it appeared, having had it granted her to be arrayed in the finest white linen,1 (which linen, it was said, was the righteousness of saints, so marking the saints as the bride,) and the song retaining still the form Hallelujah.-But an enemy yet remains to be overcome, ere the completion of the anticipated blessedness. As the harlot must be exposed and branded and destroyed ere the manifestation of the bride, so the usurper Antichrist, (the self-vaunting King of kings and Lord of lords,) ere Christ's establishment of his kingdom. And, after a passing mention of the Angel's declaring the blessedness of those who were called to the Lamb's marriagesupper, (whether a class the same as, or a class distinct from, the Bride herself,*) and another of St. John's falling down and worshipping the revealing Angel, (still I suppose in his symbolic representative character,5) and being rebuked for it, there follows a most striking and remarkable vision of Christ issuing forth to the destruction of this long usurping Antichrist. The heaven appeared opened to make way for

20. And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worship his image. These both were cast alive into the laket of fire burning with brimstone. 21. And the remnant were slain with the sword of him that sat upon the horse, which sword proceedeth out of his mouth and all the fowls were filled with their flesh."

xx. "And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit, and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand years," &c.

Buooivov. This was linen of the finest kind; such as kings and priests and nobles wore for example Joseph, Gen. xli. 42; David, 1 Chron. xv. 27; the priests, Exod. xxviii. 39; and the rich man in the parable, Luke xvi. 19.-On the possibly intended meaning of the word here, as suggested by Daubuz in a very interesting critique, I reserve my observations till the chapter iv. following.

2 dikawμara used in the same sense, I conceive, of justification, as dikawμa in the singular in St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, v. 16, and, in the plural, Heb. ix. 1, 10. The plural is here perhaps adopted, rather than the singular, in order to signify the badges of that justification on the many justified.

3 So Gerson (ap. Gieseler, Text Book iii. 256,) speaks of this as applied to the Pope by the Papists of the day; " Papa, cujus in femore scripsit Christus, Rex regum, Dominus dominantium."-He too had the sharp sword of anathema going out of his mouth. "Anathematis gladio feriantur;" or "Anathematis mucrone percussus." So Innocent III, against the Waldenses and Albigenses.

See generally my sketch of Antichrist in his full-grown greatness, Part iv. Chap. V. § 2. • So Daubuz.

I may have again to advert to this in chapter iv. following.

8. Usually, as in xii. 17 and xiii. 7, the article is not added. It seems to be the war of Armageddon, before resolved on.

* B, Scholz, and Wordsworth, ὁ μετ' αυτου ψευδοπροφητης.

† την λίμνην του πυρος την καιομένην εν θειψ. Our translators have rendered it "a lake;" not marking the definite article: a mistake of no inconsiderable importance, as will appear afterwards in my comment.

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his descending. His appearance had in it all that was most august of superhuman majesty. His emblems were those of royalty and triumph,-the white horse, the sharp sword, the many diadems, the red or purple robe ;-red, however, with blood, as that of one that had already begun to tread the wine-press of God's wrath. (Was it not the wine-press long before prophesied of as trodden in Bozrah?1) His names enunciated were, The Faithful and True, the Word of God, the King of kings and Lord of lords, besides that secret as well as incommunicable name JEHOVAH. And hosts, already" in heaven," (were they not his saints, "the called, and chosen, and faithful?" 4) appeared following him; themselves also on white horses: the partakers (so did the end contrast with the beginning of this great drama) of their Lord's triumph.-Meanwhile the Beast and his False Prophet, and the kings and armies that still supported him, are represented as having gathered to the scene of conflict. And, after a proclamation from an Angel that seemed "standing in the sun," (whether to denote his universal visibility, or the supreme royalty that dictated his words,7) inviting all the birds of prey that might fly in the mid-heaven, to assemble and partake of the great supper about to be prepared in the judgments of God Almighty,8 —after this, I say, the conflict was joined; the Beast, or Antichrist, and his False Prophet taken, and cast alive into "the lake of fire," (mark the definite article,) that same "which was burning with brimstone;" the kings and other earthly adherents of Antichrist slain by the sword of Him that sat on the white horse, a portion for the birds of

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1 Isa. lxiii. 1. I shall have to make the comparison in my next chapter.

* Such I conceive to be the name meant. Compare Judg. xiii. 18; "Why askest thou after my name, seeing it is secret?"

3 τα στρατευματα τα εν τῳ ουρανῳ.

4 Compare xvii. 14;-" These shall war with the Lamb: and the Lamb shall overcome them, (for He is King of kings and Lord of lords,) and they that are with Him, the called, and chosen, and faithful." 5 See Vol. i. p. 106. So the late Rev. Robert Hall, in his noble Sermon on the Discouragements and Supports of the Christian minister.

Such I conceive to be at least part of the meaning of the symbol; so as, ample, in the notable case of the woman clothed with the sun in Apoc. xii. 1.

for ex

Ezekiel's prophecy of God's great sacrifice and supper, and the birds invited to it, in Ezek. xxxix. 17, &c., can scarce fail of occurring as a probable parallel to the reader. But I reserve to my next Chapter a notice of this, and a few other such prophecies. 9 See Note † on the page preceding.

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prey; and the Dragon taken, and imprisoned in the abyss for a thousand years.-And so the MILLENNIUM appeared to begin.

From this prefigurative vision thus much may I think be inferred respecting the coming future;-viz. that some signal, total, and most tremendous destruction of the Papal Antichrist, (that false usurping king of kings and lord of lords,) with the Papal Priesthood and Kings (perhaps kingdoms too) adhering to him, is to follow very soon after the catastrophe of Rome and its Italian dependency:-a destruction to be accompanied with some striking manifestation of Christ, and of his glory and power, who is then to be made publicly manifest as the true King of kings and Lord of lords and to be wrought by the agency of earthquake and fire, (probably volcanic fire,) so as to involve the reprobates, thus destroyed, in the same fiery lake as Rome itself and its subject territory just before."-The fact of their destruction following after, and so being in point of time distinct from, that of Rome, as would seem to be the case, is perhaps to be accounted for by the supposition of Antichrist and his army being, at the time, gathered to some country or place without the territories of the Popedom-a supposition already suggested by the intimation in the parallel prophecy of chap. xiv. that the wine-press of God's wrath was to be trodden "without the city; 4 and partially confirmed, I think, by other and earlier prophecies of the last crisis. As to the nature of the manifestation then to be made of Christ's glory,-whether personal or simply providential,-again, whether the hosts attending to participate in his triumph are angels or saints, and, if saints,

1 Compare Christ's proverbial saying, "Where the carcase is, there shall the eagles (or vultures) be gathered together." 2 Compare Dan. vii. 10, 11.

3 At the same time it is to be remembered, as possible, that the second description may be only added in particular, of what was described previously in the general, respecting parties suffering from the same catastrophe; the one picturing being territorial, the other personal.

Apoc. xiv. 20. See p. 16 suprà.-The Beast's separation from his proper seat, at the time of his destruction, may be compared with Pharaoh's and Korah's from theirs. I shall have again to advert to this point at the end of the next chapter. Moreover the distinctive notice of the False Prophet's destruction may be compared with that of Elijah's slaughter of Baal's prophets, distinctively from the other worshippers of Baal, at Mount Carmel.

whether in the earthly or the resurrection state, (a point involving that other, already mooted,' whether the bride and the parties called to the bridal supper are identical, or distinct,)-finally, what the nature of the lake of fire mentioned, and whether identical or connected with that eternal and penal fire of which we read such awful notices in other Scriptures,-on all these points of solemn and surpassing interest, it is evident that the answer to be given must involve a consideration of the great question of the Millennium and Second Advent; and can therefore only fitly be given in the Chapter next but one following, in which the whole millennial subject has to be discussed.-Before which, however, it may be well to look carefully to those apparently parallel prophecies respecting the final crisis, whether in Daniel or other of the Old Testament prophets, that have been just referred to.

CHAPTER II.

CHIEF OLD TESTAMENT PROPHECIES RESPECTING THE CRISIS OF THE CONSUMMATION.

§ 1.—THE FIRST HALF OF DANIEL'S LAST PROPHECY, FROM DAN. x. 1 тo xi. 31.

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THE date of the vision that I am now about to notice,-I mean Daniel's last vision, given in chapters x., xi., and xii. of his prophetic Book,-is stated by the Prophet to have been the third year of the reign of Cyrus; its local scene by the banks of the Hiddekel or Tigris.3 Now it appears from Ezra that it was in the first year of his reign that Cyrus issued his memorable edict for the Jews' emancipation from Babylon, and that Zerubbabel and other Jews, acting on it, returned to Jerusalem: also that it was in the seventh Jewish month (or October) that they set up an altar there, and in the second month of the second year of 1 p. 52.

2 Dan, x. 1.

Ezra i. 1, 5; ii. 2.

3 Dan. x. 4. 5 Ibid. iii. 1-6.

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their coming that they laid the foundation of the new Temple--after which there began from the people of the land a system of harassing and interruption,-in part by personal opposition, in part through the agency of accusers sent to vilify them at the Persian Court,-which at once put a stop to the work; and suspended it through what remained of the reign of Cyrus, and for some years after, till the accession of Darius son of Hystaspes. Such then had already begun to be the state of things at Jerusalem in the April 3 of that 3rd year of Cyrus, in which Daniel (now, like St. John in Patmos, an old man of eighty or ninety)* saw the vision we are about to consider. It seems important to bear this in mind in examining the prophecy before us. We can scarce but suppose that his fasting and prayer, which preceded and was answered by the present vision, had reference, like that which preceded a former revelation, to the then state of trial and disappointment attending the returned remnant of his people. The Angel's words, on occasion of a former vision, about the street being built in troublous times, seemed already beginning to have fulfilment. When were better times to come,― the times of the Messiah promised? His heart was set to understand the things predicted. Of the quadruple series of Gentile dominant empires which, it had been 70 years before foreshown to him, were to precede the full and final establishment of Messiah's kingdom, the second, of Persia, had already come, a guarantee for all the rest. But the third, that of Greece, as expressly foreshown to him,'—had as yet not come forward. When was that next step in the great chain of events to take place? When the fourth empire to appear, under which apparently Messiah was to

2 Ibid. iv. 1, 11, 24.

Ezra iii. 8, &c. The vision was seen on the 24th day of the Jewish first month, or month Abib: which was part March, part April. Dan. x. 4.

Daniel was carried away from Jerusalem, on the first deportation of captive Jews, in the third year of Jehoiakim and first of Nebuchadnezzar. At this time he must have been nearly grown up; as we find him in Nebuchadnezzar's second year expounding to him his dream of the great quadripartite image: after which there had now elapsed the seventy years and more of the captivity. Dan. i. 1, 6; ii. 1. 5 Dan. ix. 3, &c. 6 Dan. ix. 25. Compare Hagg. i. 9.

7 Dan. x. 12; "From the first day that thou didst set thy heart to understand," &c. Both in the symbol of the quadripartite image, and that of the four wild beasts, Dan. ii., vii. • Dan. viii. 5, 6, 21.