Just accordant with which is the tenor of that other prediction, that "the Image of the Beast caused that as many as would not worship the Beast's image should be killed." For the Image being of course subsequent in time to the lamb-like Beast that formed it, and the lamblike Beast's own rising subsequent in time to that of the first Beast, the dicta and the acts of the Image must à fortiori have been later than the commencement of the 1260 days of that first Beast's reign. In fact, if my interpretation be correct, and the Papal General Councils answered to the Image, (nor do I fear any one's disproving it,) forasmuch as these were first formed only in the xiith century,' they could not have embraced in their persecuting enactments any one of those three centuries (the 8th, 9th, and 10th) to which Mr. M. has most particularly referred, as a period to which the absurdity applied to Christ's saints being persecuted even to death by Antichrist, yet not knowing him.2-The state of the saints during the 1260 years may be well illustrated by comparison with that of Abraham's seed in the 400 predicted years of trial from Isaac to the Exodus: 3 during all of which these latter were to be strangers, I might perhaps say subjects, in the land of their pilgrimage; but during a part only persecuted and oppressed, so as to have the bondage enter into the soul. Again, as to the temporary ignorance of the Pope's real character as Antichrist, we may perhaps not inappropriately compare it with the temporary ignorance of Jewish saints before them in regard of the character of Jesus as the Christ. For we know that for many years after Christ's birth, and for some even after his manifestation by John the Baptist and opening of his ministry, there were sincere Israelites who so far failed to recognize him. In the one 1 See Chapter vii. suprà. 2 See the extract Note 3 p. 245, suprà. 3 Gen. xv. 13; "And God said to Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, (and they shall serve them, and they shall afflict them,*) four hundred years." (I write the clause in the parenthesis, according to the understanding which I have of the passage in common with Mr. Observe here the change of the nominative, and compare it with a similar change in Apoc. xi. 13, noted Vol. ii. p. 426; where may be seen other examples. case, as in the other, the development of the evidence was to be gradual.'-Only it must be remembered that this temporary ignorance of the Pope's being the predicted Antichrist, would not involve the reception of his antichristian doctrine, in so far as regarded the essentials of the Christian faith. This, we know, could not be with the elect. And in fact we have seen reason to believe, on good historical evidence, that throughout the earlier, as well as later half, of the 1260 years of Papal domination, there were those who faithfully witnessed for Christ's doctrine, in contradistinction to that of Him whom yet they knew not to be the predicted Antichrist: 3 as also others, weaker in discernment, faith, and courage, (for example the Carthusian monk mentioned at my p. 57 note suprà ;) who, resembling the 7000 of the Lord's secret ones of old, were know to God, though not to man, as not bowing the knee to Baal. A second historical objection, urged with yet more force by Mr. Maitland against the year-day anti-Papal application of the prophecy, is derived from that awful denunciation by the Angel of Apoc. xiv; "If any man worship the Beast and his Image, and receive his mark in his forehead or his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone; and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever." For he justly supposes that no year-day interpreter will be prepared to contend that among all that were visibly connected with Rome through the 1260 years, there were none of God's saints. And then, after urging the incredibility" that when God had pronounced so heavy a curse on all that Maitland. Answer to Cuninghame, p. 35.) Mr. Cuninghame with great justice adverts to this parallel. Strictures on Maitland, p. 49. Nor does Mr. M.'s parenthetical construction of the clause, given above, destroy the force of the parallel. 1 It would seem from Daniel's description of Antichrist's Horn as at first little, but afterwards assuming a great mouth,-so as probably to have then in the symbol overtopped the other ten,-that it must have appeared to the prophet to grow larger and larger, in gradual development. 2 "To deceive, if it were possible, the very elect." Matt. xxiv. 24. This, if applicable in the first instance to the false prophets before Jerusalem's destruction, would seem from the various prophecies of Antichrist to be applicable to him and his times also. 3 See my Chapter on the Witnesses. might worship the Beast, or receive his mark, He should actually have concealed from his Church that most important fact, that the person or power whom they religiously believed to be their spiritual Head, and the very Vicar of Christ upon earth,-whom under this view they received with reverend honour and worship,—and whose mark they took upon them in simple faith that it was the seal of the living God,-that this personage was indeed THE BEAST, the great enemy of their God and Saviour," he states it as a necessary corollary of the year-day system, that all in past ages who did thus act, must be supposed (a supposition doubtless incredible) to have received the Beast's mark, and so, according to the prophecy, "to have past into perdition."2 I consider this to have been by far the most effective and influential of all Mr. Maitland's arguments. Yet how simple and complete the answer! It needs but to remember that the vision of that third Angel, and his warning voice, has of course its proper chronological position in the prophecy, just as all the other prefigurative vision and that this its position is at the very end of the 1260 years, or after it; for it follows after a declaration of the close impending fall of Babylon3, and only a little before the sign of the coming of the Son of Man to judgment. Whence the inference that it prefigures a warning voice even yet future:—a warning to be given to such of God's saints as may be then in Babylon, (and that such there will be, even then, appears from the parallel warning-voice of another Apocalyptic Angel crying, "Come out of her my people, "") precisely like what was given to Lot on the night before the destruction of Sodom. And we might just as well argue that the antiSodomitic Angel's implied denunciation against all who afterwards remained in Sodom, that they would "be consumed in the iniquity of the city," had reference to 1 Why might not Antichrist's incoming be as an Angel of light? 2 Cor. xi. 14. 2 Second Enquiry, pp. 99, 100. 3 Apoc. xiv. 8. 5 Apoc. xviii. 4. 4 Apoc. xiv. 14. residents within it during the whole previous period of its flagrant wickedness, thus involving God's servant Lot himself in the tremendous catastrophe that followed, —as to make the Apocalyptic Angel's curse embrace such as might have been residents in Babylon and non-recusant subjects of the Papal Beast, before ever his warning voice was uttered, and during the whole previous period of the Beast's domination. The very basis of Mr. Maitland's argument is nothing more nor less than an immense anachronism. I have now, as I trust,-either in the observations of the present Section, or in critical notices in other parts of my Work,'-replied to almost every objection of consequence that has been urged either by Mr. Maitland or others against the year-day anti-Papal scheme of Apocalyptic interpretation. And, assuming the aggressive, I might further abundantly corroborate the truth of my views on this subject, by showing the essential inconsistency and unsoundness of that counter-view of Apocalyptic interpretation, which would construe the 1260 days, predicated of the Antichrist's prosperity of rule, as simply so many days literally taken. But the inquiry would necessarily occupy so much space and time, as to constitute somewhat of an interruption to the onward progress of my course of exposition. And I therefore (as already observed at the commencement of this Section) think it better to reserve it for insertion in the Appendix." 1 See my discussion of his argument on the Beast's seven heads, p. 100, &c. suprà and of those on the true meaning of daiovior, the true character of the Paulikians, &c, as Witnesses for Christ, and the right view of Antichrist's religion, see the Critical Notices in my Appendices to Volumes ii. and iv. With regard to that which Mr. Burgh has made his primary argument against the Protestant view of the Popes being St. Paul's Man of Sin and Antichrist, viz. that the Man of Sin is spoken of as an individual, (Second Advent, Lect. 2,)—an argument which has been also often urged by others, especially Romanists,-the reader may remember that it is answered p. 80, Note. Let Romanist objectors look further to the quotation Note 3, p. 174 suprà, in which the individual Peter is used to include the whole line or succession of Popes following him in the See of Rome; also to Pope Innocent's explanation of the Man of Sin as Mahommedism, in Note* p. 218.-But indeed it is needless to amplify on a figure of speech so notorious in every language, and in writings alike sacred and profane. * Viz. in my Examination of the Futurist Apocalyptic Scheme at the end of Vol. iv. § 2. COMMENCING AND TERMINATING EPOCHS OF THE BEAST'S PREDICTED 1260 YEAR-DAYS OF SUPREMACY. Before the end of the xiiith century we might truly say that each predicted moral characteristic of the Apocalyptic antichristian Beast had been fulfilled in the history and acts of the Popes and Popedom: also at the opening of the xvith century, just before the Reformation, the predicted fact of his success against the Witnesses of Christ. And by that time the duration of the Popedom had extended to many centuries; so approximating on this point also to the word of prophecy. Still the years of its duration had not yet amounted to 1260: and the question thus remained, even at the time of the Reformation, and afterwards, how much these 1260 years would extend farther; and what the epoch whence to calculate them; and yet again, at the end of the period, measured from some such notable epoch of commencement, what the probable nature of the events that would then be introduced, constituting the epoch one of a death-blow against the Beast's supremacy.-This, as the Reader will no doubt expect, I shall seek to show, primarily at least, in the outbreak and acts of the great French Revolution, at the close of the last century. The present, however, is not the precise place for its historical development: the ivth or present Part of my Commentary reaching up to, but not including, the 7th Trumpet-sounding, which I presume, answered chronologically to it. It is therefore only my purpose in the present Section, to make an observation or two with reference to the commencing and terminating epochs of the 1260 year-day period,-in part recapitulatory of what was before stated, in part confirmatory; and with some further explanations also added on the subject. They will serve usefully, I think, to clear the ground before us; and to prepare for the historical proof of fulfilment to be given in Part v, next ensuing. |