Bloud of the Lamb so as to be exalted to the Heavenly station of ruling by the Man-child being caught up unto God and his Throne c. and obtained sentence against their Adversary to be cast out c. yet was that sentence executed as before by the War v. 7. Ans. See what head-strong prejudice will doe As if the Remarker shou'd say though this eleventh verse does imply that the War was betwixt the Primitive Christians and their Persecutors yet it was not But it does most certainly demonstrate that the War was betwixt the Primitive Christians and their Persecutors For the words are these For they overcame viz. the red Dragon by the bloud of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony and they loved not their lives unto death What can be a more express description of Martyrdom than this This is not a description of a War of Emperours against Emperours with their armies in the field where they fight upon equal terms but of Martyrs with the word of their testimony passively undergoing for their witnessing to the truth what their cruel Persecutors would inflict upon them Vers. 12. The Dwellers in Heaven are bid to rejoice by reason of the salvation and strength and Kingdom of God and power of his Christ which was to come and therefore surely must signifie them to whom the same came whose particular concern this matter of joy was whereas Angels and Martyrs are no farther concerned in it than in general as they are concerned for the welfare of the Church Nor can those that were exalted by preferments to the Political Heaven of the Empire be concerned in it farther than they were in such a state as to have the coming of salvation and strength and the Kingdom of God fulfilled in them For it onely respects those that are in such a state who are called dwellers in Heaven in respect of the Heavenly station that they were exalted to thereby after the Devil and his Angels were cast out and the autority of Christ established as Prince of the World For then they became the joyfull company with the Lamb on Mount Sion singing the Song of the victory c. who as they are there markt on their foreheads for preservation so they are the worshippers in the Temple and Altar or the two Witnesses meted for the same purpose and are the same that are called dwellers in Heaven Ch. 13.6 and are thus distinguished from those dwellers on Earth against whom the woe is pronounced by reason of the power the Devil will have over them still after he is cast out Ans. The Expositor has taken in both senses of Heaven political and natural they being both sure and consistent one with another and the joy of Angels and Martyrs at the welfare of the Church is too great to be slighted or omitted But to ramble into mystical senses and reach out to the company of the Lamb on Mount Sion is not to interpret by rule but to trifle All Apostolick Christians were concerned in this victory of the Church and most of those in high place in the Empire turned Christian. But the foregoing verse so plainly determining this joy to the victory of the Church in the times of Constantine which shews that the Kingdom of God and power of his Christ was come already and is said to be so v. 10. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. not yet to come it is a strange vagary to ramble from the Antemedial synchronals to the middle synchronals which undoubtedly the company on Mount Sion belong to And for the Remarker's groundless conceit touching the worshippers in the Temple and Thysiasterion the vanity thereof has been above sufficiently shewn And for the dwellers in Heaven Ch. 13. v. 6. we shall consider it when we come at it But for this present place if the Dwellers in Heaven be those in high degree the Dwellers on Earth must naturally signifie those in low degree or common people as the Expositor has interpreted it Vers. 15. Arianism cannot be here intended more than the Catholick doctrine they both running into extremes and each maintaining their cause with like fumous Animosity But by the Serpent's casting out water like a floud seems to be signified the frequent tumultuating of the common people and Magistrates that continued Pagans against the Christians whereby great outrages were oft committed But such Arians and Catholicks may be also included who under a cloak of Religion did violently prosecute each other out of enmity or self-interest to the great reproach and ruine of Religion Ans. The contention betwixt the Arians and Catholicks is most certainly included and is that which History most of all rings of and most highly concerned the Church and therefore could not be omitted in this Opened-book-prophecy which concerns the state of the Church As for any other contests less notable betwixt Christians and Pagans they were such as could not hazard the Woman's being 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 her being carried away with the sloud None but a contention betwixt the Christians themselves and such as shaked the very foundation of their Religion could put her in that hazard So that this is a very lank sense which the Remarker gives of this passage Vers. 16. The Earth that helped the woman by swallowing the sloud may signifie the sober stayd sort of people who being either seasoned with principles of Religion or being of peaceable spirits and obedient to authority did endeavour to asswage all such tumults and discountenance and oppose all such furious Animosities and were for composing all differences in a legal orderly and peaceable manner Ans. Undoubtedly that sloud of contention was the hot Contest betwixt the Arians and Catholicks Could therefore the soberer sort of common people Christians or Pagans compose this difference What an absurd conceit is this The Earth that swallows up this sloud does not signifie the common people here though sometimes it is a Symbol of them But the sense is onely this That this floud of contention was swallowed down and dried up by the help of Oecumenical Councils as some rapid Torrent is suck't down by the gaping of the Earth This is enough But farther curiosity might invite a man to fanfie that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is included in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whence Oecumenical comes is alluded to or Earth in general put for clayish Earth which in Daniel is a symbol of the Ecclesiastical Power of which Councils did consist And then it fits obviously and exquisitely Chap. 13. Vers. 1. THE name of Blasphemy if it does intend Idolatry yet it hath a farther signification as All sins and blasphemies shall be forgiven men but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost c. Where the malignant reproach of God's Spirit evidencing it self in the works of our Saviour is said to be unpardonable blasphemy And the like reproaching of the holy Spirit manifesting it self in the Saints is likewise blasphemy though not of so heinous a
the Opened-book-prophecy of any Vision that sets out the persecutions of the primitive Church which is as notable and considerable as any thing that is prefigured in the whole Apocalypse and so makes the Opened-book-prophecy defectuous 2. It supposes which is false that Heaven in this Vision signifies Symbolically when it signifies onely Topically 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. If 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 had signified Symbolically it would have run thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. And there appeared a great wonder a Woman in Heaven cloathed with the Sun c. if being seen in Heaven had signified her Political state or condition Which it does no more than it does concerning the red Dragon v. 3. who is not said to be seen in Heaven to set out his Political condition for that his seven Crowns sufficiently shew namely that he was in the highest Political state but onely signifies Topically and declares in what place Iohn saw this wonderfull sight and so it is of the Woman being seen there 3. The Remarker's interpretation here and his exposition of the Temple appearing in Heaven contradicts the Text. For he supposes in both the Christian Religion to have become the Religion of the Emperours and the Christian Laws the Laws of the Empire Whence it is plain that the Woman cloathed with the Sun in his sense is past her Throes This is point-blank against what is declared in the Vision that the Woman cloathed with the Sun being with child cried travelling in birth and pained to be delivered whenas the being in Heaven in the Remarker's sense implies she was delivered already Wherefore it being so plain from hence that the 19th Verse of the precedent Chapter is not the beginning of this Vision it is manifest that it ends the former and that the Earthquake and great hail is the same with that of the seventh Vial And consequently from what has been already noted here on this Chapter and what deliver'd in my answers to the Remarks on the former that the Vision comprised in that Chapter commenceth with the beginning of the Church and ends with the seventh Vial. It is also plain already that the Vision begun in this 12th Ch. commenceth from the beginning of the Church and endeth not till the Vision of the Wine-press which closeth the 14. Chapter and which the Remarker himself cannot deny but synchronizes with the seventh Vial. So that the 12.13 and 14. Chapters contain one entire Vision consisting of several parts synchronal to the Vision contained in the 11. Ch. And the affairs represented in this 12. Ch. reach unto the Woman's flight into the Wilderness where she is to be for a time and times and half a time and to the emerging of the healed Beast out of the Sea who makes war against her seed for 42 months the same with a Time and Times and half a Time and with the 1260 days of the mournfull Prophesying of the Witnesses Which time and things answer to one another those of the 13. Chapter to those of the 11. as the time of the affairs of this 12. Chapter to the measured Inner Court there in Chap. 11. And now forasmuch as there is a War betwixt the Beast and the Soldiers of the Lamb in the 13. Chapter the mustering of these Soldiers takes up part of the 14. Chapter and the description of their condition which Soldiers therefore synchronize with the War mentioned in the 13. Chapter And the voice of the first Angel is a menacing admonition to the Bestians for their Idolatry threatning to them the ill success of their War against the Saints at last Which comminatory voice of this first Angel commenceth for ought I can see with the fifth Trumpet and extends it self to the Western as well as Eastern Empire but is restrained to the time of the 42 months war But the second Angel tells the actual success thereof Babylon is fallen is fallen Which answers to the fall of the City in the 11. Chapter which is the success of the War there betwixt the Beast and the Witnesses But what follows the Fall of the City in the 11. Chapter and the fall of Babylon in the 14. reacheth into the times which commence with the seventh Trumper and end with the seventh Vial. So that there being such a perpetual correspondence of Time and Things betwixt the Vision comprised in the 11. Chapter and this integral Vision contained in these three next it is manifest they are two Synchronal Visions And this I thought was a seasonable place to represent them to be such Vers. 2. This travailing in pain is not the suffering of the Primitive Persecutions but her labouring to bring forth the Man-child that was to rule all Nations that as she was exalted to that Heavenly station by the Emperours receiving the Faith so the Devil might be cast down from the same and so outed of his Dominion which he held thereby whereby the autority of Christ might be established in Heaven as Prince of the World Ans. This travailing in pain must be understood of the Primitive Persecutions For after the Christian Religion had become the Religion of the Empire which was upon the victories of Constantine in whom the Man-child which the Woman brought forth who was to rule all Nations viz. those numerous Nations contained in the Roman Empire was caught up unto God and his Throne that is was invested in the imperial Throne the Woman that is the Apostolick Church was freed from her Throes The Remarker seems to interpret without any regard to History And here he harps again upon the same mistaken string making Heaven signifie Symbolically when it here onely signifies Topically Vers. 7. The War here does not signifie the conflict between the primitive Christians and their Persecutors For the Christians were not then in such a station as to war in Heaven but the War here on their side bears the same sense with the War of their Adversaries viz. the Devil being sentenced to be cast out on the Man-child's being caught up unto God and his Throne the War here was to put that sentence in execution and it was betwixt the Christian Emperours and the Heathen Emperours and also the Tyrants who in favour of Paganism rose up against the Christian Emperours by which War at length the power of the Devil or Pagan Empire was wholly abolished Ans. The War does signifie the conflict betwixt the Primitive Christians and their Persecutors And the reason alledged against it is very vain as if Heaven signified Symbolically and not Topically which most certainly it does as Grotius has also noted and renders in coelo in aere And when the Man-child was caught up unto God and his Throne the Devil was not onely sentenced to be cast out but was actually cast out Nor was the Man-child taken unto the Throne of God till the Christian Emperour had overcome the Pagan Vers. 11. Though the Primitive Christians did overcome their Accuser by the
the Church of Smyrna He that overcomes shall not be hurt by the second Death from the comparing of which two places together the Ancients rightly inferred the Rising of the Martyrs at the first Resurrection that it was their privilege So that as some of the passages in Daniel and the Apocalypse are as it were Tallies kept by parties one with another to give a just account of the sense so the same are some passages of the Apocalypse one to another of which I might give many more examples but I hold it needless Nor does the Martyrs reigning in Heaven that thousand years of the Millennium clash with their reigning there for ever afterwards But from the beginning of the Millennium to everlasting is their reign and Omne majus continet in se minus so that it is true that they reigned in Heaven while the Saints which worshipped not the Beast with their successours reigned in the Millennium on Earth viz. they reigned a thousand years while the Martyrs reigned in Heaven the same time But in this place it was impertinent and too motiminous nor sutable to the accustomed brevity and succinctness of the Apocalyptick style to tell they yet farther reigned to all eternity that being to be signified afterwards Nor is it any violation of Scripture to make 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the sixth verse signifie symbolically when in the fourth and fifth it does not the Article 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being in the fourth and fifth verses Which therefore points at the determinate thousand years of the Millennium But it is lest out in the sixth verse and as it seems on purpose to lead us to that symbolical meaning touching those that partake of the first Resurrection and which was proper to them in conterdistinction to those Confessors who worshipped not the Image of the Beast and who with their successors onely reigned that thousand years of the Millennium Which farther argues that the first Resurrection is Physical and into an Heavenly glorified body So coherent is the discourse and agreeable with the symbolical sense of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in v. 6. But to make the Privilege of the Martyrs in the first Resurrection to be that they reign during the Millennium as the Powers of the Air the Devil and his Angels did among the worldly powers till he was bound this though it may seem a witty conceit yet it is not true For then they have but the office of ministring Angels which is not to reign but to minister For I hope they will not doe as the Devils did receive religious worship from us mortals And if these Martyrs have no bodies how is it a Resurrection and if onely Aerial bodies so have other souls as well as they And if you say they onely minister for the good of the Saints in this Airy Region what hinders but other souls that are not Martyrs may have the same office so that this is no Privilege of the Martyrs nor the right State of the first Resurrection Wherefore the safest and most natural sense of the first Resurrection is not to crop or mutilate it but to let it be full and of the same kind with the general Resurrection of the just Vers. 8. There was no increase of wickedness by relaxation of discipline For these Nations that gather themselves against the Saints are foreign Nations that were never subject to their discipline but during the Devil's being bound did live peaceably by them and haply did so rejoice in the light of the New Ierusalem as to fulfill those sayings The Nations that are saved shall walk in the light thereof and The leaves of the tree of life are for the healing of the Nations but were now so deceived by Satan's being loosed as to combine against the beloved City as the Neighbouring-nations used to confederate against Ierusalem Ans. That there was no increase of wickedness by relaxation of discipline is a thing said not proved though I have proved above to the contrary Nor is there any sufficient intimation in the Vision that they were foreign Nations that environ'd the Holy City that is the Holy Polity but people of a foreign spirit and aliens from the faith and genius of those that are of the true Houshold of God though they lived amongst the Nations that were converted to the true Apostolick Christianity And the Kingdom of Christ having become so large at that time when Apoc. ch 11.15 ch 15.4 all the Kingdoms of the World as it is written were become the Kingdoms of the Lord and his Christ it is hard to conceive it should be otherwise and also by relaxation of discipline that even those that were subject to their discipline should not so corrupt as to make part of the Army of Gog and Magog And what Nations can be thought to walk in the light of the new Ierusalem but those that are converted to the Christian Faith For by faith we are saved as the Apostle tells us And those Nations that are healed are the same that are saved also no other at all need be implied And whether you count Gog and Magog neighbouring or foreign Nations it is but childish and Idiotical to take it so far in the literal sense and against the genius of the Apocalyptick style that they must signifie either neighbouring or foreign Nations in a Geographical meaning but in a Mystical Dissimilitude of spirit and profession answering to distance of place and those that have the same profession but not the same spirit really and the same saith are Borderers rather than Natives And such are those that bear the name of the Christianity then established I mean in the Millennium but covertly favour the Dragon and the Beast And these are Gog which signifies Tectum But those that are open Draconists or Bestians these are Magog which signifies Absque Tecto as the Lexicon Sanctum will have it But this is a greater curiosity than needs It is sufficient in the mean time to observe that as the very people Gog and Magog that were the ancient Enemies of the Jews are not here understood so no people of a foreign Nation out of the bounds and precincts of the New-Ierusalem Jurisdiction or Kingdom of Christ are necessarily signified thereby though I do not deny but by Magog may be also understood whatever foreign forces are accumulated to those that are within the Dominions of the new Ierusalem Vers. 9. Those in the Ierusalem state being called the Camp of the Saints and the beloved City does shew they are in no such a degenerate state as the Epistle to the Laodiceans describes and so is one reason more to those many given ch 3. that the two last of the seven Epistles do not concern the Millennial State And it 's a great straining of the Text to serve the contrary conceit to make those Titles be given the new Ierusalem because there were many Saints there and the rest so as to purity of external Worship
Issue of the 42 months war more than an hundred years in which expiration of the 42 months or 1260 days prophetical he surmises that Antichristianity will be utterly rooted out of the Church as if that would be the full completion of the Rising of the Witnesses this gave me occasion in the above-mentioned Arithmetica Apocalyptica to shew that Daniel's seven Semi-Times not the 1260 days nor 42 months is the true Authentick eventual measure to compute the fulfilling of the Medial-Visions by And I may here add that if the fulfilling of the Vision of the Rising of the Witnesses and the fall of Babylon be enlarged to an utter ruine of the Antichristian Kingdom and advancing the Reformation throughout Christendom and to the extending the last blast of the second Wo-Trumpet or sixth Trumpet or the beginning of the seventh and consequently the three Triumphant expressions of Ioy till then for they must be contracted or enlarged together I having proved so plainly that all the Vials which are so many plagues upon Antichrist follow the sixth Trumpet and those Triumphs or Doxologies chap. 11. v. 15 16 17. chap. 14. v. 8. and chap. 15. v. 3. there will be no time for the pouring out these Vials till Antichrist be gone upon whom they are to be poured Which shews plainly that the success of the 42 months war with the Saints or Witnesses is not to be as it were continued from the Reformation till an universal Rising of the Witnesses or full and final Ruine of Babylon at the expiration of the 42 Prophetical months or 1260 years but that the Reformation past is the adequate success of that 42 months War or Daniel's Time and Times and half a Time which is equivalent thereto and the onely Authentick measure of the truth of the events of the Medial-Visions And forasmuch as many Authentick copies Apoc. 13.15 instead of to continue have to make war forty two months and that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 if you leave out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies here to act at pleasure prosperously freely and unmasterly or untrollably as judicious Interpreters have noted and since however the Beast cannot make war before he continue and that therefore his continuance at least commences as high as his making war and both are said to be 42 months it is plain hence that the Beast's continuance and his war do perfectly synchronize and as one ends so must the other at the same time But the Rising of the Witnesses is the issue and end of the 42 months war therefore the continuance of that state of the Beast who is said to continue 42 months ends at the Rising of the Witnesses or fall of the tenth part of the City Which is a plain intimation that those Interpreters are in the right that interpret 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 v. 5. if 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 be left out to act at pleasure with uncontrollableness and success Which state of the Beast ceased at the Rising of the Witnesses and fall of the tenth part of the City For then was he over-mastered in a large part of his Dominions and he could not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 act so freely and domineeringly as he did before So that all the pretence of prolonging the 42 months continuance of the Beast Apoc. 13.5 beyond the time of the issue of the 42 months war v. 7. and then at the 42 months end precisely taken of quite extinguishing his power plainly vanishes the 42 months onely pointing at the entireness of his reigning before he came into that broken condition and not at the time of his reign at large Of so great use is that little Piece for the preventing mistakes touching this matter And for Appendicula Apocalyptica by maintaining Mr. Mede's Interpretation of the Seals against Mr. Durham's as also his Symmetral Times of the Church antecedent to the Asymmetral it does plainly strengthen the Right of Monarchy and Episcopacy from the Holy Writ against such as are otherwise affected And this is all that I have to say by way of Preface touching the whole Book nor shall add any thing more to detain thee from the perusal thereof but my prayers that thou maist reade to thy own edification and that what thou readest may either beget or encrease in thee a sober mind and sensible of thy duty to God and to thy Prince and to all that are in Autority under him whether in Church or State Farewell The ERRATA correct thus  For Reade PAg. 3. lin 17. Seraphimus Seraphinus Ibid. l. 18. Peresius Pererius P. 7. l. 33. now not P. 12. l. 3. his this P. 33. l. 20. from being for being P. 44. l. 10. Seat Seal P. 50. l. 28. regenerating degenerating P. 51. l. 10. Trumpet might Trumpet might P. 59. l. 19. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 P. 65. l. 20. toils evils P. 67. l. 1. world word P. 83. l. 30. most of those most of all those P. 103. l. 23. Primity Primitiae P. 117. l. 24. Vails Vials P. 129. l. 4. Vial-Angel first Vial-Angel P. 130. l. 20. game gain P. 139. l. 2. partly Party P. 143. l. 29. in the is the P. 161. l. 11. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 P. 176. l. 30. Motiminous Moliminous P. 238. l. 19. many main P. 274. l. 26. Arme Army P. 325. l. 24. Aetymological Etymological P. 351. l. 30. rom from P. 368. l. 31. Synopsis of Synopsis P. 383. l. 33. to the as the P. 410. l. 1. seven seventh P. 412. l. 22. why has why has not AN ANSWER To Several REMARKS UPON Dr. Henry More HIS APOCALYPSIS APOCALYPSEOS Written By S. E. MENNONITE And Published in English by The ANSWERER Together with his ANSWERS thereunto JAM III. 13 14. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 LONDON Printed by M. F. for Walter Kettilby 1684. REMARKS UPON APOCALYPSIS APOCALYPSEOS Chap. I. Vers. 4. BOTH here and vers 11. the direction to the seven Churches is rendred To the Catholick Church distinguished into seven Successions and so no literal sense but onely a prophetical sense regarded in the Epistles Ans. It was no part of the Expositor's scope to meddle with the literal sense but to give a continued coherent prophetical sense onely of this whole book of Prophecies the Apocalypse Ver. 6. Kings and Priests are doubtlesly to be taken here as in ch 5. v. 10. And hast made us to our God Kings and Priests and we shall reign on the Earth So that the sense here given is a straining of the Text from a proper literal to a forced metaphorical sense Ans. The sense is very easie unforced and exceeding usefull and a fit caution against such hot and heady Saints who would be presently up and reigning on the Earth before they have attained to the Kingdom of Heaven within them and have become Masters of their own Earthly minds Reigning upon Earth seems here in the Text on purpose omitted to give way
come c. Now therefore say I as these five Intervals represent the state of the truly Catholick and Apostolick Church so plainly amply and lively so does the Philadelphian Interval the succeeding state thereof where is not onely no Idolatry to be tempted to nor any Martyrdom for refusing to comply therewith but also no spot nor wrinkle nor any such thing but it is entirely holy and without blemish This is the description of the sixth Interval or Succession of States in the Church Catholick and Apostolick And therefore I demand here of any man that has any spark of judgment and sagacity left in him what time this can be but such that includes in it the Ierusalem State and blessed Millennial Empire of Christ which cannot be more pure perfect and glorious than this State of the Philadelphian Church Which is a Prophetical description of some state of the Church as is acknowledged on both hands and which is to succeed the Sardian and also that there will be a blessed Millennium on Earth Wherefore this consideration alone might assure us of this truth But when there is farther added That on him that overcomes that is on the Philadelphian Church I will write the name of the City of my God which is new Ierusalem which cometh down out of Heaven from my God c. Can it be any thing but affected stupour or some strange invincible prejudice a Prophetical sense being allow'd that any one should doubt but that the times of the New Ierusalem and Millennial Empire of Christ are included in the Philadelphian Interval which was the thing to be demonstrated Vers. 20 21. Christ's coming in to sup with them that open to his knocking does signifie his receiving them to his Marriage-supper And his granting to them that overcome to sit down on his Throne signifies their reigning with him in the Millennium And these being two promises to the same purpose to be fulfilled in the Millennial State and being made to the victorious in the Laodicean Church does manifest the same to be in a militant state precedent to the Millennium Nor is the degeneracy of the Laodicean Church competent to the Millennial state of which there 's no account that there should be any such change in it nor is it imaginable how it should it being established in that glorious state of righteousness as is described and having all occasion of evil removed by the Devil 's being bound and all things being made new And though he be to be loosed again yet it is not to deceive or work any change in those that belong to the new Ierusalem but to seduce the Nations about it who through his deceit are to be stirred up in enmity against it though before they brought their glory into it and walkt in the light of it Ans. To pervert the genuine sense of this Prophecy here the Remarker interprets that Politically that he should interpret Mystically or Spiritually as he has in other places interpreted that Spiritually which should have been expounded Politically So sinuous and serpentine a thing is beloved falshood From v. 15. to v. 20. The declension of the Philadelphian state after the Millennium in their remisness in pursuing spiritual gifts and graces and breathing after the living image of Christ in themselves and in their propagating of his Kingdom is prefigured or predescribed the Church being depressed then into a new denomination of Laodicean and they sharply rebuked and terribly threatned if they do not repent of these immoralities or Dispiritualities if I may so speak And thus continuedly in the same Moral sense he still farther upbraids them that though he by the searching rebukes of his spirit knocks at the door of their Consciences to awaken them out of their remisness and litherly formalness yet they are insensible of his call being satisfied to celebrate the Lord's Supper without idolatry still indeed as it was in the Popish Mass but also without any breathing after the fruits thereof our living union with Christ and spiritual Communion with him and yet he tells them for their comfort as well as reproves them that if they will open to him through constant obedience to his dictates that they shall fully enjoy his communion and be in a truly living union of Spirit with him which is the true meaning and scope of the Lord's Supper and which will recover them again into that wholsome state the Philadelphians stuck to universally in the former Interval That this is thus Spiritually or Morally to be understood and not Politically as the Marriage Supper of the Lamb is Apoc. 19.7 8 9. is farther manifest in that it is said If any one hear my voice and open the door I will come in to him and will sup with him and he with me viz. at his home they will sup together there which therefore is no invitation of the party abroad to sup Wherefore what a fond thing is this to apply Christ's coming into our hearts and Souls and entertaining there spiritual Communion with us such as is signified by the Communion of the Lord's Supper unto that Political sense of things the Jews adjoining themselves to the Church of Christ and acknowledging him their Messias their Head and Husband in the above cited place This is enormously to strain and pervert the sense of Scripture As is also that conceit of interpreting to sit down on his throne of their reigning with him in the Millennium For being there is no mention here of such conflicts and persecutions and martyrdoms in this Laodicean state to which an earthly deliverance and victory and an earthly crown and dominion was promised in the Smyrnean Pergamenian and Thyatirian Intervals nor any mention of the word of Patience c. the throne that is here promised must be of another nature that is a place or seat in Heaven as universally it is interpreted by Expositors And being the conflict the Laodiceans are here exhorted to is the subduing their carnal minds and affections and through mortification to be renewed unto the Heavenly image of Christ by the spirit of life in the new birth which is the true and onely method of attaining to this Heavenly Throne or Crown of glory it is very unnatural to understand it of any other Throne than that But they being roused thus up by the exhortation of Christ to shake off that dulness and torpor of spirit and dead formality and carnality and to be enlivened again into a quick sense of their duty by virtue of their Regeneration into his living image that of St. Paul to the Ephesians ch 2. will be fulfilled in them When we were dead in our sins he hath quickened us together with Christ and hath raised us up together and made us sit there is the promised Throne together in Heavenly places in Christ Iesus And that it is an Heavenly seat or Throne that passage in the promise 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 does naturally insinuate according to that in
who yet had no Tempter from without for there were no Devils that needed to be tied up before the Angels fell Wherefore as to that point they had as much advantage as the Philadelphian Church but exceeding much more in being Spirit and not Flesh. But the Philadelphian Church will be mortal flesh as other sons of Adam Wherefore in long process of time they may well degenerate something even before the loosing of the Devil out of Prison And when he is loose again it is but a precarious surmise to think he can act onely upon the Nations that are not in communion with the Church For when he is loose he is as he was before he was imprisoned Nor is there any ground to restrain the word Nations to those onely that are not in visible communion with the Church but it may very naturally signifie that multitude of Nations and People in the World whether of the Church or not And it is a rash presumption to suppose that the Nations that walk in the light of the new Ierusalem are not converts to the Christian Faith forasmuch as they are said to be saved or the Kings of the Earth that bring their glory into it that they are not whole Kingdoms converted to the Christian belief as that auspicious acclamation foretells that the Kingdoms of the World are become the Kingdoms of the Lord and of his Christ c. Wherefore we see that there is not the least shadow of reason but that the Prophecy of the seven Churches is a Prophecy of the state of the Church distinguished into seven Intervals from the beginning of the Church to the end of the World Which may the better assure us that the two Prophecies the one of the sealed Book the other of the opened Book are so likewise Chap. 4. Vers. 3. THE pure transparent Iaspar stone is an Emblem of Holiness and the red Sardin stone of Iustice and therefore he that sate on the Throne being like unto them does signifie the Holiness and Righteousness of God in executing of Judgment and so does better sute with the occasion of the Vision it being a Representation of God on his Throne of Judicature as Judge of the World than to make the firmness of the one to signifie the strength or omnipotency of God and the red fiery colour of the other his piercing Activity c. But indeed it is not of a fiery red but of a dead red colour Ans. God is not represented here on his Throne of Judicature but simply in his Chair of State as I may so speak It is the Throne of the Divine Majesty as Creator and Governor of the World and more peculiarly of his Church according to that Doxology v. 11. Thou art worthy O Lord to receive glory and honour and power for thou hast created all things and for thy pleasure they are and were created Wherefore Grotius judiciously notes that the Iasper does signifie invictam Dei potentiam which we may briefly call his radical Omnipotency or rather the necessity of Existence of his indiscernible essence And the Sardius which 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 answers to in Hebrew so called from its redness vim Dei activam qualis in igne est They are his very words on the Text. And Zegerus tells us that Tychonius Primasius and Beda all three make the Sardius to have the colour of fire To which you may add Victorinus Rupertus Richardus and Lyranus who all give the signification of fire to the Sardius And Aretas expresly says in Cornelius à Lapide Sardius quia sanguinei ignei coloris est igneam i. e. sublimissimam efficacissimam Dei naturam significat But what the Remarker objects that the Sardius is but of a dead red colour is not true of the best sort and least true in the appearance of the Vision Where though the colour was not so brisk as that of a flame for there are three differences noted here both in Greek and Latin 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Pruna Flamma Splendor yet it might very well be like that of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or pruna Which sutes best with the Vision in Ezekiel which answers to this and is noted in the Exposition it self Vers. 4. These Elders are onely Spiritual Rulers in the same sense as they and the four Beasts ch 5. are said to be Rulers For they come together in thanksgiving from being redeemed from the Earth and made Kings and Priests c. So that the reigning here signified is such as is common to all Saints and therefore it 's a gross perverting of Scripture to appropriate it to worldly Princes Ans. The Song of Thanksgiving is this ch 5. v. 9. For thou wast slain and hast redeemed us to God by thy bloud out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation What wonderfull weak arguing is this Because the Kings out of every Nation are redeemed by the bloud of Christ and publickly confess the same therefore they are no more Kings of any Nation than the common people that are so redeemed As if true Christianity took away all subordination of Ranks and Degrees in the world Why then have they not all Crowns if they be all Kings alike or why has any so Who grosly perverts Scripture now And what does the Remarker mean by worldly Princes If he means worldly-minded Princes this contradicts the Scene of things here which is a Representation of the Millennial Happiness and Holiness upon Earth and therefore these four and twenty crowned Elders or Monarchs are not supposed worldly-minded If he makes them worldly Princes because they are still in the world that is on the Earth that 's a contradiction to Christ's Millennial reign on Earth The Millennium must be in Heaven then not on Earth If subordination of Ranks and Degrees from the Prince to the Pezant make them worldly Princes the Polity in Heaven is worldly For there is a subordinate Hierarchy of Angels there and Archangels of Powers Principalities Dominions and Thrones Colos. 1.6 and so the Millennial Reign will be no where O but it is said in the following verse And hast made us to our God Kings and Priests and we shall reign upon the Earth Ans. This questionless alludes to that which God commanded Moses to tell the children of Israel touching him Exod. 19.6 And ye shall be to me a Kingdom of Priests which is called a Royal Priesthood 1 Pet. 2.9 and the Apocalypse more distinctly styles the true Church in those happy days Kings and Priests But as under Moses the Nation being called a Kingdom of Priests it did not confound the distinction betwixt Priest and People but Aaron was the High Priest and had other Priests under him And Moses was King in Iesurun and had the heads of the Tribes under him so the four and twenty Elders and the four Beasts the whole body of the Church joining together in this Doxology Thou hast made us Kings and Priests and we
Dream of the Sun and Moon and eleven Stars worshipping him where the Moon is interpreted his Mother though no Priest as the Sun his Father Chap. 9. Vers. 2. THE Sun darkned here is not the Gospel but the Autority or Legislative Power of those Dominions over-run by the Saracens and Religion but secondarily concerned as it suffers by the suffering of the Autority which upheld it And as the Sea denotes the many Dominions of the Earth so does the Sun here signifie the various Powers or Autorities that governed them Ans. That the Sun does not signifie Legislative power in abstracto but the highest person in Autority I have noted already And though one great Sea may signifie a comprehension of several distinct Kingdoms subject to tumultuate or rather War one against another as having no union under one Head yet the several Heads of these Kingdoms cannot so properly be represented by one Sun which naturally implies one Head over them all Wherefore being that the Saracens over-run so many Kingdoms and Principalities if this must be the darkning of them it would then have been said that the smoak of the Abyss darkned the Stars For when Multitudes of Kings and Princes are concerned together that have no dependence one of another they are then signified by Stars Whence the Red Dragon is said to have pulled down so many Stars with his tail that is to have subjected so many Kings and Princes to the Roman Empire Wherefore it is rashly pronounced That the Sun-shine of the Gospel of the Sun of righteousness is not meant by the Sun that is here said to be darkned whenas the smoak of the pit must be Mahometism And therefore in this passage Religion most certainly is related to and is the main concern of the whole Book of the Apocalypse and other things predicted merely in order to it viz. to the right worship of God through Jesus Christ. And therefore that sense which is easie and natural and tends that way is most assuredly the true sense of any passage of these Prophecies See the spiritual signification of Sun in the Expositor's Alphabet of Iconisms Chap. 10. Vers. 2. THE Ten-horned Beast did rise out of the Sea and two-horned Beast out of the Earth and our Saviour setting his right foot on the Sea and his left foot on the Earth does signifie here his coming down from Heaven to put down all Autority and power under his feet the Earthly Powers within his Kingdom being within the seventh Trumpet to be abolished and all things to become new by forming a new Heaven and a new Earth or establishing the Kingdom of Heaven upon Earth and so making the Kingdoms of the World become the Kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. Ans. This Remark is not much amiss saving that it lears toward that foul conceit that there will be no Monarchy nor Princes over their respective Principalities and Kingdoms where the Kingdom of Christ is set up whenas the twenty four crowned Elders do most certainly denote the pure Apostolick Christianity of those many Kings and Princes that will be contained within the Kingdom of Christ in the Millennium And setting one foot on the Sea and another on the Earth refers particularly to the vanquishing the ten-horned Beast that came out of the Sea ch 13. and the false Prophet or two-horned Beast that came out of the Earth v. 11. out of a Clay-pit for the Clay in Daniel signifies the Ecclesiastick regenerating party which two ch 19.20 are taken alive and cast into the lake of fire and brimstone Vers. 3. The sounding of the seventh Trumpet is plainly not at the time of the roaring of the mighty Angel and therefore cannot be branched into the seven Thunders For after his roaring and the seven Thunders uttering their voices thereon and the other matters after declared there is a Regress to begin a new Prophecy of the Contents of the opened Book and to bring the same down to the seventh Trumpet also that the affairs of the six Trumpets and the opened Book viz. during the time of the Antichristian and worldly Powers being connected as synchronizing the seventh Trumpet might close both together The seven Thunders therefore seem symbolically to signifie a preparation of the Christian party against the great day of God at the seventh Trumpet as the three unclean spirits like Frogs are of the Antichristian party That as the latter bestir themselves with miraculous deceits to excite the Princes of the Earth to battel so the former signifies a miraculous power of spirit that shall exert it self in many Christian Heroes whereby they shall become exciters and conductors of the Christian party to the same and hereunto shall also become Boanerges's thundring out such powerfull convictive testimonies against the abominations of their Enemies and such denunciations of God's judgments against them for the same as were not meet before that time to be uttered and therefore were to be sealed up c. Some such meaning seems to be signified in Micah ch 5. v. 5 6. Ans. The more clearly to decide this point let us consider that the Apocalypse consists of three Prophecies The Prophecy of the seven Churches The Prophecy of the sealed Book and the Prophecy of the opened Book And that as it less derogates from their perfection to be conceived each of them to reach from the beginning of the Church to the end of the World viz. of the affairs of this Earth so of the first of them I have proved the same as also shown that the second commenceth from the beginning of the Church and that it reaches to the end of the world is plain from hence The whole time of the Book consists but of seven Seals and some things of the book reach to the end of the world therefore the seventh Seal must reach to the end of the world And the seventh Seal being divided into seven Trumpets the seventh Trumpet must reach to the end of the world Wherefore it is plain that the Prophecy of the sealed Book reaches to the end of the world And if this Reasoning will not serve I will anon confirm it by the Oath of the Angel But in the mean time let us farther note that the sounding of each of these seven Trumpets and the Visum of each Trumpet do synchronize or are of equal extent begin and end together As for example The Visum of the sixth Trumpet which contains the over-running of the Turks and the general Impenitency of the Western Christian World for their Idolatry c. c. 9.20 The sixth Trumpet I say is conceived to sound all the while this Visum continues Now the seventh Trumpet belonging to the Prophecy of the sealed Book it was before we come to the Prophecy of the opened Book immediately to succeed the sixth and to sound all the time its Visum is exhibited But it is manifest the roaring of the Angel immediately succeeds the sounding of the sixth Trumpet wherefore
and so thoroughly enlightening them with the Judgments of his Truth that they shall not need the light of the Sun or Moon viz. of those humane Laws and Policies c. So that Time shall be no more and the Mystery of God shall be finished does here answer to that great voice from the Throne at the pouring forth of the seventh Vial viz. It is done And to the same voice from him that sate on the Throne ch 21. who also there says Behold I make all things new viz. The Mystery of God being finished by the former things passing away a new state of things is to be introduced as is there after described Ans. At the expiration of the sixth Trumpet it is not improper to give notice that there will be no more time than what is contained in the seventh because the seventh is both contiguous to the sixth and reacheth to the end of the world as was noted above But that Time signifies Political Order and Government is a private precarious Notion of the Remarker without any ground or example in Scripture or the Onirocriticks And for his reason for which he imagines it signifies so it is over-lax Time indeed is divisible into Ages Ages into Years Years into Months Months into Days c. But what greater matter of order in this than in the dividing and subdividing of any other quantity Or if there be how does this Typifie Political Orders and Laws more than in Husbandry Mechanicks c. So that it signifying all things under the Sun done in any order or method as well as Political Laws and Government when this Time here spoken of shall be no more we may all put up our Pipes Tradesmen Husbandmen Students in whatever Arts and Faculties and fall asleep with our fingers in our mouths unless a spirit waken us that will drive us to act without order or government which yet can be no Apostolick Spirit because the Apostle's Precept is 1 Cor. 14.40 Let all things be done decently and in order How much better were it Sapere ad sobrietatem than to entertain such high-slown conceits as these In these best times undoubtedly there will be humane Laws and Polities that is Laws and Polities constituted by men but perfectly conformable and complyable with the Laws of God and dictates of his Holy Spirit and his guidance will assist in making them To fansie an Aziluthick State on Earth whenas a Briathick Constitution is consistent with the State of Heaven is a too too extravagant surmise As for It is done and All things are made New Here would be rather undoing than doing and nothing would be made new No new Heaven nor new Earth which certainly has a Political sense if there were no Polity in this renewed state And the Polity will be constituted by men though by the guidance of the Holy Spirit which will invigorate also both Governours and People to support the said Laws and to live according thereunto Vers. 7. The saving here is a great straining of the Text to uphold a crazy Notion For whereas it is said in the Notes on the Verse That the sense is exceeding imperfect unless 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 be put for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saving or except the common sense given of it is very clear and this new imposed sense so exceeding imperfect as to be really false And the several places cited to prove that it may be taken in this sense is no proof that it is taken so here Nor do those Citations prove that it is so taken in them For the Particle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or But will signifie the same with saving or except c. Ans. The Remarker here is very Magisterial and somewhat Scoptical But the Expositor is crazy neither in his notion nor the proof of it For no man that understands Greek but must acknowledge that our English Translation is out in rendring those words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 thus When he shall begin to sound the Mystery of God should be finished For it leaves out the Particle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and yet makes but imperfect sense rendring 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 should be finished whenas to make the sense perfect it should be rendred shall be finished but that would ill agree with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But in the days of the voice of the seventh Angel when he shall begin to sound the Mystery of God shall be finished That is the sense our English Translation aims at but then it should not be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as it is but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And yet so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being left out which yet is intollerable 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will be rendred unsutably to the words following 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ut Evangelizavit as he told the joyfull news to his servants the Prophets Wherefore this Mystery of God containing that joyfull news it is very hard to conceive it not to contain the new Ierusalem and the Millennial reign of Christ. Which Mystery is not finished at the beginning of the sounding of the seventh Trumpet but rather at the end thereof But now render but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saving as it certainly does signifie sometimes and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 shall sound as it naturally signifies and all will run as glib as can be according to the most approved copies of the New Testament set out by Isaac Casaubon and Dr. Winterton which is the Cambridge Greek New Testament thus That there shall be time no more saving in the days of the voice of the seventh Angel when he shall sound and the Mystery of God be finished Which shews that the sounding of the seventh Trumpet will reach to the end of the World But now according to these Authentick Greek Copies if you render 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But not Saving or Except The sentence will not be sense thus That there shall be time no more But in the days of the seventh Angel when he shall sound or begin to sound and the Mystery of God be perfected What then what of all that one may well say This plainly is not perfect sense to any one that understands sense unless you take away the Colon and take but in the same sense that except has which is all that I contend for Wherefore it being so plain that the sentence is imperfect sense unless you understand 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and But to signifie the same that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Except if 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 does sometimes signifie so it plainly follows it signifies so here This is more than enough to this Remark I will onely here note which I intimated above on v. 3. That this Oath of the mighty Angel That there shall be time no more saving in the days of the voice of the seventh Angel plainly imports that the sounding of the seventh Trumpet reaches to the end of the World or of the Scene
There is a very gross and false Principle laid down in this Remark if I mistake not the Remarker's meaning Which is this That Christ's Kingdom cannot be there where things are ordered by any external or Political Rules or Laws in either Church or State but merely by the immediate guidance and motion of God's Spirit That the Spirit of God will assist in making these Laws and will actuate and invigorate both Rulers and People with a sensible and living relish of them to observe them and see them observed in those excellent times that are to come I willingly grant But that other Principle I look upon as proceeding either from a deep or high melancholly I know not which to call it or if the Remarker can bear it a Religious delirancy And it is a most enormous piece of Ingratitude against the Holy and Benign Providence of God to speak so vilifying of the Reformation as he does If the Reformed people as they are called had taken half the pains to spy out every one his own faults and sincerely with imploring the Divine assistence had endeavoured to mend them that they have taken to spy faults in Governours and Governments we should have had a glorious Church of it by this time But spiritual Pride has laid waste their Understandings The Kingdom of Christ can very well subsist without such Enthusiastick whimsies Consider Apoc. 12. v. 10. Now is come salvation and strength and the Kingdom of our God and the Power of his Christ. Which is the Triumph of Christianity over Paganism And yet the Primitive Christians lived under external Laws and Rules both Spiritual and Civil Vers. 19. This Verse ought to begin the next Chapter it being the beginning of the Prophecy of the opened Book The Temple of God was opened in Heaven when Christian Worship was received and autorized by the Emperours and the Ark of the Testament was seen in the Temple when Christian Laws became received by autority to become the Laws of the Empire and the lightnings and thunderings and voices signifie the great changes in the world by shaking the powers thereof that should be made thereby Ans. What a marvellous Remark is this that this verse is the beginning of the Prophecy of the opened Book Whenas it is said ch 10 11. upon Iohn's eating the opened Book Thou must prophesie again before many Peoples and Nations and Tongues and Kings The Vision of the Inner and the Outer Court the two Witnesses their slaughter and resurrection is it no Prophecy What an affected blindness is this not to see so plain a Truth Wherefore that Vision most certainly begins the Prophecy of the opened Book which Iohn is said to swallow and thereupon that he was to prophesie before many peoples c. Which words this Vision immediately follows And again what a violence is this to make the opening of the Temple of God in Heaven no part of this first Vision but to tear it off from the rest of the Vision and make it part of the following contrary to the autority of the best Copies and most approved Expositors of the Apocalypse There must be a strange prejudice that should hurry any one upon such an outrage it being also repugnant to what is said in the same verse which he thus unnaturally breaks off And there were lightnings and voices and thunderings and an Earthquake and great Hail which is plainly a description of matters concerning the seventh Vial where ch 16. it is said upon the seventh Vial being poured out into the Air That there were voices and thunders and lightnings and an Earth-quake and a great Hail indeed the Hailstones being of a talent weight The concurrence of these five Phenomena voices thunderings lightnings Earthquake and a great Hail being found here and no where else in all the Apocalypse saving under the seventh Vial what can it be but an Indication of their synchronizing or signifying the same things So that this cannot be the beginning of the ensuing Vision or Prophecy but the conclusion of this comprized in this eleventh Chapter And still it is more impossible for as much as it is certain that the Vision beginning in the next Chapter containeth the Persecutions of the Primitive Church as we shall see anon whence all in the foregoing Chapter must necessarily belong to that first Vision And therefore this Interpretation of the Temple of God being opened in Heaven is exceeding extravagant For this comes to pass after the seventh Angel begins to sound which is a thousand and odd hundred years after the Christian Worship was received by the Emperours We may note also that the pretty Interpretation he makes of this passage depends upon a Political sense of Heaven which he rejected before and may better doe it now it being not likely to signifie any thing more than merely the place where the Temple was seen as Heaven is taken in the following Vision Where certainly it signifies not Symbolically but Topically or Locally viz. the Air from which Region the Thunders and Lightenings were seen as well as the Temple of God appeared there As it is also said chap. 16. that upon the Angels pouring his Vial into the Air there were thunderings and lightenings which confirms to us that Heaven here which the Remarker would interpret Symbolically signifies onely Topically and denotes the Air. Chap. 12. Vers. 1. THe Woman cloathed with the Sun signifies the Church her being established in a Heavenly station by the Emperours receiving the Faith the supreme power being signified by the Sun and so autorizing and defending the same by their autority and is not applicable to the Sun of Righteousness farther than he is owned by the Emperours or worldly Powers to be Prince of the World for she is beautified with this cloathing by her being in Heaven But she was before her exaltation to that station as much cloathed with the light of the Gospel or the Sun of righteousness and her Crown of twelve Stars does signifie as much as her being cloathed with the Sun in that sense Ans. That the Expositor's interpretation of the Woman travailing in Birth and pained to be delivered is true this alone may assure us viz. because it is very natural and such as is hit upon by all Interpreters in a manner I may add also necessary it being incredible that the Opened-book-prophecy prefiguring the fate of the Church should omit the state of Persecution the Primitive Christians were under Which if not here is no where figured out in the Opened-book-prophecy Whence it is plain that as the Vision of the measured Inner Court prefigures the purity and unapostatized state of the primitive Church so this of the Woman in the throes of Childbirth her sharp persecutions under the Pagan Emperours But now for the Remarker's exposition besides that it is tautological it presently repeating what was understood according to him by the Temple opened in Heaven that it is false appears 1. Because it deprives
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Deut. 9.15 Testimony And this other is called the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony And Exod. 25.21 it is said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but also before v. 16. the same thing is said and Vatablus from the Hebrew renders it Ponésque in arca Testimonium quod dabo tibi upon which Cornelius excellently well Hinc says he dicta fuit Arca Testimonii id est Legis Arca Testamenti id est Foederis Continebat enim legem quae erat conditio foederis inter Deum Hebraeos initi Consequenter Tabernaculum ab Arca quam continebat vocatum est Tabernaculum Foederis Tabernaculum Testimonii So Cornelius à lapide Whence we see plainly that the Temple in these two places named is one and the same Temple which Temple stood open out of which the Vial-angels came as well after the Doxology of the Elders ch 11. as after the Song of the Harpers in this Chapter But ch 11.19 the Ark of the Testament is said to be seen in it because this points at the sixth Vial which synchronizeth with the Harvest by both which is understood the calling of the Jews And therefore by the Ark of the Testament being seen in Heaven is signified that that was the time in which God would have an eye to his everlasting Covenant made with the Jews and resume them again to be his People which sense is worthy the taking notice of though it was omitted before c That sense which the Remarker would put upon the Ark of the Testament being seen in Heaven ch 11.19 I have shewn the vanity thereof sufficiently above nor need I here repeat it His conceit therefore sailing and there being no mention of opening the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony or Testament in Heaven but in these two places ch 11. and ch 15. and they both being after a Song of Thanksgiving it is a shrewd Indication d That the times of the opening the Temple here and those in ch 11.19 are one though the mention of the Temple being opened ch 11. be deferred till v. 19. that it may set off the appearing of the Ark of the Covenant with a greater grace but the time of seeing the Ark of the Covenant differs from the time of the opening of the Temple for the former is at the sixth Vial the latter just before the first Wherefore in brief The opened Temple in Heaven ch 11. and this opened here being one and the same and this in order to the effusion of the Vials this is no small confirmation of the Expositor's Interpreting the two last verses of ch 11. touching the affairs of the Vials which was worth noting by the bye Vers. 6. The seven Angels coming out of the Temple may signifie that it 's by the Worshippers in the Temple and at the Altar viz. the two Witnesses that they pour forth their Vials and that they minister to them in that service Their being cloathed in white linen and girt with golden girdles signifies the righteousness and holiness of their administration for the advancement of Christ's Kingdom which though spiritual extends to the executing Justice and upholding true Worship and they are the Ministers of God's wrath for transgressions against both Ans. That the Worshippers in the Temple and at the Altar are not the two Witnesses I have shewn above and therefore the Angels coming out of the Temple here cannot denote them and if the two Witnesses be the Ministers of God's wrath it is the more unlikely that that effusion of bloud from the Wine-press so that it would reach to the Horses bridle for sixteen hundred furlongs together should be understood Literally and not Parabolically else these Ministers of God's wrath must shed the bloud of an Army nine thousand times bigger than that of Xerxes as was noted above A Butchery incredible to be perpetrated by the Saints and holy Witnesses of God Chap. 16. Vers. 2. a TO understand the pouring forth of the first Vial on the Earth in such a general sense as the command is to pour all the Vials on the Earth so that it is onely to correspond with the other Vials in the Cortex is to make it signifie nothing and therefore the effect of the first Vial viz. the grievous sore on the Worshippers of the Beast is imputed to another cause viz. to their exulcerate rage at the Rising of the Witnesses b These are but sorry conceits for which one should reject Mr. Mede's far more current account of this Vial viz. that it signifies the Bohemian War that ensued the sufferings of Huss and Ier. of Prague whereby great ruine fell on the Popish Clergy and the religious houses in that and the adjoining Countries and miraculous defeats on the great Popish Armies sent against the Bohemians c. Which plague is aptly signified by the Vial poured on the Earth the two-horned Beast rising out of the Earth And that there was then the like spirit in agitation in other Countries though it did not break forth may appear by our Commons Petitioning in Parliament about the same time Henry the fourth and the Lords that he may have the Temporalties of the Bishops and Clergy which were consumed in unnecessary courses c. And also by the Parliaments importuning Henry the fifth to suppress the Religious houses as being Nurseries of Idleness and Cages of unclean Birds To divert which storm the Clergy set on foot the claim of the Crown of France and the War thereon c. c Also there could be no such exulcerated rage at the Rising of the Witnesses because the Reformation was not the Rising of them For though thereby the Pope's Supremacy was rejected and some gross corruptions reformed yet did the Reformed Churches retain generally the same Political state of Government and so much of the Popish Leaven in Matters of Religion that they did not cease to continue members of the Beast d Nor did there appear any such Spirit of life in them to set them on their feet and cause them to ascend c. they continuing in the same worldly state and station though freed from some Popish Grievances Ans. a Though the first Vial were poured out on the Earth in that general sense doth its pouring forth signifie nothing It will necessarily hit some particular thing or person or other and it particularly hits the marked slaves of the Beast and inflicts a sore on them and so every Vial the pouring it forth will mediately or immediately concern the Terraqueous Globe namely the Inhabitants thereof But for that special meaning of Earth which the Remarker takes notice of and I have noted to answer to the Clay in Daniel and to signifie the Ecclesiastick Rank of men if this in general were understood by the Earth v. 1. it were an Hypothesis very allowable yea laudable being these Vials concern the Pontifician Hierarchy which Mr. Mede calls Bestiam Antichristianam and all reach him either immediately or mediately
For if those many were the greater number then the Laodicean state would not be applicable thereto if the less then the Titles of the Camp of the Saints and beloved City would not agree therewith and the purity of their external worship in all will not mend the matter unless Hypocrisie may entitle one to Saintship Ans. That the Church of Philadelphia though degenerated into a Laodicean state may be called in these straits the Camp of the Saints and the beloved City appears out of ch 11. The City is there called holy though trampled down and polluted by the Gentiles Nor is it any straining of the Text to make them called the Camp of the Saints because there were many Saints there though not all such whenas the greater part according to several degrees of Saintship might be Saints and these less degrees of Saintship an effect of the degeneracy and that the external worship in all was still pure and incorrupt and they that used it did it out of judgment and conscience being sincerely pleased in that they thought God was pleased with it this adds a farther weight to make the City both holy and beloved especially in comparison of the rabble of their enemies And therefore it was not Hypocrisie but a solid ground that entitled this Camp to Saintship And if we should suppose the most degenerate part to have listed themselves in the Army of Gog and Magog as it is exceeding probable the Holy City seeming in such imminent danger this is manifestly consistent with the Camp being called the Camp of Saints and the City the beloved City and likewise with the degeneracy of those times I mean the Laodicean degeneracy at once those degenerate persons being now drained out of the Holy City into the Army of Gog and Magog and so the City lest fit to retain the Title of holy and beloved still without any scruple or exception Vers. 13. Death and Hell are here made one to be the Species of the other viz. The first to signifie those dead by diseases and the other the whole Region of Mortality But surely it will be a better account of the Text to suppose this to be a like distribution of the damned into two parts as the twenty four Elders and the four Beasts is of the Saints viz. into the Governours and governed and that Hell signifies those children of wrath who have been Rulers in the World under the Powers of darkness and Death those that died in their sins in their private condition but were not publick Instruments of evil as to others And that this distinction of them is made by reason of the different state or degrees of punishment that befalls them after this life according to that saying The Lord soon pardoneth the mean but the mighty shall be mightily tormented This sense will well agree with v. 14. viz. Death and Hell were cast into the lake of fire but so will not the other sense For not all that dye of diseases much less shall the whole Region of Mortality be cast into the lake of fire c. Ans. Death and Hell are not here made the one the species of the other but rather the one a part of the other 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is translated Hell signifies the dark invisible Receptacle of the deceased and Hell has its name from an Anglosaxon word that signifies to cover 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 therefore which is here rendred Hell is the common or universal Receptacle of all the deceased The Sea gave up the dead that were in it and Death and Hell delivered up the dead that were in them There was begun an Enumeration of the Receptacles of the deceased or by a Prosopopoeia of the Keepers of these Deposita viz. the deceased The Sea is one Those places that take in the bodies of those that dye of diseases another but to be short he abruptly names that common Receptacle or Keeper of all the deceased 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is translated Hell This is the plain meaning of the Text. But the Remarker's two parts are out of doors because if Death and Hell make two parts Sea will come in for the third and so spoil the conceit which otherwise had no harm in it For whereas he most of all applauds his exposition as so well agreeing with v. 14. Death and Hell were cast into the lake of fire if he take in Sea too to cast into the lake of fire it will make strange work But the Interpretation of v. 14. by the Expositor does not suppose Death there to signifie either all that dye of diseases or none but those that dye of diseases but to signifie Death it self and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Hell to signifie this Region of Mortality wherein he reigns as you may see in his Exposition where the sense is sufficiently clear and smooth Chap. 21. Vers. 1. SEA does not signifie here the unquiet multitude of the wicked but as it does in the second Trumpet and the second Vial viz. The over-spreading of worldly Dominion that does overflow and overwhelm men with power as the Sea overflows the Earth Ans. The nature of the Sea is to be tossing unquiet and moving which therefore very well sets off the disposition of the Mobile vulgus especially the wicked part of them that are easily ruffled into seditions and rebellions But when this new Heaven and new Earth that is this New-Ierusalem-Polity is settled there will be no such thing as the appearance of a fluctuating Sea or of a Sea by invasion breaking in upon the Land but all will be in settled peace and quietness as the Expositor has explained this passage But to interpret Sea and Waters not of multitudes of people but of worldly Dominions the ruling Part is quite out of the road of the Prophetick style But the worldly Powers and worldly Dominions hugely fill the Remarker's fancy Vers. 2. The New Ierusalem coming down from Heaven is not a Polity to be settled on Earth by Councils but it is God's taking up his abode among men to rule and govern them by his truth and life dwelling in them whereby they shall walk in the light of life and so not need the constitutions of Councils Ans. The New Ierusalem come down from Heaven is the new Heaven and the new Earth and a new Heaven and a new Earth in the Prophetick style is a New Polity See the Alphabet of Iconisms in Heaven and Earth And besides in that it is the City Ierusalem in opposition to the City Babylon it must be a Polity antistoechal to a Polity City signifying a Polity in the Prophetick style And a Council and Laws will be requisite yea necessary in the Millennium for there will be Draconists and Bestians though under the Hatches mingled within the Dominions of the Kingdom of Christ. And it is a childish conceit to think that through so vast a Dominion as the Millennial will be there will be none but
if Constantine in virtue of the Christian doctrine wherewith he was embued ruled more righteously than his Predecessors this was no abridgment of his absolute Power but merely a right use thereof And the same may be said of the ten Kings or Monarchs the ten Horns of the Beast They were trepan'd out of their Right when they acknowledged any Sovereign in causes Ecclesiastick as well as Civil besides themselves And I wonder whenas the Remarker produces such a notable example in the case of Carolus Calvus of the Ecclesiastick encroachments upon the Secular Power that he should at all doubt but that the Clay is the Ecclesiastick Power as well as the Iron the Secular and such a Power as alone is fitly set out by the Clay in full distinction to the Iron or Secular Power in Kings Nobles and Gentry c. Vision 2. Vers. 2. a SEA in the Prophetick style signifies not simply vast multitudes of people for then There was no more Sea Rev. 21.1 must signifie there was no more multitudes But by Sea is meant such multitudes united in a Political State under the Powers that rule them b And that Power which does overflow and so subject them to its Dominion is rather the Sea as appears by the second Trumpet and the second Vial and they as the Fish moving in it By reason whereof and the fluctuating condition they are in thereby they are represented by Waters Rev. 17. c This Power is the Spirit of the World ruling in them Their thraldom under which is that bondage of corruption which subjects them to the Prince of this World Of which Spirit Solomon saith He hath set the World in their hearts c. And Paul We have not received the Spirit of the World but the Spirit of God c. And by reason of the rule of which in us we are said to be of the World and so under the power of darkness in opposition to that Spiritual state which Believers are begotten into whereby they cease to be of the World and are translated from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God delivered from the power of darkness and translated into the Kingdom of our Lord. This Spirit of the World therefore is the like Principle of the natural Life in man's heart as the Spirit of God is of the spiritual Life therein and by the one do the Devils bear the like sway in natural or unregenerate men as Christ does by the other in the Regenerate Hence is ascribed to the Devil that power over those who are delivered to him for the destruction of the flesh and also the power of Death through fear of which he makes men all their life subject to bondage And hence did he make that claim to all the Kingdoms of the World which our Saviour did not gainsay For he by the power mentioned being the spirit that worketh in the children of disobedience Ephes. 2.2 which all mankind are till they are recovered out of their lapsed state he can as Paul says take them captive at his will and so rules as he pleaseth in the world save wherein God as supreme Governour of the World does interpose in the behalf of his servants and for bringing to pass what Changes and Revolutions he hath determined The four Winds striving on the great Sea and four Beasts coming out of it signifie the four great Kingdoms that were to arise successively on the Earth and the great commotion and combustion they would cause in the World by their vanquishing one another d But the Aerial Genii or Angels are not concerned therein as Ministers of God's Providence farther than they are a part of the Powers of those Kingdoms that are so to arise Such are the Presidentiary Angels of the Kingdoms of Persia and Graecia in Vision 5 th Ans. The Expositor does not say that a Sea signifies multitudes of people simply but that the great Sea in this place signifies so according to the Prophetick style which does not denote the determinate Dominion of any one Potentate but the people of adverse Potentates who are so far from being held under one Government that they are the people of opposite Governments or Empires and therefore cannot be called one great Sea as under one Government but as one great Multitude which is called a great Sea by reason of the greatness of the Multitude and is well represented by the great Sea with Winds ruffling the waves thereof by reason of the Commotion and War one against another b But that a multitude under one Government is not called Sea unless it be overflowing some other Government I deny to appear either out of the second Trumpet or second Vial. The Remarker should have spoke out more clearly But I say the Sea though it be not actually overflowing another being so subject to fluctuations from several cross Winds and unexpected occasions is properly a Symbol of worldly Governments that are obnoxious to these Commotions and Mutations Whence that passage Revel 21.1 is fitly understood And I saw a new Heaven and a new Earth where Heaven signifies the governing Part and Earth the Multitude governed which being expressed by Earth there was no want of Sea to signifie the same but to denote the stability of this new constitution of things it is added And there was no more Sea which does not signifie there was no more multitudes but no more tumultuating multitudes and that firm Peace and Tranquillity possest the Millennial Empire of Christ and his holy and righteous people From whence come wars and fightings amongst you come they not hence even of your lusts that war in your members Jam. 4.1 c What follows in this Remark is something prolix and mysterious but may be well meant for ought I know but so far as I see enervates nothing that the Expositor has writ on this verse For the Spirit of the World which he discourses of certainly Ambition which the Expositor names is the chief effect of it and most chiefly considered in this place d Nor does the Remarker deny but that the Aerial Genii are concerned in these Mutations and Revolutions in Kingdoms which is all I care to have granted This looks like a desire of saying something contrary to the Expositor when there is nothing to be said But I cannot let pass one passage of Scripture amongst the many he has cited viz. that Eccles. 3.11 where he insinuates that in He hath set the World in their hearts by He is understood the Spirit of the World whenas it is plain from the foregoing words He hath made every thing beautifull in its time that it 's God that has set the World in mens hearts viz. in their understandings For the Heart is the seat of the Understanding in the Scripture-phrase in virtue of which they take more notice thereof than Brutes but yet are far from being Masters of the Mysteries of his Providence as is intimated in the following words of that verse
ruling them by the Divine Influence of his Spirit whereby he has the perfect and absolute command over them This Symbolical Idea of the glory of the God of Israel Moses saw in the Mount and ordered things according to this pattern in the Mount as he was directed of which the Cherubims on the Ark of the Covenant is part as also the pitching of the Tents of the Israelites about the Tabernacle in four parts with the Standards bearing the names of these four living Creatures in their Camp These were an external Imitation of the Symbolical Idea of the Angelical Kingdom of the God of Israel but their Dispensation reached not to the Life and Reality thereof but they bore it onely in the outward Image But this standing Symbolical Idea is that Seal which the Divine Providence intends so thoroughly to impress on his Church at last in way of Life and Perfection that the God of Israel by the Influence of his Spirit will so actuate his Church that his Will will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven or in the Angelical World by his holy Angels To which purpose this Vision is again exhibited to Iohn in the Apocalypse as a Representation of the blessed state of the Millennium when the State of the Church will answer this Symbolical Idea in the truth of Life or plenteous Dispensation of the Spirit Here therefore is the Remarker's mistake that he fansies that the standing Symbolical Idea of the Angelical World where there is no Death nor Succession cannot set out the State of the Church on Earth where there is Death and Succession Which methinks is as awkardly argued as if one should imagine that St. Michael the Archangel being the Seal of some Corporation and intended for the signing of successive Leases of that Corporation the Seal should be argued successive and not to be the same standing Individual Seal because the Wax and Leases it seals are not so and consequently that the Seal cannot be the Image of St. Michael the Archangel because he is one standing Person and not in Succession Wherefore it is plain that the standing Symbolical Idea of the Angelical Kingdom which is unsuccessive may notifie the Millennial Kingdom of Christ on Earth which is successive and the said Kingdom be examined by it how near it is to the Pattern as the Seals of Leases how near they are to the standing Original Seal of the abovesaid Corporation To the second I say Those four living Creatures having the likeness of a man and the hand of a man under each wing does not prove these Angels to be men but rather proves that the Remarker is mistaken in the nature of Angels as if they had either no form which is impossible they being finite Creatures or a round form as if they were so many Aereal or Aethereal Foot-balls or contracted Hedg-hogs But if they have distinct Animal Forms what can it be but humane all conceived imperfections being removed therefrom and nothing taken in but what will well consist with Heavenly Beauty and Glory Wherefore let their Figure for the main be humane and other variations in them onely Symbolical Appendages it does not follow from thence that they are not the standing Symbolical Idea of the Angelical Kingdom but rather that the Angels are naturally in humane shape For that this Vision signifies Angels is plain in that they are called Cherubims But if one will be here resty and perverse there will be no room left for any Cavils if we answer that the faces of a man and the hands of a man signifie no otherwise than the faces of a Lion Oxe and Eagle or the feet of a Calf they all signifying onely symbolically Which Answer will weaken also the third Reason For the feet of a Calf need signifie nothing but what is competible to the Angelical nature as the face of an Oxe or Calf does no other it may signifie robustious indefatigable strength And 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies God or an Angel has its Notation from strength and is ordinarily translated 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by the Seventy And to give a reason why all the four Beasts have Calves feet is obvious enough because that which supports ought to be strong But there are farther Cabbalistical Mysteries touching that point which is needless here to enter upon It is sufficient that we have hitherto proved that the three first Reasons have no force to evince that these living Creatures and Wheels are not Angelical And for the last Reason it is the slightest of all as if Angels which are Spirits were not to be actuated by the Spirit of God as well as the Souls of men are Whenas by virtue of the Divine Spirit they escape the being turned into Devils And indeed the many Reins whereby the God of Israel rules and governs the four Provinces of his Angelical Kingdom is the Influence of his Divine Spirit which unites with their spirits and they with it whereby he drives them whither he pleases For his Spirit is as sure to be effectually in their pure Essence as the Rays of the Sun in the clear Air. Wherefore there being such solid proofs that the living Creatures in Ezekiel's Vision are Angelical and none but invalid Arguments against it it is an argument that the Remarker has much mistaken himself in thinking it was so safe to conclude the contrary The rest of the Remark is a Digression into an Ethical or Ethico-political explication of the Vision of Ezekiel which though it were true and unexceptionable the Expositor is not concerned to meddle with as not at all enervating the Philosophical account of that Vision he admitting both a Philosophical and Moral Cabbala touching both the Bereshith and Mercavah too But that the Remarker's pains may not seem to be over much slighted I will consider some passages in it First then He makes the four faces the four wings and the four Beasts to signifie but one and the same thing which is a marvellous slubbering and hudling things together which surely have more distinct meanings Certainly it must be some great and abstruse Mystery that is thus repeatedly both by the Faces Wings and whole bodies of the four Beasts and living Creatures and thus pompously set out And yet it is onely this That there are these four Properties in Humane Nature Reason Religion Courage and Industry Which lying so bare and obvious to every understanding what is this but the making the Spirit of Prophecy to trifle in setting out so pompously such a trivial Theory that no man is ignorant of nay I may say and that so maimedly and unfitly For the Elephant certainly had been a more fit Animal to represent Religion than the Eagle so that there is a fitting Animal wanting to denote the property of Religion in Humane nature And for as much as Brutes have Reason and Man alone properly Religion Man had been a better Symbol of Religion than an Eagle But then
there had wanted an Animal to typifie Reason unless you made Man the Type of both and put the Eagle quite out of office Thus crude and broken is the Remarker's conceit in this matter Again There are good Scriptural-phrases produced about the two flying wings of the Seraphins which he will have the same with the third pair of wings of the Beasts but the Application is methinks much of the Hooks For the two flying wings of the Seraphins Esay 6. signifie the readiness and expediteness of their Ministry enjoyn'd by God to the service of his Church whenas he referrs it to the exalting of ones self from a Worldly and Earthly to a Heavenly state Thirdly That seems a precarious groundless conceit or rather false That the Tree of Life was not set in Paradise for Adam to eat of but to play at Chop-cherry with him and to mock him whenas the Text says The Lord commanded the Man saying Of every tree of the Garden thou shalt eat and I hope the Tree of life was one of them The Original is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 thou hast plenary commission if not command to eat of all saving the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil Which had been a mere mocking of Adam if he had no power of eating of the Tree of Life And now fourthly this being a fundamental mistake of the Remarker in the case of Adam the like discovers it self in his conceit touching the Iews and the two Visions of Ezekiel that of the four living Creatures and that other of the Temple God gave no impossible Commands to the Iews But those exquisite descriptions of things touching the Temple by a long and operose Hylasmus and Israelismus set not out what the Iews should have been if they had kept these Ordinances exquisitely but what the Church of Christ would be of which the Iews were a Type in process of time That this is the sense of that Vision the Apocalypse that borrows so many things from it and uses such frequent Allusions to the Temple does sufficiently indicate Nor is there any other sense of the Vision of the four living Creatures as touching the Iews who were not upon condition of legal performances to arrive to that Angelical State that the Christian Church with them will arrive to at last But the Divino-political sense of that Vision which yet is most properly applied to it as repeated in the Apocalypse which relates to the Camp of the Iews a figure of the State of the Christian Church to come is that the Church of God at last will answer the Pattern of the Angelical Kingdom and God's Will will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven Fifthly The Name of the City The Lord is there is the very Indication of the state of the New Ierusalem which is a demonstration it was never intended for the Iews under their Legal Dispensation upon any terms Sixthly Ezekiel is not here sent to Prophesie the Ruine of the City and Temple they both having been destroyed fourteen years before But they being destroyed he in this Hylastick and Israelistick way prophesies of the state of the New Ierusalem which the Apocalypse also describes Seventhly therefore The Iews their making a golden Calf and craving a King whatever other inconveniences it may cause to them it could not make them forfeit that which was never intended them in that state Eighthly If the Beasts be the Governed and the four and twenty Elders the Governours how come the Beasts to be upon the Throne and the twenty four Elders onely about it Ninthly The Wheels and living Creatures being not moved but as acted by the spirit does not signifie an Earthly state in them but the most Divine and Heavenly viz. an Vnselfwilledness in them That they have no Self excursions of mind or will but that the Spirit of life from the eternal mind is the perpetual principle of their motion and rest Tenthly That the four Beasts are not upon the Throne I have shew'd upon that place of the Apocalypse and that he contradicts himself in saying so I observed even now in the eighth Note Eleventhly The burning Coals which are Prunae do not signifie the Spirit of Elias in Men but the Seraphick Spirit in Angels as Seraphin from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 has its denomination viz. from burning And the Seraphin are counted of the higher sort of Angels And as for Lamps they are in the description of the scene of the New Ierusalem Apoc. 4. Now for the Temple I say Twelfthly That the whole Vision of the Temple concerns the Christian Church and therefore that command to the Prophet chap. 43.10 11. respects especially the Thyatirian and Sardian Interval thereof that they may repent of all their sins and corruptions and so make what haste they can toward that excellent State of the Church which is prefigured by the Vision of the Temple Thirteenthly As for the Numbers 25000 5000 and 500 Ezek. chap. 45. and 666 in the Apocalypse nothing more can be signified by the former viz. those in Ezekiel than that the New Ierusalem will gratifie even the external man also and his outward senses which the Quinary number does denote namely that even the outward State of the Church then will be rich and glorious according to what is likewise prophesied of in the Apocalypse that the Kings of the Earth shall bring their honour and glory into it And it is the encouraging Prediction of Christ himself Seek the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all worldly good things shall be added thereto Which will most amply be fulfilled in the Millennial Empire of Christ which is that eminent Kingdom of God upon Earth And for that other Number 666 it is not set down to signifie the most complete carnal politick State but to be a certain character of the Pontifician Hierarchy the two-horned Beast who are discovered to have affected the number 25 which is the root of 666. That is the main drift of that Number though deluding their followers with pleasing Objects of sense may haply be aimed at thereby also Fourteenthly The 18000 measures which is the compass of Ezekiel's City agreeing with the Perimeter of the New Ierusalem whose Solid or Cubick measure is 12000 furlongs in the Apocalypse the true and usefull meaning of that is to assure us that Ezekiel's Vision of the Temple is a Prophecy of the State of the Church which is set out by S. Iohn in his description of the New Ierusalem that men may make no vagaries into any other fancies as the Remarker has done here And the Wisedom and Providence of God is admirable herein Besides if that Externality or Superficiality were aimed at which the Remarker would have signified the measure of the Superficies of the Cube not the Perimeter would have been set down and made use of Fifteenthly The difference of the Mosaical Laws and those of Ezekiel's Temple the greater exactness of these above the other is
predict the entire Event of the Medial-Visions to the accuracy of one Prophetick day nor yet month yet the Spirit of Prophecy has not herein trifled at all but that there are several considerable uses of this variation that no man for the want thereof may obstinately pretend that the other must needs be the use thereof whenas yet there is no necessity at all of that viz. that the 42 months or 1260 days should signifie the full extent of that time whenas that full sense is so easily abatable by a Prophetick Synecdoche or Numeral Diorism there being given also intimations thereto Having thus therefore dispatched the two first Queries we proceed to the third and last the Solution of which I shall transcribe out of the abovesaid Letter to a friend Which Solution is as follows First having fixt the Epocha of the beginning of the Church which I conceive is to be reckoned from the year in which our Saviour suffered ascended into Heaven and sent down the Holy Ghost to assist his Apostles which is the most indubitable and unexceptionable Epocha that can be pitched upon and must needs seem the least strained to serve any design in the next place we are to consider whether the Epocha of the threefold Prophecy of the Apocalypse that is to say The Prophecy of the seven Churches the Prophecy of the Sealed book and the Prophecy of the Opened book is not to be fixt in the self same year that the beginning of the Church is And that it is so to be fixt these few Reasons seem to infer First They are Prophecies all three of them of a large universal extent reaching from the time at least of their reception which was but a few years after the beginning of the Church especially in comparison of the time succeeding even till the day of Doom Wherefore in all likelihood they are a Transcript of the Divine Decree or Provision of the State of the Church such as God foresaw it would be in its general successions from the very beginning thereof to the end of the World that so the three Prophecies or Visionary Representations of the State of the Church may be complete and unmaimed Secondly It is acknowledged by such Interpreters that otherwise dissent from us that the Prophecy of the seven Churches begins from the very beginning of the Church why should not then the other two Prophecies do so too Thirdly The beginning of the Visions of the Sealed-book-prophecy and the Opened-book-prophecy are naturally applicable to that Epocha of the Church we have pitched upon viz. the year when our Saviour suffered ascended and sent down the Holy Ghost to assist his Apostles For what more natural and fit application can there be of the Rider of the white Horse with a Bow in his hand to whom a Crown is given than to Christ ascended and sending down the Holy Ghost to assist his followers to conquer the Roman Empire and subject it to the Sceptre of the Son of God that that might be fulfilled which was predicted by our Saviour Fear not little flock for it is your father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom And this Rider came from the East Oriens nomen ejus See the Interpretation of the first Seal in the Exposition of the Apocalypse Wherefore this Vision does that right to our Saviour as to represent his glorious and miraculous assistence at the very beginning of his Church in the beginning of the Prophecy of the Sealed book Now for the two Initial Visions of the Opened book that comprized in the eleventh Chapter which begins with the measuring of the Inner Court it is manifest at the first sight how applicable that is to the Church from the year that Christ suffered till the Apostasie came in and the more Primitive the more applicable and therefore here is but justice done to that part of the succession of the Church which reaches from the first year of the Church of Christ to the Reception of these Visions that it be as well as the rest of the time before the Apostasie noted as Symmetral in this Visionary Representation And now for the Initial Vision comprized in the twelfth thirteenth and fourteenth Chapters the Throes of the Church begun in the Head thereof Christ on the Cross of whom it is truly said There was never sorrow like his sorrow These were the pangs so early begun for the bringing forth in his Church a man-child that should wear the Imperial Crown at last the Emperours becoming Christian. And so the fight of Michael with the red Dragon the Paganick Roman Power the battel was begun in Christ on the Cross crucified under the Roman Power by Pilate their Governour But this strategem of the Captain of our Salvation in suffering thus himself to be crucified was the spring and source of all his Conquests and Victories afterwards as is obvious to observe and therefore it were very unfit and unjust to have this left out of the Visionary Representation which yet it would be did not the Prophecy of the Opened book reach to the very first beginning of the Church and take in the year of Christ's Crucifixion And fourthly and lastly Whenas it is observable in Daniel chap. 7. in that Set of Visions that represents the four Monarchies by four Beasts viz. the Babylonian Persian Greek and Roman that notwithstanding those Visions are received in the first year of Belshazzar which is according to Thomas Lydiat about 50 years from the beginning of the Babylonian Monarchy yet merely that the Set of Visions might be complete the Babylonian Monarchy is represented from its very first Rise and Original though above two thirds of its duration was then past when Daniel received those Visions Wherefore the Spirit of Prophecy affecting as I may so speak this completeness in Sets of Visions though the Representation be of profane Kingdoms and we finding no cause of the Vision reaching into some part of time before its reception saving that Intent that the Visionary Representation of such Periods of time should be complete we may hence much more be assured that these Sets of Visions are so they so much concerning his Church and for whose completeness there were such weighty reasons as were even now alledged namely why they should reach into the very first year of the Church when Christ suffered ascended into Heaven and sent down the Holy Ghost and being the space of that time to the Reception of the Visions though they were received under Domitian bears nothing that proportion to the space of the Antemedial Visions or of the first six Seals that 50 years bear to 70 which is above the proportion of two to three but of the other the proportion is less than of one to six I say he must be a Sceptick even to stupidity that is not hence convinced that all these three Prophecies I have spoken of the Prophecy of the seven Churches the Sealed-book-prophecy and the Opened-book-prophecy