AN

EXPOSITION

OF THE

EPISTLE

TO THE

CHURCH OF PHILADELPHIA.

BY THE REV. JOHN HAYDEN.

WYCOMBE.

1841.

AN

EXPOSITION

OF THE

EPISTLE

TO THE

CHURCH OF PHILADELPHIA.

"This I can boast of, that I am not unacquainted with any
thing written in that truly canonical book the Revelation, ex-
cepting that chapter where a woe is seven times repeated.
I know not whether that time be past, or still future."---SCALiger.

For

"To explain this book perfectly is not the work of one man
or of one age; and probably it will never all be clearly under-
stood till it is all fulfilled."---NEWTON ON THE PROPHECIES.

WYCOMBE:

PRINTED BY W. T. BUTLER, CHURCH SQUARE,

AND SOLD BY

MESSRS. JACKSON AND WALFORD, BOOKSELLERS, LONDON.

MDCCCXLI.

"This John was Legatus a Latere, that Embassadour who leaned on his Lord's brest. Hee writeth Christ's history, and there hee sheweth his love unto Christ: hee writeth the Churches historie, there Christ sheweth his love unto him; especially in this, that hee will do nothing, which hee doth not reveale to his servant this Prophet. For the Church in his time, we may see how it stood, in the three first Chapters and what condition it should have for the time to come, it is plainely set downe in the rest of this booke."-Hill's Epistle Dedicatory to Perkins's Exposition.

PREFACE.

"Calvin is wise," said Scaliger, "because he hath not written on the Revelation;" and Dr. South, with more wit than piety, did not scruple to assert, "that that book either finds a man mad, or makes him so." But whatever difficulties present themselves to the diligent student of "the sure word of

*These are confessedly numerous and, in not a few instances, insuperable; but if men would betake themselves to the study of this book "with great wisdom, sobriety, and reverence," as Lord Bacon adviseth, who can doubt but that God would "make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight." "The folly of interpreters has been," as Sir Isaac Newton observes, "to foretell times and things by this prophecy, as if God designed to make them prophets. By this rashness they have not only exposed themselves, but brought the prophecy also into contempt. The design of God was much otherwise. He gave this, and the prophecies of the Old Testament, not to gratify men's curiosities, by enabling them to foreknow things, but that after they were fulfilled they might be interpreted by the event, and his own Providence, not the interpreters, be then manifested thereby to the world."