still continued and yet is to continue to the end of the whole Line 1260 which goes to 1290 and so to 1335 the happy end of all the 2300 Ev. Morn All which I cannot but hope will be acknowledg'd a rational and clear Account of this admirable Line Now of every of these particulars I undertake particularly to discourse and although I confess the Order of Nature is first to speak of the Kernel of Time or the intimate Time to which the Fore-going Time at large is but a Preparation and After-Time but an Accomplishment yet because I must follow as the Divine Spirit hath gone before I begin with the Ambient Time of the Gentiles Forty two Months and of the Witnesses twelve hundred sixty Days in Sack-cloth and of the Woman in the Wilderness that first appear and are plac'd as in Complex one with another before the Inner Time or Season In beginning with which Sacred Prophecy is pleas'd to make the way plainer to us To begin then first with the Gentiles Treading the Holy Court and City which as hath been declared does not run as a principal Character but at farthest to the first part of the intimate State or Season and there is supported by the latter Forty two Months of the Beast to the very end of the whole 1260 dayes Now the knowledge of this either State or Character of Time is peculiarly given by the Apocalypse and hath no other Intimation in Daniel than what is common to the Time Times Semi-Time and to the Twelve hundred sixty joyn'd with the Thirty more and so making Twelve hundred ninety at the taking away the Daily and yet because it is of very great Use and Necessity in this Account of Time therefore is given so distinct and express in this excellent Apocalyptick Prophecy which surpasses Daniel even as the New Testament exceeds the Old and as Revelation however mystical excells Type and Figure of an older date Now the great Use of this Character is this When the Beast does neither in the Account of Prophecy nor Accord of History rise till some years after the Twelve hundred sixty years began nor reach his State especially design'd to be set out by Daniels Prophecy till many years after the 1260 years began viz. the very beginning of his most intimate State at his so often mentioned 666 in prevision of which it is said The Saints Times and Laws are given into his hand Season Seasons Dan. 7. 25 and half a Season meaning this intimate Time Upon all this it may well be ask'd How came the Daily to be Taken so early away what is the occasion of the Witnesses putting on Sack-cloth or the Womans flying into the wilderness seeing all these belong to the Beasts Tyranny who did not yet exist nor till so long after appear'd Regnant or why are the Twelve hundred sixty days made to begin so much sooner than the Beasts Forty two months Now in Answer to this The Gentiles treading under foot the holy Court and City appears timely to give cause to all these things and to shew the Agreement of Prophecy herein with it self These Gentiles are no other than they that are said Revel 13. to dwell on the Earth whose Names are not written from the foundation of the world in the Lambs Book of Life whom that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that other Beast ver 11. of whose two Horns like a Lamb was spoken before and who is hereafter further to be explain'd instructed to worship the Grand Apocalyptick Beast as one with the Pagan Roman Empire in its Idolatrous Universality call'd therefore the First Beast and to make an Image to it viz. an Image unto its Idolatry and to its Monarchy which Things are hereafter to be explain'd upon the Beast but at present it is easie to be understood The newly Christianiz'd Pagans of the Roman Empire were under the Change of the Emperours to Christians violently chang'd to the Profession of Christianity and yet at the same time fond of their Ancient Pagan Rites and Customs as also of the Glory of their Vniversal Empire East and West Now meeting with that Two-horn'd Lamb-like Beast fond of the same Sensual Religion but in another sort of Imagery as also of the Earthly Universality and Glory but of it in another Appearance also it may very readily be conceiv'd how complyant they were one with the other in both these things so as immediately to fill up the Outward Court and to Take away the true Datly Publick Worship of God and so to prepare for the Bestian Kingdom under the Seventh Head before his Existence in his own Forty two months and much more before his Regnancy to which he himself as a principal or chief Member of the other Beast though not yet the Grand Beast and after in his own Infancy when his 42 Months began as that Grand Beast was never wanting in his Contributions All which rightly conceiv'd does wonderfully conciliate the Prophecy to the History especially when I come to clear all Doubts upon those two Beasts Apoc. 13. For thus according to Daniel All these things were negotiating for the Beast who was the Prince design'd and on whom all redounded in the Issue and these Gentiles under
same time aggress'd were all taken from the Maccabean Words we mention'd before although it is evident they have their Ground of Allusion chiefly from Sacred Writ it self yet by way of Argument ad Homines to the Men themselves this is no unworthy Observation nor can it seem undesign'd by Providence 4. There is in this very Epoch of the wonderful Line we are upon such a Concurrence of Prophetical Notes both of the States and of the Times adjusted that it is as if the Holy Spirit of Prophecy had said to us Observe it This is the Beginning the Era and Epoch of it For first the treading the Holy City and the Court is in words the very same with the place of the Sanctuary cast down and the Sanctuary and the Host given to be trodden under foot Dan. 8. v. 11. 13. in the Vision of the Daily taken away and of the 2300 Ev. Morn From whence is to be concluded that the Forty two Months must as was before asserted be detach'd from the 2300 Even and that there the Daily taken away begins The 1260 Days immediately following in Account as concurrent with the 42 Months shew They are taken out of the 2300 Morn and confirm this to be the Time of the Daily taken away because the Daily taken away is the Character of the first Point of Time to the Twelve hundred ninety of which Twelve hundred sixty must needs be part seeing they go on to 1335 at the end of all and so many cannot be found in the 2300 which is the Date of the whole Vision of the daily taken away or in so great a Number but in these 1290 joyn'd with 1335. The twelve hundred sixty being joyn'd and the same twelve hundred sixty with those of the Womans dwelling in the Wilderness do both set the Era or beginning of that State to be even with the Daily taken away and do also shew the Equality of Time Times half a Time with the twelve hundred sixty days if taken at their full extent for they are joyn'd Dan. 12. with the scattering the Power of the Holy People which scattering was 1260 Days Revel 12. 6. * And Time Times half Time compare v. 14. there being not a plainer Expression of the Wilderness-state in an Old Testament mystical Prophecy than scattering and that Word accomplishing to scatter does subindicate some Power that began this scattering which was this of the Gentiles and then that the Antichristian Prince accomplish'd this scattering both to the highest degree and to the utmost moment it was to last and because he as hath been said is Lord of the Time Times Half Time the very naming them is naming of him And now if all this be not demonstrative of the Epoch or Beginning of these 1260 Days I shall be bold to say Nothing in Prophetical Scripture is capable of being demonstrated so much as by and within Prophetick Scripture it self which to assert must needs weaken the Evidence of Scripture by and from it self throughout I confess it may seem the Church is sooner in the Wilderness than the Witnesses are in Sackcloth for assoon as the Woman brought forth the Man-child it was caught up to the Throne of God which Bringing forth and Enthroning was certainly when the Empire became Christian in Constantine and that was long before 437 when the Witnesses put on Sackcloth as I assert But to clear this it is to be consider'd there are three synchronous Descriptions of the very Beginning of this Line of Time or of the Apostacy The first is bottom'd upon the substantial and sensible Foundations of Imperial History under prophetick Figures viz. Of the blasted Western Empire embellish'd with very curious Types of the Apostacy then beginning as shall be shewn upon the first Trumpet sounding when we come to it The second is by the more Scriptural Images of the Witnesses putting on Sackcloth on account of the Gentiles treading the Holy City or Court And the third by the parallel Shade of the Woman flying into the Wilderness The First hath a plain distinct Indication of things preparing to the Apostate State in the Declaration of a new Roll of Martyrs * Revel 6. 11. c. 7. c. 8. v. 1. in the sealing the 144000 Sufferings after the Christian Empire in the Silence in Heaven for only half an Hour in the Angels preparing to sound all which were so many distinct Steps towards the Apostacy This is the most full and clear The Second hath one like it in the Reed given to John with a Command to measure the Temple which was parallel and contemporary to the Sealing by all Rules of Proportion as we shall see The Third is the Womans flying into the Wilderness where indeed there is no open mention of a Preparation but the Event is given in one view viz. The Woman flying into the Wilderness yet in that the Woman having been first spoken of her History as to the utmost extended Time of the Apostacy is given together so as to make it evident the so sudden Assignation of the 1260 Days in the Wilderness is given both to match the Preparation of the two former Types to the Apostacy as also to joyn the Witnesses and the Womans twelve hundred sixty Days into one and the true Order both of that Preparation and Vergency as also of the 1260 Days beginning is given in the second giving of the Womans Times and Half Time as shall be made most clear when we come to parallel these three synchronous Descriptions in their Events at the First Trumpet Now as to the Involution of these Three States and Characters as necessarily contemporizing one with another it is even self-demonstrative for when the Daily Service of God is taken away and the Bestian Gentiles delay the Kingdom of Christ in Preparation to the Antichristian Prince the Witnesses must if there be such a prophetick Type prophecy in Sackcloth and retire to the Altar of Incense as to private Worship and if the Woman be the same with the Witnesses or her Seed if They are hid in Sackcloth and there be such a Type as of her self in the Wilderness fed with hidden Manna how can both be but at the same Time And if the Witnesses be in Sackcloth and the VVoman in the VVilderness and there be such a Type as of the Gentiles treading the Holy Court That and That only being then in view the Beast being not risen must be the occasion of it And if there be such a Type as Sealing which signifies Secrecy Retirement and Delay the efficacy of that must be at the same Time with the parallel Symbols for this ought to be a Standard throughout The Gentiles and the Beast causing the Sufferings of God's Servants and the Servants of God the Sufferers must in all things parallel one another according to the Degrees of Elevation for the Action of the one necessarily produces Sufferings the State of the other receives Sufferings as necessarily so
them the course of historical Time and its Events all along so curiously painted out in this Prophecy I propose this Method of Progress 1. To apply to the sealing to the Altar of Incense and the Temple-worshipers to the Witnesses in Sack-cloth and to the Woman in the Wilderness the Notes of History correspondent to their Beginning according to the Prophetical Symbols and beginning together with the Gentiles forty two Months 2. From this Epoch or beginning to pass by the Prophetical Symbols in agreement with the historical Records to the Beasts forty two Months and to demonstrate their Epoch Continuance and Period 3. By the same supports from Prophecy and History to pass to the beginning of the five and five Months and the space of Time thereby denoted granted to the Locusts Revel 9. 5. 10. 4. Within which space the beginning of intimate Time the reason of it and its whole duration will fall under Examination and its 666 by Prophecy and History 5. About the midst of intimate Time the Hour Day Month and Year of that vast Army of the Horsemen will encounter our Enquiry and the whole Duration require to be stated from their beginning to the killing the third part of men or the end of that space of Time but not of that Power figured by them nor of the Woe they brought 6. At the end of intimate Time and after the killing the third part of men we shall be brought upon the Time of the aforesaid solemn Oath that Time shall be no more which will carry us to the end of this whole Line and wind us up with its self and by every one of these we shall find the Line of this black Time must end at 1697 as it began 437. All which by the guidance of the Prophecy it self and the assistance of the Holy Spirit of it will assure us by the most illustrious and stately products of that whole Time and of greatest Concernment to the Christian World that these 1260 years are a most definite space of so many and no fewer nor more in number and that seeing they must be either Natural or Prophetical Time according to the Standard of a day for a year for the Scripture-Register knows no other sort of Time nor can any instance be given of any other therefore they must be prophetical days or days of years and months of years since the Events destin'd by God to them are so much too great and large for natural Time in their own Nature and in the prophetical descyphar that no more then a year can be a year and yet be crowded up within a Month a Day or Hour no more can those long Tracts of Time-some Action be fettered within three years and a half the highest amount of those Characters of Time if naturally understood without a Contradiction in the very Nature of things SECT V. WHerein it is proved the sealing so intermatched with the inner Temple and Altar measured with the Witnesses in Sack-cloth and with the Woman in the Wilderness and the three first Trumpets in which the Efficacy of the sealing entered intermatched with the Gentiles treading the outer Court with the Dragons persecution of the Woman at her first flight into the Wilderness must according to History begin the whole Time Times half Time the Gentiles forty two Months the 1260 of the 1290 Days when the daily Service Dan 12. 11. was taken away and the Witnesses and the Womans 1260 Days altogether at 437 and so move forward till the fourth Trumpet when the Beasts forty two months began at 475. THat I may settle the beginning of the 1260 Days c. aright the Contents of this Section must be answered and made good in the Body of the Discourse within it I must endeavour these five things then to attain that End by these Enquiries 1. How far the seven Seals had brought down Time from Enquiry 1 our Lord's Resurrection to the first of the seven Trumpets must be diligently enquir'd and settled seeing one follow on the other 2. The Importance of the sealing the Sevants of God after the seven Seals open'd and the conspiring of that Symbol with the Retirement of the Worshippers within the Temple the Witnesses under Sackcloth and the Woman into the Wilderness must be determin'd and settled for the Sealing's Efficacy begins All even the very Trumpets which could not sound till the sealing over 3. The Scope and Intention of the Trumpets is to be carefully estimated in the strict Attention to the Emblem it self and seeing the first four and the sixth display upon third part of Men what third part of Men it is they play upon must be found for the Trumpets play upon that Third of Men runs along the whole Line we are upon and why all this Play upon a Christian Empire 4. It must be duely research'd what the Symbols of the three first Trumpets convey to our notice to what Time History directs us that we may find their Effects 5. It must be justly stated what the Dragon means and how his Persecution of the Woman can agree with the Explanation of the Trumpets seeing both must be at the beginning of the Line because then was the Womans first Flight into the Wilderness which was at the first of the 1260 Days Now if all these can be rationally according to this Prophecy and the Argument of History resolv'd so as to unite with the Gentiles forty two Months and all of them to determine the beginning of this Line to be at the beginning of the Trumpets sounding and both to be at Ann. Dom. 437 and to reach in the three first Trumpets to the Beasts rising at 475 then that will be done which ought to be done for by necessary Consequence the Line must end at 1697. I begin with the first viz. to enquire How far the seven Seals open'd had brought down Time from our Lord's Resurrection to the first of the Trumpets sounding for the Trumpets must needs follow upon the Seals as is most apparent Now since it is very evident the Resurrection of Christ begins the whole course of Apocalyptical Time I know not what can be more demonstrative of any point of Time than to find the Prophecy by the most lively Pictures and Emblems to draw the course of Events from a Time given as from the Resurrection Ann. Dom Vul. 33 to a Time given viz. to the Trumpets suppos'd to be Ann. Dom. Vul. 437. that is from the Resurrection the Apocalyptical Epoch or Time beginning 404 Years Now what could more congruously and even undeniably follow the Resurrection than Christ riding out in his Majesty and Glory in the universal preaching of the Gospel by an Apostolical Ministry and thereby claiming his Kingdom according to the first Seal opened What follows more uninterruptedly upon that than that warlike sett of Emperours and upon the red Horse of War arm'd with a great Sword given them viz. Vespasian Titus Trajan Hadrian respecting especially
the Desolations of the Jewish Nation according to the Prophecy Dan. 9. ult which was perfectly fulfill'd by the last of these nam'd Emperours according to the second Seal Can any thing more justifiably follow this Train of Emperours than the grave just rational Succession of the Antonines or close with greater Esclatt and Renown than in Alexander Severus so fam'd for Justice that the Ballances are most worthily put into his Hand and by a Voice from the Throne in the midst of the Beasts the whole Scheme is directed upon the Church and the Half-Time fix'd from the Resurrection to the Apostacy or taking away the Daily Service of God under the Type of the Wheat Barly Oyl and Wine the Materials of Sacrifice the Type of the Christian Service all which are the Result of the third Seal opened Who can deny that a Chain of salvage Emperours press'd upon the Heels of Alexander in whose Equipage Famine Pestilence the Sword attended and was most fitly given with the Device of Hell and Death waiting upon the dismal Pomp of these Beasts of the Earth in the fourth Seal Is it possible to oversee the Persecution rais'd by Dioclesian that ceased not by the space of ten Years in which all the Christian Blood shed by the Pagan Emperour was summ'd up Is it I say possible to oversee this in the fifth Seal the Emblem of which is the Cry of the Souls under the Altar No more can it be denied That that great Shake of the Power of the Spirits of the Air above and of the Heathen Idolatrous Powers below is admirably pourtrayed in the sixth Seal opened After which we find an industrious Delay to the seventh Seal in the new sealing and the seventh Seal when opened did most leisurely produce the very sounding of the Trumpets for first There was the silence of half an hour a short and imperfect Time indeed but it stay'd the Effect of the Sealing for not till that half Hour past the Trumpets were deliver'd to the Angels After that there was a solemn Service of Christian Religion signifying the daily Service yet continuing and upon the Acceptance of it a second demolishing of Paganism by Theodosius Defeat of the last Rallyings of it by Eugenius and Argobastis after Julian and other Heathenizers upon his Prayers Now from that Time or Theodosius the Great 's Death within a Year after at 395 or near it all History dates the Declination of the Western Empire and Prophecy agreeably denotes the Angels preparing to sound in the many Impressions upon the Empire by foreign Invasions upon it yet respiting the very date of their Sound from the Time Theodosius died to 437 or 404 from the Resurrection somewhat above forty Years but according to the Half time exactly before observ'd at Alexander Severus's death An. Vulg. 237 or 202 from the general Epoch the Resurrection with this half 404. Let us now Review the wonderful Consent and Harmony between the Relation of History in Things so undoubted as to be incumbred with no Controversie and the Schemes of this Prophecy the one keeping hand in hand with the other in such an even uninterrupted and just sucession and course of Time as does abundantly prove this Line and its Beginning so far as is necessary in this first particular to be at 437 and consequently its End at 1697 All which have been more fully Treated and are here only summ'd up to make the Perspective the clearer and more entire I come now to the Second Enquiry viz. into the Importance Enquiry 2 of the Sealing wherein these two things will deserve our particular Examination 1. What the most natural and ready significations of Sealing are and which is here to be chosen as most agreeable with the other Symbols of the Worshippers Retir'd into the Secret of the Temple the Witnesses Sackcloth the Woman in the Wilderness upon the Gentiles Treading the Outer Court 2. When the Efficacy of this Sealing began for that leads the Time of the Trumpets even as the Trumpets fix the Time of the Sealings Efficacy As to the First it is to be known that Sealing imports three things 1. Secrecy and Retirement from general and ordinary observation Thus the Servants of God by the Antichristian Apostatical Times coming on are hidden no eye but the eye of God or of men inlightned by him could discern all of them The Disguise put upon them by Antichristians casting them out for Gods name sake their Retiring from the common corruption of Publick Worship their mourning for the Gentilisme brought in and the Kingdom of Christ not appearing their not being suffered to meet as a Church a Body or Congregation of Saints and the Glory of God and Christ not shining out yet upon them brought them into the Secresie of a sealed condition immur'd them within the Temple and at the Altar of Incense cas'd them in Sackcloth and scatter'd them as into a Wilderness so that at length the Serpent himself could not find them and all this from the beginning of the first Trumpets sound at 437 till 1697 more or less 2. Sealing intends Security and Preservation Thus Treasures are sealed up in Safety and defended from violation and rapine thus the Servants of God are safeguarded by their Sealing the Temple being the Secret of Gods Presence their Sackcloth Prophecy arm'd them as by vertue of the Sealing with a mighty power of Miracles and Fire going out of their Mouths to destroy their Adversaries the Church even in the Wilderness is deposited in a place prepared by God for her that she might be fed and all to this purpose That they might though they might suffer in the common Calamity of the several Trumpets yet not be hurt in their true Essential Glory by the Dragon but that they shall Reign when He is Bound nor so shut up but that the Temple shall be opened c. nor be so overcome by the Beast but that they shall Rise again ascend to Heaven in a Cloud their Enemies beholding them with terrour and appear in Mount Zion with the Name of God written in legible Characters on their Foreheads and at last in an innumerable company cloath'd in white Robes and Palmes in their Hands and the Church it self as the Bride the Lambs Wife be admirably Glorious 3. Most immediately and close to the purpose of the present Symboll Sealing speaks Delay and Estoppage from a present Exposal or publick Shew And thus the Symbol of sealing is provided to claspe and indent with the former Symbol of the Seals for the whole Symbol is taken from sealing the Book of Christ's Kingdom Dan. 12. 4. till the end when therefore at the sixth Seal opened the Empire became Christian the manly Birth was caught up to the Throne of God the Dragon was cast down and a Song of Victory sung upon it immediately this sealing followed to stay this Glory and as it were to arrest its Appearance it was therefore hid from hurt because the Glory
against whom the Sounds are Directed These two first Trumpets then as beginning at 437 summon the Barbarian Nations to fall on on all parts of the Empire as they had began to do by the vertue of the Angels preparing themselves to sound About this time Gensericus the Vandal-King took Carthage the Hunns over-ran the upper and lower Pannonia now called Hungary Thrace and Illyricum the Brittish Provinces soon after fell into the Hands of Strangers and Barbarians Thus the Glory and Greenness the Flourish and Verdure of the Roman Empire was universally blasted by the Hail and Fire mingled with Blood of the first Trumpet running every way At the same time no Green of true Christianity was unblasted by the Apostacy and Rome it self as a great Mountain burning with Fire was thrown into the Sea that is it had been indeed taken under Honorius in the preparation to Sound and immediately recover'd But now at the Second Trumpet it was made the Ball of War in a continual Taking and Retaking for many years after so that the Flames of War from several Parts of the World and the People of it compar'd to a Sea congregated about it and in the midst of the fearful Broil the Imperial Starr Augustulus the last Emperour fell From hence therefore we obtain the clear Agreement of Time with the Symbol of the First three Trumpets as their Blast fell upon the third part of men the Figure of the Roman Empire in Agreement with the Dragon or Roman Emperours drawing down the third part of the Starrs with his Tayl. Revel 12. 14. Where all Interpreters understand that Imperial Power Now at the very time of the Barbarous Nations coming like the Gentiles into the chief Residences of the Christian Religion is the Symbol of the Apostacy of the Gentiles treading the Holy City and Court and the Dragon Rev. 11. 2. c. 12. 13. 14. persecuting the Woman just now taking her flight into the Wilderness fairly made out both as to Similitude and Time But that the Ministration of the Trumpets may answer the Ministration by the Servants of God in his Church at the Seals opened besides this Semblance of the Trumpets with War Holy Writing leads us to another viz. the Sacred use of Trumpets in the giving of the Law Exod. 19. And they were instituted by God to call the Congregation of the Servants of God together which was now not into Publick but in Private at the Altar of Incense There was also the Feast of Trumpets on the First Day of the Seventh Month joyn'd with the Reading of that Law upon which follow'd the Solemn Fast on the Tenth Day Levit. 23. 23 c. and Numb 29. 2. Thus by these Trumpets the Witnesses began their Prophecy and Testimony for the Commandments of God and Doctrine of Jesus and in Sackcloth and Fasting These Prophets and Watchmen blew the Trumpet according to the charge laid upon them Ezek. 32. v. 1 c. And according to this Blowing the trumpets the Camp the Congregation the Woman the Church made its motions in the Wilderness according to Numb 10. v. 1 c. So admirably does this Symbol agree with the Gentiles forty two Months of treading the Holy Court with the Worshippers at the Altar of Incense with the Witnesses Prophecy in Sackcloth and the Womans Flight into the Wilderness as on Eagles wings in regard of Divine Providence as well as of the Roman Eastern and Western Empire Apostatizing And how fitly does the whole Apocalyptical Time answer the Jews Feast of the Passover at the Resurrection of Christ united with the Feast of Weeks at the giving of the Spirit and John's being in the Spirit when he receiv'd the Revelation and then follows the Interval of the Seals opened like that Interval of Feasts till the day of blowing the Trumpets and the Fast or Sackcloth after which follows the Triumphant Feast of Tabernacles so celebrated Numb 29. by the Ennumeration of every Day 's Services like the cleansing of the Sanctuary by the solemn Observation of it at the restoring Jerusalem Ezra 3. 4. in Image of the New Jerusalem and Nehemiah 8. after the Feast of Trumpets with Olive-branches Pine Myrrh Palm-branches ver 15. like dwelling in a Garden of Eden and in Resemblance of the Palms Revel 7. 9. and as a prophetical Emblem of the Paradise of God Revel 2. 7. c. 22. 2. compar'd according to all which the Prophet Zechar. so distinguishly proclaims in that wonderful Prophecy of the Glory of Christ's Kingdom Zech. 14. this Feast of Tabernacles v. 16. and as if it were the entring a Caution against understanding that as the True Feast of Tabernacles Nehem. 8. 4. A solemn Fast follows as it were irregularly upon it Nehem. 9. to shew the True Feast of Tabernacles was not yet come but a long Mourning to intervene And how excellently do the seven Thunders uttering their Voices agree with the Trumpets sounding so long For towards the latter Time of the sixth Trumpet and at the last 180 Days beginning the Gospel Law was given in these Thunders like those of the Law Exodus 20. v. 28. Thus all things concurring even to Miracle or a Demonstration of the Almighty Wisdom and Power of God I cannot doubt I have fix'd upon the true Epoch or Beginning of the Line of 1260 days at 437 and so upon the end of it at 1697. Let it then be certainly apprehended by all that love Christs Remark on the whole Kingdom what God hath so determin'd shall come to pass and that He the Lord will hasten it in its own Time He will work and none shall let it The Israelites went out of Egypt to a Day at the 430 years end of their sojourning and no sinful Exod. 12. 41. unsensibleness that God would deliver them by Moses or their other sins could interpose Christ wrought Redemption at the very night of the Fulness of Time viz. at the middle of the last half Week and no unworthiness of the Age could Dan. 9. 27. hinder it though never so great so nothing shall hinder the Rising of the Witnesses and their Ascension at the 1260 days Revel 11. 9. Ten years hence no though there should be Three dayes and a half not only signifying the intimate Time as hath been declared but a Blush a Recollection a drawing the whole Time past again in little at the end For no Appearances how great soever shall surprise the Divine Decrees upon Time Nullum tempus occurrit Regi There may be a deep Reshrouding Christianity at least in some Parts The Israelites slavery sate closest upon them when their Redemption was so nigh We see what a change was begun 1517 by those seven Thunders when all was one Night piece and the Voice so little from Man and wholly from Heaven much more at 1697. We see how at this day the Turkish Power that hath been so long the Terrour Scourge and Woe of the World call'd Christian Falls when
remove any seeming Objection arising from the sudden change from such a Glory into the Apostacy so soon after entring and the Witnesses going into Sackcloth and the Woman into the Wilderness SECT VII In which is given the description of the other Beast and his first Administration of the Witnesses and their first manner of Testimony both before the Beast's forty two Months with the Answer of an Objection and Reflections upon this Interval IN these Enquiries I have now explain'd whatever I can conceive needful from the Beginning of the Trumpets to the forty two Months of the Beast except the Delineation of that which the Prophecy calls the other Beast under whose Conduct the Gentiles were brought into the outer Court and Holy City so far as the Action of that other Beast led to the grand Apocalyptick Beast And to inlighten this Interval of Time the more viz. from the Apostasie beginning in the 1260 Days at 437 unto the Beasts 42 Months 475 I find it most convenient to consider most accurately the State of the Witnesses as Prophecy hath given any Light to the pointing of the Time of their whole Testimony and distinguishing the various States of it which Method I will endeavour to follow through this whole Line of Time viz. to observe the Advances and Declinations of the Bestian Kingdom and to adjust thereunto the Declinations and Descents of the Witnesses into the deepest of their obscure State and their Re-advances till their Resurrection and Ascension for the one and the other States rise and fall alternately whose motion herein the Woman the Church was exactly conform'd to being indeed the very same one with another except the Notion of Single and Collected Single in the Witnesses Collected in the Church as before said But because the Action especially was sustain'd by the Seed or the Witnesses the Line of that Action is most particularly drawn over them the Witnesses I begin then with the other Beast but I will adventure to lay no stress upon the Word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Another as if it did necessarily imply Another Order or a various Sub-specification of these two Beasts because I find this Word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may be according to this Prophecy significant of no more than a numerical individuating Difference But yet that these two are so different so solemn and great so momentously different Iconisms as are given of each of them and their Action by the holy Spirit sufficiently argue That we may then have the perfect Pourtracture of this other Beast who manag'd all things from the Beginning of the Apostacy during the wounded State of the Grand Beast in one viz. the sixth of its Heads call'd the Dragon and the Infancy of the Grand Beast viz. as united to its seventh Head call'd in this Prophecy most often The Beast We may thus behold Him the other Beast so far as his Description reaches while the Grand Beast lay wounded which was till the forty two Months began by which great Preparation will be made to understand that Grand Beast 1. This other Beast must as Beast does every where in Prophecy import a Body of Men under some Superiority of Power I must here remember again to except to the Translation of the Four not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 salvage Beasts but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 gentle Animals or living Creatures Revel 4. and elsewhere least it should cause any mistake but else both in Daniel and the Apocal. Beast does imply a People under united to some Principality above and because here the Principality was in a Peerage or Aristocracy it resides in the two Horns 2. Because it is a Beast of Continuance as plainly appears by its Action from the very Apostasie to the Number of the Beast viz. from 437 to 725 and after that to the very Destruction of the Beast and false Prophet it must be a fluid successive Body as other Prophetical Beasts are 3. The inward sense of it must be a Body of False Prophets under Chiefs mitred Prophets for all the marks of false Prophetism are upon them this Beast therefore rises low mean feeble stilly out of the Earth without warlike force or noise it works Miracles pretends to call for Fire from Heaven like Elias that is it threatens Men with the Wrath and Judgments of God it deceives it caused men to do by saying or teaching After its Administration as a Beast is past because swallowed up in the Grand Bestianism it is several Times call'd the False Prophet as being expressive of its very Essence and wherein it is most nearly united to the Beast Revel c. 16. 13. c. 19 20. c. 20. 10. 4. It must be Antichristian and seeing Antichristianism is a false mock abused Christianity it must have of Christian also in it else it could not be Antichristian it hath therefore the Resemblance of a Lamb in its two Horns but it is Antichristian specifickly working by Fraud to surprise the Kingdom of Christ ambitious haughty idolatrous persecutory cruel thirsting after blood for it spake as a Dragon altho therefore it hath two Horns like a Lamb yet not the Lamb Christ Jesus for he hath seven Horns Revel 5. 6. agreeable to all the Apocalyptical Sevens except the Dragon 's and the Beast's seven Heads Seven not because They were symbolically but literally seven Successions of Government as the Rev. 17. Womans seven Mountains 5. Seeing the great Subject of the Apocalype is the Roman Empire in its last State when the Kingdom of Christ was begun in the Gospel and to appear in Glory after that last State of the Roman Empire the last of those four Imperial Canales of Time it must therefore be that this pseudo prophetical Beast under its two Horns is compounded of the upper and under the dignified and inferiour False Prophets of the Eastern and Western Empire And seeing we shall find that the Grand Beast is Roman it will thence appear This Beast must be so seeing its whole Ministry is about that Grand Beast which is Roman 6. It must be after the Grand Beast in some prophetical Respect or Notion of that Grand Beast for it is call'd the first Beast in compare with this other Beast yet this other Beast must be before it in regard of Action for it does all for it viz. It is after it as the Grand Beast is one from its very Beginning or Foundation of the Roman Empire under its seven Heads successively it is after it in regard of Procuration of the Cure of its Wound of the Exercise of its Power while it lay wounded all which speak it in being before this other Beast But it is before this very grand Beast as under its seventh Head for it erects it into its Headship by speaking as a Dragon by keeping alive the Bestian Power and in exercise while the sixth Head lay wounded till the VVound was heal'd by the seventh Head succeeding and then
Allowance of the Name of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the other Beast to him who is erecting this seventh Head into its Supremacy and Dignity because he is so one with him as the false Prophet and but for the time he is so erecting him 3. That the prophetical Scheme may be understood concerning this Beast it is to be duely stated where the Situation of each part of this multiplice Scheme is to be there must be the Trunk or Body of this Beast and that hath its feet of many Nations and People spread far and wide the People of the Ten Horns like the feet of a Bear and by those many sorts of People its Body is variously spotted about like a Leopard this is the Populacy with their subordinate Magistrates There are the seven Heads or supreme crowned Authorities each having successive Dignity and Sovereignty as the Romans had Kings Consuls Decemvirs Tribunes of the People perpetual Dictators all fallen in the Apostles Time and so they signifie no farther than the making a Character of the Monarchy intended In the Apostles Time were the Emperours or the Dragon in the Language of Prophecy and the sixth Head and the Beast the seventh and last whose Mouth speaking as the Lyon Nebuchadnezzar acts the Body and Feet to the Cruelty of the Leopard and Bear by his idolatrous and fiery Decrees There are the ten crowned Horns whose Scite is in this Head absolute independant Monarchs and Princes only as they agree to give their Strength and Power to the Beast Now all these have so close an Union with the Grand Beast that the Body is so his that he is the Beast because he is the Head of the Body the ten Horns are his while they are Horns for their Situation must be in the Head the former Heads are his the five fallen to make him a Character the sixth the Imperial Dragon lives in him is worshipped in him continues to the last in him viz. the Monarchickness the Idolatry the Enmity to Christ's Kingdom especially even as he at the first is wounded in him And the other Beast is his negotiating his Dignity and Supremacy and at that compleat subsiding into his False Prophet the Dragon the Beast the False Prophet sending out each the Spirit of Devils and the False Prophet taken as inseparable one from the other with him and cast into the Lake Thus he is every way the grand Apocalyptick Beast Having laid this Foundation by way of Premisal I come now to define this Grand Apocalyptick Beast according to his certain essential invariable Characters most eminent in Prophecy most conspicuous in History for I dare not adventure so great a weight on History without Prophecy nor suspend it on my Interpretation of Prophecy without observing Divine Providence conducting the Event at every swelling Period into most undoubted History When both meet to such Perfection it is hard to doubt and even sullen Obstinacy to deny The Beast must be the Apostle John's Great Antichrist that Charact. 1. was to come into the World agreeing with the false Christs our Lord prophesied of and the Apostle John's many Antichrists 1 John 4. 2 3. Mat. 24. 24. who would steal the Kingdom of the Messiah from Him by pretending themselves to be Christs and so denying that great Article that Christ was come in the Flesh to which the Kingdom of his Father David is assur'd without end as being his Root and Off-spring Now this can be no way so effectually done as by pretending to be the Vicar of Christ and holding his Kingdom in his Right and as in Honour of him And he that does that is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Opposite to Christ and if it should be disguis'd under Servus Servorum Dei it would not excuse it Now those open bare-fac'd False Christs the Judgment of God immediately seiz'd and gave up to Destruction But of such an Antichrist as this Christ hath sworn There shall be Time Times Half a Time for Him and that Christs Kingdom should not come or the Wonders of it be accomplish'd till these are past and fully past And the Apostle Paul assures us before the Day of Christ can come the Apostacy must bring forth such an Antichrist who must therefore sit in the Temple of God viz. the outward Court and Holy City or the Profession of Christian Religion and in Christendome and there must exalt Himself must usurp above All that is called God viz. Christ even in his humane Nature called and carrying the Name on his Vesture and on his Thigh but not Written or set in publick view till just before the Beast's Ruine King of Kings Lord of Lords whom God Sanctified and sent into the World as Supreme Prince and under him truly Christian Supremes who are also called Gods John 10. 35 36. If then all History and all Knowledge of Time successively for several Ages declare such a pretended Vicar of Christ This is the most essential and original Character of Antichrist without searching farther into his Quality and Action For as whoever should pretend to be deputed to be a Divine God is an Idol so whoever pretends to be a Spiritual Plenipotentiary Lord of Lords and above Princes as Vicar of Christ is Antichrist for whoever says thus of Himself says He is God For Christ can have no Vicar General on Earth any more than God one Universal Deputy of his Power claiming Divine Honour Such an Antichrist must needs Sit at Rome For he must Charact. 2. bear aloft the Woman as a false Church that was a Wilderness to the True Church when it was Hid and yet Fed with hidden Manna a howling Wilderness where the Lyon the Leopard and the Bear Inhabit In this Wilderness John saw sitting on the Beast this Woman under the Name of that City that in the Appocalyptical Time or when that Prophecy was Given sate upon many Waters or People and upon the Seven Mountains or the City so fam'd for being Septi-Collis or seven Hill'd Rome and which Reign'd over the Kings of the Earth as no other City at that Time could be once suppos'd to do so Character'd either by its Hills or being Drunk with the Blood of the Saints and Martyrs of Jesus * Call'd on that Account Sancta Roma as that City in all Ages hath been A City whose Freedom was purchas'd at great rates in all parts of the World and so fitly said to sit on many Waters and to draw the Confluence of People to it to receive Law from it Here therefore for the fulfilling Prophecy the Beast must have his Throne even as under Pontius Pilate the Governour of Judea constituted by the Emperour of Rome Christ suffer'd and Rose again into his Kingdom according to the Prophecy of Daniel That in the Days of those Kings God would set up an everlasting Kingdom the right of which then began so that till Constantine that Roman Empire was a Dragon watching to devour the
manly Birth that had Right to Rule all Nations Now with this Dragon the Beast was to be united to receive his Throne Power and great Authority from him and in Him the Dragon must Live and be Worshipped Therefore He that is the Beast must be Roman and Sit at Rome from which the Christian Emperours by Divine Conduct receded that this Character of the Beast might be left free to the Beast alone And under Him it must be Antichristian until the very Glorious Kingdom of Christ and then is to be Burnt when the Beast is Taken and Cast into the Lake that it may answer the whole Ichnography or Description Rev. c. 17. c. 18. Now that we may throughly understand this Character and the certainty of it By the Woman that sits on the Beast must be Apprehended Rome as a City and a Church a False and Antichristian Church fix'd in and made inseparable from this City No other can answer the Prophecy so that the other Beast called the False Prophet cannot be conceived by it For whereas this City must be burnt as from Heaven the False Prophet was taken with the Beast and cast into the Lake That it must be the very City is plain by the whole Prophetical Type This had the Seven Kings united with the whole Empire that by their Residence in it did also carry it and bear it aloft This Sate on many Waters This Reigned over the Kings of the Earth This had its Merchants and its various Merchandises its Pomp and its Pleasures This is the Eternal Rome that after its being Thrown a burning Mountain into the Sea at above twelve hundred Years old was preserv'd and rescu'd and hath stood twelve hundred Years more so Great as it is at this Day and shall not be totally Destroy'd till the Appearance of Christ It s Epoch of Restitution is in Sacred Prophecy as Chronicular and Monumental as is its Building or Vrbs Condita But as it is a City so is it an Apostatiz'd Church fix'd to that City For on its Forhead is written Mystery the sense of which is Church in a City opposite to the Mystery of the Seven Churches but agreeable to the mystery of Iniquity It is the Great Whore and mother of Harlots with which the Kings and People of the Earth have committed Fornication And this we know is the constant description of an Idolatrous Church in the Old Testament as of Aholiab and Aholibah Ezek. 23. It is Babylon the Great in this Mystery and it is spiritually call'd Sodom the Impure City in its Spiritual Fornications as well as corporeal Nicolaitanism and Aegypt the enslaving cruel City holding the Israel of God in Bondage It is Spiritually that Apostate Jerusalem that is in Bondage with its Children where our Lord was Crucified It covers the true Church call'd for its sake Pergamus and the high-rais'd Throne of Satan so it is Thyatyra the Spiritual Jezebel Daughter of Eth. Baal King of the Sidonians Daughter of an Ethnick Idolatrous City whose Merchandises are the Instruments of Idolatry and Superstition sum'd up in the Bodies of men not only attending its State as the Scarlet Fine Linnen Gold Silver Ivory Precious Wood does but its blind dark Religion requiring servile stupid Brutes for men and Souls of men perishing for ever in its service against Light and Convictions of Truth and defending it with a violated distorted Reason abus'd Parts and Learning Revel 18. 13. And this Rome must be both the City and Church for here and in it the Primacy of St. Peter residing as Bishop laid the Foundation of its so long Greatness under the Name of the Apostolick See Constantinople was but an Eminence as small as the Fame of it Seven Hills but as little Risings compar'd with this Eternal Church of Eternal Rome The Ottoman Port has swallowed that Flames from Heaven rest upon this so that the Smoke of its Burning shall ascend for ever and ever as both City and Church For so Prophecy hath read its destiny and it cannot be revers'd Strong is the Lord that Judgeth it This City then is to be a Pyramid Pile of Smoke and Flame ascending for ever and ever an eternal City of burning as the City Sodome a Lake of Brimstone settling in its very Room Place and Scituation a Jerico so curs'd as to be no more built and an Apostate Church suffering as spiritual Sodome the vengeance of eternal Fire He The Beast must carry universal monarchy as the Emperours 〈…〉 of Rome did over as it were the habitable World for so his Union with the Dragon imports and yet that this may not be mistaken it must be in an Image a real martial natural Cesareate is not in the prophetical Portraicture of Antichrist but in the Image of a Pontificate or a Vicarship to Christ on Earth even as the Caesars carried a Pontificate enchas'd into their Imperialism or Cesareate so the Beast bears a Cesareate or imperial Power enchas'd into his Pontificate The other Beast therefore ministring to the Worship of the first Beast viz. the Roman Empire as to be under the seventh head but not yet erected into publick Dignity and Supremacy found no way to do it but by saying to the Antichristian Earth and its Inhabitants that they should make an Revel 13. v. 14 15. c. Image to the first Beast that was wounded with a sword and did live was wounded in the sixth head liv'd in the seventh but was not yet in Dignity to be worshipped to this entire Beast as in the seventh head was to be made an Image of Idolatry and an Image of Imperiality an universal Power under the Image of an in ordine ad spiritualia resident in a pontifical supremacy and infallibility And when this Image had by the continuing service of that other Beast Life given to it to speak and to cause That all that would not worship this Image c. 14. v. 9. c. 15. v. 2. c. 16. v. 2. c. 19. v. 20. c. 20. v. 4 should be kill'd and that all should receive a mark c. Here arose the universal monarchy in an Image and from this time the Prophecy joyns continually the Beast and his Image together The Beast must answer that prophetick motto or Inscription Caract 5. upon him thrice given and pointing at three several Seasons 1. The Beast that Was Is not he is the eighth and is of the Ch. 17. 11. seven and goeth into Perdition this is determin'd to the point of time proper to his Succession and then he must answer it 2. The Beast that was is not shall ascend out of the bottomless v. 8. Pit c. This is determined to the times in which the Beast first bore the Woman For the Beast that thou sawest viz. with the Woman sitting upon him was c. Then therefore he must answer that Inscription 3. The Beast that was is not yet is This is determined to v. 8. the time when
this Argu. 1 Prophecy speaks of their King He is the Angel of the bottomless Pit whose Name is Abaddon in the Hebrew Tongue and in the Greek Apollion Now by this Description it is most evident some Potentacy is describ'd that hath its place in the World and whose very Constitution should of all that hath ever been in the World be such a one as Sathan himself who is the only proper Angel of the bottomless Pit hath and would choose to appear in be the immediate Intelligence of and the Spirit that acts it above any Potentacy that hath been in the World to this day But it is in the first place to be consider'd that as the Locusts and Horse-men we shall find plainly united in their empoyson'd Tayls of Serpents so they are in their King and his Title is therefore set in the joynt between the fifth and sixth Trumpet to communicate with both The Potentacy then must be a Potentacy on Earth and it must seat it self in the Hebrew and Grecian Acropoles or chief Cities as the Hebrew and Greek Tongues imports like as the Inscription upon our Saviour This is the King of the Jews was providentially written in Latin Greek and Hebrew to shew the chief Residency of his Kingdom in those so known parts of the World I appeal then to all Christians whether since the days of Christ or indeed since the Creation there hath been an Empire in the World that may be compris'd in one word viz. Mahometan that for the foule fordid base Impostures of its Religion and Alchoran the ignorance and bruitishness of its very Profession the Cruelty and ravage it hath made upon humane Nature to the utmost signification of the Words Abaddon or Apollion or wherein Sathan hath most immediately appear'd as the Enemy and Destroyer of Mankind can be said to be under the Angel of the bottomless Pit as its King with such propriety as the Mahometan Abating the confession of one God and the abhorrence of Image-Idolatry there is not any thing in which the utmost Effects of the Angel of the bottomless Pit have not been seen and even that good in that Confession of one God is improv'd by his Malice against the Knowledge of the true God in the Son and Holy Spirit and so may well be couch'd in the very Words Abaddon and Apollion as the every way most incomparable Dr. More hath with highest Ingeny and Learning observ'd The fallen Star that had the Key of the bottomless Pit who is sathanick enough in whom the Dragon also inhabits who hath been bloody to great Extremities yet is even essentially enough distinguished from him He is a Star fallen from another Sphere descends with the Key and ascends and lets out the Smoke but is in regard of the true Religion he professes still and maintains however debauch'd by Antichristianism not a Native of the Abyss as this Angel is he holds the Scripture while he lets out the Smoke also But this Angel of the bottomless Pit hath no more of God but what Hell hath that believes one God trembles in the acknowledge of him All else is perfect Hell The Time most eminently and illustriously agrees For after the Roman Western State was in Justinians Time so wholly unenlightned after the Christian three Woes proclaimed by Pope Gregory the first after Vniversality given by Phocas and receiv'd by Boniface and that there was some time for opening the bottomless Pit and letting out the Smoke out of that Smoke comes Mahomet the false Prophet and King of the Locusts inhabited and possessed by the Angel of the bottomless Pit of which his Epileptick Fits were an Emblem if not the Effects of a very possession according to the eminently judicious Mede upon the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the possessed in the Gospel he comes I say a false Prophet in Armour leading these Men-locusts who have a King over them for Solomon observes Proverbs 30. 27. those natural Insects have no King that we may thereby know These are Men-locusts This Mahomet upon his Persecution for his hellish Imposture makes a flight from Mecha and sets up for Prophet and King that flight becomes in the Judgment of God a famous Hegira an Era or Date of Time at Anno Dom. 622. from thence this Prophecy draws a Line to the taking Constantinople 1453. of just 830 years of which allowing five Months and five Months to the Locusts and their Action and an interspers'd five months after the manner of Locusts before between and after the heat and height of their Action their share will be to 1057 that is Four hundred thirty five Years when the Turkish Sultany entred into a remarkable Appearance in the World in Tangrolipix as then prepar'd for an Hour a Day a Month and a Year Which is most exact as to point of Time as will appear in that part to 1453 when Constantinople became the Ottoman Port. The Symbols or Parables of the Prophecy and the Parallels of History are most exact The Locusts came out of the Drought and Smoak of the Apostacy Thus Mahometanism sprung as is observ'd out of the Idleness Stupidity and Superstition of Monkery for Sergius the Monk incubated the Alcoran Their Power as the Scorpions of the Earth have Power their having Stings in their Tails and their hurting with them are all significant of their false serpentine Religion and their false Prophetism which Scripture compares to a Tail Now the propagation of this their Venome is the great pretence for their Cruelty and this envenom'd Syrma of a devilish Religion strikes under and for the sake of which their enslaving is worse than Death it self Their hurting neither the Grass of the Earth nor any green thing nor any Tree speaks the universal Blast of the Apostacy and its Drought that there was no such thing in Appearance to be hurt the Witnesses the Worshippers the Servants of God were all close The Woman in the Wilderness where the Serpent could not find her as before explain'd No green Olive Tree appeared tho' still secretly they emptied their Oyl but in the Time of these Locusts Elijah's Drought had withered all Appearances but what was secretly in the Temple in the House of God Psal 52. 8. The Emblems of their Warlikeness are very admirable their Likenesses were as Horses prepar'd to the Battel on their Head was the Glister of their Helmets like Crowns of Gold their Faces as of Men their Arabian Locks like the Hair of Women their Teeth as of Lyons their Breastplates of Iron the noise of their Wings was as the sound of Chariots and Horses running to the Battel and a warlike King over them All these are demonstrative Emblems of armed men The description of Locusts Joel 2. is so like this of the Apocal. 9. that I cannot think but that besides the litteral sense it had a prospect upon them And These as They came out of the Drought describ'd c. 1. of that Prophecy viz. the universal
Voices had now prepar'd for the Vials and the Thunders then were unseal'd for the Vials pouring out Rev. 22. 10. And this agrees with the sealing Vision and Prophecy at the very cutting off of Messiah altho there was a Time of farther Tryal of the Jews the last Half-week yet it was then indeed seal'd the Jews having rejected and crucified their King who yet even by Pilate's Inscription in Hebrew Greek and Latin This is the King of the Jews by his Resurrection Ascension and sending down the Spirit was Anointed But till the End of the Indignation The Prophecy of his Kingdom was seal'd from its Glorious Appearance altho this Sealing had several new Sealings after some partial and momentary Discoveries of the Kingdom which are most necessary to be here understood and carried all along It is most evident It was here seal'd and answerably in the Revelation c. 5. It was a Book seal'd with seven Seals when Christ took it at his very Resurrection and though the opening the first Seal was a Publication of his Kingdom to the Jews and Gentiles and he went out conquering and to conquer c 6. 1 2. after the opening the first Seal yet it could not then appear for there were six Seals still upon it Now these Seals carry most evidently as we shall see a Course of 400 years from the last half week when the sealing was complete in the final rejection of the Jews For the first Seal opened and the Gospel not received by the Jews the rest had greater Force of Sealing which Sealing yet was determinately made at the very Death of Christ and the Indignation upon that Parricide And though these Seals carry a Course of Time yet condecent to the Type of the great secrecy of the seven Seals There is no express Line of Time drawn till the Kingdom of Our God is celebrated as come after the sixth of the Seals opened and the Rev. 12. 10. compar'd with c. 6. 12. c. 8. 3. 4. seventh also opened as compleating that whole Vision of the manly Birth Caught up to the Throne and the Dragon cast down Revel 12. in Theodosius the Great 's last Victory over Heathenism as we shall see in those Visions But then immediately at the sixth Seal as it were by way of prevention of the Kingdom of Christ breaking out at the seventh The 144000 were first sealed and this was such an c. 7. obscuring Christs Kingdom under the Apostasie That the Lines of Time were according to the Decency of the Type concealed till the Thunders uttering their Voices and the Book opened Apoc. c. 10. c. 11. without which Apocalyptick Lines these Numbers of Daniel could not be understood So till the End viz. the seventh Trumpet finishing all and the Kingdom of Christ proclaim'd there is a continuance of this sealing in some Degrees even till the Thunders unseal'd Chap. 14. But yet there are convenient Notations of Time along the Seals For every Event upon their opening leads us demonstratively enough from Time to Time and that general Character of this First space of Time of the Seals after Christs Resurrection is most significantly imprinted by that Motto Many shall run to and fro and Knowledge shall be increased Dan. 12. 4. which was so notably fulfill'd in the Apocalyptical Ministry it self and after that especially during the Three following Seals in those Gospel Voices of a yet continuing Apostolical Ministry though inferior to the Apostles and daily growing flatter but still saying Come and see All labouring to have then proclaim'd Christs Kingdom For so Come and see imports all along c. 6. till the Fifth Seal Christ having now commanded the sealing of the Book with that Latitude not to the End but to the Time or whole Current of Time to the End The Two Angels on either Bank attending Christ the Man in Linnen upon the Waters of the great River Hiddekel as in the Preface c. 10. v. 4. These two by divine Ordination from that very word The End start this Question Vnto how long the End of these Wonders viz. That End until the Time of which Christ had just now signifyed The Book was seal'd To this Christ is pleas'd intending to reveal this Course of Time to his Church by Daniel to return an answer in the very sight of Daniel by lifting up both his Hands to Heaven and swearing by the Eternal Being living for ever to whom all Time is but as the Drop of the Bucket That there should be Time Times half a Time for the scattering of the holy People or the Revel 12. Womans being in the Wilderness which is the Apocalyptick Comment on it and when that was accomplished According to the Correspondent Oath in the Revel c. 10. All these things should be finished in the Days of the seventh Trumpet Now it is most observable Christ gives an answer by this Oath not of the Time from the End of the Weeks or at his Resurrection but from the Time of the Seals opened confirming that sealing the Book to make a Line of Time in its unsealing For who can think Time Times c. were together with the Seals seeing those three Times and Half are so plainly given after the Seals But because the Divine Spirit knew that neither could the Cypher of Time Times half a Time be truly discypher'd but by it self and that the Half Time would open in some appearance of the Kingdom and that this very Oath that now Lett out this Time would be revers'd upon it at that very prophetical Juncture Daniel is mov'd by the same Spirit as not enough intelligenc'd by this Oracle to desire a further Divine Responsal I heard saith he but I understood not and therefore I said Lord what the End of these things Upon which Christ declares first a second sealing and discharges Daniel from farther Attendance in this matter after this last Oracle given him v. 9. which is again repeated v. 13. Go thy way Daniel saith Christ that is the way of all Flesh or Dye at thy Time till Thou stand in thy Lot at the end of the Days Not the Book now but the Words referring to the Thunders Vtterances and the Words within the open Book are seal'd or stay'd from an immediate coming to pass till the very Time of the End much farther promoted viz. to the Vials And then Christ is pleas'd to give first this Emblem of the Time of the Vnsealing in these Words Many shall be purified and made white and tryed or refin'd viz. by the Voices and by the Efficacy of Divine Truth then breaking out but as is discover'd in the Vials The wicked will do wickedly and will not understand by so great a Thunder of Truth and therefore it is so eminently noted of them in the Vials They Repented not but blasphem'd and in proper Application to the same Time it is said He that is Vnrighteous and Vnjust let him be so still and He that is Righteous let
him be farther justified that is clear'd from the Imputations laid upon him by the Apostacy and let him farther also vindicate and justifie himself from it by a Ministration of the Vials on the Beast and doubling to the infamous Woman the Cup she had given and thereby making Preparation to the Kingdom of Christ Thus is that great Time in its curious Emblematism in Prophecy c. 22. 11. compar'd with Rev. c. 15. c. 18. v. 6. And because all this should by the Will of Christ be yet drawn out more definitively He is pleas'd to add From the Time of the Daily or Continual in the very same only word Tammith no where applied alone to Sacrifice from that taken away by the Apostacy I say are given exactly till the seven Thunders unseal'd thirty additional Days to the 1260 Days viz. 1290 Days and to that very End so often mention'd of the Lots of Blessedness by the Addition of 45 more are given 1335 and all cast into Indictions or eighty nine Fifteens a way of accounting Time so notoriously known to have come into use after Constantine as elsewhere shall be farther urg'd and most evidently characterizing this Time And it is much to be observ'd This so clear Line is given here as in the Revelat. after a Supposition of the Book open'd at the Half-time and not before except in this Cypher of Daniel's Time Times Half-Time not to be understood but by the 1260 Days and other Apocalyptical Lines Now from all this may be collected by compare with the Apocalyptick Prophecy a Line of Time as exact as from the very Ages of the Patriarks allowing the Hebrew Copies there and the prophetical Days for Years here For first the 2300 Ev. Mor. are so exact undoubted an entire Number as to leave no Dispute if granted to be a Line of Time The Weeks ending at the Resurrection is so very full and compleat a Vision before this Vision not only in the Order of Prophecy but of the express Dates of Darius's First and Cyrus's Third The sealing of Prophecy in that Vision just at the End of that Vision of the Weeks and the Book shut and seal'd in this Vision joyn those two Visions close together The sealed Time and of the Book shut by the Apocalyptick Prophecy in so orderly a Progress as by compare with History it is found cannot but be acknowledg'd to be 400 Years from the last half-week ending Then the 1335 are so close joyn'd that they cannot be forc'd asunder and so riveted into the End both by being a farther Resolution to Daniel in his Complaint of not understanding for his Knowledge of the End of Wonders as also by the Blessedness and Daniel's standing in his Lot Besides the Evidence from the Indictions so open and industrious is not small But what could Daniel's Lot in the End of the Days be of or in but of and in the New Jerusalem and its holy Priesthood It is impossible then the days should fly back from the End these therefore being the whole of the 2300 except 75 the 75 must be plac'd in the Forefront of all the Number as we have seen what Reason from the Vision of the Words going forth hath been found so to place just so many And if we allow that Number to be 75 there is as great a certainty the sealed Time must be just four hundred for one adjusts the other necessarily if 75 before the Weeks there must be 400 between the Weeks or 490 Years and the 1335 if 400 there then 75 here for so the 2300 require Now how each of these Spaces of Time the 400 of the Seals the Time Times Half-time or twelve hundred sixty days of the Trumpets the Thirty of the Voices the forty five of the Vials how these I say are all replenish'd with their proper Furniture we must be instructed by the Prophecy of the Revelation What great Reason have we now to adore the Spirit of Remark Jesus Christ in this Prophecy of Daniel and to search what or what manner of Time it signifies in this sure Word of Prophecy giving in prophetick Schemes the very same Thing that the Transfiguration in so glorious a majestick Appearance represented viz. Christ the Sun of Righteousness with his Stars of the first Magnitude Prophets and Apostles those wise turning many to Righteousness and then the lesser ministerial Stars and the sporadick Fellowship of Saints included appear therein as those who are so turn'd to Righteousness And this Prophecy having been so long in the World and traversing such spaces of Time like a vast Tract of Earth with Charts Maps and Sculptures fitted to them and that came with such Certainty and Assurance into every hand is inlighten'd and enlivened with new and fresh Delineatories of the New Testament Prophecy or the Revelation Certainly had not God in Justice upon the Apostacy diverted the Thoughts and Labours of his Servants from the Illustration and Demonstration of them so that they have not travell'd herein as in other parts of Christian Verity nor by such a Concert of Minds and Judgments herein the Evidences both against Atheism and the Apostacy had much exceeded what they arise to now No Miracles except in constant and present Motion before our Eyes nor hardly then being so intellectually sensible Arguments of the Divine Being of Christianity and against Antichristianism as these Prophecies from Time to Time fulfill'd And this very Prophecy of Daniel is a most certain Ground to expect such a Prophecy as that of the Revelation for one cannot be understood without the other and how admirably do they conspire For just at that sealing at the end of the last half Week begins the unsealing also or the Events coming to pass in their just order and the Apostolical Ministry running to and fro to increase Knowledge and just Scals 400. Rev. c. 6. then 1260 in the six first Trumpets c. 8. c. 9 Then 30 45 in the Voices c. 14. and Vials of the 7th Trumpet c. 15. c. 16. as they have hitherto proceeded exactly according to their Time and Place so far as within ten years end of the sixth Trumpet so shall they proceed in the seventh Trumpet in the Voices and the Vials till the last end of Wonders be produced and perfected Blessed therefore is He that waiteth and cometh thereunto he shall tho out of this Body certainly then stand in his Lot of that New Jerusalem State and Priesthood in a Body of the First Resurrection SECT VIII Wherein is given a Prefatory Survey of the whole Apocalyptical Prophecy I Am now brought down by the course of prophetick Time to that very Point of Time where the Series of Apocalyptical Visions begins so that although the Line of Time was by Daniel stretch'd over whole Apocalyptick Time in the Number given to him and in a general way some Umbrages of those Visions had been presented by Ezekiel and even by all the Prophets since the World began
seven Churches that is proper and particular to the Church wherein the Churches as Symbols sustain the whole Prophecy which is worthy the Spirituality and Clearness of a New Testament Prophecy so to Order and of great Grace Elegancy and Condecency to God's great Regard to his Church The Second is that which embraces the whole State of the Church but propp'd and supported with such Imperial Events as most nearly related to the Church adorn'd with such Symbols such Notes of Time such Events as agree to those Times whereby History both Common and Ecclesiastick may be adjusted to and concerted with both and the Truth of the Prophecy and its true Interpretation justisted before and by all the World And this is that Systeme or Complex of Prophecies that first by the Seals runs through the Roman Empire till the sixth Seal Pagan and Christian in the sixth and seventh Seals in those things wherein the Kingdom and Church of Christ are most interessed until the Empire was blasted in the first Trumpet and true publick Worship also by the 1260 Days of the Daily taken away entring The Imperial City was thrown like a Mountain into the Sea in the second and in the third Trumpet when the Roman Empire expiring in the West was surrogated or new founded in the Beast succeeding in his forty two Months and so the Prophecy goes on in the other Trumpets till it comes to the Kingdom of Christ in the seventh Trumpet in its just Succession to the last State of the Roman fourth Monarchy according to all Prophecy And this till the thousand Years runs through the Voices of Preparation into the Vials and the Vials prepare to the thousand Years glorious Reign of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then this is the only true proper Division of this Prophecy into its two Systemes of the Churches and then rise the Seals Trumpets Voices Vials in another Systeme supporting all things relating to the Church by Imperial Motions Mutations and Times And in the latter Systeme all these Tubes of Time are each Sett of them and each of each Sett so united one to another that they can neither be disjoyn'd from their immediate sequence one upon another nor mov'd out of their order so that the Trumpets follow the Seals the Voices the Trumpets the Vials the Voices and each Seal Trumpet Voice and Vial follows immediately upon its foregoing Seal Trumpet Voice and Vial and every seventh comprehends the following Sevens the seventh Seal the seven Trumpets the seventh Trumpet the seven Voices the seventh Voice the seven Vials and each precedent Seventh hath some grasp on all the following Sevens So the seventh Seal comprehends the Trumpets the Voices the Vials the seventh Trumpet the Voices and Vials the seventh Voice the seven Vials so admirably is this Prophecy united and interwoven And to other Division than this of the second Systeme of Prophecies I can by no means subscribe as of the Prophecy divided into the sealed and open Book-prophecy or the Prophecy of the Empire first and then of the Church For that remarkable part of the sealed Book-prophecy viz. the palm-bearing Company by peculiar Right pertains to the open Book or that must be so if there were such an open Book-prophecy and much of the open Book-prophecy allowing such a one must needs pertain to the sealed but indeed there is no such Thing as an open Book-prophecy in that place where it is said to be open'd for the Book was no sooner open'd but it was eaten and so absconded assoon as open'd till open'd by the Voices c. 14. as shall be farther clear'd nor is there any Prophecy of the second Systeme but pertains properly to the Church as within first the Pagan then the Christian then the Bestian State of the one Roman Empire and lastly of the Vniversal Empire and Kingdom of Christ. Now in this Order apocalyptical Both Visions and Times in the first Systeme run through the six Churches In the second through those four Sets of prophetical Tubes Seals c. 6. c. 7. c. 8. to v. of Trumpets c. 8. v. 8. to the end of c. 11. of Voices c. 14. of the Vials c. 15. c. 16. and so laying these Chapters together the order is most exact except that in c. 7. There is an Anticipation of the Triumph of the New Jerusalem from v. 9. to the end In c. 11. there is a Collection of the whole State of the Apostasie during the six Trumpets into one Body together as it consists of the Sufferings of the Witnesses and the Tyranny of the Bestian Apostasie excepting some close Intimations in the very Composure of the Symbolisms of those Trumpets for the great Reasons hereafter to be given that refer to the same Apostacy and begin at the first Trumpet And then in the twelfth and thirteenth Chapters the extravasated Account of the Dragon watching the Woman and her manly Birth the Dragon cast down and the manly Birth caught up is to be reduc'd within its most proper Channel viz. the fifth and sixth Seals And this prepares for the right understanding of the Beast mention'd ch 11. as deriv'd from the Dragon c. 13. arriving his Number 666 which belongs to the six first Trumpets and it is there fitly set to prepare for the Vision of the Lambs Number c. 14. And as to the Chapters 17. 18. and 19. they are most evidently the Progress of the History of the seventh Vial and the full Relation of its Effects To prepare for which an extraordinary Description of the Woman or Great City reigning over the Kings of the Earth opposite to the Woman in the Wilderness is prefix'd and on her occasion a more perfect Portraicture of the Beast and of his ten Horns or Kings is given in preparation to the Judgment executed on all c. 19. And then the Milennial State being drawn up c. 20. it is carried on to the end of Apocalyptical Time as it reaches into the complemental State of Eternity which the Prophecy briefly absolves and then returns upon its more proper Subject or the 1000 Years of the New Jerusalem c. 21. c. 22. Now this Order began with the Preface to the Churches Vision of the first Systeme c. 1. and then the Preface of the second Systeme and lastly a Postscript returning especially c. 4. c. 5. c. 22. 16. to the Vials as given by the first Angel of the Vials This Order is I say the whole entire natural Order of this Apocalyptical Prophecy which is contriv'd indeed suitable to the Secrecy and Mysticness of the Prophecy so as often symbolically to declare when these Prophecies would have the clearest and most efficacious Discoveries in the Church viz. after the Half Time when the Thunders had utter'd their Voices and the Book open was shewn in the hand of Christ. That was the just Season for the Discovery of the Apostacy in the suffering of the Witnesses and the Tenthly Fall of the City and then after the seventh Trumpet
the whole Series of Visions concerning the Beast deriv'd from the Dragon will be best understood and most fully believ'd even as at the Reformation there was most necessarily an Acknowledgment of a long Apostacy of the cruel Tyranny of the Beast over true Christians and a visible Pledge The Ten Kings on the Head of the Beast that carries the Woman would at length fall from it but the End of that Half-Time will make a farther both Notoriety and Assurance of these things This allowed the Prophecy takes no Freedome but what is due to the gravest History to place by way sometimes of Anticipation sometimes of Recollection the Parts of the History so as may best serve the Purposes of the History And yet we cannot deferr so little to the Majesty of Divine Prophecy as is even challengeable by Humane History For that is justly entitled to a Right of secret and insensible Transitions Connexions Transpositions from one part to another which require leisurely Meditation and thoughtful Pauses to find them and yet are so plac'd as when found they give Light one to another with Vsury Altho therefore I rise up with greatest Reverence and Honour to those great Names who have thought otherwise I can allow no Beginning of Apocalyptical Time anew either at the open Book ch 11. or at ch 12. but only a Recollection of those things after their redundant Swellings out of their Channels one to the first Trumpet the latter to the fifth Seal Only The two Systemes have each one and the same Epoch given particularly to each The Churches are close and evenly cemented and souldered one to another and so the Seals Trumpets c. and their Connexion even hermetically seal'd And Both from the same Epoch the Resurrection of Christ derive themselves And as to the Interpretation of the whole even as it is a Rule of great use in the Interpreting General Scripture that the literal Sense is to be preferr'd where no Analogy of Faith or Scripture-Reason is destroy'd by it so here the mystical sense is rather to be chosen where no such Injury is committed upon the Analogy of Scripture Truth and yet as in the one case a subordinate mystical sense may be allowed so in this a subordinate literal sense may be allowed To give only two or three Instances Hearing and Reading this Prophecy hath first the mystical sense of a close Conformity to the Rules of Faith Worship and Practice according to it which makes All Blessed who so read and so hear tho' they do not interpret nor concern themselves in the Interpretation of this Prophecy and yet there is in the literal sense an Accumulative Honour and Happiness on those who joyn both these Senses in themselves together As on the other side They who add and take away by Antichristianism from the Words of it by breaking its Holy Measures in Faith Worship and Practice shall lose their part in its Promises and have their part in its Plagues altho they neither added nor took away in the litteral sense and yet They shall receive accumulative Plagues who have done the first and then by false and distorted Interpretations added the latter also Thus Opening the Book of this Prophecy and its Seals are principally the several Effects of the Kingdom of Christ and that principal one at the Reformation and not the Exposition of the Book or a new course of Prophecy and yet it is subordinately true There was then a greater Clearness and Illustration of the whole Doctrine of the Christian Religion and a new order as it were of Holy Prophecy and Instruction And this Prophecy did then Recall its own Discovery of Things at that Time after the Apostacy so long darkning it and the Gospel and enlarge its former brief Notes And so Coming quickly to pass hath the literal sense That then immediately began Apocalyptical Events each in their own order to come speedily and immediately to pass altho' so many hundred years run out ' ere all come to pass As an Army may be said to come presently when the Avaunt Corriers first appear altho' the Rere may be long in coming because of the numerous Body coming on orderly and in just Files Thus every Apocalyptical Event was on the Wing and darted it self into Existence without the least of slumbring or lingring when its Time was to come But the mystical sense is that whereas that sublime Event of the Death and Resurrection of Christ rose up as a Mountain dividing and parting the former World and Time from the latter Time or the last Days and All beyond the Resurrection was as a Book clos'd and seal'd up so as that it could not till the Resurrection make an offer of Appearance Then it did and therefore then properly seal'd down with seven Seals and yet by their opening it was in a daily motion to its Appearance But those two Worlds were of such different Lines of Communications that nothing pass'd in prophetical Account into Existence or Being out of one into the other even as the World on the one and the other side of the Equinoctial Line are remarkably taken notice of as two distinct Parts of the World how near soever they joyn who are on each side next to it Thus nothing on the other side the Line before the Resurrection was so much as coming to pass that was to be after the Resurrection or to have any motion accounted to it But after that Resurrection every thing pertaining to the latter days is describ'd as coming quickly to pass each in its own Order and Time and knowing its Place and marching in its own Distances none as that Army Joel 2. 7 8. thrusting another or breaking rank but all duely plac'd in their Climes as on this side the Line And now having given this general view of the Apocalyptical Prophecy and its Order of Times I will discourse briefly first on the Systeme of the Church-Prophecy or of the seven Churches and observe their Concert with those Lines of Time that rule the Evenings and Mornings or Nights and Days of Apocalyptical Time SECT IX Wherein a Proof is given The seven Churches carry with them a Line of Time contemporizing with whole Apocalyptick Time Apoc. c. 2. c. 3. THat these seven Churches are intended to bear by their Symbolismes a Line of Time equal to the whole Apocalyptick Time I shall at present use no other Argument but these general ones reserving the more particular Treaty upon these Churches to another part of this Discourse These Churches are as the whole Prophecy of a Mystical Argu. 1 Sense and Importance Christ therefore prefixes I will shew you the Mystery of the seven Candlesticks the seven Candlesticks are the seven Churches where the meaning is not that the expounding the Stars into Angels of the Churches and the Candlesticks into Churches is all the Mystery opened For even Angels of the Churches must be acknowledged to be still Mystery or a mystical Expression except
final Judgment over the Book is quite unseal'd in Death the last Enemy overcome and then the Book the Symbol of the Kingdom is resign'd with the Kingdom it self into the Hand of the Father 9. Hereupon the State of the Christian Church in its Apostolical Purity with the Order of the Living Creatures first and then drawing that of the Elders along with it in a Song of Redemption in Praise of the Lamb with a Prophecy of his Kingdom in which his Servants and Saints shall reign above the Earth or over it as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies in several Places of the New Testament joyn'd with a Genitive Case particularly Matt. 25. 21. 23. I will make thee Ruler over many things 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 10. To sum up all The State of the Church in the thousand Years Kingdom of Christ is given in a second Song of Praise wherein all things bow in the Name of Christ as Lord and that not ceremonially but in real Subjection Phil. 2. 10. Things in Heaven and in Earth and under the Earth and that to the Glory of the Father For the four Living Creatures having said Amen to this high Celebration of Christ the four and twenty Elders as having by the Apostolical Church receiv'd an explicate Knowledge of Christ to shew The New Testament did not at all derogate from the Old The four and twenty Elders after they had fallen down with the four Living Creatures and joyn'd in a Song of Praise to the Lamb now as making up the Concent worship him that liveth for ever and ever and conclude that which the four Living Creatures or the Apostolical Ministry began and herein shew the Resignation of the Kingdom of God at last that he may be All in All Rev. 4. 10. compar'd with Rev. 5. 8. 14. For as all began in God that made all things so here it ends in him The sealed Book being now in the Hands of Christ and all due Acknowledgments made to him that sits on the Throne and to the Lamb immediately follows the opening of the Seals and therein the Course of Time flows out and so flows on of which we are now to take a particular and strict Account only I would desire every Person that sets his Mind and Thoughts to view this so august Inthronization of God and of the Lamb That he would ponder within himself Whether the desolating either the Jews or the Heathen Empire can be Events great enough for so stupendious a Pre-Representation or any thing less than the Glorious Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ could answer to it And now that we may establish the Line of Time according to these Seals and the Time of their opening there are three Things to be consider'd 1. What it is that is the principal Jewel and Treasure that lies under these Seals and so to be set free by the unloosing them 2. What is the principal and supream Visum or Thing to be seen in every Seal and the opening of it and how it serves the disclosing that Jewel 3. What is the true method of fixing the certain Time that the whole Course of the Seals took up and how it is to be measur'd and fix'd If we can now determine and settle aright upon the Resolution of each of these Particulars we shall be able to understand this first Sett of Apocalyptical Visions and to have ample satisfaction concerning them and have great Light into the following Visions also 1. As to the First then That great Treasure and Jewel of Truth that is inclos'd within these Seals and so also as we shall see that the Trumpets ultimately sounded unto is the Glorious Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ Every Event and the Stage of Time it was to pass over is as a Seal or Stop upon this Kingdom till it opens into Glory and the opening of every Seal was an Advance towards it and although when the seven Seals were open'd there appeared a greater and more prodigious Cause of Delay viz. the Antichristian Kingdom yet every Trumpet was as an Alarm of War to the subduing that Mock-Kingdom that rose in Despight and Opposition to the Kingdom of Christ And because all things were so set and placed in their Season and Order that no one thing could come to pass before that which was set before it had had its free Egress and Event therefore every of these Events and the opening of the Seals to let them out though they did not in the Issue open to the true Appearance of that Kingdom yet because they did as it were what they could and there was a Remove of so many Prohibents or Obstacles to that Kingdom and Time so advanc'd from Point to Point that by the opening every Seal the Kingdom of Christ might be nearer to its Appearance therefore they are justly understood and expounded to be Seals unloos'd and opening to the Kingdom of Christ Now besides those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or IT IS DONE IT IS DONE at the End of the Apocalyptical Time and all its Events whither they one and all run together besides this there is this absolute Assurance That the Kingdom of Christ was under the Seals The Kingdom made so magnificent a show of it self at the sixth Seal that had not the Servants of God been seal'd in their Fore-heads that they should not then appear with him in Glory the Kingdom had even then appear'd for in Constantine's Christian Empire to the End of the Reign or at the Victory of Theodosius the Great over Heathenism of which he endeavour'd the utter Extirpation that Kingdom so far came out of its Retirement that there was a solemn and loud Doxology in Heaven that the Kingdom of God and the Power of Christ were come and yet at the very same time the Woman is recorded as fled into the Wilderness Rev. 12. 10. 2. The first Particular then being resolved with so much Evidence and Assurance we may with the greatest Clearness resolve concerning the second or the principal Visum of every Seal open'd for it must be some State of the Kingdom of Christ defin'd by the joyning together the Voices that summoned to the Sight and Observation so far as these Voices continued and then when they ceased the State of the Kingdom of Christ must be considered by the Visa themselves as under the Cessation of those Voices and by any sort of Voices we can find equivalent to them And in this Method and no other that I can understand we may justly and truly comprehend the Intention and Signification of the Seals For if all the Seals carry on the Kingdom of Christ by so many Degrees and Steps of Advance as I have in some measure I hope made evident they do By undeniable Proof then it must needs be That every Seal hath some State of that Kingdom protuberant or swelling out in its Appearance upon that opening and that the Voice that says Come and see calls to observe it and
Wind could stir when therefore the first blasting Trumpet sounded all true Christian Glory was cover'd shut and seal'd and Apostate Christianity alone in any splendid publick Appearance could be hurt 6. At this very joynt of Time upon the Christian Empire is grafted a Pre-Appearance of the Glory of the New Jerusalem in the innumerable Palm-bearing Company 7. That Glorious Kingdom is notwithstanding the sixth Seal open'd apparently stay'd and estopped in sealing the 144000 of Gods Servants that the Glory of Christ in them could not appear For the Glory of a King is in the Multitude of his People the sealing therefore this square Israelitish Apostolical Number is the sealing and estoppage of the Kingdom it self The seventh Seal is the last Portion of this sealed Time and it keeps its hold on all future Time till the Book and Kingdom are resign'd In which the Visum or Thing seen was the seven Angels that stood before God to whom were given seven Trumpets and these Angels preparing themselves to sound till they just began to sound make up the Representation of this Seal The State of Christs Kingdom is to be understood 1. By the Silence as Characteristick a Note as any of the former Voices For in the structure of this Divine Prophecy the symbols are not only drawn and taken from the Events but He that both manages the Events by his supream Power and erects the Schemes upon them hath design'd provided and contriv'd so much of Event and Symbol one for another that it is a great Symbol that there is no more of such or such Event That while it looks as if it were a Reason why the Symbol goes no further because the Event goes no further It is even yet a Symbol through the admirableness of this Mystick Prophecy that just then and there where the Event ceases the Cessation of the Event comes in the place where that Cessation may create a Symbol And this could be no way thus modelled but by so supream an Authour who is not only the Artificer of the Symbols but the Opifex the absolute Operator of the Events themselves The Reason why the living Creatures spoke no more after the Fourth Seal was not only because there were but Four living Creatures but also because the Pure Apostolical Ministry there ceas'd The Reason why the Souls cryed under the Altar was not only because the Martyrdomes under the Pagan Empire were then compleated That all of that Roll might joyn in that appeal to God but because that was the most Pure and Excellent Voice the Church had then left to speak to God in the Voice of Martyrs Blood that when they were dead yet spoke for after this the Church spoke no more so as to be heard till after the Apostacy nor did the four living Creatures or twenty four Elders appear any more after this Seal till then c. 11. 20. And this Cry was tim'd just before that amazing change in the World that Constantines Conversion produc'd The Reason why an Angels Voice remarqu'd the sixth Seal except only as that so wonderful Event of the Desolation of Heathenism spoke it self was because the Kingdom of Christ was greater in the sealing of so many of his Servants to be hidden under the Antichristian Kingdom then that very Conversion of Constantine which as it let out the Kingdom of Christ so far as in an Emblem let out the Apostacy and Antichristian Kingdom also by accident that just then the 144000 were seal'd and the Woman took her Flight into the Wilderness Lastly the Reason why Silence and Prayers without any audible Voice solemnize this Seal is because the pure Service was reducing to the silent private Prayers of the measured Temple Altar and its Worshipers and the publick Tammith Daily or continual Pure Worship was about to be taken away by the Gentiles Intrusion into the outward Court Chap. 11. 1. Compar'd with Chap. 8. 1. Yet at this Time the Worship was both publick and pure in Gods Account and the Prayers of all Saints came up as Incense before him and the Prosecution the Kingdom opened in all the Seals had made against Heathenism was completed in Theodosius's Famous Victory against it imported in the scatter'd Altar-Incens'd Fire of his and all Christians memorializ'd Prayer in the midst of the Battel with Eugenius upon which followed Voices Thunderings Lightnings and an Earthquake the usual Symbols in this Prophecy of all the Acquists and Prevalencies of Christs Kingdom So the State of the Empire was during this Time a State of Respite Quiet Peace or Victoriousness and Greatness under the Favour of the Precept given to the four Angels that held the four Winds which Precept was yet in full Force and Vertue But all this was but for an Half-hour an imperfect decurtated Time seiz'd and surpriz'd from its Perfection as the Beast's Times have been and much more shall be yet within the Half time The Purity of Worship was surpris'd by the Apostacy the Kingdom of Christ by the Antichristian Kingdom being immediately in Preparation The Glory and Peace of the Empire no sooner vindicated from Paganism but merg'd in Antichristianism and so pursued by Vengeance that punish'd the former in the latter and so also made way by a high mysterious Counsel of Justice for the Antichristian King while it destroy'd the Antichristianiz'd Empire Now the just Time of the whole Course of the Seals opened from the last half Week I estimate at 400 Years For the Decency of the Type of sealed Time it is indeed given in no numeral Account Even as the seven Thunders seal'd are ever after conceal'd and under the Name and explicite Series of seven Thunders never open'd and yet as we shall see produc'd in the seven Voices So this sealed Time and of this seventh Seal ending may be understood 1. By comparing that great opening of the Kingdom of Christ at the first Seal in the Apostolical Preaching and the magnificent Appearance of it in the sixth Seal in Constantine's Conversion and except that short Nubecle that little Cloud of Julian's Apostasie all along the Christian Empire to Theodosius's Death Parallels to each of which nothing appears throughout the Time either in Common or Ecclesiastick History wherein the Christian Church is concerned as shewing Christ's Kingdom 2. By comparing all along the 2300 Ev. and Mor. the 75 of the Word going forth the 490 of the Weeks the 1260 of the Witnesses and its concurrent Numbers and the 75 of the Voices and Vials we have and shall farther find the sealed Time determin'd to 400 Years and ending at 437 when the Trumpets began to sound which ought to be shewn 3. By the Signature of the half Time of the Churches Purity and of the Western Roman Empires Duration before the Vacancy at which Vacancy it enter'd in the New and last In Augustulus form viz. the Bestian we may compute the Sealed Time This I account given by the Voice in the midst of the
the other Beast were to be his Subjects and the other Beast his False Prophet zealous of him and of his worship and so the Daily worship was Taken away from before him or out of his way the way of his Rising as Daniel foretold And thus according to the Revel the Gentiles tread the Holy Court and the Witnesses put on Sack-cloth upon it and the Woman flyes into the Wilderness for what these Gentiles do they do by the Conduct of that other Beast who from his Lamb-like Horns yet spake as a Dragon in resemblance of the Pagan Dragon while they convey his Power to the Grand Beast of the Seventh Head How fitly then the Gentiles Forty two months of treading the Holy Court are made the First note of Time will be easily understood if we consider these particulars 1. That the Holy City first and then the Outer-Court of the Temple was the onely due place of Sacrifice of the Jews Daily of Publick Worship after God had plac'd his Name there So that no fitter Type of the Daily Christian Services and Sacrifices than the Holy City and the Outward Court of the Temple 2. That nothing could more express the Taking away the Jews Daily Sacrifice than the Gentiles invading crowding in and filling the City and Court For how great a violation and defilement even according to the Divine Appointment that was appears by the uproar against the Apostle Paul upon a supposition of a Gentile brought by him into the Temple so their Daily Sacrifice must cease of necessity upon the Gentiles coming into the Holy City and Court by an Authoriz'd Violence like a Flood and continuing so to do therefore the Gentiles Treading the Court makes a fit Symbole of the Jewish Daily Service Taken away Proportionably these Gentiles or Paganiz'd Christians taking up the whole room of it as if they were the Church and People of God do as notably answer the Type as can be conceiv'd by defiling the whole Christian Publick Service and thrusting out the true Worshippers These uncircumcised in Heart and in Flesh not inwardly Gracious nor keeping so much as to the outward circumcision of the pure Worship of God break the very Covenant of Sacrifice and Holy Service to God for no such are to enter the true Christian Temple Ezekiel 45. 7. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 what placing together can there be of the Temple of God and Idols Of True Christians and Pagan Christians it is a very unequal Yoke 2. Cor. 6. 16. This most admirably also answers the prophetical Type of the daily Sacrifice taken away by Antiochus * Call'd Epiphanes for first the false and revolting Jews would make a Covenant with the Heathen and obtained Licence of the King to do after the Ordinances of the Heathen because the Land had more Peace then whereupon they built a Place of Exercise at Jerusalem according to the Custom of the Heathen and then in Gods Account the daily was taken away from or before that wicked Prince Antiochus Dan. 8. 11. Then he entred Proudly into the Sanctuary and so things went on to the utmost Extremity and height that all should leave their own Laws and the People be one and whoever would not do according to the Commandment of the King should dye and the daily Service was openly forbidden so Jerusalem became 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Habitation of Strangers or Gentiles then the Sanctuary became a Desolation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It was desolated as a Wilderness and became 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an alien to its Off-spring and they to it and then all was turned 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 into the Mourning and squalor of sackcloth at the Appearance of the Abomination that maketh desolate which was set up the fifteenth of the Month Casleu in the 145th year of the Grecian Kingdom and on the five and twentieth day of the same Month they sacrific'd upon the Idolatrous Altar and that this might be done without controul and the true Religion banished they rent in pieces the Books of the Law wherever they were found and wheresoever was found with any the Book of the Testament or if any consented to the Law the Kings Commandment was that they should put him to death Howbeit many in Israel were fully resolved and confirm'd in themselves to keep close to the Divine Law and Rule in all things and accordingly suffer'd But exactly three years after as the History reports the sanctuary was cleans'd and the daily service restored and a year after that Antiochus dyed as a Prince broken without hand This is the sum of the Relation 1 Macc. c. 1. c. 4. cap. 6. Now how admirably this prophetical Type of Antiochus's enacting the taking away the daily Jewish service the way being prepared by the paganiz'd Jews the Methods and Degrees by which all was done the Restoration that followed and then the divine Judgment upon the Tyrannous Prince himself how admirably I say all this Answers the Table of things before us is even amazing as also that the History was not onely preserved by Providence Divine Revelation being then intermitted till Christ which is not without its significancy that it hath not been only I say preserved but inserted however unduely into the sacred Records by those by whomsoever it was done that by a Witness and Prophet of their own a Scripture of their own Canonizing such an Eye of time though much shorter and such a Typical Delinetion allowing for some lesser Disagreements so wonderfully exact should be ratifyed and that this Map of things might be not only extant but so illustrious as to have become in their Account part of the Bible and bound up so generally with it by their Influence who were indeed concern'd it should have been blotted out from under Heaven But that in which we are at present most interessed is That by the Apostacy of the Gentiliz'd Christians the Daily of the publick Worship of Christians first ceas'd and so in God's Account the Mourning or Sackcloth of the Witnesses and the Wilderness-state of the Woman the Church by that Gymnasium that Place of Exercise or Academy for Idolatry to train and school men up to it was brought into the Holy City even thus the remaining Love to Paganism began the Covenant or Composition between Gentilism and false Christianity exchanging the one into the other and on the very same Account because the Land then infested with the barbarous Irruptions needed such Maozzim or Patrons and Defenders as Idols before and the Saints Departed now And so all things went on to the 666 the Number of the Beast his Image Mark Name and the Number of his Name so that one would be prone to think The * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Treading the Holy City under foot by the Gentiles †〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Witnesses Sackcloth ‖ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Wilderness of the Woman * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Her Seed at the
their several Symbols require there must be the Efficients to work there must be the Subjects to work upon Both at the same Time There are yet two Symbols more Tangents or immedidiately joyn'd with the beginning of this Line that come in to our Assistance and they are the true Worshippers retiring within the Temple enfolded with the Gentiles entring the outer Court and the Servants of God under the efficacy of their Seal at the first Trumpet That we may make all things then most clear with relation to this Epoch let us more distinctly compare all the Symbols of this Prophecy that immediately touch it and pierce as far as we can into their sense and meaning and joyn therewith that their immediate Touch of this Epoch For if by all these we can well fix it it is an absolute and undoubted foundation of the whole Time Now there are four Symbols all meeting to begin this Time upon each of which we may either Recollect the Substance of what hath been already spoken upon any of them or dilate our Thoughts upon what in any of them hath not yet been explain'd and see how any Intimations or Notes of Compare among themselves reflect Light from one to another 1. That which comes first in the order of the Prophecy as also in order of nature is the sealing the hundred forty four thousand into a Secresie and close Retirement For a Seal on their Foreheads and the Name of the Lambs Father written on their Foreheads differ as a Writing seal'd and a Title open and in Capital Letters compare Revel 7. v. 1. c. and Revel 14. v. 1. c. 2. The Temple the Altar and the Worshippers therein Reduc'd within close and confin'd measures is the next given Symbol And here it is necessary to inquire what is meant by the Temple and the Altar because the Temple sometimes is taken for the whole Area or ground upon which it self and all its Courts and Avenues stood yea even the whole City Jerusalem was reputed a Court to it and the Holy City thereupon we find it styl'd But the Temple at other times is taken strictly for that retyr'd part of it that was under covert and into which the Priests only came There were also two Altars one in the Outer Court which was the Altar of Burnt-offering and Sacrifice in approach to which the Congregation came and the Altar of Incense within the Temple to which the Priests only drew near and the People stood without Luke 1. 9 10. 2. 22. Now it may be a Doubt what Temple and what Altar are here intended and the deciding of the Altar will much contribute to the deciding of the Temple And that the Altar of Incense is alone intended and the Inward Cover'd Temple in which it stood before the Vail or the Holy of Holies these three things do enough assure us 1. The Altar of Incense is brought into view and observation just before this Time of the measuring the Temple as shall be prov'd and in distinction from that Altar under which the Souls lay as Sacrifices compare Revel 6. ver 9. ca. 8. v. 5. c as it were to intimate that the Daily Publick Worship under the Type of Sacrifice was near its Taking away and the private close Worship at the Altar of Incense succeeding and within the Temple with both which the silence agrees 2. The Cry for the loosing the four Angels bound in Euphrates sounds from this Golden Altar of Incense whither the True Worshippers had been long retir'd before the Time of that Cry and were close within the Temple c. 9. 13. 3. The very Symbol it self speaks an inwardest Retirement within the Temple and to the Altar enclosed within that For whatsoever was outward viz. the Outward Court and City was cast out to the Gentiles who trode under foot the Sanctuary and Holy place of Publick Sacrifice viz. the Court where the Sacrifices and People had place and so make up this Symbol For the Gentiles having the Outward Court of Sacrifice under their Feet the Daily Service became taken away so the True Worshippers retir'd to secret Service at the Altar of Incense the Apocalyptick Type of Prayers c. 8. v. 3. 3. The third Symbol is the Witnesses in Sackcloth that as hath been said is a mournful Habit and covers that Glory and Excellency wherewith they were endued by the great Powers committed to them and their Prophecy imports a Delay of some admirable Things they declar'd which till Twelve hundred sixty dayes past could not come to pass 4. The Woman in the wilderness yet in a place prepared by God where she shall be Fed as Elijah in the wilderness in a high and wonderful manner 1 Kings c. 19. v. 5. 6. makes the fourth and last Symbol Revel 12. 6. Now a Wilderness condition is out of view seemingly lost and forlorn the Church therefore in the wilderness fed like Elijah couples the Church with the Witnesses who are so eminently resembled to Elijah and shews they are the same in substance Revel 11. 6. with the Woman under onely the different Notions of single and collected as was before explain'd Now all these Symbols are of nearest Importance for all speak Invisibility Secresie and a State out of view and sight and which conceales its true Excellency within it self so does being Sealed so does worshipping at the Altar of Incense and within the Temple so does the Sackcloth of two so great Prophets so does a Church or Woman in the wilderness and all these are upon Personages of the same Character For so are the Servants of God so are the true worshippers at the Altar in the Temple so are the Martyrs or Witnesses so is the Woman that brought forth the manly Child and whose Seed keep the Commandments of God and hold the Martyry or Testimony of Jesus And then all these we shall find cope and bind with the Gentiles Months in some or other Prophetical Point and Regard All these so closely coordinated Symbols would of themselves much incline us to suppose that they all begin together especially when two of them have the same measure of Time viz. 1260 d. But because there can be no proof so great of the Beginning of these Twelve hundred sixty dayes nor of their whole full and entire length and the several other Notes of Time that will fall in each in their due place as the Beasts forty two months His Number 666 within his Season Seasons half Season of intimate Time the Five months and Five months granted to the Locusts Revel 9. v. 5. 10. the Hour Day Month and Year given to the two hundred thousand thousand Horsemen v. 15. 19 and that great Period at which Christ swore Time should be no more but that in the days of the 7th Trumpet c. Revel 10. 6 7. Because I say all these things can no way be so satisfactorily prov'd as by subtending or stretching out under them and applying to
it protected the Infancy or low beginning of that seventh Head as will be seen under the beginning of the forty two Months to which it hath led us From the whole then these two Things arise to our main Purpose 1. That this other Beast must be the whole prophetick Office of the VVestern and Eastern Roman Empire under its Superiors or Hierarchy so far as it was grown Apostatical Antichristian and Pseudo prophetick or into false Prophecy from the very beginning of the Apostacy at 437 to the end of it at 1697 and beyond that in what State soever it shall be till it is cast into the Lake with the Beast With this Exception before the Beasts coming to the Image and Number of it self this Beast hath the Regency and so the Type of a Beast after that it subsides into bare false Prophetism but such as is inseparable from the Beast and the Beast from it so that they rule together but the Supremacy is in the Beast and they fall and are cast into the Lake together 2. The Action of this other Beast till the forty two months is its shaping its own Bestianism both into the Body under it and its Superiority over its own Body It s speaking as a Dragon and governing the Gentiles who are call'd the Earth and them that dwell therein herein exercising the Power of the wounded Beast before him viz. the former Paganish Beast that with all its Heads and Populacy according to the prophetical Emblem liv'd in a wounded State for want of a Bestian Head or Prince from the Empire becoming Christian till the Antichristian King became its Head at the beginning of the forty two Months And this other Beast guided them rul'd and conducted them as paganishly affected to a new Antichristian Paganism in preparation for the seventh Head without whose Succession the Grand Beast had been extinct In all which by Head is meant Head in Power It may be objected against this whole State of Things Object That here is no view of that Arrian Heresie and Persecution which could not be untaken in the Notices of this Prophecy This Prophecy is not to be suppos'd to take notice of All Answer the disorders in the Profession of Christianity any more than of all the Governments or Changes of Government in the World It minds its own Pursuit runs in its own Channel which was the fourth Monarchy and in that the Antichristian Surprisal of the Kingdom of Christ after the Destruction of pure Paganism so that Paganism first under the Pagan Empire Antichristian Paganism punish'd with the Barbarian and Mahometan Inundations from which the True Church was hidden and its Seed persecuted under the Bestian Kingdom is the only Symmetral Even Proportionate Course of this Prophecy till the end of the 1260 Days I come now to the last Thing necessary before the Entry into the Beasts forty two Months that is to settle the State of the Witnesses as in its general view under the whole 1260 Days and more particularly in this Interval from the Apostacy beginning unto the Beasts forty two Months The Witnesses as hath been already declar'd are the Seed of the VVoman the True Church who keep the Commandments of God and hold the Testimony the VVitness the Martyry of Jesus These are in Sackcloth as the best of their State the whole 1260 Days but their Time is distinguish'd by three great Pairs of VVitnesses in the Old Testament whose History explains the varying Types of their Condition Joshua and Zerubbabel Elijah and Elisha Moses and Aaron The first is of Joshua and Zerubbabel who though in mournful Garments as Joshua and in union with him Zerubbabel is represented Zech. 3. 1. c. yet They were as two Olive Branches to the Church of the Jews which was at that Time the Candlestick standing before the God of the whole Earth And this is the first Representation of the VVitnesses for they are also the two Olive Trees and the two Candlesticks standing before the God of the Earth Revel 11. 6. compar'd with Zech. c. 4. And it comprises the certain Assurance and Expectation of the New Jerusalem and its glorious Sanctuary even as the typical Temple and its Jerusalem were so far settled by those two great personages But beyond that They had the Promises of the New Jerusalem State peculiarly made to them to Joshua Zech. 3. 7. places among the Angels standing by in that Vision as Attendants on Christ to Zerubbabel Haggai 2. 21. c. When that Overthrow of Kingdoms should be which could be no other than that at the seventh Vial. Zerubbabel shall be a Signet and to all God's People throughout the Prophecy of Zechar. the same Promises are confirmed and so to these two Witnesses The VVitnesses then at this Time by holy Doctrine pure VVorship unspotted Sanctity begin their Testimony and are truly Christian Prophets or Persons of a magistratical Character and Eminency or truly fit for such a Dignity and as the Sons of Oyl or anointed ones Zech. 4. ult They empty the golden Oyl into the two golden Candlesticks into the Souls of the Servants and People of God the Seed of the VVoman who from the beginning of the Apostacy to the end of it are Members and make up those two Churches Pergamus and Thyatyra which as I have shewn in its Place run parallel in Pergamus at the beginning and Thyatyra in the latter part with the whole Apostacy although the Church of Sardis first and Philadelphia at last do indeed undertake the Line drawn by the Churches through the whole Apocalypse before the Church of Thyatyra in its real Subsistence shall cease to bear that Type of the Christian Church it is appointed to sustain Now how admirably does this agree with the state of the true Christian Witnesses for some considerable space after the Apostacy beginning They did indeed put on Sackcloth in God's Account assoon as the Gentiles came into the holy ground with their unhallowed feet shod with Paganish Superstition But They at first and for some space of time rather emptied the golden Oyl out of themselves than were under Persecution and Sufferings They sent out the Holy Doctrine and chrystal Stream of Evangelical Truth The Worship of God they directed was transparent clear and pure without Paganish Mixtures and Ceremonies and the Conversation they preach'd and gave Example of was not foul ranck fetid but holy gracious pellucid of an excellent Odour and Fragrancy And although History is not just and sincere enough to give account hereof passing through the Feculencies of the beginning Apostacy and suffering under all its particular Injuries more than those of Time and obscur'd as under that cover'd State in which the Church now was yet we are not under a total want of such Monuments of the Witnesses Testimony But for the Corruptions they were to testifie against they are too notorious to be denied as such Beginnings of the Apostacy even at this very joynt of
having the Key of the bottomless Pit not judicially given but committed to him not to open the bottomless Pit and let out the Smoak not to loose nor draw out at greater liberty and by provoking God to give the Malice of Devils greater scope by the Angel of that Pit raging like a roaring Lyon in a hellish Mahometanism but to lay hold on him to bind him to cast him into the bottomless Pit to shut him up and to set a Seal upon him that he may deceive the Nations no more for the 1000 Years which very Consideration of that so opposite Vision does much inlighten this of the fifth Trumpet we are now upon It remains that we consider now what the Service of the two Witnesses might at this time most agreeably with Prophecy be and as so considering it I look upon this joynt of Time this Proclamation of the three woe Trumpets to be the very entrance of the Witnesses in the second Type of that eminent Binary or Pair of Witnesses and Prophets Elijah and Elisha The Witnesses had now a long time as the Sons of Oyl emptied their golden Oyl by way of preparatory Furniture of those two golden Candlesticks the true Churches of Pergamus and Thyatyra that stood this whole Line of Time before the God of the whole Earth and though we have not the clear and unmixed Records of any such Testimony for that were to lessen the Prophecy besides that the Indignation of the Apostate Church must needs have suppress'd them they must needs have suffer'd more so than under the Injuries of Time but I say it were to lessen Prophecy which says They were cover'd with Sackcloth they were seal'd they were retir'd within the Temple the Church was in the Wilderness through the scattering of its Seed It is not then possible according to the Prophecy there should be pure liquid Remains of their Testimony But now the Antichristians like Sanballat and Tobiah and other the Enemies of the Jews disturb'd their Service and in building with them hinder'd the Operation and infus'd their Venome in some part into the Writings and Discourses of Persons of a much more excellent temper in the main Now the Witnesses therefore as we may in part see by Gregory praised before passed into the Spirit and Power of Elijah and Elisha they began now to have fire proceed out of their Mouths to devour their Adversaries They began to declare the Wrath of God against Idolatry and Antichristian Pride and Blasphemy And this entred as Fire into the Consciences of their Enemies that in this manner they were kill'd as it were by the Sword of Christ's Mouth which he threatens to the Balamites in the Church of Pergamus and herein they imitated the Zeal of Moses and Phincas against the spiritual Fornication and Nicolaitanism of that time and also prepar'd the Servants of God in Thyatyra with a holy Zeal against the Jezebelism and Idolatry and Fornication of that Time also when the Apostacy was increas'd But how can we hope for much of Monument hereof The Prophecy of Gregory is more than we could expect and were it not that he serv'd the Apostacy to many other great purposes we had not had so much of him but God over-rul'd so far Now the Witnesses were coming into the closest time of being seal'd and therefore we have the mention of it reviv'd within the fifth Trumpet They were sed with hidden Manna They were hardly known one to another at the very Time Elijah knew not of the seven thousand Knees that had not bowed to Baal nor their Mouths kiss'd him but thought himself alone How much less then can we now know them And which is very characteristical of this Period of the Witnesses Prophecy and Testimony They have Power to shut Heaven that it rain not in the Days of their Prophecy so that there arises a Famine not of Bread but of hearing the Word of the Lord and this endured for the intimate Time of which we are to speak in the next Period of the Witnesses and the Remark of shutting Heaven for three Years and six Months will be of great Conduct to us SECT X. Wherein is undertaken to be prov'd That the Mahometan Sarazens are the Locusts design'd in the fifth Apocalyptick Trumpet and that the five Months given to them comprehend Four hundred-thirty five Years from the Mahometan Hegira at 622 and so reach to 1057. upon Rev. c. 9. v. 1. c. I Pass on from this joynt of Time engraven with the real and substantial Characters of the Angel proclaiming the three Woes the Star falling the Key of the bottomless Pit given to him All which I have explain'd I come now to speak of the Descent of this Star to the opening the bottomless Pit and of that Smoak that issued out upon it and the unexpected Events of Locusts coming out of the Smoak which produce a new Line of Time beginning at 622 and not ending till 1453 but divided by Prophecy into two parts the five Months and five Months of the Locusts and the Hour Day Month and Year of the Army of Horsemen between which will come in the Account of intimate Time and so we will discourse each in their order Antichrist then appearing in the Star fallen to the Earth to shine there as an universal Pastor of which sort the Firmament of Heaven knows none nor can bear any such so he must needs fall to the Earth and the Beast here transmigrated into by the Dragon and beginning to exalt the Woman by carrying his Vniversality in an Image inscrib'd with the Name of the Woman and having receiv'd the Key of the bottomless Pit in place of the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven he immediately proceeds to open it and le ts out Error Falsehood Blasphemy the Doctrine of Balam Nicolaitanism Antichristianism spiritual Pride and Tyranny like the Smoke or perpetual Vapour of the Abyss and its open Mouth that darkned the whole Air of the Christian Doctrine and Profession and in this by degrees he ascends higher and higher till he comes to his number 666. But Sathan above him in this bottomless Pit turning every way and moving more ways than one to advance his Kingdom especially over-rul'd and govern'd by God in fulfilling the course of his Judgment so impregnates this Smoke in that time of spiritual drought and of the Heaven shut as Brass and the Earth as Iron a Time specifick for these Locusts as drought is for the natural ones that unawares to this fallen Star there comes a swarm of Locusts out of the Smoke and they prove armed crowned Locusts dreadfully annoying and Tormenting the Antichristian World viz. by the Mahometan Saracens Having thus far then prepar'd to it I come to the main position of this Section the proof of which I am to undertake that these Locusts are the Mahometan Saracens whose five and five Months measure from 622 to 1057 The first Argument I derive from the Style in which
they are all indifferently and promiscuously by this Prophecy used in all Cases as we may see If then the Number of the Name co-eval with the Number of the Beast was at 725 all the rest must be also at that Time Seeing then it is evident All must begin together If by Evidence from History one was at 725 or as between 725 and 726 we may conclude All the rest were so too But that one was viz. the Worship of the Image we have that so illustrious Icono-Clastick History at that Time Now besides the force of the Allusion between Worship of Images and the worshipping the Beasts Image if we examine it well we shall find both united For as in the worship of Nebuchadnezzar's Image to which pattern the Prophecy undoubtedly refers It seems the Worship of an Image made to his Glory even of that Image he saw in a Dream of which he was the Head of Gold or however most certainly his universal Power and Monarchy commanding all Nations was celebrated by the Worship of the Image he had made and therefore the Edict runs in that Imperial Style Unto you it is commanded O People Nations Tongues and Languages But besides this The worshipping this Image is call'd both by Nebuchadnezzar himself and by the Servants of the true Dan. 3. 14. 18. God The serving of his Gods Even thus The worshipping the Image made to the Beast was both a Worship of the Beast as part of that old Image made up of Idolatry and Tyranny a Worship of his Universal Power commanding Nations Tongues and People and also justly call'd a Worship of his Gods represented by Images As worshipping his Image in the last Time of the fourth Beast or Monarchy gives so significant an Allusion to the Worship of Images set up at that time by his exorbitant Power in whom the whole Image and Bestianism shall perish Of all this Leo Conon Isaurus and after him his Son Constantine Copronymus and the Successors of them from 725 or 726 the Beasts 666 until the second Council of Nice are a notable Indication for although we read not of any precedent Decree by the Beast commanding the Worship of Images yet the general usage of so doing made Image-worship as an Idolatrous Colossus to which every one in obedience to this Bestian Monarch paid Devotion And when the Emperour denied thus to worship it was an Offence as high as against that express Lyon-mouth'd Command of that King of Babylon Vnto You c. And in that these Emperours were out of Rome's Diocese and Jurisdiction it was a style like that Vnto you it is commanded O Tongues People and Languages And the Disobedience a Denial to worship the Image of Vniversality made to the Beast in a Monarchy so universal as to be above Emperours And if things were thus with so great Personages as Emperours how must they prevail in general upon Nations Tongues and Languages of an inferiour Character and what must the Rage be against them Whenever the Number was compleat the War so often Arg. 2 foretold that the Beast should make with the Witnesses with the Seed with the Saints must needs be also for then was the Obligation to worship and to receive a mark the Name or the number of the Name carrying the Nature But the 144000 sealed who had not defiled themselves with Women of a Virgin-worship and obedience to the Lamb distinct from the Beast and his Woman of Fornications he carries The Seed who keep the Commandments of God and hold the Testimony of Jesus The Saints and Holy Worshippers in the Temple must certainly remonstrate to this Idolatrous Tyranny and abominate it They are those who neither worship'd the Beast nor his Image nor receiv'd his Mark Name nor Number as is after the mention of this Number often recorded to their Honour Upon this the Beast risen out of the bottomless Pit who was to make War with all these and into whose hand they were given would in his Rage and his Fury make the War that was given to him to make with them And by wonderful Providence without which a Hairfalls not to the ground The Name of the high Feud in this matter is in all Historical Records call'd a War From 725 or 726 or the Beasts 666 Icono-Machia or Bellum Iconoclasticum The War of destroying Images Loade's History And though Leo the Emperour may seem to be the Aggressor and to have begun the War yet because the Cause on his side was just it is in Prophetical Censure the Beast that made the War and Leo Canon is herein a Representative of all the Witnesses Speedily after the War must follow the dying of the Witnesses Arg. 4 for whenever the War began it was given to the Beast to overcome and to kill and this was as was said solemnly declar'd by the second Council of Nice as also by the Excommunication of the Emperour and violating his Rights in Italy from him as in Capital Letters Greek and Latin as it were like the Jews Superscription on Christ All that worship not the Beast nor Received c. are damned Hereticks And this according to the known Blast of Excommunication was both a religious a civil and also a natural Death as often as the Tyranny of the Beast could make it so This Interdict Proscription and Outlawry upon men joyn'd with the Anathema or Curse of Excommunication like casting into the fiery Furnace was the very dying of the Witnesses the dispiriting and invalidating their Testimony so that it was esteem'd not only dangerous as to worldly Concerns but a deadly Sin to hold with them They were cursed even as he was that was hanged on a Tree All detested and abhorr'd them as damned Hereticks hated of God and Men. And when the Beast had this Victory They then cried out Who is like the Beast Who is able to make War with him They then in token of Triumph sent Gifts one to another rejoyced and made merry because of these Prophets who tormented them that dwell on the Antichristian Earth But tho' they died As their Lord did they could not as he be buried His Death was to be so assur'd by Burial but these Witnesses being a successive Body were to continue dying and prophecying as Christ did at his Death viz. in their continual Successions Part of this first day the whole two following days or twice 360 Years joyn'd therefore as two Times till within 1517 the last half day or 180 Years then the first motion to a Resurrection began and could not begin sooner So that when that Resurrection began we may know assuredly Intimate Time was expir'd The last 180 Years on which it was to make an Impression was come and that therefore the twice 360 days were past or the two Times and that some part of the first 360 days or first Time had also past since Intimate Time began so as to come from thence forward to 1517 and so to 1697 which is the
late Other Parts of the reform'd Church have not pursued the true Principles of the Reformation the Regulation of all Things in Doctrine Worship Conversation and Discipline according to the pure and perfect Rule of the Word of God but that Word in many things is regulated by Antiquity not considering how early the Mystery of Iniquity was at work and where the Foot of the account of the Beast's Number ought to be plac'd even at 25 or 26 from the Resurrection Revel 3. v. 1. c. so that these as in the Church of Sardis affecting too much outward Pomp and Grandieur are to strengthen the Remainders which are ready to dye that are to fill up the Reformation to endeavour to open the Voices of the Thunders among themselves and to prophecy more vigorously before Peoples Nations Tongues and Kings concerning which Things the generality are so asleep That there are but a few Names who have not defiled their Garments but will be in great danger of a shameful Devestiture or Degradation when Christ appears Revel 3. 3. compar'd with Revel 16. 15. The Church of Philadelphia although in a general Zeal to have a perfect Square with pure Evangelical Truth be indeed v. 7. c. in Being yet not come to make the Apocalyptick Line of Time by its proper Interval or space nor can do before the end of the 1260 days as it is drawn upon these Churches to the New Jerusalem which appears in Philadeph and the Right of a Church Their Door of the Profession of Christ according to his Word is endeavoured to be shut although Christ as by immediate Power hath hitherto kept it open yet They of this Church have but a little strength outward Power or Glory Revel 3. 7. c. The Synagogue of Sathan is ready on all Accounts and at all Advantages to Dissinagogue them and cast them out to controul and brow-beat them and that Synagogue must be of the Reformed so the naming them Jews imports as in the Church of Smyrna Jews signified Christians in Profession but becoming Gentiles so here it signifies Reformed but so far relaps'd as to be falsly so call'd who are at the same elevation of Corruption the Apostacy was at in the Church of Smyrna Not long before the 1260 dark days came in so that though they disallow the Apostacy since that time yet they are ready to Cannonize it so far as to that Time it had proceeded and might if they had Time find the same Path to the same End Yet still they escape the Beasts Number 666. Now in regard of all these things it is most evident The Witnesses must be yet in Sack-cloth but they are if they are not wanting to their own Priviledges and Office like Moses and Aaron commission'd to smite with Plagues as often at they will that is to declare the foulness of the Apostacy to Revel 11. 6. remonstrate the Bestianism and Antichristianism of it and to foretel the seventh Trumpet and its Voices and Vials in Ruine of the Kingdom of the Beast and the great Judgments to be executed on his City Church Himself and his false Prophet and all the Impenitents of his Kingdom from first to last and also to declare the Redemption of the whole Israel of God from this spiritual Egypt and its Slavery the opening the Temple that the Ark of the Testament the Tabernacle of Testimony may be seen in Heaven and the Kingdom of Christ appear in the New Jerusalem And this they may do as often as they will That is There is abundant Evidence of Prophetick Truth to do it by There are abundant Promises of Acceptance Favour and Support in the doing of it so that it is a Remisness of Will that is of Zeal not to do it For Blessed is he that heareth and they that read the Words of this Prophecy especially when the Time is so near at Hand The last part of this Time is the most Glorious because Revel 11. 11. c. it issues out into the seventh Trumpet and then those great things will come to pass in Preparation of which all that was at the beginning of that Time was but a shade and semblance Then the Spirit of Life in full and perfect measure shall enter into the Witnesses and set them on their Feet and great fear shall fall on them that see them there will be then so wonderful an appearance of divine Power and Judgment as upon the Apostles Doctrine and Miracles in the very first Times Where if things had gone on with the same Power from Heaven as at first the Kingdom of Christ had then appear'd but the Mystery of Iniquity surpris'd them at 25 or 26. There shall be a Voice calling them up to Heaven and as in the Cloud wherein Christ himself ascended They shall Ascend and whereas only the Servants of Christ beheld Him Their Enemies shall behold them which speaks the publickness of their Ascention and the mighty Influences it will have And in the same Hour the Tenth that is the Decem Principality of the great City viz. most necessarily That great City in which the Witnesses lay dead in the breadth of it fell For when the Ten Horns that give State and Altitude to the Beast fall off from his seventh Head the Woman that sits on the Beast which is this very same City-Church must needs fall from that Height with which the Beast carried it while exalted with his Ten Horns which substantial Reason will recompence for the seeming Impropriety of such a use of the Word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 This Tenth being both in Dan and this Prophecy so essential to the Beast that carries the Woman The Ascent of the Witnesses into Heaven I understand to be some Exemplification on Earth of the Glory and Triumph The Witnesses of Christ that have gone out of the World suffering for Christ in any degrees of Martyrdome have at this time in Heaven upon this change of the World to Christ's Kingdom as undoubtedly the Saints have on all such Changes even as the Angels joy in the Repentance of Sinners As the Saints in Heaven triumph'd at the Desolation of Heathenism or the casting down of the Dragon The Exemplification then of this on Earth by the exalted state of the true Servants of Christ there is the Importance of these Symbols And in the same Hour oppos'd to the same or one Hour of Revel 17. 12 13. the Ten Kings receiving Power with the Beast and giving then their Kingdom to him and therefore comes now into a fit Counter-parallel There shall be an Earth-quake such a mighty Concussion shake and change of the State of the Christian World that Cities shall be removed as it were and not be the same they were before That great City although it shall remain on its Heap yet its tenthly or Ten Kingdom'd-state shall utterly fall seven thousand not Names only but Names of Men shall be slain They shall be slain in