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something quite other than what Daniel explained it to mean, viz. Nebuchadnezzar's empire of the Euphratean Babylon.

2ndly, and with reference to the ground of Dr. Arnold's thus excepting Papal Rome from the curse assigned to the Apocalyptic Babylon, viz. that the intense evil attached to that Babylon cannot be deemed to have attached to the Romish Church, the question must be asked, Does Dr. A. refer in this his plea of mitigation to the system as less evil in itself; or to there being many individuals of a different spirit from the system, professedly, included in it? If to the system, I think I may say that I have shown from the recognized and most authoritative exponents of Papal doctrine,—its Papal Bulls, Canon Law, Decrees of Councils,-doctrine not proclaimed in idle theory only, but practically acted out, that the system is one marked, so as no other professedly religious system ever has been, by that which must needs be of all things the most hateful to God; I mean the commixture of the foulest corruption of Christ's religion, and blasphemy of Christ himself, with the most systematized hypocrisy. --If, on the other hand, it be because of individuals professedly belonging to antichristian Rome who yet partake not of an antichristian spirit, the very voice of the Angel, "Come out of her, my people," just before the destruction of the Apocalyptic Babylon, shows that up to the very eve of her destruction there would also be in what was meant by the Apocalyptic Babylon, just similarly, some of a different spirit, some of God's people. So that the characteristic is one to fit the symbol to, not to separate it from, Papal Rome. No! the existence of some of his own people in a guilty nation may make the Lord spare it for a while for their sake. But at length their very presence and protest, by life at least, if not profession, but all vainly, will be judged by Him to be only an aggravation. And while He will know how to deliver those godly ones from the judgment, yet it will not then any longer prevent the fate of the guilty people. So it was in the case of the old world, when the destroying flood came, as predicted. So in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah. So again in that of Jerusalem. And so too (may we not undoubtedly anticipate) will it be in the case yet future of Papal Rome, the antitype, the only proper antitype, to the Apocalyptic Babylon. For, as the symbol has been so tied to it by God's infinite wisdom, that no human ingenuity can ever put them asunder, so most as

suredly the fate predicted on the same Apocalyptic Babylon shall in Papal Rome have its fulfilment. Nor can I see any reason to alter my exprest conviction, that even when a better state of this earth shall have succeeded to the present, the ruined site of that antichristian city and empire will remain a monument to the future inhabitants of our planet of the most astonishing system of human ingratitude, and perversion of God's best gift, that the old world ever saw : the smoke of its burning going up for ever; and its volcanic crust resting like an ulcer, agreeably with Isaiah's awful prophecy, on the face of the new creation.'

Since the above was written I have read Dr. Arnold's very interesting "Life and Correspondence" by Dr. Stanley; and am thankful to learn from it that on the subject last touched on by me, viz. the measure of evil in the Apocalyptic Babylon, or Romish Church, that that great and good man was by no means consistent with himself in at all extenuating it.

With regard to the nature of the apostasy, of which the man of sin predicted by St. Paul was to be the head, he in the strongest terms, as appears from that Biography, again and again declares it to be just that system of priestcraft which was perfected in Popery. The difficulties felt by him in the way of his fully carry

1 See my Vol. iv. pp. 221, 222.

2 "So far as Popery is priestcraft, I do believe it to be the very mystery of iniquity. But then it began in the 1st century; and had no more to do with Rome in the outset than with Alexandria, Antioch, Carthage." So in November, 1836. Life and Correspondence, ii. 61.

Again; "There is no battle in which I so entirely sympathize as in this against the priesteraft-Antichrist." So December, 1837, about the troubles from the Archbishop of Cologne. Ibid. p. 99.

Again, in January, 1838; "This spirit of priestcraft, the root of anarchy, fraud, and idolatry, is the mainspring of all Popery, whether Romish or Oxonian." Ib. 105. Again, October, 1839; "I see the Tractarians labouring to enthrone the very mystery of falsehood and iniquity in that neglected and dishonoured temple, the Church of God." p. 172.

Again, January, 1840; "In one point I think Antichrist was in the Church from the 1st century: yet God forbid that we call the Church Antichrist. Newmanism is the development of that system which in the early Church existed only in the bud; and which, as being directly opposed to Christ's religion, [we see that Dr. A., had not attended to the peculiar force of the word auTixpisos,] I call Antichrist." p. 183. Again, June, 1841; "That the great enemy should have turned his very defeat into his greatest victory, and converted the spiritual self-sacrifice, in which each was his own priest, into the carnal and lying sacrifice of the mass, is to my mind, more

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ing out the Papal application of the prophecy, alike as regards the
time of the heading of the apostasy, and the measure of its universal-
ity when dominant, as if (in the old Protestant view) embracing all
but the Waldensian witnesses,' were founded on entire mistake.2
And whereas, in his Sermons on Prophecy, he had argued that in the
Romish Church there "is not such unmixt or intense evil as to an-
swer to the features of the mystic Babylon of the Apocalypse," yet
in his Correspondence we find him declaring that he cannot imagine
to himself anything more wicked than the Papal system, at least as
exhibited at Rome and in Italy.3

I therefore rejoice to appeal on this point from Dr. Arnold to Dr.
A. himself; from Arnold under misapprehension to Arnold self-cor-
rected and to regard him as in reality much more a witness for,
than against, the great Protestant view advocated in these Lectures,
after Bishop Warburton and all the fathers of the English Reform-
ation; to the effect that the Pope of Rome is distinctively the Anti-
christ of prophecy, and Papal Rome the Apocalyptic Babylon.

than anything else, the exact fulfilment of the apostolic language concerning Anti-
christ." p. 260.

"But then it (the priestcraft system) began in the 1st century." So in the
primary citation given in my Note on p. 679. Again; "To talk of Popery as the
great Apostasy, and of the Christian Church as the Vaudois, is absurd." So June,
1834. Vol. i. p. 395.

2 In fact, what St. Paul's prophecy marks is a clearly gradually self-unfolding evil : first existing in the bud, as Dr. A. says; then increasing more and more into a general apostasy; then, when so advanced, to be headed by the man of sin, or Antichrist. So that the Roman Bishop, if the Antichrist meant, had then only, according to the prophecy, to take his part in its fulfilment.

As to God's Church of the true-hearted it is represented as hidden in the wilderness, during Antichrist's reign, known to God, but (collectively) not visible by man. Only certain direct witnesses for God's truth, few in number, were to be visible and active on the scene. See Apoc. xii. 17, and my Comment on in, Vol. iii. p. 68. The Vaudois we look on as some only of those witnesses.

"In Italy it is just the old heathenism; and, I should think, a worse system of deceit." So October, 1825, while in Italy. Life i. 74.

"I saw these two lines painted on the wall in the street to-day, near an image of the Virgin:

Chi vuole in morte aver Gesu per padre,

Onori in vita la sua santa madre.

I declare I do not know what name of abhorrence can be too strong for a religion.
which, holding the very bread of life in its hands, thus feeds the people with poison."
So May, 1827, at Rome. Ibid. 279.

Again, at p. 385, we find him applying to a statue of the Virgin in the Tyrol, the
tales told about it, as the deliverer of the people from the French, and the worship
paid it, what Herodotus might narrate of a statue of Minerva aλečikakos.

Yet once more, this is the statement of his final opinion on the subject, and made very shortly before his death; "Undoubtedly I think worse of Roman Catholicism, in itself, than I did some years ago." So October, 1841. Life ii. 287.

1

CHAPTER IV.

EXAMINATION AND REFUTATION OF THE RECENT COUNTER-
PREMILLENNARY THEORIES.

In revising this part of my Work for its 5th Edition, the important bearing of a right view of the Apocalyptic Millennium on the interpretation, not only of the future, but also of the past, seems to me to require that I should not close this Chapter without a notice of millennary views counter to my own, such as may have been set forth by writers more or less of eminence since the publication of my 4th Edition, notwithstanding the large space allotted to the discussion of it in the last chapter but one of my Commentary; in case perchance any new light may have been thrown by modern research on the subject. I propose, therefore, here to pass under review the millennary counter-explanations advocated respectively by Dr. Wordsworth in his Hulsean Lectures, by Professor Hengstenberg in his Apocalyptic Commentary, by Dr. Fairbairn in his work on Prophecy, and by Bishop Waldegrave in his Bampton Lectures on the Millennium. The two first of these writers, it will be seen, explain the millennium as an æra of the past, or in part of the present; the third, like Whitby, Vitringa, and Brown, as an era of blessedness still future, but antecedent to Christ's 2nd advent; the last, like Hengstenberg, (after carefully weighing the evidence in favour of each and every one of the counter-solutions hitherto suggested,) as an æra wholly past, though not the same æra as Hengstenberg's.Proceed we to consider them in succession.

And, as regards both Wordsworth and Hengstenberg, though the one point of Apocalyptic Interpretation on which I have proposed to exhibit their views is the millennary question, yet, as their names have a certain literary prestige attached to them in the minds of many, as names of authority, I think it may be interesting to all such if I briefly sketch their general views of the prophecy in the first instance. The rather as it will be not interesting only, but most useful to my present object. For, if I mistake not, the fact will then in either case be sufficiently apparent that, whatever their prestige and authority on other literary subjects, there attaches to them little indeed in their character as expositors of the Apocalypse.

1. Dr. Wordsworth.

As regards this expositor, he states at the beginning of his commentary, (and this I doubt not most justly,) that St. John in the Apocalypse "lays open a long avenue of events rising up, one after another, in clear perspective, through the whole interval of time. from that Lord's day in which he was in the Spirit upon the shores of the Isle of Patmos even to the day of doom." But how does he make good and illustrate the thus asserted clear prophetic perspective of the future in his actual commentary? how prove it to have clearly prefigured the grand and most characteristic events such as have been subsequently in fact unfolded in the now far advanced history of the Church and of the world? Says he; "Alike the seven Epistles, seven Seals, seven Trumpets, and seven Vials, foreshow in parallel chronological lines, though in different points of view, the whole history of the Church and world from St. John's time to the consummation. The seven Epistles indeed are not orderly in respect of succession; but only vaguely anticipatory in their church-picturings of certain points more fully illustrated in the other three series. The seven Seals depict respectively, and in chronological succession, Christ's gospelprogress, the Pagan Roman Emperors' persecution of Christians, the outbreak of heresies, the ravages of barbarian invaders, (such as of Goths, Saracens, etc.,) the martyrdoms of Christians, the convulsions of the last judgment, and finally, in the half-hour's silence in heaven, the promised everlasting sabbath. The seven Trumpets "contain a rapid view of the conflicts and sufferings of the Church, and of the judgments inflicted from heaven on its enemies :"-the first, (designated as one of judgment on the earth,) symbolizing the chastisement on heathen Rome for its persecution of the Church, as inflicted in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centuries; the 2nd, the judgments on the Roman world in the 5th century; the 3rd, heresies such as of the Arians, Nestorians, Monophysites, &c.; the 4th, errors, confusions, and defections, such as were prevalent in the 5th, 6th, and 7th centuries; the 5th, Mahometanism; the 6th, the binding of the gospel (under figure of the four angels bound) in the great river of the mystical Babylon, or Church of Rome; which gospel is prepared for the hour of retribution, the day of wrath, the month of God's harvest, the year of His visitation, in the contest of the mystical Armageddon. But how all these things prefigured? With any definiteness of etching? Any pointedness in the prophetic symbols

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