yet it abated it so far as that the Woman was safe from being 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 thereby Nay it was in a manner all drunk up by the Earth the Clayish Earth or Ecclesiastick Councils by that time Theodosius came to be Emperour which was a little before the Woman entred into the Wilderness And the Church had such Anchorage in this first Council of Nice that such Arianism Erat quando non erat as was properly condemned by that Council could never hold up its head again But the eternal Generation of the Son was acknowledged begotten of the Father before all Worlds as the Nicene Creed has it and Arius expressing himself more compliantly with this Creed was re-admitted into the Church by the favour of Constantine who you may be sure would never have re-admitted him unless he had come to some such tolerable compliance And the whole Controversie after that seems only to have been Whether the Son should be deemed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to his Father which being difficult to decide there were those that would have the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as being too hard for the people nor mentioned in Scripture to be left out of the Creed giving that deference to the Nicene decision as not to pronounce it false but over-curious So that there was no peril of the Churches drowning in this Floud when the Nicene Council was so nearly observed even by those that seemed to oppose it And for the Homoüsians and Homoeüsians there wanted nothing but a dextrous Critick to shew how both their terms are consistent one with another if you will but exclude Sabellianism out of the account For making the Father and the Son two real Hypostases though indiscerpible or indivisible one from another they are not only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as it may aim at a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of one and the same Individuous Substance but also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of like substance because according to Aristotle himself there is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Similitude betwixt Substances 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Identity of Quality whether Essential or Accidental is a sure ground of Similitude And the Son being the eternal Image of his Father how can they but be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 unless you run into Sabellianism and will have nothing to do with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Substance and acknowledge a Trinity only of words qualifications or second Notions So that we see what a manifest Influence the Council of Nice had to keep the Woman from being 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and perishing in the Draconick floud And that not only from the benefit of this one Council which was purely Orthodox but even from those Councils which were with a general and promiscuous appellation called Arian though not such Arians as were first condemned by the Nicene Council So that though these Arian Councils were less Orthodox than they should be yet one part of the Christian Populacy adhering to them and the other part to the Orthodox Councils the Woman was so well buoyed up by the help of these Councils as young Swimmers are with Bladdders or Bulrushes that she was safe from sinking again into Paganism or giving religious Worship to any but who was really Creator of the Heavens and of the Earth Jer. 10.11 though that was the malicious project of the Dragon in spuing out that floud of Heterodoxy and Contention viz to extinguish Christianity and make men turn Pagans Thus therefore was the Woman helped by that first Oecumenical and other Councils But how Julian's Death can be so properly said to be an help to her in this case I must confess I see not For most certainly the floud out of the Dragons mouth signifies Heresie or Heterodoxy and Contention The natural Remedy to which evil are well regulated Councils that the minds of the Vulgar who are neither studied Theologers nor Philosophers may be setled and quieted by the grave authoritative decision of their Superiours in things hugely expedient and necessary in Religion and Divine Worship and such was the knowledge of the Divinity of Christ and Triunity of the Godhead Father Son and Holy Ghost Which Faith was assured to the Christian people by these Ecclesiastick Councils and Paganism kept out at arms length and the Christian Religion secured But as for the death of Julian in the Persian War how little service it did may appear in that within a year or two after Valens coming to the Imperial Crown proved an hot Persecutor of the Orthodox Object 3. Upon pag. 143. a The Text of the dead dying in the Lord seems to refer to such times when Martyrdom was most frequent b And p. 146. though Christ's Harvest may signifie the Conversion of Nations and People yet the Angels Vintage seems rather to signifie execution of Judgments because that is the usual Employ of Angels but those things I cannot so well judge of till I have better studied the whole Apocalypse One thing Sir I will a little discourse of which concerns the latter part thereof It is an Antichristian Polity that is to be destroy'd pretendedly or after a sort Religious Now it concerns us to consider after what manner such religious Polities are destroy'd according to the usual Method of Providence The Judaical Polity was very like the Roman c Now their religious Polity was destroy'd by the destruction of their Temple City Priesthood and the like Wherefore Interpreters have applied that Prophecy Gen. 49.10 of the Scepter 's departing from Judah to the destruction of the Jewish State by the destruction of their City and Temple d Cardinal Perron considers the City-Church of Rome as Central to the whole diffusive Church of Rome e It seems by the language of the Apocalypse that Providence designs the destruction of that Material City of Rome and its inhabiting Sacerdotal Polity both together and not one alone f Which if it were destroy'd there could be no such thing in rerum natura as a Church of Rome or Roman Communion no more than the Jewish Ecclesiastick State could exist when their City and Sacerdotal inhabiting Polity was destroy'd g In Rev. 17. v. ult it is the City of Rome that is spoken of for that City then reigned over the Kings of the Earth After the mention of this City immediately follows that Cry Rev. 18.2 Babylon the great is fallen and that other monitory Voice v. 4. Come out of her my people c. After which follows a large and pompous description of her destruction h These things bear hard Sir towards that sense of the Prophecy that the ruine of that Material City is intended as well as of the Sacerdotal Polity that inhabits it You see Sir I have done what I can to deserve the name of a Literalist but in a great Mundane Polity that is to be destroy'd and Cardinal Pallavicino pleads that such it ought to be Answ a The Text of the dead
Religion and make Laws and Orders concerning it so far as consists with the just Liberties of truly conscientious men nor are repugnant to the written Law of God whether in Scripture or in Humane Souls This is so consistent with Christianity that I do not doubt but the Holy City in the Millennium will be built by a Council truly Holy and truly Oecumenical Arg. 2. This Imperial Council confessedly added to the Creed Answ What the Council of Nice concluded concerning the Divinity of Christ and Triunity of the Godhead was no addition to the Creed or Canonical Scripture but only an Explication made for the quieting of the Church and burying that Floud of Contention wherewith the Dragon would have overwhelmed the Church And therefore no Pride Fraud nor Covetousness being underneath but a sincere study of preserving the Church in Peace and of exhibiting such a Form of Faith as was least obnoxious to the Cavils of the Heathen as if the Christians worshipped more Gods than one or any thing that was not God we have no reason to question but Christ assisted and directed that Council in their determinations according to his promise Arg. 3. That this Council has been of greatest Authority and most dangerous to be opposed Answ I do not see how this derogates any thing from the worthiness of the Council so that it should be made the Epocha of the time of the mournful Witnesses till their Rising Certainly it is as dangerous to oppose the Apostles Creed and yet I think no man will deem it a fit Epocha for the time of the mournful Witnesses Arg. 4. The Council of Nice set the first Horn on the Ecclesiastick Beast the other not by full Authority till Anno 380. or rather 451. A Beast may be a Beast without one Horn or with none but he cannot have an Horn and be no Beast Answ The Patriarchate of Rome and that other of Constantinople that they be the two Horns of the two-horned Beast Apoc. 13. I easily admit But so soon as they were two Summities or Preeminences Ecclesiastical that they were necessarily ipso facto two Horns in that worse sense that I deny For neither embodying into a Polity or having Superiorities and Preeminences make Beasts and Horns but only Idolatry and Cruelty But the degeneracy of the Church into Idolatry was a pretty while after the Nicene Council It commenced with the Beast that was is not and yet is And he commenced with the breaking of the Empire into several Kingdoms which was after the Nicene Council and the first Constantinopolitan also Arg. 5. The Dragon stood before the Woman that was ready to be delivered to devour the Child as soon as it was born Chap. 12.4 The Child was born in the Conversion of Constantine Therefore the Re-paganizing of the Church must be presently after and so was the flight of the Woman into the Wilderness Answ The Dragon stood ready to devour the Child so soon as it was born but no Text says he did devour it so soon as it was born but quite contrary that it was caught up to the Throne of God and possessed the Imperial Crown and the Woman also escaped by her flight into the Wilderness An Attempt does not at all infer an effect I understand no force at all in this Argument Arg. 6. This gives a good account of the universal Woe Chap. 12.12 which seems to come in strangely after those words of Triumph preceding For the Devils Pagan Worship must quickly have come to an end by the Conversion of Constantine if he could not in that short time have turned off Constantine from the Faith or Re-paganized the Christians And the greatness of his wrath shows he was likely to make quick dispatch Answ I answer 1 That that Wo is not universal Earth and Sea not comprehending all the parts of a Political World There are Heavens besides that are bid to rejoice at this defeat by the Conversion of Constantine The vulgar people are Earth and Sea and amongst them the Devil was resolved to bestir himself 2 The short time he had to turn himself in is in reference to the keeping up his old Draconick Religion He must either do it before the Woman go into the Wilderness or else never And therefore that floud of Contention was to turn off the Populacy from Christianity and make them adhere to the old Pagan Religion But for Re-paganizing the Empire become Christian his time was not short for that he carrying on and perfecting that project for many hundred years 3 And lastly The greatness of his wrath only shows the greatness of his straits not the quickness of his success in those designs of either upholding the old Paganism or introducing a new one In the former whereof he is quite defeated and in perfecting the latter his progress was but slow when once begun nor begun till about four hundred years after Christ when the Empire begun to be broken into many Kingdoms Arg. 7. In this way we need not go to the uncertain Conjectures of proportion betwixt the inner and outer Court from Villalpandus or arbitrarily fix on such an Epocha as will best suit with our own Opinions For the state and times of the Church before and after Constantine are signally distinguished of themselves with reference to the Altar Chap. 11.1 as the Symbol of Martyrdom Answ I say 1 That the proportion of the inner and outer Court of the Temple namely the Area's of them in Villalpandus are not uncertain And it is the Area's of them by a Metonymia Adjuncti that are conceived to be measured The square Area of the whole Temple in the largest sense is conceived to be cast into nine square Areolae of equal bigness Two of which are the Area's of the inner Court the rest of the outer Whence the inner to the outer is as two to seven And it is Ezekiel's Temple questionless that the Apocalypse alludes to and none else As the description of the Trees and the River Apoc. 22. is from thence And the thing is so phrased according to the Artifice of the Apocalyptick Stile that both the proportion of the Time of the Non-Apostasie and Apostasie and also the Non-Apostate and Apostate Condition of the Church is insinuated For his being bid to measure the inner Court shows the Symmetricalness of that State of the Church but the rejecting the outer Court from being measured intimateth its Incommensurableness or Asymmetry to the Measure But the naming the forty two months it was to be trodden down gives a third Term whereby we may gather the time the Church was not yet trodden down by the Gentiles For as the outer Court is to the inner so is forty two months time to the Time sought for which is twelve months Thus As 7 to 2 so 42 to 12. The time therefore of the Non-Apostate Church is one entire Time or two Semi-times 2 And this plainly hinders us from seeking such an
a reference thereto of the Camp of Israel So that the four Wights are as well Israelitish as the twenty four Elders And the twenty four Elders wearing Crowns and the four Wights not so plainly indicates that the one are the Rulers of the other and therefore are but one congenerous Polity And the Reasons which he produces to the contrary are but slight For the four Beasts or Wights are no more employ'd in the services of the New Testament time than the twenty four Elders For whatever any of them are said to do respects the New Testament time And for their being made to say Come and see at the opening the four first Seals we are to consider that the three latter of those Seals respect rather the Empire than the Church And it is not as an Israelitish Elder that he informs John of the Lion of the Tribe of Judah's prevailing to open the Seals but as a crowned Prince it becoming such a Personage to instruct John touching the Almighty's deriving Power to Christ both to foretel and so to administer the Affairs in the World as to cause his own Predictions to be true But now for the Doxology of the twenty four Elders alone Chap. 11.16 without any of the four Beasts it is not intended to signifie the Christian Church not to be universally pure but confinedly to these Elders But it marvellously ratifies my sense of things that these crowned Elders signifie Kings or Monarchs and that therefore the Doxology of the Elders is here mentioned and that of the Beasts left out to denote the gladsom sense of those Kings and Princes that had cast off the Tyranny of Antichrist or Papal yoke in the Reformation at the Rising of the Witnesses The People was to be yet subject to their Kings or Princes but these Kings themselves to be no longer subject to the Pope but to be absolute Sovereigns in their own Dominions And this is the occasion of their peculiar Doxology which if the Beasts had not been left out would not have been discerned And that one of the four Beasts within the same Confines of Time delivers the Vials that is rather an Argument that the Beasts are pure as well as the Elders and that Purity is not confined to them And 't is much if the Beasts were not pure that they should give the Vials to Angels in pure and white Linen pag. 69. And as for the Inversion of this Doxological service Apoc. 4.9 and Chap. 5.8 where the Beasts begin first compared with Apoc. 19.4 where the four and twenty Elders are named first these things further confirm my Notion of the four and twenty crowned Elders that they are Kings or Monarchs For the usual custom being that the Doxology from the Beasts as the Praecentors should begin the Clergie being part of the People in Counterdistinction to their King or Monarch though otherwise highly venerable in their Archbishops Bishops c. this Doxology Chap. 19.4 which succeeds that copious description of the utter destruction of Babylon that Papal Polity that so Tyrannized over Kings how naturally does the four and twenty Elders being placed first in this Doxology though together with the Beast or People denote both that those four and twenty Elders are the Monarchs of those Times and that they have a more peculiar gratification in this destruction of Babylon though the people also are greatly gratified thereby and therefore both join in a Doxological Thanksgiving for her destruction But in the first place the four and twenty crowned Elders In pag. 45. he places the beginning of the Interval of the Church of Smyrna in the beginning of the ten years Persecution by Diocletian Because it is said to her that she should have the Tribulation of ten days that is of ten Prophetical Days or years Which I will allow to be alluded to also though that Persecution was not full ten years But Day not signifying only a Prophetical Day or Year but also any particular Season or Time those ten Days signifie chiefly all the ten Persecutions so famous in History of which this of Diocletian is but one But there were other swingeing ones before though that the greatest And Spondanus does justly call that first of Nero's raising a most direful Persecution and therefore the fittest Epocha for the Church of Smyrna that Interval having its Name from the Bitterness of Persecutions And as elsewhere so especially in this Prophecy of the Churches Allusion to Names as the Author himself somewhere freely confesses is of no small moment in Prophetical Interpretations In pag. 47. the last Seal he makes the space reserved for the rallying of Heathenism and its Forces that it may be finally destroy'd by Theodosius the Great in the overthrow of Eugenius and Argobastes and of the Paganish Forces under them But this which he would have the last or seventh Seal no doubt is part of the sixth which describes a Victory over all the Pagan Forces brought forth in defence of their Idols that none of them could withstand the wrath of the Lamb and this was the Fate of Eugenius and Argobastes as well as of others who were both subdued by Theodosius the Great An. Dom. 393. or thereabout even upon the Epocha of the seven Trumpets So that as the whole space of the Church from the beginning to the end of all is comprehended under the seven Seals so the space from the beginning of the seventh Seal to the end of all may be comprehended under the seven Trumpets This is the natural disposure of the Apocalyptick Time as Mr. Mede has solidly made it out And the half-hours silence at the time of Incense is no delay to the Prophetick Time of the sounding of the seven Trumpets which brings on the Vengeance on the blood-guilty Empire but is only a Type of the Efficacy of the Prayers of the Church unto God to do them right that had suffered and to execute Justice on his own Enemies which the Thunderings Lightnings and Earthquake Chap. 8. there mentioned signifie In pag. 49. he makes as if at the very same time that the Woman had got into the Wilderness the Dragon cast the floud of the Paganish Barbarians as it were out of his mouth to have swallowed up the True Church but that the Earthly Church drunk up the floud by proselyting those Barbarians to its Pseudochristianity when the Ten Kings gave their strength and Power and Kingdom to the Beast But first a floud of Contention and Dissension according to Scripture-phrase is more suitably conceived to come out of the mouth of the Dragon than vast Armies of men Secondly The floud is spued out to carry her away in her flight toward the Wilderness before she could get thither and by that means to re-establish pure Paganism again in the Empire as it seems to me from Chap. 12.15 Which design of his was frustrated by Daniel's Earth or Clay by the Oecumenical Council of Ecclesiasticks at Nice c. as
yet partly because I have dwelt already on this Calendar of Prophetick Time longer than I intended and partly because I have already noted such things as may satisfie the Reader touching the Matters betwixt the Calendarist and my self I shall endeavour to be exceeding brief in my strictures on this Postscript Wherefore as for his first second and third Objections and Answers pag. 80 81. I have so fully set down what may satisfie the Reader therein in the foregoing forty fifth Chapter that I will omit saying any thing of them here We come therefore to his fourth Objection pag. 82. which is this But if the Line of 2300 Evening-Mornings could be supposed to begin at Cyrus yet the 1335 days Dan. 12. cannot be set to any other point of time than Antiochus for it is expresly dated from the taking away the daily Sacrifice and that is enough to destroy the Calendar His Answer to this is ample and ingenious but the summ and substance is this That the taking away the daily Sacrifice by Antiochus being a Type of the Beast or Antichrist his taking away the pure Christian Service which was at the beginning of his Reign this is to be the Epocha of the 1335 days as the taking away the daily Sacrifice is the Epocha of the 2300 Evening-Mornings literally understood But here I reply Why then is not the taking away the pure Christian Service the Epocha of the 2300 Days mystically understood especially I having demonstrated Chap. 45. that the Epocha of 2300 days mystically understood cannot be Cyrus his taking of Babylon though it would thus be very pretty the Typical Line reaching from literal Babylon's falling to mystical Babylon's falling and from literal Jerusalem restored to the mystical or New Jerusalem as he urges pag. 80. But that Epocha I have fully routed in that forty fifth Chapter and therefore the Epocha of the Typical 2300 days must either be in the taking away the Christian pure Service at the commencement of the Reign of the Beast where he would fix the Epocha of the 1335 days Whence the Church of God will not be cleansed from the impure Worship of Antichrist till above a thousand years hence Or else the Epocha must be from the taking away the daily Sacrifice which is most true but this will again destroy infallibly the ingenious Author's Calendar which I think I have hinted above also We pass therefore to the fifth Objection The Beast's time began before 400 and that spoils the Calendar-Account In Answer to this he recurs to that witty Invention of his whereby he concludes 404 years after the Refurrection to be the Time of the Purity of the Church and consequently the 437 of our Lord to be the Epocha of the Time of the Beast But this is already refuted in the foregoing forty fifth Chapter so that I need say nothing more here Furthermore to my Argument drawn from the proportion of the outer Court to the inner he answers First That let Villalpandus his Measures be never so punctual the Text seems not to point at Time but to the Churches Purity or agreement with Ezekiel's Measures Secondly Villalpandus's Measures are adjusted to the Temple but the Vision to the Tabernacle and City to make the outer Court Whence Villalpandus his Measures will be unapplicable to the business Thirdly The Church symbolizing with the Eremitical Woman was retired into the Temple worshipping before the golden Altar of Incense the daily Sacrifice being taken away viz. at the entrance of the Reign of the Beast before which time he supposes the outer Court was commensurable Fourthly Although it be hence that the first Vision of the Opened Book does not begin so high as the seven Churches or Seals yet this is according to the true Apocalyptick Order which first compleats the History of the Trumpets begun to the very end of the Apocalyptick time and then begins from the very first in the Woman cloathed with the Sun as a new set of Visions But to the first I reply This measuring respects not only the Purity of the Church but the Time of the visible Church continuing pure else why is that third proportional so seasonably offered in the Vision To the second That Villalpandus his Measures are adjusted to Solomon's Temple in Ezekiel which is Typical or Prophetical but the City being added it is Iconismorum Metallaxis usual with the Prophets to typifie one thing by more Symbols than one And by the Holy City is signified the People of Israel congregated in the outer Court to worship and answers to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the inner Court. To the third I say The retiring into the Temple can be no fit Symbol of the Woman in the Wilderness by Wilderness Paganism being emblematized as Alcazar has noted and brought a Cloud of Witness to confirm it and the reason thereof is added in my Alphabet of Iconisms So little congruity is there betwixt the Woman's retiring into the Temple and her being in the Wilderness which is as wide and vast as the two-winged Empire Eastern and Western Re-paganizing and so becoming a Wilderness or Desart And for the outer Court 's being commensurable before the entrance of the Reign of the Beast we were not come to the outer Court then and the Vision respects the external and visible state of the Church To the fourth and last I reply That the making the outer and inner Court synchronous does most certainly infer the first Vision of the Opened Book not to begin so high as that of the seven Churches and Seals Which is an intolerable absurdity and as great a piece of violence as can be done to the sacred Method of the Prophecies And now for the Calendarist's Apocalyptick Order so far it is true as that it points to the running through the History of the Trumpets begun to the very end of Apocalyptick Time which is the thing that is done in the roaring of the Lion-Angel distributed into seven Thunders which are equal put together to the space of the seventh or last Trumpet which therefore reach to the very end of Apocalyptick Time And therefore the Angel having declared that there was no more time than this seventh Trumpet which he had in so general a touch run thorough after his giving the Book to John to be eaten John is immediately bid to prophesie And therefore the Vision of the measured Temple and Witnesses is as certainly the first Vision of the Opened Book-Prophecy as any thing in the World can be certain And if it be so the Calendarist himself cannot but confess it begins as high as the seven Churches or the Seals But if he imagine the History of the Trumpets begun to be compleated to the end of Apocalyptick Time in the Vision comprized in the eleventh Chapter because of the second Woe 's being said to be past and the seventh Trumpet sounding to make the Vision of the Woman cloathed with the Sun the first Vision of the
Which Consideration will justifie against the idle Cavils of the Unskilful what we have writ in Synopsis Prophetica Book 2. Chap. 16. touching the Visions of the King of Tyre in Ezekiel applying them to the Bishop of Rome And now in the next place we may also note That as in Ezekiel his eating of the Roll does not signifie that he was thereby to expound Prophecies but to utter Prophecies himself so in like manner S. John's taking the Opened Book from the hand of the Angel and eating it and his being bid thereupon to prophesie does not signifie expounding Prophecies but the uttering Prophecies himself as he begins to do immediately in the next Chapter so that a man may justly wonder that any thing should blind any one so as to interpret John's being bid to prophesie after his eating the Book of either preaching or expounding Prophecies And thirdly and lastly As Ezekiel his sight of the Appearance of the Glory of the Lord as of the Bow in the Cloud in the Day of Rain was an Introductory Vision to his eating of the Roll and prophesying John also seeing this Glory of the God of Israel this great Angel of the Covenant Christ with the Rainbow on his Head from whose hand he takes the Opened Book eats it and prophesies what can this signifie more naturally than that this Appearance of this glorious Angel is an Introductory Vision to S. John's Opened Book-Prophecy as the Appearance of the Glory of the God of Israel was to Ezekiel's Prophecies as was concluded before in the foregoing Chapter CHAP. XXIII His reason of inserting here his Demonstration that the Reformation begun by Luther is the Rising of the Witnesses The two first Visions of the Opened Book Prophecy proved Synchronal The agreement of the fore-parts of these two Visions and the exquisite correspondency of the middle-parts one with another Whence the Fall of Babylon in the second Vision is proved to be the same with the Fall of the City and Rising of the Witnesses in the first That consequently the Fall of Babylon in the second Vision is after the sixth Trumpet That the Fall of Babylon and Rising of the Witnesses is the Object of those Acclamations in Heaven Chap. 11. and of the Doxology of the Elders As also of the Song of Moses and the Lamb sung by the Victors over the Beast That this Song therefore follows the sixth Trumpet And that all the Viols follow that Song From whence the above-mentioned Demonstration is concluded THAT excellent usefulness of having an assured knowledge that the blessed Reformation begun by Luther and here in England more especially perfected was the Rising of the Witnesses which most naturally must beget a peaceful mind in men and due value for our Church makes me resume again the seven Arguments at the end of the Answer to S. E. his Remarks on my Apologie enlarging at least upon some of them more fully that so useful and necessary a Matter may not be omitted or maimedly managed in these Paralipomena That the abovesaid Reformation therefore is the Rising of the Witnesses I demonstrate thus First We are to observe in the two first Visions of the Opened Book Prophecy viz. the Visions comprized the first of them in the eleventh Chapter of the Apocalypse and the other in the twelfth thirteenth and fourteenth Chapters that they begin from the same Epocha and that they end in the same times namely with the last Vial which contains a full and final overthrow of Babylon or of the Beast and false Prophet Whence these two Visions must be concluded Synchronal Now that they begin from the same Epocha we prove thus They both begin from the beginning of the Church For the Vision in the eleventh Chapter being the first Vision S. John sets down after his eating the Opened Book and his being bid to prophesie that is to say to prefigure or predict things to come as Ezekiel did after his eating the Roll and what is set down Chap. 11. being plainly a Prophecy it is plain this is the first Prophecy of the Opened Book and therefore according to indispensable Method if any Visions of the Opened Book-Prophecy begin from the beginning of the Church this first must and not be Visio 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a decollated Vision with its head struck off But that the Vision of the Fight of Michael with the Dragon and of the Woman in the pangs of Childbirth commence with the beginning of the Church which are parts of the entire Vision of the twelfth thirteenth and fourteenth Chapters is so plain a thing that impudence it self if not stark blind cannot deny it Wherefore the Vision of the eleventh Chapter must begin from the beginning of the Church as well as the other and so must have the same Epocha And as the fore part of the Vision Chap. 11. viz. the Temple measured and the Worshippers therein denote the Purity of the Primitive Times as to Worship so the fore-part of the other Vision the part contained in Chap. 12. viz. the Combate of Michael with the Dragon and the pangs of the childbearing Woman denote their fortitude and patience in suffering for the Truth Now that these two Visions end in the same times is plain from hence in that the end of the first Chap. 11.19 is a lively description of the seventh Vial. There were Lightnings and Voices and Thunderings and an Earthquake and great Hail the same description that is found Chap. 16. v. 18 21. and no where else are those five Phaenomena put in the whole Apocalypse So that the first of these two Visions ends in the seventh Vial. That the second does so too is plain for that it ends with the treading of the Wine-press where blood came out even to the Horse-bridles Which therefore must be the slaughter by that mighty Heros on the white Horse Apoc. 19. Commander of the Army in the Battel of that great day of God Almighty which is plainly under the seventh Vial. Wherefore these two Visions beginning from one Epocha and ending with the seventh Vial do Synchronize Secondly As the fore-part of these two Synchronizing Visions represent a pure Church conflicting with the Pagans over whom at last they get the Victory Chap. 12. v. 9 10. so in the next or middle parts of these two Visions the former from v. 2. to v. 11. in Chap. 11. the latter the whole thirteenth Chapter there is contained the like Conflict betwixt the pure Apostolick Church and the Apostatized Church or Pagano-Christians and a Victory noted Chap. 11. v. 11 12 13. in the former and in the latter Chap. 14. v. 8. the foregoing verses being referrable to this Conflict as the description of the Souldiers of the Lamb. So that the middle-parts of the two Visions exquisitely answer one another these middle-parts of both the first and second Vision containing a War of the Witnesses or Souldiers of the Lamb or Saints with the Beast and we are to
And these first Acquists are as it were the Primitiae and Pledges thereof So plain is it every way that this Vision Chap. 11. touching the Witnesses drives only at a partial regaining of the Kingdom of Antichrist into the hands of Christ The Judgment indeed is here begun of the little Horn they begin to take away his Dominion but consuming and destroying it even unto the end that is the work of the Vials 2. To your second Bring by a Prophetick Henopoeia as many Risings of the Witnesses and as distant in time and place as you will and phansie them as strongly as you will to be made within the last Semi-time or before the forty two months according to your Epocha be expired yet the Vision does expresly declare that all this can amount to no more than the Fall of the tenth part of the City Babylon and a commensurate Rising of the Witnesses Upon which consideration one would think it were impossible but you should find your self in a wrong Box and that my way is the genuine Interpretation of the Prophecy But that your Epocha is also false is abundantly made out from what we have said to your third Letter viz. That the Beast and his War with the Witnesses commenced as early as the Apostasie which your self acknowledges to begin about four hundred years after Christ which is above fifty years earlier than your Epocha This if you thoroughly consider it is a full Answer to whatever you offer in your second Paragraph And it is tedious to me to multiply words 3. To the third This invincible Reasoning of mine touching this Vision you seem to be aware of in this next Paragraph and yet you are not sufficiently pierced by it but would shuffle it off by saying If the Event of this forty two months War be but partial how can it be final as if there were an inconsistency therein because the one signifies there is more of the same kind to follow whereas final signifies the contrary Answ But this is a mere piece of Sophistry The pretended inconsistency not observing the Laws of real Opposition which must respect the same thing But final here respects the Extension of the forty two months War but partial the Extension of the Kingdom the Witnesses or Saints warred against the vanquishing of part whereof may well be the final result of the forty two months War or of the Time and Times and half a Times War though there may be more of the same Kingdom still behind to be conquered and subdued This is so open a Fallacy that it needs no illustration to set off the inconsequence thereof But you proceed 4. To your next I answer briefly That After three days and an half or three times and an half I understand to signifie as much as After the last Vnite of the Eventual Computation current which is a Semi-time as I have demonstrated in my Arithmetica Apocalyptica and more concisely in my Nine Queries and Notes And a Semi-time being the Vnite in Eventual Compute and so adapted to the nature of the Event predicted too big for either a Prophetical Day or Month and not the beginning of the Event but the whole Event it self being the Object of the Prediction and the whole Event reaching from about the midst of the second month of the last Hexamenon or Semi-time into the fifth if not sixth thereof the Accomplishment of the Prediction is as exquisite and complete as if the Vnite in Compute had been a Year and the Event had fallen out after the last year current of suppose twelve hundred and sixty years This if you consider it is a plain and full Answer to what you alledge in this Paragraph 5. In the next many things are said but nothing that in the least infringes that grand Truth viz. That the final issue of the forty two months War betwixt the Beast and the Witnesses is only the Fall of the tenth part of the City and the Rising of the Witnesses proportionate thereto You readily grant that the Vials succeed the sixth Trumpet but you say that the Vials succeed the three Times and an half does not thence follow unless I had first proved that the Three times and an Half reached no further than to the end of the sixth Trumpet which you say you never yet saw proved This I wonder at because Mr. Mede has sufficiently demonstrated that the Woman to be nourished for a Time and Times and half a Time in the Wilderness synchronizeth with the first six Trumpets Consult his Table of Synchronisms and you will see it and peruse his little Treatise of Synchronisms and there you will find it proved Besides that till after the three days and an Half the second Wo or sixth Trumpet is not past Rev. 11. And this is a plain demonstration that the final issue of the forty two months War is but a partial Fall of Babylon or partial Ruine of the Kingdom of the Beast and not a total because there would be no Beast left to be ruined by the Vials after the Expiration of the sixth Trumpet and last Semi-time Think seriously on this You say the three Woes have the same subject and the same object which is a mistake For the first two Woes are the Invasion of the Saracens and Turks upon the Idolatrous Empire at large the Ten-horned Beast and belong to the Sealed Book Prophecy but the third Wo more peculiarly respects the two horned Beast or Idolatrous Hierarchy and belongs to the Opened Book-Prophecy But all three agree in this that they are Woes and so the transition is from one Wo to another But that proves not that they have one adequate Subject and Object no more than that they belong to one and the same Prophecy whenas it is manifest the last Wo belongs to the Opened Book-Prophecy the other two to the Sealed Nor is the last Wo-Trumpet divided adequately into seven Vials but into seven Thunders and the first Thunder into the seven Vials which is needless here to insist on and you may find satisfaction elsewhere See the Answer to the Remarks on the place and also Appendicula Apocalyptica So that there is not the least pretence of continuing the forty two months War betwixt the Beast and the Witnesses beyond the partial Fall of the great City and the Rising of the Witnesses proportionate thereunto That there is still a struggle betwixt the Antichristian and Evangelical Party and that the Evangelical Party may sometimes receive damage is true yet this is not to be reckoned to the forty two months War but to take denomination from other Visions or Prophecies from the Menaces to the Church of Sardis and from the Vials especially And their attacks to do the Evangelical Party mischief is to be referred to their noisom and grievous sore as an effect thereof inflicted on them under the first Vial and sticking to them or at least irritable in them all along as this sore is
Mutation either after the year 393. or the year 1653. I say the seeming force of this Objection is built upon a mistake as if the Vnite in the Eventual measuring of the Medial Visions were a Prophetick day or single year whenas it is a Semi-time or Hexamenon according to the first Premiss Wherefore if considerable Changes happened within the first Semi-time and in the last it is sufficient As when the Eventual measure is by single years if the thing fall out that denominates the Epocha of the Period of Time in the first year and the Event in the last it is sufficient though not in the first day or month or in the last day or month of the year If the Epochal Note should fall out either before the beginning of the first Semi-time or the predicted Event after the last then indeed it would be a flaw but if within the first and the last and that in handsom proportion then all is right c To the third That Idolatry came not into the Church till the beginning of the eighth Century This seems a very odd Objection as if there were no Idolatry but mere Image-worship whenas certainly the Invocation of any invisible created Powers Saints or Angels and to make them our Mahuzzim to put confidence in their Succour and Protection is the Fundamental Idolatry upon which praying with eyes and hands lifted up to their Images and other Superstitious or Idolatrous Rites done to them are built But that this kind of Idolatry began not long after the Epocha of 393. I have abundantly proved Chap. 28. d And to the fourth and last That it was not till the end of the eleventh Century that the Church of Rome was guilty of shedding of blood I answer out of my third Premiss That my Interpretation of the 13. and 17. Chapters of the Apocalypse does not precisely and adequately respect the Church of Rome but concerns the whole Sacerdotal Hierarchy of the Empire and the whole Empire Eastern as well as Western in which Division I take in the whole Empire And the two wings of an Eagle which were given the Woman to fly into the Wilderness spread over all Apoc. 12.14 Secondly That that which is an eminent Character of a Body Politick though it be not all along the Body Politick yet in these Henopoetick Visions will and may justly be represented in the Hieroglyphical Type together with those Characters that continue from the beginning to the end especially when the said Character continues for a considerable time and according to the Objector's account it will have begun and continued 4 or 50â— years but I shall prove that this practice of Rome began several of hundreds of years sooner Thirdly Bloodshed is not the only Cruelty outing men of their Preferments imprisoning banishing and reducing men to extreme Poverty and Beggery are things as harsh in a manner as Death it self Fourthly lastly Though we were destitute of History what was done after the Epocha of the Apostasie 393. yet the carriage of the Arians and Orthodox one against another before is so furious and severe that we may guess from thence what would be done after the abovesaid Epocha To particularize before this Epocha I shall forbear for brevity sake and because it is the time I am less concerned in the Apostasie not beginning till Idolatry was conjoined thereto We will content our selves to set down only such Instances of Cruelty and Persecution as are after that Epocha In the first month the seventh day of the month of the first Hexamenon or Semi-time Theophilus Bishop of Alexandria holds a Synod there and condemns Origen and expels Origen's Followers out of Aegypt and Palestine One of the first occasions of this Pique against the Origenists was this He invited to him four Brothers Dioscorus Ammonius Eusebius and Euthymius who were Overseers of the Religious Houses in Aegypt men of singular Piety and Parts and Lovers of Origen from whom they were thoroughly convinced that God was incorporeal nor had any parts nor members as the Anthropomorphite Monks of Aegypt thought he had and did with zeal and fury profess as much Theophilus made Dioscorus Bishop of Hermopolis and the other three he importuned and obtained of them to live with him But these pious Monks being disgusted at the ill life of Theophilus would stay no longer with him but returned to their former Monastick Retirement He smelling out the reason thereof conceived a deadly hatred against them and declared against his own Conscience for the Anthropomorphite Monks and disswaded them from obeying Dioscorus and so set the Anthropomorphites and Origenists together by the ears Socrates calls it Bellum pestiferum And Theophilus coming with a Band of armed men to Nitria a Mountain in Aegypt where there were many Monasteries was there ready to assist the Anthropomorphites against the Origenists and armed the Anthropomorphite Monks against Dioscorus and his Brethren that they hardly escaped the danger of being slain The business is more at large set down in Socrates his Ecclesiastick History lib. 6. cap. 7. We see how timely the Hieratical Head made use of its power even tantum non to the effusion of blood These banished Monks Dioscorus and his Brethren conscious to themselves of their own Innocency betook themselves to Chrysostome at Constantinople for their redress The fend of Theophilus follows them and abusing the simplicity of Epiphanius got him to be earnest with Chrysostome to anathematize the Works of Origen and send packing Dioscorus and his Brethren from Constantinople And his malice wrought so far against Chrysostome who refused to comply with so unworthy a motion that In the Year 403. or the eleventh day of the first month of the first Hexamenon in a Synod of Bishops ad Quercum near Chalcedon packt for the purpose he got Chrysostome deposed from his Patriarchate and banished but there being an Earthquake that very night that the innocent Prelate was hurried away by the Souldiers he was immediately by the Emperour's Command recalled to his Office and Mansion The Story is at large set down in Spondanus And in the twelfth day of this first month there was a Synod called at Constantinople that again most unjustly deposed Chrysostome and he was with that violence torn from his dear Charge or Flock with Swords and Staves and Clubs ut ipsum Baptisterium cruore repletum fuerit as Spondanus has it out of Palladius Which is no contemptible Specimen of the Cruelty of the Hieratico-political Head of the Beast thus early after the Epocha of the Apostasie And this very year what direful Persecutions they suffered that would not communicate with Arsacius that succeeded Chrysostome you may see in the same Author In this same year 404. Alstedius tells us Donatistae in Africa crudeliter saeviunt in Catholicos Yet the Donatist Bishops with their Flocks took themselves to be the true Church and the rest but persecutive Schismaticks Wherefore it is not strange that
appearing is Christ That this third Introductory Vision is a kind of Transitionary Introduction to the Opened Book Prophecy Proved briefly from the Oath of the Angel that the Sealed Book Prophecy reaches to the End of the World FOrasmuch as I am fully perswaded in my own judgment that I have suggested in my Exposition of the Apocalypse touching that Volume of Divine Visions is true namely that the whole in a manner consists of three main Prophecies which reach each of them from the beginning of the Church to the End of the World viz. the Epistolar Prophecy to the Seven Churches the Sealed Book-Prophecy and the Opened Book-Prophecy and of three Introductory Visions each of the three Prophecies having prefixed to it one And because this is so fundamental a Truth that no man with success can interpret any part of the Apocalypse repugnantly thereto yet knowing certainly and experimentally that men of Learning Wit and Parts and of a Genius to these kind of studies have notwithstanding overlooked this necessary Principle and thereby have bewildred themselves and lost themselves in inextricable Labyrinths therefore for the more sure inculcating so sound and necessary a Notion I have thought fit something more fully here to insist on the proof thereof but more especially that those three Visions prefixed to these three Prophecies are rather Introductions to the said Prophecies than Prophecies themselves That the Epistles to the Seven Churches is a Prophecy I have in my Exposition demonstrated by no Iess than twenty solid Arguments which are also set down at the end of my Exposition of the Visions of Daniel and the scope thereof is enforced by Notes thereon But that it is a Prophecy reaching from the beginning of the Church to the End of the World that one Consideration might assure any one that is not hoodwinkt with prejudice viz. that these Seven Churches imply seven Intervals from the beginning of the Church as any will grant that is convinced it is a Prophecy and the Number Seven every where in the Apocalypse implies All from the Terminus whence the Reckoning is and therefore it necessarily implies all the intervals of the Church from the beginning to the end thereof This must be indubitable to him that understands the stile of the Apocalypse And taking this ground and observing the intervals we have chosen and applying History to each of them the Epistles are found an exquisite Prefiguration of the things in each interval and the Paronomastical allusions hugely expressive of the Events of every interval which is as full a confirmation as one can desire that the Epistolar Prophecy reaches from the beginning of the Church to the end of the World And now that the Sealed Book-Prophecy does so too it is evident from the same Argument drawn from the Septenary which is an Apocalyptick Symbol of Vniversality taking in from the term it commences all the space of mundane Affairs wherein the Church may be concerned and Divine Providence and Prophecy imployed which therefore is to the end of the World And thus not only the seven Seals reach to the end of the World but by the same reason the seven Trumpets commencing with the seventh Seal and seven Thunders commencing with the seventh Trumpet must reach to the end of the World And the Angel Chap. 10. swears to this Truth That there shall be no more time saving that wherein the seventh Angel shall sound and the Mystery of God be finished as I shall make good afterwards Wherefore here is abundance of Evidence that the Sealed Book-Prophecy reaches from the beginning of the Church to the end of the World And that the Opened Book-Prophecy does the like that is reaches to the end of the World is manifest because it reaches to the last Judgment and Conflagration Chap. 20. And that the Visions of Chap. 12. respect the beginning of the Church viz. the Woman in Childbirth and the Fight of Michael with the Dragon no man of common sense can deny From whence yet it will naturally follow That the measuring of the Temple of God and the Altar c. respects also or reaches the beginning of the Church for the Church was Symmetral as soon as it began But these three Points there was less need to insist upon they being sufficiently made out elsewhere The chief thing intended here is to prove that the three Visions prefixed to these three main Prophecies are Introductions only to those Prophecies and not properly Prophecies themselves For the better clearing this Truth we will take our rise from the Title of the Book comprized in vers 1. The Revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave unto him to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass and he sent and signified viz. the things to come to pass some sooner some later by his Angel to his servant John Here we see how methodically in a plain vulgar stile is set down the summ of this Book viz. that the Book is a Book predicting things to come that is to say a Book of Prophecies That this Book of Prophecies is a Revelation of Jesus Christ that he is the Revealer of these things to come and that unto John by Angelical Ministry But that the Man Christ Jesus had this Revelation from God it being the high Priviledge of the Soul of the Messias to have such Secrets revealed unto him The two main things therefore included in this Title are these That this Book is a Revelation of things to come That this Revelation is from the Man Christ or through the Humanity of Christ but by the Gift of the Eternal Godhead Both these things are set down here in an ordinary vulgar stile But forasmuch as those Predictions in the three main Prophecies which might have been made also or expressed in such a vulgar plain stile but yet are not but in pompous and Aenigmatical Phrases it was very suitable and congruous that the signifying that these three Prophecies were the Revelation of the Man Jesus Christ by the gift of God should be expressed with correspondent Pomp and Magnificency And this is the thing I contend for that those Visions prefixed to these three main Prophecies that the main design of them is to intitle the succeeding Prophecy to the Revelation of Jesus Christ by the gift of God and that the Godhead is joined with him in every one of these three Introductory Visions and so makes good that part of the general Title of the whole Book and in as magnificent a manner as the Prophetical part it self is set out therein That there are such Introductory Visions prefixed before eminent Prophecies is observable in very illustrious Examples thereof As Isai Chap. 6. I saw the Lord sitting upon a Throne high and lifted up and his train filled the Temple Above stood the Seraphims c. Which Vision is no Prophecy but a signification of Isaiah's Mission and Inspiration from God whereby he was inabled to utter infallible Prophecies The
it is to be understood in a larger meaning than to be grosly put out of Office This Death I mean is gradual and the first degree thereof is when those that stood up for the Truth against the introducing the Pagano-Christian Rites c. were found so weak that they could not stop the Tide of Ecclesiastical Corruptions flowing in but their attempts were ineffectual so that as to any efficiency to stop the incroaching Pagano-Christianism they were as mere Cyphers or dead men that can do nothing This is included in Political Death in that large sense I take it in I mean this Inefficiency or Inability to carry on things that appertain to the Order or Polity of the Church or of the State in Matters respecting Religion against the Authors and Countenancers of the growing Corruptions And the Apostasie being the very Wilderness of the Church the Woman was in it as soon as it was These are Hints of an Answer to your former Letter I shall offer the like to your latter CHAP. XXVII Hints of an Answer to a second Letter from the same Hand A Semi-time the Unite in computing the Events of the Medial Visions proved by the Author Not four hundred thirty two but three hundred ninety three the Author 's Epocha for the Medial Visions The odd Semi-time in Daniel added to good purpose The prevailing of the little Horn Dan. 7. how to be understood The meaning of After three days and an half His Friend's mistake touching the second Query His use of a Prophetick Henopoeia in Answer to the sixth Query but no avoiding thereby but that Luther 's Reformation will be the final Issue of the forty two months War and a Semi-time the Unite for computing the Medial Visions YOU understand aright what I mean by making a Semi-time which I call also in one word an Hexamenon an Vnite in computing the time of Events in the Medial Visions But I am amazed that you say I only suppose or assert this whenas I have evidently demonstrated it in the brief Method of the nine Queries and Notes thereon if you patiently and closely attend thereto And I have noted above that from my Epocha the Witnesses began to rise about the midst of the second month and were rising till about at least the midst of the fifth in the last Semi-time And therefore it is no wonder that so large an Vnite as an Hexamenon or Hecatouogdoconthemeron that is an hundred and eighty Prophetick days should be the Vnite by which so large an Event should be computed Nor is there any other eventual measure of Time signified by the forty two months or twelve hundred and sixty days than Daniel's seven Semi-times as I shall remind you again in the Conclusion And it is not this partial Victory signified by the Rising of the Witnesses but that total Victory of the Rider of the white Horse under the seventh Vial that secures the Saints for ever falling again under the power of the Beast Now to your Paragraphs To 1 In Synopsis Prophetica lib. 2. cap. 5. sect 4. there I say only that the Epocha of the Beast's forty two months is at least so early as four hundred thirty two years but the Epocha I stick to is three hundred ninety three And according to that Epocha the Rising of the Witnesses will begin about the middle of the second month and reach into at least the middle of the fifth month of the last Hexamenon or Semi-time And I say that all the Variations of the time of the continuance of the Medial Visions signifie no more than that they shall continue for seven Semi-times which are the seven Vnites in this Compute And therefore if the Continuance reach into the seventh Vnite especially the Event aimed at filling that Unite so competently well as it does viz. the Rising of the Witnesses and partial Fall of the great City the fulfilling of the Prophecy is plain and exact To 2 What you say here is neat supposing your Epocha of four hundred fifty six years when the Beast became ten-horned were true For then Luther's beginning the Reformation would fall short of the seventh Semi-time But I stand to that one Epocha of three hundred ninety three years according to which the Rising of the Witnesses will begin about the middle of the second month of the last Hexamenon or Half-time and reach into the midst of the fifth month at least So that the Half-Time is added to the three Times to very good purpose in Daniel To 3 The little Horn prevailed against the Saints for a time and times and half a time but in the last Half-time he was not so prevalent or prosperous in his War but that part of his Kingdom was given to the Saints in the Rising of the Witnesses as it is said Dan. Chap. 7. v. 26. And they shall take away his Kingdom which was in part done in the Rising of the Witnesses and Fall of the tenth part of the City viz. in the Reformation but the consuming and destroying it to the end is left to the Vials that succeed the Rising of the Witnesses and will be completed under the seventh at that great Battel under the Conduct of the Heros on the white Horse with a Sword issuing out of his mouth And the Vials succeed the sixth Trumpet and consequently the Time and Times and Half a Time Which Vials would have no Kingdom of the Beast left to be poured upon if the fulfilling of the Vision of the Rising of the Witnesses and Fall of the City were more than partial What can be more plain To 4 After three days and an half or after three times and an half doubtless is to be understood of the Three and Half current not expired But this Expression After does plainly assure us that this is the final issue of that forty two months War of the Beast with the Witnesses and that the final issue of that War is but a partial Fall of the City and no more Rising of the Witnesses than was commensurate thereto I pray you think seriously on that The regaining of the tenth part of the Kingdom of Antichrist into the hands of Christ and the Rising of the Witnesses in that tenth part is plainly the final Result of the forty two months that is of the Time and Times and half a Time War of the Beast with the Witnesses The Vision says so expresly As for your Answer to my second Query It is not my Query you answer to For my Query is Whether the forty two months prosperous War of the Beast does not synchronize with the first six Trumpets and you give your Answer touching the Reign or War of the Beast at large which indeed reigns still and wars still but not with like continued success as in the forty two months continued War noted in the Vision In Answer to my sixth Query it 's a pretty ingenious use you make of the Prophetick Henopoeia and I acknowledge there is
I have above declared Chap. 40. And thirdly and lastly How the Earthly Church helped the Apostolick Church the Woman by proselyting the Barbarians to a Pagano-Christianity I see not For from hence was the Man of Sin more strongly armed to fight against the Witnesses and bring upon the Evangelical Church all that Misery and Calamity that either History records or Prophecy did prefigure In pag. 50. he asserts that from the first moment of the Time and Times and half a Time the daily Sacrifice is to be dated as taken away But if this be true how can we handsomly come off from making this the Epocha also of the 2300 Evening-Mornings Typically or Mystically understood And so the Sanctuary the Christian Church will not be cleansed from all Antichristian Pollutions till more than a thousand years hence as was noted before In pag. 57. here he says That Apoc. 10. the roaring of the Lion ceased of a sudden and the Thunders were sealed up I suppose he means of a sudden I only take notice that this is said without any the least intimation from the Text. But the roaring of the Lion supplying the place of the sounding of the seventh Trumpet this Roaring must be understood to reach from the sixth Trumpet to the end of all And the seventh Trumpet comprehending the seven Thunders as the seventh Seal the seven Trumpets these seven Thunders must reach to the end of all So that neither the ceasing of the roaring of the Lion nor sealing up the Thunders could be of a sudden In pag. 58 59. he here affirms That the three first Churches run out their just Intervals and then cease from their being any longer Prophetick Types but the three last Thyatira Sardis and Philadelphia run their course together to the New Jerusalem and he supposes none of these three to begin before the last Semi-time at the end whereof they pass into the New Jerusalem And that the seventh of the seven Churches Laodicea comes not into play till after the thousand years Ligation of Satan or blessed Millennium pag. 77. This to me seems a marvellous Invention but his chief pretence to this surprizing Innovation is this pag. 59. The three first says he have their Promises so general that they do not imply a Conjunction betwixt their time and the New Jerusalem The three last have in their promises such Clauses as do necessarily suppose their Contact as I may so speak with that Jerusalem But to this his main or rather only Reason so far as I can discover I briefly answer That the Promises neither to Thyatira nor to Sardis imply any Contact with the New Jerusalem Not Thyatira for the promise to the Victor is only this That he shall have power over the Nations He does not say over all Nations And this was performed in the Rising of the Witnesses at the Reformation when the Popish Power in those Principalities and Kingdoms that were reformed was broken apieces like a Potters vessel To such a measure is Power given to the Victor 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 says Christ Where 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is an Adverb of Proportion and is as much as if he should have said So far as I have received of my Father Which he explains by adding And I will give him the Morning-Star not the bright Morning-Star as Christ is called in reference to his Empire in the Millennium or New Jerusalem-state So that the very Promise implies rather a great distance from the Jerusalem-state than a Contact with it And for the promise to the few Names in Sardis viz. to the Victor there it is only that he shall be cloathed in white raiment which signifies their prosperous success and that their Name shall not be blotted out of the Book of life that is that their Seed shall continue for ever Christ will so effectually recommend them to his Father and to the Ministry of his Holy Angels But he does not say that the state of these few while such shall be contiguous to the New Jerusalem-state which is the full and ample Millennial Empire of Christ but there being but a few such Names in Sardis it is an Evidence rather that Sardis cannot be contiguous to the state of the New Jerusalem and therefore there must be a larger increase of these few Names under the next Interval before they can be contiguous to the New Jerusalem And therefore as for the third of these three Philadelphia I will allow more to the ingenious Calendarist than he requires viz. that Philadelphia in the forepart thereof is not only contiguous to the New Jerusalem but continuous thereto a due increase of these few Sardian Names emerging into the Appearance of Philadelphia and such a door of success being opened to Philadelphia that at last she emerges into the New Jerusalem-state that state being nothing else but the fulness of the Philadelphian This is so plain in the Promise to the Philadelphian Victor that I wonder that any one can wink so hard as not to see it whether he will or no. Note only here by the bye That if the Jerusalem-state of the Church be not part of the Philadelphian it must be a Church by it self and so there will be eight Churches not seven only which is contrary to the Vision See what the Answerer says to S. E. his Remarks on this place and it must be full satisfaction Thus invalid is the Calendarist's ground for making Thyatira Sardis and Philadelphia all three of them contiguous to the commencement of the New Jerusalem But now let us briefly consider the Incongruity of the Position it self For indeed it seems to me to clash with one of the first Principles of rightly interpreting the Apocalypse viz. the right meaning of the Septenary or Number Seven into which when any thing is divided it denotes that all those parts are there and no more nor fewer Wherefore we are necessarily to understand the succession of the Church in this Prophetick Vision thereof being cast into seven parts that these are adequately the parts of this Succession from the beginning of the Church to the end of all and that all the Succession must be contained in these and no more than these Whence it is plain that these seven Churches are to succeed one another in one Line from the beginning of the Church to the end because it is a Line of Succession But the Calendarist contrary to this making Sardis and Philadelphia Synchronal to Thyatira makes but five Successions in one Line instead of seven viz. Ephesus Smyrna Pergamus Thyatira and Laodicea leaving a gap betwixt Thyatira and Laodicea of no less than a thousand years Which besides the dry Logical Repugnancy in it looks as desormedly as if in a row of teeth in some Animal two viz. the fifth and sixth were struck out and yet to make it still more unsightly two gobber teeth were set in one on this side the other on the inner side of the fourth answering to
Opened Book-Prophecy as commencing as high as the seven Churches or Seals there is he out again For that Vision in the eleventh Chapter does not reach to the end of Apocalyptick Time but to the seventh Vial only inclusively So that the Descent of the New Jerusalem the Millennial Reign of Christ and the Laodicean Interval are still behind But the Apocalyptick Time upon the seventh Thunder above-mentioned was quite ended and so a fit Regress made to a new set of Prophecies Which the ingenious Calendarist cannot deny but that it ought to begin as high as the seven Churches and the Seals And then of necessity the Time of the inner Court will not be synchronous but antecedent to the Time of the outer Which is a very plain Truth and equally useful He makes my second Argument for the forty two months beginning before 400 That the Invocation of Saints had entred somewhat before it In Answer to which he recurs again pag. 84. to the device of the Balance But my Reply to his Answer to the fifth Objection will serve here So that I will add nothing further but remind the Reader that not only the Invocation of Saints but the reposing Confidence in the Mahuzzim was then and this exceedingly spread as has been proved Chap. 28. The sixth Objection and the Answer being less material to my purpose I omit We therefore pass to the seventh and last which is this The Witnesses are risen and out of their Sack-cloth and that some years ago and therefore the 1260 years are also so long ago expired which utterly subverts the Calendar pag. 85. This says he being the great Objection requires the most distinct Answer I shall therefore briefly explain my full sense c. In pursuance of this I confess he is witty operose and copious but the substantial summ of the matter so far as I can gather is this That as the Time of the Medial Visions is distinguished into parts A Time and Times and Half a Time and three Days and an Half so there are several Degrees of the Completion of the Vision To this sense is that which occurs pag. 78. By all which it appears saith he Time at large has a less full presence of the Event and admits a contrary intimate Time hath the full presence of the Event and admits no contrary And pag. 88. Some says he speaking of the Witnesses are called up into places of Dignity as into Heaven but not as they shall be at the end of the 1260 days For each first and last part of all the Characters of Time must have degrees of the Event else they could not have a foundation to be so distinguished Even our Lord's first Night was a beginning to dye in his Agony being betray'd c. And till the Evening of the first day of the week he appeared not to a Number as not publickly risen till the end of the third day And then giving several instances of the scantness of the Reformation and of great Objects still remaining of the Witnesses sorrow to conclude then says he pag. 89. till after the full Expiration of the Time of the Apostasie being in Power as a Throne or Kingdom in all its coextensive Characters the Witnesses are not in full Apocalyptick sense Risen as the golden Key of the Time the three days and an half also assure us For till the Emphatical 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or After three days and an half are fully past they rise not viz. conspicuously as our Lord did not And that that is not yet beside the credit of our Calendar is apparent in that since the Reformation there have been no effects like those that are to signalize the end of the 1260 days c. This is the main of his Answer to which I briefly reply that it reaches not the case For the utmost fulfilling of the Vision of the Rising of the Witnesses is not that there shall be a Rising of them throughout the Kingdom of the Beast but that it shall be only in part of his Kingdom For it is expresly said in the Text that at the very hour of their Rising 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the tenth part of the City fell not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 betwixt which there is as much difference as betwixt ten and one For as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the third part which is a Symbol of the Roman Empire does not signifie the whole Habitable or then inhabited Earth but the third part of the Earth only so the tenth part of the City cannot signifie all the ten parts of the City or the whole City but the tenth part only Besides that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 does not here relate to the ten-horned Beast or Secular Empire but to the Hieratical Polity the City of Babylon the tenth of that only fell but the Secular Empire where this fall was stood rather more strong than ever was more complete than ever being rid of the Papal Tyranny at the Reformation so far forth as it was reformed And now for the Emphatical 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 After the three days and an half Forasmuch as it is said after these three days and an half the Witnesses rose and the tenth part of the City fell it is as clear as Noon-day that no more than a partial Fall of the City and a proportionated Rising of the Witnesses is the full completion of this Vision or Prophecy But whatever other Accessions there are to be made to the Kingdom of Christ or Ruine of Antichrist they must be the completion of some other Visions but not of this And as for the Credit of his Calendar I have again and again shown how frail it is And for any Effects to signalize the end of the 1260 days I have demonstrated elsewhere that not Days but Semi-times are the measuring Vnite of the Event of this Vision And that there was no signalizing Effect at the expiration of the 1260 days from the right Epocha it is a further confirmation that not a Day but a Semi-time is the Eventual Measure and the last Semi-time was signalized with the blessed Reformation But yet as if his Answer to this seventh Objection had been in it self solid and valid and that as he has explained things the Witnesses were not Risen in a full Apocalyptick sense he proposes three Objections out of what he has read of mine The first Objection is this The latitude of months for the fulfilling Events in some parts of them may so disagree with the narrower lines of day too narrow for the months pag. 90. that the Prophecy may be made to contradict it self and so speak true and not true as to point of Time and Events together True in the months not in the days But his Answer is this As the heighth of Events is by the Prophecy determined to the intimate part of the three days and the three times and an half so the duration of the Event at large is by the Prophecy
look on those labours as ill bestowed which tend to obscure those Prophecies I suppose you mean of the Medial Visions and that of the prevailing War of the little Horn against the Saints for a Time and Times and half a Time as if we could not by them take any measure of the Time of the Churches sufferings and her deliverance out of them To this I answer That pains may be faithfully and judiciously bestowed by them that remonstrate to the World that the Numbers of the Medial Visions indicate only a partial deliverance a thing which I have invincibly demonstrated And I have shown even now that though there be no Prediction unless we recur to the two thousand three hundred Evening-Mornings whose full Exitus is at least four hundred years hence how long and no longer to a year or thereabout till the deliverance of the Church will be fully consummated and perfected yet the Order of the Vials which reach to a full Victory of the Church and complete deliverance gives us some measures to collect the nearer approaches to that happy Time So that in this case to complain is to be unthankful especially if we consider that we are at least as well provided for as the Primitive Christians were in their most grievous Persecutions under the red Dragon Wherefore those that would squeez out of the abovesaid Medial Prophecies whether of the Apocalypse or Daniel such a precise determinate time of the Churches full deliverance when the nature of those Medial Numbers and Prophecies will not afford it what shall we say of their labour Is it not in vain if not worse For without good ground to set a precise time of the general deliverance of the Church from a pretended true Interpretation of the Holy Prophecies when there is really no such thing predicted by them is to make our selves more wise and benign than the Divine Spirit the Author of these Prophecies as if he had omitted what was so requisite for his Church and is to delude and mock the expectation of God's people and to slur the Holy Prophecies themselves and discountenance all pretence of rightly interpreting them Which has been the Fate of many curious Interpreters who from the Numbers of the Medial Visions have presumed to calculate the final Ruine of Antichrist to a very year And therefore those that have made it their business to demonstrate the groundlesness of this Pretence I hope their labours will prove well bestowed nor be found vain in the Lord being earnestly pursued for him and the Honour of his Word who is the Amen the faithful and true Witness and predicts nothing but what will come to pass and therefore we must not make him predict any thing that will not either as to time or the thing it self CHAP. XXX Two Arguments out of a fifth Letter from the same hand to prove That the Roman Beast under the seventh Head was not in being till the ten Kings signified by the ten Horns were risen up in the Empire Certain things premised in order to an Answer to the said Arguments Amongst which is the true Notion of the Head of a Beast in the Prophetick Stile in counterdistinction to his Horns An Enumeration of the Heads of the Beast and what the fullest sense of the seventh Head An Answer to the first Argument An Answer to the second Argument Two Arguments of the Author 's to prove that the Roman Beast under the seventh Head was in being before the ten Kings signified by the ten Horns were risen up in the Empire That the placing the Epocha of the forty two months War of the Beast in the beginning of the Apostasie is unexceptionably right with the gross absurdities of the other Opinion THE first Argument If the Roman Beast under the seventh Head did rise before the ten Kings in the Empire then these then Kings will make an eighth Head of themselves or at least conjoined with the Emperour as one of their number when the other nine had possessed so great a part of his Empire and were as absolute in their Kingdoms as he in that share was left to him he having no preeminence above them but what was merely Titular or Honorary Wherefore these together and not the Emperours separately ever made the seventh Head of the Beast For the seven sorts of successive Governours in Chief of the Roman Empire as Idolatrous they as such made the seven Heads of the Beast and these ten Kings taking in the Greek Emperour made one Head of the Beast as being such For they ruled as Chief in the Empire and their Government was Idolatrous Wherefore or they are the seventh Head nor was the Beast revived before its Head or else the Emperours separately before was the seventh Head which cannot be For then the revived Beast would have an eighth Head whenas there are but seven Heads of Blasphemy according to the Visions Therefore the Roman Beast under the seventh Head was not in being till the ten Kings signified by the ten Horns were risen up in the Empire The second Argument There being seven sorts of Government but all agreeing in this that they are Idolatrous the Sovereignty of the ten Kings ruling the whole Empire every one in his share ought to be deemed the seventh Head it being a seventh sort of Idolatrous Government whenas the Pagano-Christian Caesars though Idolatrous indeed as the six preceding sorts of Government were accounted the first six Heads of the Beast's would not be properly the seventh Head of the Beast but the sixth Head again brought into being as being again Idolatrous Caesars or Emperours Wherefore since the Beast cannot be conceived to be in being without an Head nor is supposed to be again in being according to the Visions before the seventh Head and the Pagano-Christian Caesars separately being only the sixth Head revived not a seventh it follows that the abovesaid ten Kings are the seventh Head and that the Beast under the seventh Head was not in being till they were risen in the Empire These two Arguments are pretty press and close to the purpose and therefore before I go about to answer them I will premise some few things and settle some Terms or Notions that occur in the Question and the Prophecies 1. First therefore We are to consider what in the Prophetick Stile is such an Head of a Beast as may be said to have Horns on it so that there may be some distinction betwixt the Head and the Horn or Horns thereof and that they may not seem to denote the very same thing Such an Head therefore of a Beast as here we are searching for I conceive to be this according to the Prophetick Stile viz. Idolatrous Sovereignty in the general abstractive comprehension and succession thereof Something like that in the Apocalypse touching the Woman the Church our Mother which comprehends the whole Community of the Church in a general Notion and yet if you speak of any particular persons
of that Community though the whole be the Woman which whole takes in all yet those particular persons belonging to that Community are her Seed or Children according to the Prophetick Stile But to come yet nearer to the matter This Notion is plainly ratified by that passage in Daniel Chap. 8. v. 5 21. where the Kingdom of Greece is set out by an He-goat with a great Horn betwixt his eyes and it is said v. 8. that when that great Horn was broken four other Horns rose after it Here is plainly a Beast the He-goat with its Head for there is mention of its Eyes and of a Horn on its Head betwixt these two Eyes and of other Horns rising successively on this Head we may be sure not on his Back and yet that great Horn is said to be the first King And if so then the other four Horns must be four Kings after him and yet there is an Head distinct from the Horns plainly in the Vision Wherefore what can that Head be but the Idolatrous Sovereignty in this Beast the Goat in the general abstractive comprehension and succession thereof And therefore the Kings that in concreto are the real Heads of the Greek Empire are in this abstractive Generality called the Horns thereof And hence it is plain that the Idolatrous Sovereignty in the general abstractive comprehension and succession thereof is the Head according to the Prophetick Stile of which the succeeding Kings may be said to be the Horns 2. The next thing which we will premise by way of Postulate is this That the revived Beast set out Apoc. 13 and 17. was not revived without an Head there being nothing more absurd than to imagine a Beast to recover out of the state of Death or Non-existence and leave its Head behind it And it being acknowledged on both sides that its Recovery is not till under the seventh Head we premise also that the abovesaid Beast did not recover till the seventh Head and that there were no more Heads than seven 3. Thirdly therefore We are to inquire what in truth this seventh Head of the Beast in the full sense thereof is and in what it differs from the other six forasmuch as all seven are acknowledged on both sides to be Idolatrous The seven Idolatrous Sovereignties or Heads of the Roman Beast are these The Regal the Consular the Tribuno-Consular the Decemviral the Dictatorial Imperatorial and Hieratico-Political or Ecclesiastico-Secular Sovereignties or Heads of the Beast Which last is most palpably differenced and specifically from any of the six former so that this is the very seventh Head Which will appear if we seriously contemplate the Vision of the Beast and the Whore riding him Apoc. Chap. 17. Here we see the Beast and the Whore By the Beast undoubtedly is understood the Civil part of the Empire which must also have a Civil Head for his Civil Horns to be grassed upon which is nothing else but Secular Idolatrous Sovereignty in the general abstractive comprehension and succession thereof as was noted above It is also agreed on both sides that the Whore is the Sacerdotal or Hieratical part of the Empire But in that this Whore rides this Beast it is apparent that she rules him and guides him and governs him as an Heros on a Pharos or goodly Steed is the very Symbol of an Emperour Wherefore here is plainly in the Vision two Sovereignties Hieratical or Sacerdotal and Political or Civil distinctly described and both supposed Idolatrous But now for their Coalescency into one seventh Sovereignty that is as apparent as the other in the Vision For the Whore having the guidance of the Secular Head of the Beast has the guidance of the Beast and his Horns as they come up come they up as fast or slowly as they will Wherefore the Head and Horns being at the guidance or governance of the Whore and both aiming at the same end the advancing or maintaining the Idolatrous State of the Empire for that is that which the Vision drives at not Secular affairs they do evidently constitute this complex Sovereignty to which there is nothing like in all the six foregoing Sovereignties which I call Hieratico-Political or Ecclesiastico-Secular the Ecclesiastick and Secular Sovereignty complying together to make the Empire a Beast again that is bloody and Idolatrous So that whereas in my former Answers I was at a loss in a manner to define whether the Hieratical Sovereignty or Secular was the Head of the Beast here I have fairly and solidly I hope compounded the matter by making them both but one Hieratico-Political Head of the Roman revived Beast or Apostatized Empire With which as I have noted in my former Answers that passage in Daniel excellently well agrees that seems to make the Roman Empire in the time of the ten Toes of the Metalline Image rather Sacerdotal than Secular Chap. 2. v. 41. The Kingdom shall be divided but there shall be in it of the strength of Iron forasmuch as thou sawest the Iron mixed with the miry Claâ— There shall be of the strength of the Iron in this Kingdom as if that was but accessory to it but the Kingdom it self Clay i. e. Sacerdotal And so the Iron is said to be mixt with the miry Clay as if the Clay which is the Sacerdotal Sovereignty or Empire were the Principal again the Iron accessory As when the greater share is of water in the Cup we say there is Wine mingled with the Water but if the greater share be Wine we say Water is mingled with the Wine And out of this Sacerdotal Empire how naturally does the Pope rise at last quite to over-top all and how easily is the Papal Hierarchy conceived to be the little Horn arising properly out of the Hieratical part of this Complex Sovereignty of the Empire 4. Fourthly and lastly We will take notice of the genuine meaning of those words Apoc. 17.12 That the ten Kings receive power as Kings one hour with the Beast whose natural and unforced sense is this That at what time the Empire began to be a Beast and to Apostatize into gross Superstitions and Idolatry the ten Kings would be catching at and obtaining Kingdoms some here some there some sooner some later till about the four hundred and fifty sixth year after Christ they had all sped For that this one hour does signifie a pretty latitude of time all Interpreters consent and History witnesses that it was at least forty years till there appeared ten Kingdoms in the divided Empire And therefore if the Beast be not till the tenth King appear they cannot be said to receive Kingdoms with the Beast but before him Which is plainly to contradict the Text of the Prophecy These things being premised we answer To the first Argument 1. That what is here presumed is not proved nor will prove true if examined viz. That the Emperours had no more Sovereignty over the other Kings than what was merely Titular or Honorary For