Eastern and Western Christendom the two grand Satanic delusions of Popery and Mahommedanism. Had Augustine himself lived to see this, I am well persuaded, considering his evangelical views of Christian doctrine, that he would have been the first to repudiate his own millennial theory, as that which had been falsified beyond dispute by plain matter of fact. For, though making the saints' millennial reign to be spiritual, and in the hearts and lives of the faithful individually, yet his view supposed a multitude thus true and genuine to be living and energizing in the Church during the millennial period: insomuch that he considered Antichrist's manifestation, Apocalyptically foreshown under the figures of Gog and Magog, and the consequent reduction of the true Church to a mere paucity, persecuted and opprest, to mark the end of the millennium. Strange that any Protestant expositor, who verily believes Popery to be the Beast, should yet positively, and in despite of such belief, even now afresh propound the Augustinian theory as tenable !'-2. As to Hammond's and Grotius' theory, it is an essential preliminary to it, admitting as they do the subordination of Apoc. xx. to Apoc. xix., that the Apocalyptic Beast be interpreted as Rome Pagan, not Rome Papal: a point as to which, after all that has preceded in this Commentary, it will I trust be the reader's judgment that it would be a mere waste of words to offer any fresh evidence in refutation of it. Besides which there is that same historic objection to it as to Augustine's theory, of its making the dark ages, and earlier times of the delusions of Popery and Mahommedanism, to be those of Christ's reigning on earth and the Devil's incarceration. I ought to add that by expounding what is said respecting Gog and Magog as meant of the Turks and their invasion of Christendom, it makes the "little time" of Gog and 1 I allude especially to Dr. Wordsworth. Is it asked, How can he possibly reconcile such essentially contradictory views? It is as follows. Christ bound the Devil, he says, iva μn πλavnon, "in order that he should not deceive the nations : so marking object, not effect. And "the corruptions of Popish times and countries ..show that men have despised what Christ has done for them, and have loosed the enemy who was bound by Christ!" pp. 50, 51. But in Apoc. xx. 3, 7, is not the time of Satan's actual incarceration defined as 1000 years; and the epoch of his actual loosing defined as not till the end of the 1000 years? 2 See my Part iv. Chapters iv-ix. 3 μετα ταυτα δει αυτον λυθηναι μικρον χρονον. Magog's insurrection to mean a period, according to these interpreters' own reckoning, of already above 500 years; that is, dating from the rise of the Turkish Othman dynasty or, if we more rightly compute the interval, of near 800 years; since we ought to date it from the Turkman power's earliest epoch of rise, in the dynasty of Seljuk.1 -3. As to Mr. Gipps' theory, (as if St. John, retrogressing to the times of the opening of the Beast's reign, meant, "I saw the souls of the old anti-Pagan martyrs revived in those who were now not worshipping the Beast,") there are the obvious and decisive objections against it, 1st, that there is no warrant whatsoever for supposing such retrogression, 2ndly, and no warrant for construing the aorist Tроσεxσα as an imperfect, 3rdly, and none for construing" and whosoever" in the sense of "in whosoever. Moreover, according to this view, Satan would be shut up in the pit of the abyss, and the pit closed, at the very time during which (as Mr. G. would with myself explain Apoc. ix. 1) the pit was opened in order to the deceiving of the nations by the Mahommedan delusion:3the time of Christ's Witnesses' sackcloth-robing, and persecution even unto death, as pictured in one part of the Apocalypse, would quite self-contradictorily be made to coincide with that of the Witnesses' reigning and ruling in another—and, once more, as the resurrection of the Witnesses, spoken of Apoc. xi. 7, would be the second resurrection, (their first rising to protest against the Papacy being "" 1 So Vitringa.- See the continuity of the Seljukian and Othman Turks fully discussed and established in my Vol. i. p. 501, &c. 2 The pluperfect sense, here given by our English translators, is quite common to the aorist. So in Apoc. xi. 10, ßuravioav, had tormented; in Apoc. xxi. 1, anŋλOov, had past away; &c. With regard to Professor Bush, his fundamental supposition that in Apoc. xx. 1, the history of the Dragon, or Spirit of Roman Paganism, is resumed from Apoc. xii. -his being cast down from heaven in the great revolution begun under Constantine, and completed under Theodosius, answering to the figure of his being shut up in the abyss of Apoc. xx.-is, I conceive, in the Apocalypse itself distinctly negatived. For whereas, according to Professor Bush, this Dragon ought to have been from after Theodosius' time shut up, so as not to deceive the nations, he is in Apoc. xii. xiii. represented distinctly as after that time not only sending out floods from his mouth to overwhelm the woman, and driving her into the wilderness, but afterwards, with a view to prosecute his enmity against the remnant of the woman's seed who kept the word of God and the testimony of Jesus, himself evoking the seven-headed beast, Antichrist, which was but his creature, from the abyss: giving him up his throne; and, by seducing the nations to believe on him, furnishing him all through his reign with power and great authority. The same applies substantially to Waldegrave's modification of Gipps' theory. their previous death, there also told of, would be, 1TE SEKing, the second death. This is clearly Whitby's futuro-figurative theory alone with any show of plausibility, compete against the acer and more literal explanation of the millennial proThe by Papias and Irenæus, and sketched the ny. Nor, I think, if we do but carefully sift it, stion be found less clear and complete (though r... Dessy occupy us much longer) than that of the I proceed then to show this, and coincidently; and to show the evidence for the literal view, in two C Sections; vir as drawn successively, 1st from the LAMA YA ASTIAny itself, 2ndly from that of other Scrip « Č. APOCALYPTIC EVIDENCE AGAINST WHITBY'S FUTUROLSI TERRY, AND IN FAVOUR OF THE LITERAL 28 THE MILLENNIAL FIRST RESURRECTION. the this bead it may be well to consider separately 1a que may intimated concerning the death −se ram and west concerning the resurrection itself. 8. What is Apocaliptically intimated about the death. as granted by me that the term resur and its cognate words, are often vay, & Whitby says, to denote a revival naIn Ezekiel's vision, Ch. xxxvii., angle of the dy bees gathering together, and re-adand showles to form and then into life, may very stupy the political resuscitation of the Jews.1 - S. Lude the mid revival was designated sve again." And again, in the ch the Beast's ring again, after had the wound with the sword, and the two WitRONS AND BOE, aber being kid by the Beast, indiLesing empire, and revival of PLANTA, and testimony, respectively. But The and a sack ass we must mark most carefully one rule that is observed,—a rule the propriety of which will approve itself at once to every discriminative mind;viz. that of making the resurrection of corresponding character with the death, from out of which it is a revival. Thus in Ezekiel it was a change from national extinction to national revival; in Luke from spiritual death to spiritual life; in the earlier Apocalyptic visions from political and official annihilation to political and official resuscitation. So constant is the observance of this rule, and so stringent its requirement by the proprieties of diction, that it needs but, in any doubtfully expressed case of resurrection, to ascertain the nature of the death revived from: and, if this can be ascertained, an explanation of the resurrection conformable thereto must almost necessarily be the true one. And what then the death in the present case? What is stated both in the passage itself, and in its Apocalyptic parallels, seems to me inconsistent with the Whitbyite theory of figurative death, as of the Christian cause or party; and such indeed as to force us to understand it of natural individual death.—For, first, we find expressly and prominently specified among these dead the souls of those that had been beheaded for the witnessing of Christ; a form of expression which identifies them with those that St. John had seen on the fifth Seal's opening, long before, under the altar, the victims of the persecutions of Rome Pagan: whereas, had the death now meant been the figurative death of the Christian cause or party, the event would necessarily have been one of recent occurrence, altogether distinct from, and independent of, the deaths of those anti-Pagan martyrs ages before. Secondly, had there been any such recent figurative death, or, in other words, extinction and overthrow, of the Christian cause and party, we might surely expect that some striking symbolization of it would have been given previously; just as of the figurative death of Christ's two sackcloth-robed witnesses in Apoc. xi. 7, some time before. But no such symbolization is to be found in the immediately preceding context; nor a hint, even the 1 So again in Luke ii. 34; “ This child κειται εις πτωσιν και αναστασιν πολλων Ev Iopanλ, is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel." And, somewhat similarly, Ezra ix. 8; "that the Lord may give us a little revival in our bondage." 146 the first,) 1 properly sĮ Thus it that can, earlier an phecy giv first in m will its re it will ne others. ! in contra separate Apocaly tures at § 2. FIGURA THEORY Und what i raised 1st, It i rection used tional the fi justin possi In St by th Apoc havi nesse cate the in th זי an ac shall 27 aus are the sere in maThere is re them, the ca Beast and False Ind Amity: but I WIS N VE KES: 1. The 18 of the time fying rxtinction. the And deed to the Messiah's joining -ne fearful earthquake in nto three parts, then its effect, thirdly, is the arguvards of " the rest of the surrection:-an argument nest careful attention. For I seems to me, absolutely mainder of the dead, later i just before said to have shaving been originally, and some dead first taken, part and any dead, in whatever sense, - that word dead be meant :st needs have been once on, PATAN IS the art whose abstraction left it sis"the rest" said by Luke to have 2002 - me on boards and some on broken pieces the same ship's company with those that sig or to take an Apocalyptic še men in Apoc. ix. 20, that certain plagues, were of the same politiSen of Christendom, with those that had the plagues? Apply we then this test, in Julia this Volume pp. 2–5. 2 Acts xxvii. 44. qe do va ball latimates a derivation and meaning to the phrase oi |