now the Church was indeed out of view by the Apostasie introduc'd by the Gentiles the Beasts people under the other Beast so that the False Church hid the True as in a wilderness The Gentiles crowded the True worshippers into a clos'd Temple The Daily was taken away The witnesses were in Sackcloth where then could the True Church be seen All was scatter'd no Body of a Church appear'd but the Antichristian to this state things grew more and more under the Regnancy of the Beast till the Woman was fled from the Serpent himself All this is then to be accounted to the Beast serving the True Church by Gods overruling Hand so far as that it was out of the Dragons reach who was deceived thinking to strike the True but the False lay bleeding In the mean time Satan however in his Serpentine and draconick Nature jealous of any thing of Christ even in his own Kingdom first persecutes the Empire by the Barbarians where He knew the woman very lately was by her bringing forth the Manly Birth He struck at it by way of distinction in his own Aym but finding He could not reach it by the rude strokes of the Barbarians but the Eagles wings had convey'd it away and finding that those Barbarous Nations setled by degrees into the Antichristian Christianity and so help'd it forward into the wilderness He then resolved to be sure of it attempted to swallow it by the Mahometan Flood But This neither distinguishing it nor succeeding because the Bestian Earth drunk up the Flood not only receiving it upon it self but maintaining the name Doctrine Profession and Church state of Christianity so far as is necessary absolutely to Antichristianisme and its Kingdom so drunk up the Flood by setting it self against the blasphemous monstrous Mahometan Imposture and with a deadly hate because Mahometanism is no less against Antichristianity than Christianity so the Serpent disappointed is wroth and as so necessitated determines now to sift for his Ends by Draconism refin'd into Beastianism Heathenism guilded with Christianity but pointed and edg'd with Antichristianisme which is a compound of the Dragon and the Beast And because this Antichristian state allowed such a thing as a Christian Church tho but it self only He can make war only with the womans seed And to the purpose and as we say with a Vengeance He makes War with the womans seed who keep the Commandments God and hold as witnesses the Martyry of Jesus that is by the Beast whose History immediately follows cap. 13. and to whom the Dragon deputed his power and seat even Great Authority which Delegation the other Beast that spake as a Dragon viz. the False Prophecy received and managed for him the Grand Beast until He came to his Image and Number and so the Dragon and the Beast continue together till the Beast is taken and cast into the Lake and the Dragon and all his Draconism bound Chain'd and Seal'd up by the Kingdom of Christ appearing Rev. c. 19. c. 20. v. 1. And this is the True History of Draconism as entred into Bestianism by which it plainly appears the scattering of the Power of the Holy People or the state of the Woman in the Wilderness is wholly owing to the Beast and his Bestianism whose are Time Times Half Time and that the Dragon and his Persecution were wholly defeated by the Bestian Apostacy conveying the Church from the Serpent till He wrought by the Beast and made over his Power to Him in revenge upon the Womans Seed it self being still safe Now how admirable is all this according to the Symbols the Beast still in all appearance and semblance secures Christ on the Throne while it supplants his true Kingdom and Power for how could Antichrist's Kingdom stand if Christ were not in Title upon the Throne But how could it stand if Christ did indeed reign No it presently falls then or rather vanisheth away Again the Wings of the Apostatiz'd Empire while they convey the true Church out of all ordinary Visibility yet secure it in the Name and Notion of a Church the Beast's Earth thus helps it for a Christian Church is his Claim and Title to his Kingdom but it must be hidden for a true Christian Church visible destroys his Kingdom Thus all things even to Astonishment at the divine Prophetick Wisdom have a Harmony in Truth greater than that of the Spheres in Imagination Mahometans and Pagan Infidels by subverting Christianity necessarily overthrow Antichrist's Kingdom also it is in indispensable need of Christianity so far as a Pretence goes but the Brightness and native Glory consumes it while Christianity under a false mask supports it true Christianity scorches it to nothing as will be seen at the Vial pour'd into the Sun true Christianity and the Church therefore must be hidden and in the Wilderness and its Seed persecuted as if not of the Church that false Christianity and the false Church may reign in its Absence under its Name and Appearance Thus while the Dragon persecutes in his Aim and Intention the Christian Church the Apostacy pretending it self the Vniversal Church conveys the true Church into a Wilderness and so befriends the Notion of a Church while it conveys it out of sight the Dragon by the Beast makes War with the Seed and scatters them that they could not possibly be found in the Body of a Church not but that the Church was truly visible in the single Witnesses however anathematiz'd but it could not be reach'd in a Body even by the Serpent himself for it was not in a Body and yet the Notion of a Church was dear to the Antichristians for They and the Beast usurp'd it At this Time therefore according to this Prophecy it could be no Argument against the Church Where was it or It was not visible in a Body for it was not to be visible in a Body but in the Suffering scatter'd Seed So that it was hid from the very Serpent And yet even to the end of the 1260 Days there is a Mahometan Draconism levelling at Christ Christianity and the true Church but falling almost wholly upon the false Church and the Antichristian King and his Subjects who is therefore always principally concern'd to drink up this Flood and so helps the true Church by his Earth There is nothing at the present I can think necessary to add to this Explication of the Apocalyptical Dragon but that the whole Vision Rev. 12. to v. 13. is presented as in Heaven so that the Assumption of the manly Birth the Joy upon the Dragon 's casting down upon the Kingdom of our God being come c. is given as in Heaven and is reserved also in Heaven till the glorious Appearance of Christ and there is no more but such an imperfect cognisance of those great Things upon Earth as was given by the Christian short Empire to be expected till that glorious Kingdom of Christ at the end of the Beast's Reign which may
accompanied with the Mahometan Force and yet even that remains a scourge upon it since the Reformation until now and cannot cease to be so while Antichristianism it self shall survive But if things had thus gone on The Kingdom of Christ had long ' ere now appear'd Let us then consider the Agreement of the Symbols of Prophecy with the stay of this Glory of Christ that it did not proceed to the utmost in the Ruine of Antichrist and the Revelation of his supream Dominion The first Estopple on the Kingdom of Christ is the sealing of the Thunders the constant Symbol of some breaking out of Christ's Kingdom for they were such powerful Voices of Highest and most Excellent Truth that if they had been written as John in Zeal to the Glory of Christ was about speedily to write them and not seal'd They had rent the Heavens and the Kingdom of Christ had been proclaim'd as by the Voices of the seventh Trumpet The clear shrill and exalted Voice of Divine Truth is Luc. 17. 24. as the Lightning that with the Thunder shineth from one end of the Heaven and that shineth to the other end of Heaven and brings forth the Day of the Son of Man which the Antichristian Kingdom trembles at and is shiver'd by as by the stroke of Thunder But written and seal'd are oppos'd in this Prophecy as immediate coming to pass and reserv'd to come to pass hereafter are oppos'd one to the other There is a Recognition and Renewal of the Oath of Christ concerning Time Times Half-Time Dan. 12. 9. Indeed the Front and Aspect of the Oath there is turn'd another way for then it was directed upon these Times as to come and the Oath is They shall be here it points upon them as past and Christ swears Time shall be no more but till the seventh Trumpet and then all should be finish'd spoken by the Prophets of his Kingdom which is such a Mystery the World will not believe however told them They are angry whenever Christ takes his Power to him and reigns and much more angry at Rev. 11. 18. any mention of it before hand at any unlocking or reading viz. interpreting Prophecy concerning it But Christ swears There shall be no more Time Or no Kalendar of any Kingdom but his own at the seventh Trumpet it shall then immediately succeed and be proclaim'd Till then Time is allowed for the thunders to remain seal'd Then they shall be opened And if the Thunders had not been sealed before the Oath the Oath had cut off that Time also but because the half Time cannot be less then it self The Thunders remain seal'd neither more nor less than the half Time So it is not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Time but only a half Time and a whole Time could be no more 4. The eating the Book It s being sweet in the Mouth and bitter in the Belly and prophecying again signifie altogether the retirement of Christs Kingdom anew into Prophecy in place of present Accomplishment and of that Kingdom then appearing For therefore was Its sweet in the Mouth because the Discourse of that Kingdom as in the Voice of Thunder was exceeding sweet as importing its present Appearance But the Discourse of it as matter of Prophecy and the Re-absconding it to that purpose into the Belly was exceeding bitter as signifying its Delay and Secrecy for longer time yet as Belly imports secretly Whereas therefore the Book in regard of the half-season ended was opened as if then to be accomplish'd and the things written in it to be finished It s remanding into the Belly of the Prophet concludes its delay and this was bitter The Book therefore was sweet in any presence bitter in any Delays of the Kingdom The Kingdom is not to be yet while the half day lasts It must be when that ends in the seventh Trumpet therefore it remains in Prophecy And of the Servants of God continuing to Prophecy in Sack cloth because of the delay of Christs Kingdom and to prophecy again before many Peoples and Nations and Tongues and Kings whom this Kingdom concerns John is here the Representative the prophetical Scheme or Symbol For this Prophecy is unto and so before many who will not vouchsafe to hearken or attend to it yet it is unto them before them and will take hold of them But while the Book is in Prophecy in the Belly It is Bitter and the Witnesses prophecy in Sackcloth So John Personates or Proxies for them The sealing then of the Thunders as also the Voice of the Roar of the Lion by implication retiring the Eating of the open Book or returning it into Prophecy Argue It must remain in Prophecy as it had done the whole Time of the Trumpets after the Seals opened because of the 144000 seal'd and that the Kingdom did not appear when it had in the Christian Emperours made so loud a claim And now by the Thunders utterances a so publick challenge of its Right yet it must return again into Prophecy and be Bitter in the Belly All these are the clear and evident Importance of these Symbols in a due compare of the Parts of this Prophecy between themselves And if we look not only into History but Knowledge it cannot be denyed but that the Kingdom of Christ hath not yet appear'd in Glory The blessed Effects of Christian Religion The great Prophecies concerning those Effects that even swell the Womb of Prophecy have not yet been brought forth The Antichristianism the Bestianism the Apostle Paul the Apostle Pet. Epist 2. c. 2. c. 3. Peter the Apostle John especially in his Apocal. describes hath yet a too sad Interest in the Christian World Mahometanism covers a great part of the habitable Earth and till very lately as in signification of the Time of Christ's Kingdom to be proclaim'd near at hand hath been the Scourge and Terror of Christianity but more particularly as according to this Prophecy of the Antichristianity of East and West and holds a very considerable part of the Profession of it under Slavery Pagaism we know possesses except obstinately blind interspers'd Judanism the rest of the World All which must remove at Christ's Kingdom And if we consider the State of Christianity more Reformed to it self to speak in the Language and Symbols of this Prophecy There are very great Parts of the Reformation that are within the Bowels of the yet Antichristian Princes and so within the Dition and Kingdom of the Beast when ever it pleases God to give scope to that Power They are all manner of ways persecuted and harrass'd even as the Succession or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Church of Thyatyra were to be and their last Works and Sufferings thereby became more than their First Rev. 2. 19. c. and are so far from being perfectly risen and out of Sack-cloth that they make an appearance of the Witnesses again Hungary France slain as in Neighbour Countries of
late Other Parts of the reform'd Church have not pursued the true Principles of the Reformation the Regulation of all Things in Doctrine Worship Conversation and Discipline according to the pure and perfect Rule of the Word of God but that Word in many things is regulated by Antiquity not considering how early the Mystery of Iniquity was at work and where the Foot of the account of the Beast's Number ought to be plac'd even at 25 or 26 from the Resurrection Revel 3. v. 1. c. so that these as in the Church of Sardis affecting too much outward Pomp and Grandieur are to strengthen the Remainders which are ready to dye that are to fill up the Reformation to endeavour to open the Voices of the Thunders among themselves and to prophecy more vigorously before Peoples Nations Tongues and Kings concerning which Things the generality are so asleep That there are but a few Names who have not defiled their Garments but will be in great danger of a shameful Devestiture or Degradation when Christ appears Revel 3. 3. compar'd with Revel 16. 15. The Church of Philadelphia although in a general Zeal to have a perfect Square with pure Evangelical Truth be indeed v. 7. c. in Being yet not come to make the Apocalyptick Line of Time by its proper Interval or space nor can do before the end of the 1260 days as it is drawn upon these Churches to the New Jerusalem which appears in Philadeph and the Right of a Church Their Door of the Profession of Christ according to his Word is endeavoured to be shut although Christ as by immediate Power hath hitherto kept it open yet They of this Church have but a little strength outward Power or Glory Revel 3. 7. c. The Synagogue of Sathan is ready on all Accounts and at all Advantages to Dissinagogue them and cast them out to controul and brow-beat them and that Synagogue must be of the Reformed so the naming them Jews imports as in the Church of Smyrna Jews signified Christians in Profession but becoming Gentiles so here it signifies Reformed but so far relaps'd as to be falsly so call'd who are at the same elevation of Corruption the Apostacy was at in the Church of Smyrna Not long before the 1260 dark days came in so that though they disallow the Apostacy since that time yet they are ready to Cannonize it so far as to that Time it had proceeded and might if they had Time find the same Path to the same End Yet still they escape the Beasts Number 666. Now in regard of all these things it is most evident The Witnesses must be yet in Sack-cloth but they are if they are not wanting to their own Priviledges and Office like Moses and Aaron commission'd to smite with Plagues as often at they will that is to declare the foulness of the Apostacy to Revel 11. 6. remonstrate the Bestianism and Antichristianism of it and to foretel the seventh Trumpet and its Voices and Vials in Ruine of the Kingdom of the Beast and the great Judgments to be executed on his City Church Himself and his false Prophet and all the Impenitents of his Kingdom from first to last and also to declare the Redemption of the whole Israel of God from this spiritual Egypt and its Slavery the opening the Temple that the Ark of the Testament the Tabernacle of Testimony may be seen in Heaven and the Kingdom of Christ appear in the New Jerusalem And this they may do as often as they will That is There is abundant Evidence of Prophetick Truth to do it by There are abundant Promises of Acceptance Favour and Support in the doing of it so that it is a Remisness of Will that is of Zeal not to do it For Blessed is he that heareth and they that read the Words of this Prophecy especially when the Time is so near at Hand The last part of this Time is the most Glorious because Revel 11. 11. c. it issues out into the seventh Trumpet and then those great things will come to pass in Preparation of which all that was at the beginning of that Time was but a shade and semblance Then the Spirit of Life in full and perfect measure shall enter into the Witnesses and set them on their Feet and great fear shall fall on them that see them there will be then so wonderful an appearance of divine Power and Judgment as upon the Apostles Doctrine and Miracles in the very first Times Where if things had gone on with the same Power from Heaven as at first the Kingdom of Christ had then appear'd but the Mystery of Iniquity surpris'd them at 25 or 26. There shall be a Voice calling them up to Heaven and as in the Cloud wherein Christ himself ascended They shall Ascend and whereas only the Servants of Christ beheld Him Their Enemies shall behold them which speaks the publickness of their Ascention and the mighty Influences it will have And in the same Hour the Tenth that is the Decem Principality of the great City viz. most necessarily That great City in which the Witnesses lay dead in the breadth of it fell For when the Ten Horns that give State and Altitude to the Beast fall off from his seventh Head the Woman that sits on the Beast which is this very same City-Church must needs fall from that Height with which the Beast carried it while exalted with his Ten Horns which substantial Reason will recompence for the seeming Impropriety of such a use of the Word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 This Tenth being both in Dan and this Prophecy so essential to the Beast that carries the Woman The Ascent of the Witnesses into Heaven I understand to be some Exemplification on Earth of the Glory and Triumph The Witnesses of Christ that have gone out of the World suffering for Christ in any degrees of Martyrdome have at this time in Heaven upon this change of the World to Christ's Kingdom as undoubtedly the Saints have on all such Changes even as the Angels joy in the Repentance of Sinners As the Saints in Heaven triumph'd at the Desolation of Heathenism or the casting down of the Dragon The Exemplification then of this on Earth by the exalted state of the true Servants of Christ there is the Importance of these Symbols And in the same Hour oppos'd to the same or one Hour of Revel 17. 12 13. the Ten Kings receiving Power with the Beast and giving then their Kingdom to him and therefore comes now into a fit Counter-parallel There shall be an Earth-quake such a mighty Concussion shake and change of the State of the Christian World that Cities shall be removed as it were and not be the same they were before That great City although it shall remain on its Heap yet its tenthly or Ten Kingdom'd-state shall utterly fall seven thousand not Names only but Names of Men shall be slain They shall be slain in
come But now the next Vision of the Four Beasts gives us in Prophetick Cypher the very measure of the Beast's Duration as that Beast is symboll'd by the little Horn viz. Time Times and half a Time But because this does not assure us when those Days begin nor consequently where they end the Vision we are now entring upon will teach us that And it hath a threefold Aspect upon Time to this end 1. It continues the principal Line of Time from Creation which because there will not be Scripture History to maintain it and also because and especially because the Times of the Gentiles in whose History Scripture little concerns it self are drawn by it without lesser Periods but as the Accounts of the Churches Case in relation to them after requires it they are given in one entire Line or Sum 2300 Days beginning contiguously from Ezekiel's 430 Days and continuously also to so many Days for Years uniting with the former parcel-lines and with the 430 as the last given Line and so one whole Line from the Creation is constituted by uniting these several Parcels by a divine Certainty 2. It determines the particular Time from the beginning of the Persian Monarchy at literal Babylon fallen to mystical Babylon falling as also at literal Jerusalem restor'd to new Jerusalem appearing for Antichrist broken intends the former and the Sanctuary cleans'd the latter 3. It is a measure of the length of particular Lines given after this from Time to Time as they are given in Scripture that as it self is distinguish'd into several Periods by them so it is a Boundary to them when to begin and end that together they may be symmetral to this whole Line neither longer nor shorter and therein be justly proportion'd to one another even till this Line call'd most emphatically by our Lord the Times of the Gentiles Luc. 21. 24. be fulfill'd That the Vision then and the Line of Time it carries away be rightly understood these things are necessary to be premised 1. That the principal thing in these Visions of Daniel except that single Vision next in order to that we are upon that centers in Messiah's Coming and Death is the glorious Kingdom of Christ and of his Saints having the Dominion throughout the Earth and the Destruction of that peculiar Enemy of his Kingdom who is justly call'd Antichrist immediately preceeding his Kingdom and before which it could not appear Upon the Account of this Kingdom of Christ having its way made by the Destruction of Antichrist there are so many Representations of the other Monarchies of which else we may conceive the Holy Spirit had no more touch'd their Prophecy than it does their History which it never does but in relation to the Church or to set out God's Government Universal over the World and his Judgment on sinful Nations We find therefore in these Visions of the Monarchies Antichrist next to the Kingdom of Christ is the greatest Subject and more Words laid out upon him than upon all the rest so it is in Nebuchadnezzar's Dream The Feet and Toes Dan. 2. v. 34. 41. c. take up a greater Proportion of the Dream and Exposition than all the rest and then the Kingdom of Christ flows out upon the Image broken in the Feet So in the Vision of the four Beasts the fourth Beast and in that the little Horn imploys the greatest part of the whole Vision in its Description and Judgment and the Kingdom of Christ then breaks out upon it so proportionably in this Vision He then that would understand it must be arm'd with this Rule as preparatory 2. It must be worthy our Advertency that the Antichristian State in these Prophecies and in the Revelation is rank'd with Heathenism and Gentilism and treated with much less regard than even Idolatrous Israel or Judah God not taking any notice of them as his People but as mere Gentiles so that I do not remember any Parallelism of them with the People of Israel even in their Apostacy but altogether with those that were Aliens as Balaam Jezebel the Daughter of Elth Baal King of the Sydonians with Sodom Egypt and most notoriously Babylon and so is represented by the Gentiles treading the outward Court And thus the Corruptions of Divine Worship among the Jews were express'd by entertaining the manners of the Gentiles defiling themselves with them falling in love with them bringing them into the Sanctuary The Beast united with the heathen idolatrous Monarchy coming into the Seat of the Dragon is the grand Apocalyptick Figure for Antichrist and nothing of Christ allow'd him except to the other Beast having borns as a Lamb while he spake as a Dragon nor of the Jews to the Antichristian Rev. 13. 11. Gentiles but that in the Beginning of the Apostacy within the prophetical Church of Smyrna Rev. 2. 9. They said They were Jews but were not but lyed and were the Synagogue of Sathan nor any thing of Jerusalem to the Seat of Antichrist except one only allusion to the City where Our Lord was crucified where a Heathen Power presided in Revel 11. 8. his Condemnation and that a Roman too to signifie its extream Hate to the True Christ It s deep dye in Blood and its irrecoverable Destruction for which Jerusalem was so infamous and for which the Roman Church like the Jewish Church was broken off from the true Olive and all consider'd as a Church in Conjunction with it as the Apostle had foretold Rom. 11. 6. make the Allusion On the other side The True Christianity and Worship of it are symboliz'd by the pure Jewish Worship The Temple its Measures Ordinances as they stood in Israels best Estate are the Ichnography of the Perfect Pure Christian Church But the drawing men from True Christianity to Antichristianism the Persecution of Men for it the last Deliverance from Anti-Christianism and its Persecutions are continually given out in Parallellismes betwixt the same Things heretofore between the Jews and the Gentiles and unite with the Jews great Deliverance and the New Jerusalem at last These two things are most necessary to be premonish'd for the true Interpretation of this Vision and other Visions also as we shall see as we pass along to preserve all clear and free from Confusion And upon this Premonition I say this Vision beginning with the Persian Reign goes on through the Grecian and so passes through the whole Roman Monarchy first and last and describes a Line running parallel with the whole Times of the Gentiles after the Babylonish Empire at the end of which Ezekiels 430 Days ended as hath been made to appear And they being the last Joynt of the Line from Creation this Line of 230 Days joyns with it and continues the whole Acts. 3. 21. Line from Creation to the Restitution of all Things Upon this Premonition I say further That Antiochus as the most Infamous Heathen Prince for treading down the holy and pure Jewish Worship from
that so in the Mouth of not only two or three but many Witnesses every word might be establish'd yet it appertains to the Glory of the New Testament the Gospel and Kingdom of the Mediator there should be so great and stupendious a Prophecy peculiar to it as that of the Revelation wherein God and Jesus Christ are for ever to be ador'd and had in reverence of all that approach the Profession of Christianity I say It must be of necessity agreeable to the Excellency of the New Testament there should be besides many Incidental Prophecies so divinely majestick a Prophecy as this of the Apocalyps such a Temple of Prophecies whose Symbols should be so high and lofty its Light more clear and full its Lines of Time in what it pleas'd to give more evident and certain the Doctrines intermingled more spiritual the Promises more heavenly and explain'd the Threats more dreadful and more open that in every thing there may be a Becomingness of All to the Old Testament unveil'd fulfill'd and excell'd in the New And accordingly we shall find all these to the very height taken care of and adjusted we shall see this all along the Iconisms and Figures of Things in the Churches in the several Visions in the Doctrines in the solemn mentions of the Lamb of his Blood so often memorializ'd as an Antidote against the Poison of Antichrist as also the Ministeries of Angels and their most peremptory Abhorrence of all Worship offer'd to them It s only numbred Line of Time till the 1000 Years is so often repeated and ascertain'd that it does in all things illustriously shew it self to be that grand Revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave him to shew to his Servants to the transcendent Honour of the Son by whom he thus spake last of all Who is the Heir of all things especially of the World to Heb. 1. 1. come of which this Prophecy speaks So that to ravish this from the Search and Enquiry of his Church or by Imputations of immodest Presumption to bar from it the utmost Endeavours of his Servants to compare so great a Prophecy and its Events is to take from them one of the principal Props of Christian Faith and Obedience and to devest the New Testament of so high a Glory as this sure Word of Prophecy to which we ought to take heed as to a Light that shineth in the obscure and even squalid Ayr of the Apostasie till the Bright Morning-Star appear and therefore notwithstanding all Prejudices the Apostacy hath rais'd against Researches into it Blessed is he that Readeth and they who hear the Words of this Prophecy That which this Prophecy reveals is the glorious Restitution of all things in the Kingdom of Christ and his Reign with his Saints the Destruction and Consumption of all the wicked so as to be no more as they have been in God's Creation and Earth Psal 104. 35. The Sense in which it reveals is not only Prophetical Doctrinal and Verbal but Real and Eventual and that immediately from the very Beginning of it All the Visions in their own Order each in their Season come quickly or shortly to pass that is begin to come to pass and so go on to their End according to the Types wherein they are imprinted This Revelation begins justly at the Resurrection of Christ conjoyn'd as in one entire Act and Time with his Ascension when all power in Heaven and Earth was given to him at the Lord's Day dedicated by himself to the Glory of his Rising and the Publication of his Anointing by the coming down of Act. 1. c. 2. the Holy Spirit Then could he say Behold I was dead am alive and live for evermore Then he was brought near to the Ancient of Days and receiv'd the Assurance of his Kingdom Then had he Right to be the Prince of the Kings of the Earth though he was pleas'd to stay and to joyn Patience to and with his Kingdom And this was as in the middle Rev. 1. 9. of the Five hundred sixty second Ev. Mor. from Cyrus and in the middle of the last of the seventieth of the seventy Weeks and at the Time the Roman Empire was come to Maturity in the AUTONOMY of Augustus and Tiberius in the Time of which the first Right of his Kingdom began and e're that Empire in its last State ends it shall be set up in Glory For though the Apocalytical Prophecy was not actually given to the Apostle John till some years after yet as Prophecy calls the future so that which is past to the present Time and represents in an entire Frame both together a Priviledge as to that which is past necessarily allowed to History and to a prophetick Frame much more when it hath occasion for it The Period of the Revelation till the thousand years is most evidently those two Apocalyptical Pillars bearing the two answering Inscriptions IT IS DONE IT IS DONE Apoc. 16. 17. c. 22. 6. from whence the Kingdom begins So that this Book of the Revelation is justly to be styl'd the Book of the Kingdom of Christ in its several Offers of Appearance and rending the very Clouds to shew it self in the Acts 1. 7. Dan. 12. 7. Justice of its Claim and yet retiring it self till the very moments appointed by the Father and sworn by himself In which Regards this Prophecy is call'd A Book both in Daniel and here in the Apocalyps on all occasions So that the thousand Years are properly within this Book as the Book of the Kingdom There is also beyond the thousand Years a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a little Space as it were the Revel 20. Hour of the thousand-years-day of the Lord or of the Son of Man in which the natural Apostacy of Humane Nature shews it self in the lukewarm Laodicean Church and in Gog and Magog as at a blush but the whole of any State either 1 Cor. 15. of Church or Nation below immediately is swallow'd up in Flames and Death and Hell with their whole Propriety shut up within themselves and the Kingdom resign'd to God ALL in ALL. The Passage or Conveyance of this Apocalyptical Time is through the seven Churches comprehending the whole Time within themselves as also Symbols proper to the Prophecy as peculiar to the Christian Church and then the whole Time begins again and runs in seven Seals seven Trumpets seven Voices as unseal'd Thunders seven Vials as so many Conduits Tubes or Pipes of the whole Prophecy under the Conduct and Government of the Lamb with seven eyes and the guiding Operations of the seven Lamps the seven Spirits of God that is of the Divine Spirit in its sevenfold Operations And in all I understand the sabbatical Number deriv'd from the first Sabbath and terminating in the last great Sabbatism of Christ's Kingdom continued with the Sabbatism of Eternity Thus the Prophecy is divided into two Systemes or Complexes of Visions The Systeme of the
we would understand them of natural Angels as few or none do But the meaning is The seven Churches contain a very great Mystery throughout the Vision of the Churches Even as upon the forehead of the Woman Rev. 17. 5. was a Title written Mystery Babylon the Great c. that is Understand that whole Inscription in a mystical Sense or to carry the Mystery of the Apostate Church in all Successions so Understand the seven Churches carrying the Mystery of the Christian Church throughout And it is observable the word Mystery is expresly applyed to the True and False Church As it is said here The Mystery of the seven Churches and their Stars or Angels So there I will tell thee the Mystery of the Woman and of the Beast the Fallen Star with the Key of the bottomless Pit that carries her And proportionably this whole Prophecy of the Kingdom draws down into it self the Great Mystery of that Kingdom spoken of by all the Prophets since the World began viz. THE TRUE CHURCH IN GLORY The particularizing upon the Churches the so Apocalyptick Argu. 2 number Seven assures us It will bear its proportion to all the other Sevens And seeing there are no sevens to introduce them nor to receive them and carry them on They must themselves by their own Time Sevens and Symbols embrace the whole Apocalyptical Time and its Sevens For the Book of it is the Book of the Kingdom the Kingdom is the Mystery of God The Churches are the true Kingdoms when they come to their Glory and so a Mystery The Apostate Church is a Mock Kingdom the Kingdom of Antichrist foisted into the place of Christs Kingdom and so a Mystery but a Mystery of Iniquity The Kingdom of Christ and his universal Monarchy is an Empire in a Church of which He is the Head The last State of the Roman Monarchy is an Imperialism by vertue of an Ecclesiastical Image made to it which is a false Christship that is an Empire in an Apostate Church of which Antichrist is the Head How fitly therefore are these Things displayed in the Symbolisms of Churches It is certain There hath been a Christian Church in all Argu. 3 Ages from the Resurrection of Christ to this Day and shall be to the New Jerusalem and to the End of the World This is grounded upon those two Places Matt. 16. 18. Vpon this Rock will I build my Church and the Gates of Hell either of Hell as it signifies the Grave Mortality and Death or the Powers of Darkness shall not prevail against it and Matt. 28. ult Lo I am with you always unto the end of the World Nor is this controverted among any Christians From hence it follows we cannot be Time-bound or straitned in space of Time to place these Successions in For there must necessarily be a Succession of this Christian Church in several Ages and States and so must continue till the End which must as necessarily run a long Apocalyptical Time and so give a bottom to found such Symbols upon if it pleas'd as we suppose it did the Prophetick Spirit to give them As there must necessarily have been a Variety of States of Arg. 4 this one Church so the first of them must needs have been settled and founded in Doctrine Worship Rules of Life Order and Discipline by immediate Inspiration divine Authority and Institution through the Ministry of the Apostles This is most evident from that Book of Scripture written to that purpose The Acts of the Apostles as also from all the Apostolical Epistles From hence it follows the Apostolical Church in its Apostolical State was first in order whether therefore we will allow it to be symbollically represented or not in that first Church of Ephesus it is certain that Labour and Patience twice repeated that trying them which said they were Apostles and were not and finding them Lyars importing the exact consigning all Apostolical Truths and Rules into an authentick Canon of Scripture does most admirably represent that truly Primitive Apostolical State Besides the daily or every days Miscarriages from this excellent Arg. 5 State by Heresies Errors and bad Practises to which degenerate and deeply corrupted Humane Nature is so subject and of which Apostolical Writings take so continual notice there was foretold an eminent visible and notorious Apostacy fix'd and settled upon its own Base out of which Antichrist was to come and so very fit to be taken notice of in this Book of the Kingdom Now this Apostacy was declar'd expresly by the Apostle Paul to be at work in a mystery of Iniquity and the Spirit saith expresly that in the latter Times which latter Times as we have before affirm'd were then begun though every day more and more latter Some that is not a few but a certain sort of men that should make a Body or Species of Men should depart from the Faith If then it had begun so 1 Tim. 4. 1. Written to Timothy as then at Ephesus early in some Lineaments of it although not in that of Nicolaitanism and that it daily proceeded and grew much higher after the Apostles Departure or Death ravening Wolves and Men teaching perverse things arising from Christians themselves Act. 20. 28. c. remonstrated also to this very Church of Ephesus Their leaving their first Love the removing this Candlestick out of the Superiority and Excellency of Primo-geniture and conferring it on Smyrna in the Crown of Life and Philadelphia in the Scepter of the New Jerusalem are most lively Symbols to such a purpose though yet the Overcomers of this protoplast Church are assur'd to eat of the Tree of Life in the midst of the Paradise of God This Apostacy being to become so grand an Apostacy it Arg. 6 must needs proceed and work on by degrees so as that some Church and its Bishop deriving it self from the Apostles should very elderly vere towards a Synagogue of Satan and there should be such an Assumption by it and Deference of Advantages to it by many in the whole Christian Church tending towards and preparing for such an Apostacy that it gain'd Pretensions undesign'd yet to it particularly to intitle it self to such a blooming Antichristian Power as was foretold to come out of the Apostacy for if it could not derive high from Antiquity it could not rise to that Grandeur of Apostacy under the Profession of Christianity And yet in the mean time the Vniversal publick Christian Church may not only remain pure but be first in deep Sufferings for Christ and so fill up the Number of Martyrs dying under the Pagan Draconick Empire but also receive the Crown of Life and of the Glory of the New Jerusalem in a Figure by the Empire becoming Christian as it did in Constantine Now what Type of such a State of the Church could be more express in all this than the Church of Smyrna For whether it was so design'd by the Spirit or not it is certain in
final Judgment over the Book is quite unseal'd in Death the last Enemy overcome and then the Book the Symbol of the Kingdom is resign'd with the Kingdom it self into the Hand of the Father 9. Hereupon the State of the Christian Church in its Apostolical Purity with the Order of the Living Creatures first and then drawing that of the Elders along with it in a Song of Redemption in Praise of the Lamb with a Prophecy of his Kingdom in which his Servants and Saints shall reign above the Earth or over it as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies in several Places of the New Testament joyn'd with a Genitive Case particularly Matt. 25. 21. 23. I will make thee Ruler over many things 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 10. To sum up all The State of the Church in the thousand Years Kingdom of Christ is given in a second Song of Praise wherein all things bow in the Name of Christ as Lord and that not ceremonially but in real Subjection Phil. 2. 10. Things in Heaven and in Earth and under the Earth and that to the Glory of the Father For the four Living Creatures having said Amen to this high Celebration of Christ the four and twenty Elders as having by the Apostolical Church receiv'd an explicate Knowledge of Christ to shew The New Testament did not at all derogate from the Old The four and twenty Elders after they had fallen down with the four Living Creatures and joyn'd in a Song of Praise to the Lamb now as making up the Concent worship him that liveth for ever and ever and conclude that which the four Living Creatures or the Apostolical Ministry began and herein shew the Resignation of the Kingdom of God at last that he may be All in All Rev. 4. 10. compar'd with Rev. 5. 8. 14. For as all began in God that made all things so here it ends in him The sealed Book being now in the Hands of Christ and all due Acknowledgments made to him that sits on the Throne and to the Lamb immediately follows the opening of the Seals and therein the Course of Time flows out and so flows on of which we are now to take a particular and strict Account only I would desire every Person that sets his Mind and Thoughts to view this so august Inthronization of God and of the Lamb That he would ponder within himself Whether the desolating either the Jews or the Heathen Empire can be Events great enough for so stupendious a Pre-Representation or any thing less than the Glorious Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ could answer to it And now that we may establish the Line of Time according to these Seals and the Time of their opening there are three Things to be consider'd 1. What it is that is the principal Jewel and Treasure that lies under these Seals and so to be set free by the unloosing them 2. What is the principal and supream Visum or Thing to be seen in every Seal and the opening of it and how it serves the disclosing that Jewel 3. What is the true method of fixing the certain Time that the whole Course of the Seals took up and how it is to be measur'd and fix'd If we can now determine and settle aright upon the Resolution of each of these Particulars we shall be able to understand this first Sett of Apocalyptical Visions and to have ample satisfaction concerning them and have great Light into the following Visions also 1. As to the First then That great Treasure and Jewel of Truth that is inclos'd within these Seals and so also as we shall see that the Trumpets ultimately sounded unto is the Glorious Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ Every Event and the Stage of Time it was to pass over is as a Seal or Stop upon this Kingdom till it opens into Glory and the opening of every Seal was an Advance towards it and although when the seven Seals were open'd there appeared a greater and more prodigious Cause of Delay viz. the Antichristian Kingdom yet every Trumpet was as an Alarm of War to the subduing that Mock-Kingdom that rose in Despight and Opposition to the Kingdom of Christ And because all things were so set and placed in their Season and Order that no one thing could come to pass before that which was set before it had had its free Egress and Event therefore every of these Events and the opening of the Seals to let them out though they did not in the Issue open to the true Appearance of that Kingdom yet because they did as it were what they could and there was a Remove of so many Prohibents or Obstacles to that Kingdom and Time so advanc'd from Point to Point that by the opening every Seal the Kingdom of Christ might be nearer to its Appearance therefore they are justly understood and expounded to be Seals unloos'd and opening to the Kingdom of Christ Now besides those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or IT IS DONE IT IS DONE at the End of the Apocalyptical Time and all its Events whither they one and all run together besides this there is this absolute Assurance That the Kingdom of Christ was under the Seals The Kingdom made so magnificent a show of it self at the sixth Seal that had not the Servants of God been seal'd in their Fore-heads that they should not then appear with him in Glory the Kingdom had even then appear'd for in Constantine's Christian Empire to the End of the Reign or at the Victory of Theodosius the Great over Heathenism of which he endeavour'd the utter Extirpation that Kingdom so far came out of its Retirement that there was a solemn and loud Doxology in Heaven that the Kingdom of God and the Power of Christ were come and yet at the very same time the Woman is recorded as fled into the Wilderness Rev. 12. 10. 2. The first Particular then being resolved with so much Evidence and Assurance we may with the greatest Clearness resolve concerning the second or the principal Visum of every Seal open'd for it must be some State of the Kingdom of Christ defin'd by the joyning together the Voices that summoned to the Sight and Observation so far as these Voices continued and then when they ceased the State of the Kingdom of Christ must be considered by the Visa themselves as under the Cessation of those Voices and by any sort of Voices we can find equivalent to them And in this Method and no other that I can understand we may justly and truly comprehend the Intention and Signification of the Seals For if all the Seals carry on the Kingdom of Christ by so many Degrees and Steps of Advance as I have in some measure I hope made evident they do By undeniable Proof then it must needs be That every Seal hath some State of that Kingdom protuberant or swelling out in its Appearance upon that opening and that the Voice that says Come and see calls to observe it and
the beginning of this Line which is one great Confirmation that we are upon the true Time of it for to declare this as it were with Industry there are even thirty joyn'd to the 1260 and more openly Three Fifteens or Forty Five to the 1290 that we may thereby be engag'd to look back upon the whole Line and find it throughout so compacted as may be easily computed and hath been before observ'd on Daniel's Vision 3. Each Community hath its just share in the intimate and full extended Time of this Line and each twice given The Beast hath first his intimate Time twice given in Daniel and by two forty two months given first to his Gentiles till his own rising and then forty two Months to himself he hath the utmost extent of Time Times half time as before declared and drawn out of the 2300 Evenings In just correspondence with which the Servants of God as collected and congregated in the Woman the Church that they might not be accused as having Relation to no Church and single in the Witnesses and the Seed who have the Witness that Apo. 12. 17. the Church might not seem a Notion onely have each one and the same 1260 da. drawn out of the 2300 mornings assign'd to them and the Witnesses three dayes and a half and the Woman three times and a half or season or intimate Time answering the Beasts intimate Time who must have the Servants of God as a subject to work upon while his Tyranny lasts Now that the Time at large or the Twice 1260 Days must needs be the same and differ only in notion as the Church and the Witnesses or the Seed that have the Witness of Jesus do is most evident because lying within the same Continent of Time Times Semi Time and being both of the longest reach and exactly of the same size it is not possible they should begin or end sooner one than another as we have found it possible the Gentiles and the Beasts months may do For neither are they so united as the Woman and the Witnesses And their months though of the same size one with another are yet not of an equal extent to time times half time at their full length nor to the 1260 dayes the just measure of the three times and half although both the Forty two months uniting as we have said are neither longer nor shorter than the 1260 dayes nor than the Three Times and half the common Womb of all And even so the three Times and half of the Woman and the three dayes and half of the Witnesses must be the same also seeing the Witnesses and the Woman are the same and the 1260 dayes the same and no difference but only notional as was explain'd For if they were different the Woman should have no parallel to the three dayes and half of the Witnesses nor the Witnesses have any parallel with the three times and half of the Witnesses which as most unbecoming so Uniform a Type are impossible also in such a sameness Thus the Marches or Out-lying Borders as well as the Intimate Time are full on the side of both Communities the Beasts Tyranny and the Sufferings of the Servants of God The last Seventy five years by the Voices Revel 14. and by the Vials Rev. 16. move on to the two utmost Pillars of Time It is done It is done Rev. 16. 17. Rev. 21. 6. Object In the former or after Parts of this Discourse I offer as I hope most Convictive Proofs of all these things in particular and answer all Objections I shall only at this time remove this one viz. There seems no more reason to understand the forty two Months as Lunar Months than the days of Years as Lunar Years Answ There is very great difference for if we look throughout the Scripture and the whole manner of Jewish Computation of Time we shall find They always understood Months Lunar Months and the very Solemnity of their New Moons absolutely requir'd it so that to understand them otherwise must needs be to understand against that constant use of Scripture and the Importance of the Name of their Months Scripture uses But now their Years were so necessarily Solar Years for there can indeed be no Year but strictly Solar that they most industriously provided to Adequate their Lunar Time to their Solar by Intercalations and Inserted Months or a double Adar which was their last Month of the Year we every Leap-Year by a double Twenty Eighth of February As may be seen by the Learned in that Excellent Tract of Maimonides of Intercalations which gives great light to this whole Matter As shall be farther taken notice of in the after Management of this Discourse Having given this general View of this Grand Prophetical Line of Time which appears to be of sovereign Use to the Church of God by the so often Repetition of it I think it necessary to make these Practical Remarks upon it for the universal profit of all that read it It ought to administer no Scandal to us that Christianity Remark 1 hath yet had no greater Effect in the Universe upon Jews Mahometans Pagans That it hath not won upon the world to an universal Conversion to it That it hath not prevail'd upon Christians themselves to higher degrees of Religious and Holy Affections and Actions That it hath not reconcil'd Men more to one another and made the Wolf and the Lamb to lye down together That it hath not fill'd the Earth with the knowledge of God as the Waters cover the Sea That it hath not deriv'd down a more universal state of outward Blessing Prosperity Peace and Happiness For these are the great Promises and Pretentions of the Kingdom Christ design'd to erect in the World now an Enemy hath done all this in the Wisdom of God and Christ the old Dragon the Serpent Satan hath inhabited and acted a Bestian Empire first as Pagan and in the very appearance of a Dragon watching to devour the manly Birth of Christianity and since That Empire became Christian in a Bestian Kingdom of Apostasie and this hath surpris'd and cut off the blessed Emanations of Christianity and the Gospel and made the Christian World except in some small chosen Parts of it like the Wilderness like Heathen Pagan Nations and Kingdoms full of Scandals to the great hinderance of the other parts of the World from submission to the Scepter of Christ or taking upon them his Name and Profession and made ineffectual this Profession to the very Professors of it And this hath been lo these twelve hundred and fifty years wait only till the ten are run out also and you shall see a greater change in the World than ever yet it hath known Christianity shall then prevail more in a little time than it hath done ever yet The Light of one day shall be as the Light of seven till it grows brighter and brighter to the perfect Day of Christs Kingdom the first
Usage by Pharaoh argued against their Deliverance by Moses All the Disaffection in the Age to Interpretation of Prophecies or its insensibleness of them can no more disprove them than Christ's coming as a Thief upon Sardis at an Hour it knew not shall be disprov'd by the Sleepiness and Unwatchfulness of that Church Let us then with Resolution Constancy of Obedience Strength of Faith Labour of Love Patience of Hope wait for and come to the end of these ten days and from them to the 1335 Days where Blessedness shall certainly be But if we should say We may dye before those Ten Years are come to their Period and there is no Probability or Possibility we should live to the seventy five beyond or the 1335 of Blessedness I answer The Saints of God living on Earth shall receive their share in all the Glories of his Kingdom and the several degrees of it and they that dye hoping waiting desiring praying shall be rais'd in the very same posture of Soul wherein they died so that they who by a general Faith and Obedience waited and came in Daniel's Time and ever since viz. by earnest Prayers Come Lord Jesus Come quickly shall be blessed even as they who by particular Faith and Obedience wait and come at the Time it self And in the mean time the Souls of Saints above the Spirits of just men who shall be perfected at that time celebrate in Heaven all the Advances of Christ's Kingdom even as they pray for it as the Souls under the Altar cry How long Lord c. so they rejoyce at every Rising of Christ's Kingdom so do the same Souls Rev. 12. 10. So Rev. 14. 3. They that sing that new song harping with their Harps So They Rev. 15. 3. So they Rev. 19 c. Such is the universal Song of Triumph of the Palm-bearing company Revel 7. 10. Let us not therefore despond but be abundant in the work of the Lord knowing our labour shall not be in vain in the Lord. Why should it be thought an incredible thing that God Remark 6 should draw in his Word the Plot of Future Time to so great a Period as the Kingdom of Christ That all Futurity is within the Grasp of Infinite Omniscience cannot be doubted Known to God are all his Works from the beginning to the end The Scheme of all that hath been before it was or that shall be is always with Him as if it just now was in all the circumstances and Life of a present Appearance in whose Eternity All present past to come are all one The whole Table of Time is always before Him Does it then pertain to the Prerogative of Omniscience that Future Things should be known only to himself It does so indeed any further than he is pleas'd to reveal them But He that challenges the false Divinities of the Heathen that they could not declare things to come hath certainly given Isa 42. 23. Instances of his own Prescience and Demonstrations of it to his People Hath he not done so in all Ages by his Servants the Prophets Is he not as Liberal to the Ages of Christianity to the state of things under the Gospel of his Son whom he hath constituted Heir of all things and put in subjection to him the World to come of which we speak Or is the Glory of Divine Truth so great that even as immediate Appearances the Power of Miracles and extraordinary Revelations have ceas'd since the full Settlement and Sealing the Volume of Truth in the Gospel so Prophecy needs not now This indeed hath much of Reason yet even as all Truth is compriz'd in that Volume so are the Grand Revolutions pertaining to the Christian Church in the same Volume and therefore whatever God hath done for the former World the very same hath he summ'd up in the New Testament When therefore we have besides the Interspersion of Prophecy in several places of it a Book wholly Dedicated to Prophecy Blessed is he that heareth and readeth the words of this Prophecy Have we not reason then to expect the course of things to the very end in it But does not the Prophecy it self say The Things were shortly to come to pass So that what is to be found in it pertain'd to the primitive Age the Destruction of Jerusalem to the Time when Christianity was well settled and till Pagan Rome became Christian It is true indeed The Divine Revelator Jesus Christ our Lord does say the things were shortly to come to pass that is to begin to come to pass They were then upon motion but as a great Army is said to come immediately when the Avant-Corriers are coming or come although the whole Body and Rear may be considerable distances off so this whole Series and Chain of Events in the Revelation come quickly although the first and the last part differ so many Ages Is it not clear and visible that there is the Beginning of Things and the End of Things in every mans Apprehension plain and evident that is from the Resurrection and to the Day of Judgment and why then should we not believe there is the Middle of Things also Why should we imagine Prophecy hath made such a Leap over the Between Lying Times seeing they were very great Did it not behove his Church and Servants to know of so great and wide spreading an Imposture as Mahometanisme Was it nothing to it Christianity should be in so low and dark a state as it was from the lowest Fall of the Western Empire to the Ruine of the Eastern Empire in both which the principal Residences of it were and so long space as from 666 to 1453. But still it may be said If such a Prophecy be it does not become us to pry into it it is the Ark of secret things that do not belong to us Why then does Christ say Blessed is he that heareth the words of this Prophecy Why doth he command him that hath Wisdom and Vnderstanding to count the Number of the Beast Why doth He in explication of the Seven Heads say Here is the Mind that hath Wisdom Why had Christ the Revelation to shew to his Servants But was it not all one as if they had not been reveal'd since the Revelation was not pretended to be understood in former Times I answer we do not know what was understood the Apostacy so cover'd and muffled all Things and does yet so darken them The universal prejudice against the Explanation of this Prophecy is I doubt not the effects of this Apostasie But that there hath gone a stream of Light from hence to the Servants of Christ by the Witnesses in every Age is to me out of all question and that it hath discover'd the Things most necessary to that Age although the Light hath been not only clearer but the knowledge that such a Light hath been more certain to us since the last Age and Half and shall be every day clearer and clearer When
same Account a Persecution of the Dragon for the Mahometans were from their very original Adversaries to this Sovereignty of the Lord 's Anointed substituting an Imposture of Sovereignty and Prophetism in the place of it and all this within the universal Roman Monarchy the Propriety of Christ Their Deluge of Power and People impetuously overflowing with a false Religion is then most justly call'd a Flood out of Sathan's mouth acting as a Dragon according to the Notion of abstract Draconism and so raging and foaming with hostile Opposition to the Kingdom of Christ notwithstanding some seeming Acknowledgment of him in Mahometanism as a Prophet but truckling under that infamous false Prophet This then being the first Account of Draconism it is very easie to give Satisfaction to the first Doubt for the same things that are remonstrated as the Judgments of God as permitted and order'd by him in his holy Government of the World and Execution of Justice and Judgment upon Offenders are also most maliciously and hellishly negotiated by Satan as is most evident in the History of David's numbring the People that same misdoing of David is attributed to the displeasure of God and to Sathan as may be seen by comparing 2 Sam. 24. 1. and 1 Chron. 21. 1. yea in that different Case viz. the Transaction of our Lord's Sufferings Satan enter'd into Judas to embolden him to do what supreme Wisdom and Goodness had contriv'd to redeem lost Man It is therefore nothing strange the Holy Angels and Sathan met in these Trumpets each in their Place and Orb that while the Holy Angels sounded an Alarm to the Instruments of the divine Vengeance Sathan had his Contrivance to persecute the Woman both by the Barbarians and Mahometans But besides this Draconism of profess'd Enemies to Christianity there is the Draconism of the Beast or the Dragon living and being worshipped in the Beast or Antichristianism beginning by the other Beast who is afterwards call'd the false Prophet speaking as a Dragon which was the Synagogue of Sathan in the first growth and his Throne in the farther Growth when the Beast came to his Image and Number and the depths of Sathan or his Government in his ripest Age and thus the Dragon gave his Seat or Throne and great Authority to the Beast that is Sathan the Supreme Dragon in the idolatrous and bloody Cesareate now became Residentiary in the Beast and conveyed both the Hostility to the Kingdom of Christ the Idolatry and the Bloodiness into the Beast and by his Negotiation under divine Permission order'd the very Seat and Power of the Imperial Cesareate to the Beast as the Heir both of his Idolatry Enmity to Christ's Kingdom and persecutory Tyranny and for the sake of all these in all Revel 16. 13. which Regards it may well be esteem'd Draconism to the last And God in just Indignation brings upon this Serpentinism of this Beast a Counter-Serpentinism of Infidelism a Counter Draconism for serpens serpentem devorans fit Draco as before explain'd But yet the Draconism of the Beast is a diverse Draconism its Hostility to the Kingdom of Christ is not by down-right Force and Resistance of open War to the Name of Christianity but by way of Surprise out of his Hand and held as in his Right and to his Glory and yet in such real Opposition to him that he hath sworn His Kingdom shall not come till that be at the full end of Time Times and half Time Its Idolatry is an Idolatry as it were consecrating it self to the Honour of Christ and is therefore as in it self so in the prophetical Symbol full in all its heads of the Names of Blasphemy under this Head all the former Heads are flower'd and as it were powder'd with the Names of Blasphemy all former gross Idolatries and Demonolatries are dissembled under True Religion and Heathenism under Christianity or more truly True Religion and Christianity are Travestied and Burlesqu'd into Heathenism and Paganism and therefore it is not Simple-Idolatry but Blasphemy as we shall see But yet notwithstanding all this Sathan is but on Earth for the Beast holding the Kingdom as in the Right of Christ Christ thereby is still acknowledg'd to be on the Throne and in that the true God Holy Angels and Saints are thus blasphem'd by Antichristian Idolatries and that Sathan and wicked Spirits are abandon'd and detested in Profession generally though his Kingdom hath sometimes portentously broken out in Acknowledgments as it were to the Devil himself by some of the Antichristian Cheifs His Seat is not then as before as in a Heaven he therefore in a Rage dashes one part of his Kingdom against another the Barbarian against the Antichristian the Mahometan against the Bestian because he as a subtil Computator of his own Time knows It can be but short compar'd with above four thousand Years Reign before and that as in Heaven too in the Idolatry perform'd to Devils viz. Fallen Angels or Damned Souls And for so great a Pledge of the future Fall of Sathan is that Doxology and Song of Praise concerted in Heaven Rev. 12. 10. as also in Prevision of the full Glory of Christ's Kingdom decreed to him by God from the infinite value of his own Blood and as a Retribution for the Sufferings of his Servants maugre all Sathan's Accusations in which the Accuser himself was condemn'd and cast out and notwithstanding the succeeding Antichristianism And from all this arises a full Solution to the second Doubt and not only a Solution but an admirable Harmony and Consent of the whole Prophetical Symbolism For when Satan fell from Heaven in that desolation of Heathenism not only by the Christian Empire of Constantine but the perfect Victory over it by Theodosius When the Devil and his Angels after the War in Heaven were finally cast down A Victory obtained by the Incense offered with the Revel 8. 3. Prayers of all Saints as a Signal of the Church yet continuing pure in the publick Worship and that then was so great Expectation of the Glory of Christs Kingdom as that Doxology exprsses now mention'd Now is the Kingdom of our Rev. 12. 10. God come At this very Moment to shew that though God was pleas'd to account the Church pure to the very moment it could in his Righteous Judgment be so accounted yet I say to shew its Purity was at a very low Ebb and that it had long wan'd as also to shew that God had design'd to permit a very different state of Things to the Kingdom of Christ the very next news of the Church is that the two wings Western Eastern of the Great Roman Eagle had convey'd the Church the True Church into the wilderness that Rev. 12. 14. it could not be found This had been mention'd before assoon as ever the manly v. 6. Birth was caught up to the Throne of God but that was only in preparation and to match with the other Symbols But
Time and therefore by the constant care of God in preserving a Seed that is accovnted to the Lord for a Generation and particularly by the Types of this Prophecy we are most assured there must be such Witnesses and such must be their Testimony SECT VIII Wherein The Forty Two Months are measur'd by the exactest Rules of Prophecy and found by express Concurrencies of those Prophecies to begin at the Cessation of the Christian Western Empire and to end whenever the 1260 Days end the Date of the Kingdom of Christ immediately ensuing and therefore to begin at 475 and by compare with the 1260 Days to end at 1697. According to which the State of the Empire of the Administration of the First Beast and of the Witnesses during the Fourth Trumpet viz. from 475 to 606 is represented THE Point of Time I am now entring upon hath had a just Approach made to it according to its Importance which is very great I shall now through the Assistance of the Divine Spirit duely consider the most weighty sense of it self there being no Line of Time whose Bounds are so definitive the Beginning so uncontestably evident in History the End so illustrious as this must be to sense it self in the very nature of the thing That I may therefore discourse hereof most regularly I propose these four Heads to fix the Intendment upon 1. To shew That the Apostle Paul hath affirm'd the coming of the Man of Sin or Beast whose End is according to all Prophecies concerning him Destruction by the immediate Appearance of Christ's Kingdom at that his end hath an unmoveable Bar to his Manifestation till his own Time and that the Apostle John declares that Bar to be an indefeisable Succession of a seventh King not come in his Time to a sixth King then in Being in his Time and that seventh King to endure a short time and that then the Beast the eighth King should succeed and that he could succeed neither sooner nor later When therefore it will appear that such a seventh King did succeed the sixth and that that seventh did decease at 475 if it shall also appear as it will that this is the very same Beast to whom forty two months are determin'd it will then be most evident his forty two months must begin at 475. 2. To shew That the Kingdom of the Beast must last till the Kingdom of Christ according to the same Laws of Succession can succeed and it can last no longer as also that the Kingdom of Christ must succeed when that Kingdom ends and it can succeed no sooner if then it is expresly said the Kingdom of Christ shall immediately succeed the 1260 Days and that according to this Law of Succession and the course of all Prophecy it must also succeed the forty two months it then will plainly follow the 42 Months and the 1260 Days end together 3. To shew That the 1260 Days must be Time of the Sun and the forty two months must be Time of the Moon and seeing they must be adjusted to one another as ending together and lying both within one common Womb of Time Times Half Time The forty two months by the most exact compare of Lunar and Solar Time can be but 1222 Years and therefore besides all Advantages of Scripture-use of round Number beginning at 475 they most exactly and most necessarily must end at 1697. 4. To shew That the Beast indeed must have every way the Seminal fundamental Nature of such a Beast as he is describ'd to be at the very beginning of his forty two Months as the Infant hath of a Man but need not nor cannot be suppos'd to attain full prophetical Proportions till long after which Time Prophecy hath also dated to him by his Number 666. So that the description of the Empire according to the Fourth Trumpet the Administration of the other Beast and the State of the Witnesses may continue many Years after as they stood at the forty two Months entring and so Prophecy determines of them To begin then with the first of these I find this Order and Head 1 Concert of the Parts of it will be most convictive and demonstrative 1. That Daniel the Apostle Paul and the Apostle John speak all of one and the same Beast 2. That this one and the same Beast hath forty two months determin'd upon him as the just State of his Duration 3. That the Apostle John hath declared that peremptory positive Law of Succession that was the Let of the coming of the Beast into his forty two months For the first Although a multitude of Proofs from the Concert of all Prophecy which either have been or will be farther taken notice of may be given yet That which I will rest upon alone at this time shall be that most convictive one That his End is Destruction by the glorious Appearance of the Kingdom of Christ so that his eminent Character is Son of Perdition in Conformity to that Apostate Apostle Judas so near the Glory of Christ's Resurrection so the Apostle John twice describes him by his going into Perdition Apoc. 17. v. 8. v. 11. and his Destruction is solemnly declared c. 19. and then the Kingdom of Christ succeeds c. 20. c. 21. Thus Daniel in every Vision The great Image was smitten by the Stone cut out of the Mountains without hands growing to a great Mountain filling the Earth by a Kingdom never ending in its ten-toed feet part of Iron and part of Clay so exactly compounded of the Beast out of the Sea with his ten crowned Horns inseparably united with his false Prophetism a Beast out of the Earth Revel 13. The little Horn is a Beast deliver'd to the Flames and the Kingdom under the whole Heaven given to the Saints The King standing up against the Prince of Princes shall be broken without hand At the Accomplishing to scatter the Holy People viz. by this Beast as hath been made to appear All the Wonders of Christ's Kingdom shall be finished Dan. c. 2. v. 24. c. compar'd with Dan. c. 7. 11. c. c. 8. 24 25. c. 12. 7. The Apostle Paul 2 Thess 2 3. c. stiles him the Son of Perdition and foretels his being consumed with the Brightness of the Lords viz. Christ's coming and the Glory of his Appearance Whoever then considers the most notable and notorious Destruction always affix'd to one and the same kind of Power so even in all its manners of Description and such a kind of Destruction as is always declar'd to issue and flow out from the Glory of Christ at his coming to his Kingdom will find It must be one and the same Beast since Christ hath but one such Coming and one such Kingdom as these are describ'd to be nor indeed is there any more than one such Beast so scituated in Time Place and Succession as this will appear to be It is in the second place to be made out that this is the same
to shew himself a Beast whereas yet he could not appear so but must remain in his State Is not till this fall and after it too even till he came to his number that Prophecy might be fulfilled when he ascends out of this Abyss And though his fall was but to the Earth yet because instead of the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven he pretended to he had only the Key of the bottomless Pit he is justly said to rise out of it for that he ascended what was it as the Apostle argues in a much better Case but that he descended first Ephes 4. 9. for seeing he rises to his Power by the Efficacy of his deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish by his sathanick Signs and Wonders by his excommunicational Thunders from beneath by which he affrights men downwards and that much of his Potentacy lies in the management of a false Hell of his own founding It is very proper to him to ascend out of the bottomless Pit and the Power of the Keys he assumes is very ominous to him for what he calls Keys is this one Key of the bottomless Pit and so in just derision of him he carries this device in Prophecy The Key of the bottomless Pit was given him I confess The Patriark of Constantinople was the First in this Assumption the Emulation of which mov'd Gregory it is to be fear'd as a lower cause to so high an Exclamation but though he was First yet he was not to have the Key of the Abyss in Supremacy for Prophecy sees not as Man sees by degrees and as in parcels but at once it therefore calls him that fallen Star alone who was to have this Key although the other was a falling Star also and spake as a Dragon He is then and he alone He that hath under Sathan the Key of the bottomless Pit and though an Angel is call'd afterwards the Angel of the bottomless Pit whom we shall find in its due place very diverse from this Star who may seem to have a better right to this Key we shall yet find he was only a Warlike King of the Locusts under the Title of a Prophet the false Prophet Mahomet but was not could not be this Star whose fall must be from Heaven perpetual even as his aspiring Pretensions to Heaven are so continual as shall be further declared as one who once had a fixation in Heaven which Mahomet never had He that ascends out of the bottomless Pit is he that open'd it and let out the Smoke he opens it he lets out the Smoke out of which the Locusts came but against his own Intention he intended himself to ride in this Cloud as in an infernal Chariot alone but with the Smoke Sathan also ascended and became an Angel of the bottomless Pit in the King of the Locusts who were the Flood out of his Mouth propagating his Kingdom by both the Star and by the King of the Locusts The latter of which was principally a great Judgment of God on the Antichristian Star as shall be shewn at large In the mean Time we find the other Beast ministring to this delivery of the Key of the bottomless Pit under the decree and judicial Ordination of God For they made Trial for him of the Efficacy of the Lamb-like Horns joyn'd with the draconick Idolatry and Persecution and so exercis'd the Power of the first Beast before him while he as one and the chief Revel 13. among them look'd on They essayed the calling fire from Heaven and working lying Miracles in his sight to establish the Grandeur of false Prophecy they stirred up all to worship the first Beast viz. The Roman idolatrous Supremacy and to make an Image of Vniversality to it in such a Roman Catholick Supremacy as of the Vicar of Christ on Earth And even the Eastern Horn that aspired for it self above this Beast yet by approving the Idea by making the Experiment by assuming the Title provok'd and inkindled the Ambition of him who by the divine Decree had the Permission got the Possession and hath for many Ages wedg'd himself fast into it and left the other Horn leisure only to be angry at his defeat while his vain claim justifies the thing as lawful and desirable and therefore gave the occasion to the High sounding Voice of Gregory the Great And it is very observable on this very account the Divine Justice fell all along severely upon the Eastern Empire and Patriarchate by the two first woe-Trumpets especially at the taking of Constantinople and to this day lies heavy upon them so that as the Grecian Emperours gave first to the Constantinopolitan Patriarch and then to the Bishop of Rome this Antichristian Vniversality so most distinctly the Wrath of God was very dreadful upon both the Empire and the whole Hierarchy as so antichristianizing and so it continues and will so far conjoyn them in the Punishment of the Beast and false Prophet as they shall not divorce themselves from them by Repentance For this Prophecy looks upon both the Eastern and Western Hierarchy as one and the same Beast with two Horns under the same grand Beast and their People as one Body of Men Gentiles Inhabitants of the Antichristian Earth and Sea and as two Wings of the same Eagle And they all along are both punish'd in and with one another 'T is not the lesser Controversies among themselves concerning Primacy or some other matters that can dissolve the Antichristian Vnion wherein this Prophecy leaves them it must be sincere Repentance turning from Idolatry Superstition Enmity to the pure Religion and from Pride and Tyranny enjoyed only by one one of the Horns indeed for many years as most nearly allied to the Grand Beast but affected by both that must make that Wall of Partition that hath not yet been made between the Eastern and Western Antichristians or between any parts of each and their Antichristianism In the Interim from this very Time we are upon the Beast falling as a Star to the Antichristian Earth receives as Latin that is strictly Roman the Universality of both East and West as was always design'd by God to be so given or permitted and so by degrees enlightens Rome when all the Rulers of the Day and even of the Night were smitten gone down and set and now he begins to carry the Woman on high even at his first ascending and so gradually as he ascends to his Number And hereby the fallen Star appears to be the same Beast that rises out of the bottomless Pit to war with the Witnesses and therefore must be the same that wars with the Saints who are the Witnesses and who is led captive or taken by the Lamb and his Army of the faithful and true and goes into Perdition that is is cast into the Lake and so the same throughout And when he is so cast into the Lake an Angel of another Character does not fall but descends from Heaven
The Contents of this Treatise are given in Tables annexed to each Part. 1 Part Before the Apostacy in 10 Sections 2 Part During the Apostacy to the last End in 16 Sections A CALENDER OF THE Whole Time contained in Scripture ennobled with the Events of each Part of Time distinguish'd by the true Year of the World according to Scripture the Years before Christ till the Incarnation then the Year of Christ and of the Resurrection to all which is applied the Julian Period  Year of the World Year before Christ Year of the Resur Julian Period TO the perfect Creation and first Sabbatism 1 3987  764 765 To the Flood containing the History of Abel and the Patriarks of the first Roll of the Gyants the Translation of Enoch the seventh from Adam The Ark prepar'd by Noah an Eighth and the Destruction of the old World 1656 2331  2420 To Terah's Death containing the History of Shem or Melchisedeck as he is after known to be with the Patriarks of the 2 d. Roll Of Babel the space of 427 Years 2083 1904  2847 To the going out of Egypt containing the History of the sojourning of Abraham and his Seed of the Promises of Sodom and the â—gyptian Bondage and Deliverance the space of 430 Years 2513 1474  3277 To the building of the Temple begun containing the setting up of the Tabernacle of Testimony the Conquest of Canaan the Time of the Judges of David the space of 480 Years 2993 994  3757 To Solomon's Death containing the Building of the Temple and his illustrious Reign his Fall and Repentance 36 Years 3029 958  3793 To Ezekiel's Vision of the New Jerusalem containing the History of the Kings of Judah the History of the Defection of the ten Tribes and their Kings of the two great Witnesses Elijah and Elisha the Destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple the Captivity by Nebuchadnezzar the space of 390 Years 3419 568  4183 To the End of the Captivity containing the Continuance of the Captivity Nebuchadnezzar's Victory over Egypt Ezek. 29. 17. and Babylon's Fall the space of 40 Years 3459 528  4223 From Cyrus to the Sanctuary cleans'd and to the King of fierce Countenance and understanding dark Sentences broken without hand a Line of 2300 Evenings and Mornings or 2300 Years with its collateral Lines which now follow being also inclusive of the Daily Sacrifice taken away     From the Words first going forth by Cyrus to its compleat being gone forth by Darius Hystaspis and ultimately at Artaxerxes Longimanus's seventh year the space of 75 Years 3534 453  4298 From thence to the Incarnation containing Antiochus's Tyranny and other Troubles the space of 453 Years 3987 1 Yea. of Christ  4751 To the Resurrection containing the Birth private Life publick Ministry and Death of our Lord Jesus Christ to his Resurrection 33 Years 4020 33 1 4784 To Alexander Severus's Death the ballance of Time between the Resurrection and the Apostacy containing the History of the Universal Preaching of the Gospel the space of 202 Years 4222 235 202 4986 To the Apostacy or the beginning of the 1260 Days * Or Time Times Half TIme containing a Vindication of the Gospel by the most rational Apologies constant Sufferings of Christians till the Christian Empire and then the Christian Empire till the taking away the Daily or pure publick Worship the space of 202 Years 4424 437 404 5108 To the End of the first time and Beginning of the second or first of the two Times during the Fall of the Western Empire containing the rising of the Beast at 475 his Fall as a Star from Heaven at 606 his manly Age at 666 from his Conception Anno Domini 59 to that manly Age 725 of the space of 360 Years 4784 797 764 5468 To the End of the second Time or first of the two Times and the Beginning of the third Time containing the Range of the Mahometan Locusts or Saraoens and the Beasts Promotion to a settled Age or of Consistency the space of 360 Years more 5144 1157 1124 5828 To the End of the third or second of the two Times to the Half-time containing the Cavalcade of the Turkish Horse-men and the Beasts declining Age the space of 360 Years more 5504 1517 1484 6188 To the End of the Half-time or to the seventh Trumpet containing the State of the Reformation and since to the Expectation of the Witnesses Rising about 1697 ten Years hence the space of 180 Years 5684 1697 1664 6368 To the End of the last Seventy Five Years of the seventh Trumpet containing the seven Voices and the seven Vials and ending in It is done It is done at 1772. 5759 1772 1739 6443 After this follows new Time or the SABBATISM of the Creation viz. The cubical thousand Years of the glorious Kingdom of Christ     AN EXPLICATION OF Daniel's Grand Line of Time or of his 2300 Evenings and Mornings as given in his four last Chapters In these following Sections SECT I. Of the Vision of the Daily taken away and therein of the 2300 Ev. Morn or the Vision call'd the Vision of the Ev. Morn in general On Dan. chap. 8. THE Vision of the 2300 Evenings and Mornings dates most exactly and precisely the Time from the very Beginning of the Persian Monarchy or the First of Cyrus to the cleansing of the Sanctuary at the new Jerusalem and the breaking of Antichrist without hand or by the stone cut out of the Mountains without hand at the Kingdom of Christ Dan. 8. 14. 25. The order of the former Visions duely consider'd gives great light to this For first there is in the course of Ezekiels Visions a long allotment of Time till the New Jerusalem and a peculiar Sanction of the prophetical Cypher of Time or of a Day for a Year Ezek. 4. 6. That gives full scope aed room to those Monarchies to run their Time as in the Image and the four Beasts in Daniel's two precedent Visions 〈◊〉 2. c. 7. The former of those two or the Vision of the Image gives only a general Appearance of so many Monarchies or Kingdoms or rather of a Monarchy universal shifting from one People and their Kingdom to another and all adverse to the Kingdom of Christ for that could not appear while they were in Play From hence arises such a Line of Time as necessarily is requir'd for four Monarchies to display themselves but because they may be shorter or longer in their duration they give no certain measures only as that there is no History of Action elder than Moses's of the Creation appearing in the World it is an Argument of weight against the World's Eternity so on the other side the daily matter of History arising from many other Kings and Kingdoms and particularly of the Romans assure us the Kingdom of Christ is not yet come because while that lasts the grand foretold Kingdom of Christ cannot
The great attendance of the Divine Spirit is to the Line of Time which it joyns to the Jewish Lines that went before and particularly to Ezekiels 430 Days or Years which just comprehended and ended with the Babylonish Monarchy which Monarchy in a real Calendar I have before more than once said began the Gentiles Times during which Jerusalem lay and was to lye under Foot but just here the Babylonish Monarchy is no farther given in Type although it remains in the former Types to the last but the Future Line of Time is given in 2300 Evenings Mornings from the Persian Monarchy beginning And this latter could not have been given with Prophetick Secrecy and yet also without Confusion if the former had not been omitted whose Time given before could not enter into this but it must confound Time every way But thus this principal Line reaches from Literal Babylon fallen to mystical Babylon fallen from Literal Jerusalem near to be rebuilt with its Temple to the New Jerusalem which much adorns this Line of Time and sets these two just even from Point to Point It is true The Four as Vniversal Monarchies are together the great Canale of Time till the glorious Kingdom of Christ whatever great States or Kingdoms were coexistent with them or any of them at any Time or have arisen since do not mingle with this Stream which runs strait on to this end nor are any of themselves adopted into it sooner than the just Time of their Succession into Vniversal Monarchy nor do they abide any longer in it as a Calendar of Time after once they are fallen from that Vniversal Monarchy each successive Monarchy subduing the precedent takes it up and in the Roman Monarchy the Dragon resigns his Seat and Power to the Beast the Imperial to the Antichristian without any Conquest to whom as the seventh Roman Head and Vniversal King the ten Kings giving their Power the fourth Beast still survives differently from all the rest of the Successions for each Succession was by Force besides this so in This the whole Line is continued to the Kingdom of Christ But if any of these Kingdoms falls in its order of Succession and becomes great afterwards on another Bottom as the Persian subdued by the Grecian the Grecian by the Roman the one afterwards rising in its own Name the other in Mahomet's yet they disturb not this order nor so much as enter a-new into this Calendar of Time And because of this real substantial Calendar of Time in these Monarchies the first Act of Christ's Kingdom is recorded by the Apostle Paul to be the putting down all Rule Authority 1 Cor. 15. â—6 and Power referring especially to these four Monarchies the great Emblem of such Rule and Power viz. when the Kingdoms of this World become the Kingdoms of the Lord and of his Christ Rev. 11. 15. Then all this Calendar of Rule and Power is at an end That therefore which is most considerable in the Explanation of this Course of Time farther to us is That whereas the Gentiles Times viz. this substantial Calendar of the four Monarchies began in the Babylonian so long as that Calendar is in presenting the Babylonian is never omitted but is the Capital in it but when it comes to this Numeral Line or the 2300 Ev. Mor. it is then omitted because the Numeral Line runs not upon any Revolutions of these Monarchies but upon some eminent Providence of God towards his Church either of Mercy towards it or its suffering under the Tyranny of some of these Monarchies especially the Bestian as will be seen all along which is a very clear Reason why the Babylonian is first so chief in the Calendar of the Monarchies for that being one and the first it must be so in the Real But when it comes to the Numeral it is of no use because it had been given in the last numeral Line as then existing it is not given in the following Numeral because it was then past and would disorder the Account The real Calendar is taken from each Vniversal Monarchy that had the Jews particularly the Tribe of Judah in Subjection and so oppress'd Christ's Kingdom here the Babylonian was the first the Persian the second the Grecian the third the fourth the Roman under which as Imperial first the Jews were desolated The manly Birth or Christ as King was watch'd as by a Dragon Christians lay as martyr'd under the Altar and then under it as Antichristian lies subdued the spiritual Israel till both That and the Twelve Tribes are restor'd by Christ's Kingdom So these are the Times of the Gentiles before which neither the twelve Tribes nor the Apostolical Church are fully restor'd or can be From all which it is most evident that though the Vision is not dated from the Persian Monarchy as if it was given for the Persian Monarchy's sake yet the 2300 Ev. Morn begin just when that begins and very fitly because the Persian Cyrus found the Temple fallen and the daily Service of the Jews taken away and proclaims the Restoration which makes the Date as we shall see And this is the first thing that was to be prov'd The second Proposition follows viz. That the twenty Propos 2. three hundred days of this Vision as also the Things contained in it run down and reach to the end of All or to the Glorious Kingdom of Christ. Of this we have many Arguments in the Vision it self which having briefly directed first unto I will endeavour by farther strong Proof from the whole course of Prophecy to establish it Every Vision of Daniel's except the following Vision of the Argu. 1 seventy Weeks which hath the high and noble Subject of the Death and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ making an end of Sin and bringing in everlasting Righteousness but else every Vision runs expresly to the last End and Kingdom of Christ. And whether even that does not after the Desolation of Judaism give a Prospect of their Restoration also signified by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or until the Consummation until which their Desolations are to last and no longer I leave to the Learned however It certainly bears its part in carrying on Time to that end But the very Shape and Design of all the other Visions is most apparently That End and therefore I conclude of This also The often mention of the End Three Times the Vision and Argu. 2 the End are conjoyn'd At the time of the End the Vision shall Dan. 8. be and the Exposition of the Vision is to make Daniel know what shall be in the last end of the Indignation and at the Time appointed the End shall be Now what End can be so absolute as to be understood by its naming only except that End of Christ's Kingdom so well known by the former Visions and by the following Vision chap. 11. v. 27. When because of this End to which every thing has led and made no
Story betwixt these Visions and the Messiah But the so strange the so unaccountable foul longsome Apostacy of Antichrist lying so long on the so excellent Religion of the Gospel ecclipsing the Kingdom of Christ Full of all the most pernicious Effects is deservedly Astonishing to Angels and Men and captivating the Many the Wise and the Great against all Scripture Reason and even common Sense and were it not for that Captivation as unworthy Confutation as the Alchoran The very History of Antiochus as it were proper to Antichrist is only to be found in the Antichristian Canon of Scripture and only Typically given in Daniels Prophecy shewing it of no great Account with God The Time The understanding dark Sentences the growing great not by his own Power are no way applicable to any historical Memoirs of Antiochus A Prince furious active enterprising at the Head of his warlike Affairs Lastly the very Ev. Mor. of this Line a manner of Speech not used in Scripture from the very first of Genesis till now lead us to the new Creation to the Restitution of all things to the bright Mornings Stars display of his Beams and in the mean time even as Days compounded of Ev. and Mor. so these Ev. Mor. with equal Fitness and Naturalness sustain the prophetical Type of Time Days for Years Of all which let this be the applicatory Remark to lead Remark us with Confidence Assurance due Preparation Faith Prayer and earnest Desire to him who saith Behold I make all things new and immediately after as it were in remembrance Dan. 8. 26. compar'd with Rev. 21. 5. of his Declarative Amen upon the Vision of the Ev. and Mor. It is true imposes his perfectory Finitive Amen When he says no longer Seal but write in Capital Letters These Sayings are faithful and true Whoso then by following the Lamb whithersoever he goes overcomes shall inherit all Things Christ will be his Father He shall be the Son of God and of Christ. But the Fearful who are frighted into Antichristian Cympliances the Abominable c. sunk down into the Defilements of all sorts proper to the foul State Falshood and the great Lye of the Apostacy shall have their part in the Lake that burns with Fire and Brimstone where the Beast and the False Prophet are Let us then live by Faith and not draw back for He that shall come will come and will not tarry Even so Come Lord Jesus Come quickly Amen SECT III. In which a Line of Seventy Five Years precedent to the seventy Weeks is asserted and endeavour'd to be prov'd Dan. 9. HAving in the precedent Sections establish'd the Grand Line of 2300 Ev. Mor. and their Determination to the Kingdom of Christ I now proceed to the Distribution of this Line and first to the Line that must however subordinate and collateral yet set out at the very same instant with the 2300 Ev. Mor. and that is of the Word going forth Now of this It is most evident by Scripture that it must begin at the Persian Monarchy or the Monarchy of Cyrus for at Darius the Mede to whom Scripture allows only one Dan. 9. Year it did not begin for in that Year Daniel prayed and had this Vision in Return of Prayer as appears enough throughout this Chap. At Cyrus's first year it did begin for so Ezra assures us chap. 1. For must not that most necessarily be the going forth of the Word when Cyrus sent forth his Proclamation and put it in Writing v. 1 2. c But although the Word began here to go forth yet it is most manifest It did not here attain its effect for then would it not have rested and ceased to go forth any farther But we find it stop'd after the Altar set up and the Foundations laid all the Reign of Ahasuerus and in the Days of Artaxerxes which two as we shall after reason must be Cambyses Ezra c. 4. 24. the Son of Cyrus and the Counterfeit Smerdis so that it as plainly went forth again in the Reign of Darius known in common History by the Name of Darius Hystaspis After that although it came much nearer its Perfection yet it was contradicted in the Days of Xerxes Ahasuerus by so severe a Decree for the Destruction of the Jews throughout all the Provinces so that Artaxerxes call'd by Historians Longimanus Esth 3. 8. illustrated his seventh Year with the Word compleatly going forth The Eccho of which for the building of the Wall was in his twentieth and in his thirty second the Quavers of that same Word in leave to Nehemiah to restore Jerusalem into its perfect Order and Polity which plainly argue the Word gone forth in his seventh Year Now although the great Perplexities of the Persian Chronology are no way to my main Intention to be concern'd in yet the making it Evident that the Going forth of the Word must take up such a Time as 75 Years is of very deep behoof in that Intention both as it gives great Assurance to the former principal Line of 2300 Years shewing how seventy five of them were spent and also as it will inlighten some Concernments of the Kingdom of Christ to which all Accounts of Time tend Upon this whole Consideration I shall endeavour the proof of such a space implied in the word going forth And first I shall observe that which I do not look upon so considerable as to call it an Argument The very Phrase of going forth implies some protracted and prolonged going Mich. 5 2. forth by the Word The same Word is us'd of him whose goings forth are from everlasting But more enforcingly to press this I thus argue It is impossible to spare any of those great Decrees we have Argu. 1 so specially recorded Ezra 1. c. 1. c. 6. c. 7. from the words going forth Not the first because it was the first so much foretold of formerly by the Prophet Esay of so famous Memory and that first broke the Bonds of the Jewish Captivity Who can with possible Reason suppose That had no Interest in the words going forth in which Prophecy gloried so long before-hand that was even pointed upon by Gabriel and from which the other Decrees were deriv'd as is expresly mention'd in Darius's Decree Ezra c. 6. compar'd with Dan. 9. 21 Nor can the second Decree of Darius be denied a place in it which so united it self with Cyrus's Decree that if either was the word going forth both must be so for tho they were distant in Time they were one in Substance and by it the Temple was built And least of all can the Decree of Artaxerxes in his seventh Ezra 7. year be impeached as to this Right for it was the perfective Decree so liberal and ample with such Peculiarities in it all along that there is not a word in the whole but yields an Argument It excells all that went before and leaves no Room for any to come after It
him be farther justified that is clear'd from the Imputations laid upon him by the Apostacy and let him farther also vindicate and justifie himself from it by a Ministration of the Vials on the Beast and doubling to the infamous Woman the Cup she had given and thereby making Preparation to the Kingdom of Christ Thus is that great Time in its curious Emblematism in Prophecy c. 22. 11. compar'd with Rev. c. 15. c. 18. v. 6. And because all this should by the Will of Christ be yet drawn out more definitively He is pleas'd to add From the Time of the Daily or Continual in the very same only word Tammith no where applied alone to Sacrifice from that taken away by the Apostacy I say are given exactly till the seven Thunders unseal'd thirty additional Days to the 1260 Days viz. 1290 Days and to that very End so often mention'd of the Lots of Blessedness by the Addition of 45 more are given 1335 and all cast into Indictions or eighty nine Fifteens a way of accounting Time so notoriously known to have come into use after Constantine as elsewhere shall be farther urg'd and most evidently characterizing this Time And it is much to be observ'd This so clear Line is given here as in the Revelat. after a Supposition of the Book open'd at the Half-time and not before except in this Cypher of Daniel's Time Times Half-Time not to be understood but by the 1260 Days and other Apocalyptical Lines Now from all this may be collected by compare with the Apocalyptick Prophecy a Line of Time as exact as from the very Ages of the Patriarks allowing the Hebrew Copies there and the prophetical Days for Years here For first the 2300 Ev. Mor. are so exact undoubted an entire Number as to leave no Dispute if granted to be a Line of Time The Weeks ending at the Resurrection is so very full and compleat a Vision before this Vision not only in the Order of Prophecy but of the express Dates of Darius's First and Cyrus's Third The sealing of Prophecy in that Vision just at the End of that Vision of the Weeks and the Book shut and seal'd in this Vision joyn those two Visions close together The sealed Time and of the Book shut by the Apocalyptick Prophecy in so orderly a Progress as by compare with History it is found cannot but be acknowledg'd to be 400 Years from the last half-week ending Then the 1335 are so close joyn'd that they cannot be forc'd asunder and so riveted into the End both by being a farther Resolution to Daniel in his Complaint of not understanding for his Knowledge of the End of Wonders as also by the Blessedness and Daniel's standing in his Lot Besides the Evidence from the Indictions so open and industrious is not small But what could Daniel's Lot in the End of the Days be of or in but of and in the New Jerusalem and its holy Priesthood It is impossible then the days should fly back from the End these therefore being the whole of the 2300 except 75 the 75 must be plac'd in the Forefront of all the Number as we have seen what Reason from the Vision of the Words going forth hath been found so to place just so many And if we allow that Number to be 75 there is as great a certainty the sealed Time must be just four hundred for one adjusts the other necessarily if 75 before the Weeks there must be 400 between the Weeks or 490 Years and the 1335 if 400 there then 75 here for so the 2300 require Now how each of these Spaces of Time the 400 of the Seals the Time Times Half-time or twelve hundred sixty days of the Trumpets the Thirty of the Voices the forty five of the Vials how these I say are all replenish'd with their proper Furniture we must be instructed by the Prophecy of the Revelation What great Reason have we now to adore the Spirit of Remark Jesus Christ in this Prophecy of Daniel and to search what or what manner of Time it signifies in this sure Word of Prophecy giving in prophetick Schemes the very same Thing that the Transfiguration in so glorious a majestick Appearance represented viz. Christ the Sun of Righteousness with his Stars of the first Magnitude Prophets and Apostles those wise turning many to Righteousness and then the lesser ministerial Stars and the sporadick Fellowship of Saints included appear therein as those who are so turn'd to Righteousness And this Prophecy having been so long in the World and traversing such spaces of Time like a vast Tract of Earth with Charts Maps and Sculptures fitted to them and that came with such Certainty and Assurance into every hand is inlighten'd and enlivened with new and fresh Delineatories of the New Testament Prophecy or the Revelation Certainly had not God in Justice upon the Apostacy diverted the Thoughts and Labours of his Servants from the Illustration and Demonstration of them so that they have not travell'd herein as in other parts of Christian Verity nor by such a Concert of Minds and Judgments herein the Evidences both against Atheism and the Apostacy had much exceeded what they arise to now No Miracles except in constant and present Motion before our Eyes nor hardly then being so intellectually sensible Arguments of the Divine Being of Christianity and against Antichristianism as these Prophecies from Time to Time fulfill'd And this very Prophecy of Daniel is a most certain Ground to expect such a Prophecy as that of the Revelation for one cannot be understood without the other and how admirably do they conspire For just at that sealing at the end of the last half Week begins the unsealing also or the Events coming to pass in their just order and the Apostolical Ministry running to and fro to increase Knowledge and just Scals 400. Rev. c. 6. then 1260 in the six first Trumpets c. 8. c. 9 Then 30 45 in the Voices c. 14. and Vials of the 7th Trumpet c. 15. c. 16. as they have hitherto proceeded exactly according to their Time and Place so far as within ten years end of the sixth Trumpet so shall they proceed in the seventh Trumpet in the Voices and the Vials till the last end of Wonders be produced and perfected Blessed therefore is He that waiteth and cometh thereunto he shall tho out of this Body certainly then stand in his Lot of that New Jerusalem State and Priesthood in a Body of the First Resurrection SECT VIII Wherein is given a Prefatory Survey of the whole Apocalyptical Prophecy I Am now brought down by the course of prophetick Time to that very Point of Time where the Series of Apocalyptical Visions begins so that although the Line of Time was by Daniel stretch'd over whole Apocalyptick Time in the Number given to him and in a general way some Umbrages of those Visions had been presented by Ezekiel and even by all the Prophets since the World began
the whole Series of Visions concerning the Beast deriv'd from the Dragon will be best understood and most fully believ'd even as at the Reformation there was most necessarily an Acknowledgment of a long Apostacy of the cruel Tyranny of the Beast over true Christians and a visible Pledge The Ten Kings on the Head of the Beast that carries the Woman would at length fall from it but the End of that Half-Time will make a farther both Notoriety and Assurance of these things This allowed the Prophecy takes no Freedome but what is due to the gravest History to place by way sometimes of Anticipation sometimes of Recollection the Parts of the History so as may best serve the Purposes of the History And yet we cannot deferr so little to the Majesty of Divine Prophecy as is even challengeable by Humane History For that is justly entitled to a Right of secret and insensible Transitions Connexions Transpositions from one part to another which require leisurely Meditation and thoughtful Pauses to find them and yet are so plac'd as when found they give Light one to another with Vsury Altho therefore I rise up with greatest Reverence and Honour to those great Names who have thought otherwise I can allow no Beginning of Apocalyptical Time anew either at the open Book ch 11. or at ch 12. but only a Recollection of those things after their redundant Swellings out of their Channels one to the first Trumpet the latter to the fifth Seal Only The two Systemes have each one and the same Epoch given particularly to each The Churches are close and evenly cemented and souldered one to another and so the Seals Trumpets c. and their Connexion even hermetically seal'd And Both from the same Epoch the Resurrection of Christ derive themselves And as to the Interpretation of the whole even as it is a Rule of great use in the Interpreting General Scripture that the literal Sense is to be preferr'd where no Analogy of Faith or Scripture-Reason is destroy'd by it so here the mystical sense is rather to be chosen where no such Injury is committed upon the Analogy of Scripture Truth and yet as in the one case a subordinate mystical sense may be allowed so in this a subordinate literal sense may be allowed To give only two or three Instances Hearing and Reading this Prophecy hath first the mystical sense of a close Conformity to the Rules of Faith Worship and Practice according to it which makes All Blessed who so read and so hear tho' they do not interpret nor concern themselves in the Interpretation of this Prophecy and yet there is in the literal sense an Accumulative Honour and Happiness on those who joyn both these Senses in themselves together As on the other side They who add and take away by Antichristianism from the Words of it by breaking its Holy Measures in Faith Worship and Practice shall lose their part in its Promises and have their part in its Plagues altho they neither added nor took away in the litteral sense and yet They shall receive accumulative Plagues who have done the first and then by false and distorted Interpretations added the latter also Thus Opening the Book of this Prophecy and its Seals are principally the several Effects of the Kingdom of Christ and that principal one at the Reformation and not the Exposition of the Book or a new course of Prophecy and yet it is subordinately true There was then a greater Clearness and Illustration of the whole Doctrine of the Christian Religion and a new order as it were of Holy Prophecy and Instruction And this Prophecy did then Recall its own Discovery of Things at that Time after the Apostacy so long darkning it and the Gospel and enlarge its former brief Notes And so Coming quickly to pass hath the literal sense That then immediately began Apocalyptical Events each in their own order to come speedily and immediately to pass altho' so many hundred years run out ' ere all come to pass As an Army may be said to come presently when the Avaunt Corriers first appear altho' the Rere may be long in coming because of the numerous Body coming on orderly and in just Files Thus every Apocalyptical Event was on the Wing and darted it self into Existence without the least of slumbring or lingring when its Time was to come But the mystical sense is that whereas that sublime Event of the Death and Resurrection of Christ rose up as a Mountain dividing and parting the former World and Time from the latter Time or the last Days and All beyond the Resurrection was as a Book clos'd and seal'd up so as that it could not till the Resurrection make an offer of Appearance Then it did and therefore then properly seal'd down with seven Seals and yet by their opening it was in a daily motion to its Appearance But those two Worlds were of such different Lines of Communications that nothing pass'd in prophetical Account into Existence or Being out of one into the other even as the World on the one and the other side of the Equinoctial Line are remarkably taken notice of as two distinct Parts of the World how near soever they joyn who are on each side next to it Thus nothing on the other side the Line before the Resurrection was so much as coming to pass that was to be after the Resurrection or to have any motion accounted to it But after that Resurrection every thing pertaining to the latter days is describ'd as coming quickly to pass each in its own Order and Time and knowing its Place and marching in its own Distances none as that Army Joel 2. 7 8. thrusting another or breaking rank but all duely plac'd in their Climes as on this side the Line And now having given this general view of the Apocalyptical Prophecy and its Order of Times I will discourse briefly first on the Systeme of the Church-Prophecy or of the seven Churches and observe their Concert with those Lines of Time that rule the Evenings and Mornings or Nights and Days of Apocalyptical Time SECT IX Wherein a Proof is given The seven Churches carry with them a Line of Time contemporizing with whole Apocalyptick Time Apoc. c. 2. c. 3. THat these seven Churches are intended to bear by their Symbolismes a Line of Time equal to the whole Apocalyptick Time I shall at present use no other Argument but these general ones reserving the more particular Treaty upon these Churches to another part of this Discourse These Churches are as the whole Prophecy of a Mystical Argu. 1 Sense and Importance Christ therefore prefixes I will shew you the Mystery of the seven Candlesticks the seven Candlesticks are the seven Churches where the meaning is not that the expounding the Stars into Angels of the Churches and the Candlesticks into Churches is all the Mystery opened For even Angels of the Churches must be acknowledged to be still Mystery or a mystical Expression except
the silence of any such Voice moves Enquiry Why there is no such Voice and every Visum or Thing to be seen in both sorts of Seals the Voic'd or the seemingly silent Seals are to be judg'd of as they have Relation to the Kingdom of Christ especially because we shall find the three last Seals without Voices have something to supply the want of the Voices of those four Living Creatures 3. As to the Time and its Space that is measur'd out by these Seals seeing no Line of Time is expresly given with them it is impossible to be found out but either first by some of the Visa or things seen at the opening of these Seals that are so certain as to be necessarily agreed in and thereby measuring from them on each side of them to take the whole Course or secondly by the having good Assurance what are the Visa of the first and last of these Seals that thereby we may know when they begin and when they end by the most undoubted Accounts of History or thirdly by observing if there be any Light concerning the just middle Point of their Time or lastly by some other Line of Time that may how much larger soever so as to comprehend it yet set Limits to it in its Beginning Middle and End by some certain Line of Time that must end just before it and some other Line of Time that must follow it and that all taken together can answer that whole Line And all these ways I shall use to come to the exact Measure of the Space of the seven Seals and what Measures of Time are and ought to be allow'd to them Let us then examine the Importance of every Seal first by what it discovers of the Kingdom of Christ upon the joyning of the Visum or thing to be seen and the Voice together or remarking upon the No Voice and the equivalent Supply with the Visum or thing to be seen and then collect the Time of these seven Seals The Visum or thing to be seen of the first Seal is as is Seal 1 hardly controverted by any The riding out of Christ on his white Horse with his Bow and the Right of a Crown conquering and to conquer This then was the Aim of Christ to obtain his Crown in the first place by the pure and holy Arms and Power of his Gospel in the Vniversal Perfect Ministry of the Apostles and till the Effect of that was tryed he makes shew of no other whatever farther Aim Christ might have if his Gospel was not submitted to Thus is Christ riding out prophesied of of Old Ride prosperously because of Truth Meekness and Righteousness Ps 45. 3. And upon this Horse he rides out with final Victory Rev. 19. whose Name is the Word of God This then was then the State of Christ's Kingdom the making an Universal Offer of it self to Jews and Gentiles by that high Ministry of Persons immediately guided and infallibly inspir'd and accomplish'd with the Gift of Tongues and Power of Miracles to make the Publication of that Decree Thou art my Son This Day have I begotten thee Ask of me and as I have set Thee upon my Holy Hill of Zion by thy Resurrection so I will give Thee the Heathen for thy Inheritance and the uttermost Ends of the Earth for thy Possession And if they will not submit Thou shalt break them with a Rod of Iron and dash them in pieces like a Potters Vessel Psal 2. 6. The Apostolical Voice deep and loud as Thunder royal as of a Lyon the first Living Creature Come and see is a farther Assurance That this was then the State of Christ's Kingdom in this free and universal Offer of it self It bespoke the World therefore in the Language of the rest of that Psalm Be Wise now O ye Kings Be Instructed ye Judges of the Earth Serve the Lord with Fear Rejoyce with Trembling Kiss the Son lest He be angry and for breaking his Bands and casting his Cords from you He break you at last as a Potters Vessel with a Rod of Iron or as the Stone cut out of the Mountain without Hands shivers the Image of which the next Seal gives a Type Now this Appearance of Christs Kingdom and the most Holy declar'd Annointed in it was absolutely necessary to make known the thing seal'd and to be unseal'd and that the End might be known by the Beginning and the whole Compass of the Time of the Seals by Both. For nothing could make all these more known nor the stay the sealing had on this Kingdom from appearing more manifest than this its offer to appear at the end of the last half week in the Apostolical Preaching and yet Prophecy and Vision concerning it seal'd up so that it could not bring forth this Kingdom till its just Time constituted by the Father and the Oath of Christ himself and that in regard of the Obstinacy of the Body of the Jewish Nation and of the World of the Gentiles Immediately upon the refusal of this King upon the Holy Seal 2 Hill of Zion He began to use his Rod of Iron and sent out the Red Horse of War the Visum or Thing to be seen under the second Seal joyned with the Voice of the Gospel Come and See but abated and weakened not a Voice of Thunder Whereas had the Kingdom been accepted the Thunder should not only have continued but multiplyed into Thunders and Voices and grown lowder and lowder to introduce the Kingdom But the Antichristian Kingdom upon the True Kingdom rejected work'd on and enervated the Voice though it was still Apostolical Come and See As the Voice of an Ox as if it self were Falling a Sacrifice at the Altar deploring the slaughter then coming upon the World So this second living Creature The State of the Kingdom therefore was as retreated in the Gracious and Merciful Offer The Voice was not so Grand and Sounding but instead of it He that sat on the Red Horse of War had a Great Sword given him and It was Given to Him that He should take Peace from the Earth and that Men should kill one another This certainly was especially verified in those Desolations of the Jews under Vespasian and Titus and those succeeding War-like Emperours Trajan and Hadrian under the first of which the Destruction of Jerusalem was so dreadful and bloody till the last ruines by Hadrian That no Time nor History was ever deeper dyed in Blood nor could this be without dismal Recoyls of the Great Sword upon the Empire it self within the Bowels of which it was continually sheath'd insomuch that Hadrian in his account of the final Wars with the Jews omitted the usual Preface in his Letters to the Senate Ego quidem exercitus valemus We and our Army are well This he suppressed as not agreeing to that Season of so great loss of Blood to the Romans This was a very affrightful appearance of this Kingdom and of great Evidence
of its Greatness and Power of Revenges especially upon the Jews those Murtherers and Enemies that would not have Christ reign over them and it returned back upon the Gentiles also and the Roman Empire guilty of the same Opposition to the Kingdom of Christ though not against the same Light nor with the same unnaturalness for as to them He came more particularly to his own and his own receiv'd him not and therefore having after the crucifying of him rejected his Dominion the People of that Prince Vespasian Came and destroyed the City and the Sanctuary as with a Flood and Torrent of Vengeance and now unto the End of the War Desolations upon the Jews were determin'd and by the overspread of the abominable Armies was pour'd upon the Desolate by Hadrian after the Desolation of Titus Daniel 9. ult Now this great Judgment and Desolation as a grand Argument of the Truth of Christianity in Revenge of which this Desolation came upon the Jews and the Reverberations or Repercussions and Returnings of it upon the Heathen Empire and their Persecutions of Christians was a great Subject for the Apostolical Voice to enlarge it self upon and to perswade Men to pay Homage to the King of Kings who could thus avenge himself and so of great Use was that Sound of the Voice Come and See that beholding the Desolations that were made by Christ in the Earth they might be still and know that He was God and exalt him in the very Heathen Earth After this severe Vengeance of Christ by the Rider of the Seal 3 Red Horse there ensues the opening of the third Seal and the Thing to be seen under it was a Black Horse and He that sat upon it had a pair of Ballances in his Hand and the Apostolical Voice continuing as under the last former Seals Come and See and it was the Voice of the third living Creature the Voice as of a Man Now that we may judge of the State of the Kingdom under this Seal it is to be closely examined what this Visum or Thing to be seen imports even the Black Horse and the Rider with a Pair of Ballances in his Hand and then the distinct Voice in the midst of the Living Creatures It hath been generally interpreted all to Famine as if the Seals were a Course of Judgments but besides that neither the First nor the Fifth Seals carry any Signification of Judgment by a more sagacious Inspection into the spectacle of this Seal after that forenam'd excellent Duumvirate of Apocalyptical Interpreters Mr. Mede and Dr. More and compare of it with the Voice of the third living Creature as of a Man I am abundantly satisfied the Black Horse and the Ballances in the Hand of the Rider are an Emblem of that solemn Imperatorial Justice of the Emperours of this Third Seal the Antonines especially that great Mirror of Justice to Magistrates Alexander Severus in whom I account the interval of this Seal to End who bore in his Hand continually in all Administrations that great Ballance of the World that Ballance of commutative Justice given by our Saviour Do as you would have done to you and no otherwise and this as so remarkable in it self and of a higher Prophetical Vse as we shall Discourse when we come to the Time affix'd to these Seals and particularly to this A Voice in the midst of the living Creatures calls to the more solemn Observation of a Measure of Wheat for a Penny Three Measures of Barley for a Penny and see that thou hurt not the Oyl and the Wine And now the State of the Kingdom in Relation to this Visum I estimate by those highly Rational and Apocalyptick Discourses for Christianity by Justin Martyr Athenagoras Apollonius in his publick Account of Christianity to the Roman Senate Clemens Alexandrius Tertullian Origen Minutius Felix who all appeal'd to these Just and Manly Emperors and offer'd to lay Christianity before them as Equal Judges and that would but shew themselves Men. And Alexander Son of Mammaea a Christian Lady Severus was so far prevail'd upon by those weighty Reasons that History hath reported him to have decided for Christianity and as he shewed a constant Reverence to that great Apothegme of the Saviour of the World so to have built a Temple in Honour to him upon which very last particular yet I lay no weight as being too doubtful But the other Parts of the State of this Kingdom of Christ born up by the manliest Efforts of Reason manag'd by those Apostolick Persons before nam'd before those forenam'd Emperours and Alexander particularly are so beyond all Historical Dispute as to sway me much more than those inquisitive searches for some Dearth or Famine that might be adjusted to the Time of this Seal For I account it a Rule in this and all other parts of this Prophecy That the Interpretation depend not upon dark and obscure Parts of History but upon the most Conspicuous Open and Clear and that are most known and notorious in it And it is to me a just Suspition upon any Interpretation that is otherwise grounded After this gracious Tryal and Essay upon the Heathen Empire Seal 4 to draw it by the Cords of a Man and by the Bands of Reason immediately follows the Fourth Seal In which open'd the Visum or Thing to be seen is the Pale Horse and in the Place of any Imperial Rider sits Death and Hades the Grave or Hell followes it as its attendant Emblem and the Voice of the Fourth living Creature as an Eagle drawn by the Carcase says Come and see This imports that Complication of Evils and Judgments The Sword the Famine the Pestilence and the Beasts of the Earth and Power was given to Death over a fourth part of the Earth or every fourth of it that is upon all Quarters of it Under this Seal then in the Time of those many cruel and short liv'd Emperours between Alexander Severus and Dioclesian which were as Beasts of the Earth for savageness and so are a most famous Historical Commentary upon this Seal is shewen the mighty Vengeance and Wrath of God upon an impenitent and imperswasible Empire and this by that Apostolical Voice to Come and See or to consider it the State of the Kingdom vindicating it self is so far declar'd that it was even ready to break in with Fury upon the Heathen World and that Patience so much injur'd and abus'd was now about to flame out in utmost Wrath so far therefore the Kingdom of Christ was advanc'd as to have made its last Tryal of Grace upon Pagan Rome and upon this undoubtedly the Apostolical Ministry insisted in its Come and See as Ezekiel Ezek. 14. from 12 to 22. of old as God saith there When I bring my four great Judgments The Sword Pestilence Famine and the Beasts of the Earth though Noah Job and Daniel stood before me to turn away my Wrath They should deliver only their own Souls And now
as to the State of the Church all along these Seals past There was a plain Appearance of it in the Apostolick Voices till just the Entrance of the fourth Seal From that Time these Voices ceas'd which had so far as supported by the Characters of Imperial History declar'd to us the Times and States of the Church as before drawn out in the Labour and Patience and Sufferings of the Ephesine Church while those Apostolical Voices lasted although there was such a Leaven of the Apostacy hid in it that it was charg'd to have left its first Love one great Instance of which was in Victor's Excommunication of the Asian Churches upon the score of the unwritten Ceremony of keeping Easter at all much more unwritten as to Criticism of Time which made that so great Fewd The Fifth Seal so plainly opens in the Sufferings of the Seal 5 Christian Martyrs as to assure us This Prophecy as also other Scripture-prophecies and Notes of Time are for the sake of the Church and not of Heathen Empires and States yet by the Course of the Seals we may easily know at what hour of the Empire it was as by referring to the peculiar foregoing Church-prophecy we know under what Symbol of the Church it lies and from both That it was the last and cruel ten Years Persecution or ten Days Tribulation begun by Dioclesian while the Christian Church was under that peculiar Symbol of the Church of Smyrna That it was about the Time of Dioclesian the Current of the former Seals and the immediately following Desolation of Heathenism under Constantine assure us That it was under the Symbol of the Church of Smyrna its peculiar Character of Sufferings and ten Days Tribulation make out as also in that there was no longer any Apostolical Voice but the Voice of Souls that were gone out of martyr'd Bodies it signifies the Synagogue of Sathan near an height and from that very occasion of the Tombs Relicks Memories and Veneration of Martyrs and Trust in their Negotiation out of the Body for those they left behind in it growing much higher However God graciously accepts this Suffering Church and lays no Imputation upon it but only on the Sathanick Synagogue He seems to have more respect to the Souls Complaint than to the Survivers of that Church He appoints them white Robes but as unconcern'd in Mediations for any in this World they are commanded to rest and there is on their Instance a Signification of a new Roll of Martyrs under Antichrist when the whole Number of those of the first Resurrection should be compleat over whom the second Death should have no Power This Seal then is the very Joynt betwixt the Kingdom of Paganism falling but not yet fallen and that short Appearance of Christ's Kingdom in the Christian Empire till Theodosius the Great The Army of Martyrs had not yet overcome by the Word of the Testimony which they held The Kingdom of Christ was not yet celebrated with that Doxology chap. 12. But there was nothing came between this Cry of the Souls and that Kingdom although speedily surpris'd by Antichristianism into which Pagan Demonolatry was first transplanted on this very occasion of Martyrs Sufferings compleated within this Seal especially And thus we have the State of the Kingdom of Christ in the Church within this Seal assur'd by one of the most famous Monuments of Ecclesiastick History The sixth Seal is that great Seal opened by which the Heathen Seal 6 State of the Roman Empire was demolish'd and which carries most abundant Instruction of this whole Time of the Seals and also of the Kingdom of Christ in his Church during that Time 1. That Heathen Idolatry that had seated it self as in the Heavens and from thence reach'd down it self into the Earth and in the Deep is as by an Earthquake remov'd from below and as by a Tempest above is dismounted and deposed from thence so that here Sathan as the Dragon was cast down from Heaven as by Lightning according to the Vision chap. 12. 2. The Emperours or Kings of the Earth and all its great Men lay'd aside their Greatness even to their Imperial Purple and Diadems as particularly Dioclesian the Arch-Persecutor and Maximian with him mov'd not so much by any thing as by a divine Terror by the Fear of him that sate on the Throne and of the Lamb. And this is given as a lively Type of Christ's glorious Appearance in the Destruction of his Enemies Who will be able to stand in that Day of his Wrath What Mountains Dens or Caves will then open to receive affrighted men 3. From hence it plainly appears What was to be open'd by Christ's opening of these Seals even no other than the glorious visible Kingdom of Christ and not his spiritual Kingdom only As an eminent Assurance of which He declar'd himself in the preaching of the Gospel and a Crown was given to him as an Acknowledgment of his Right though to obtain it he was to go out conquering and to conquer Here then in this Christian Empire beginning at the sixth Seal and so going on in the seventh Seal to Theodostus's Victory over all the Remains of Heathenism after Julian in the Senate Magistracy and People of Rome gather'd to a Head in Eugenius and Argobastes This Kingdom appear'd as in an Emblem and earnest of it self and so it is celebrated chap. 12. with Praise and Triumph as in Heaven though even there surpris'd 4. Here the State of Christ's Kingdom in the Church is solemnly declar'd and also as in the Christian Empire In the Church to shew the high towring Synagogue of Sathan There is no Voice of the Church but of an Angel crying to the four Angels not to hurt c. a certain Indication of bad Symptoms appearing at this in it self happy Change 2. There was a pure Church and Kingdom of Christ yet publick and visible but upon the Retreat for it was just now retiring and about to be seal'd that is under that over-growing Synagogue 3. This Kingdom of Christ in his Church was to have abating the general Unhappiness of fallen sinful Man a more quiet and illustrious State than heretofore viz. in a Christian Empire for till the whole Time of sealing the Servants of God was past the four Angels that had the four first Trumpets were commanded to hold the Wind that no such Hurt could be done upon the Empire as was after to be done when they sounded This was Smyrna's Crown So that tho' God had determin'd the Period of the Blood-guilty Roman Western Empire as Imperial yet it was kept off till it became Pagan-Antichristian a new Paganism Then God gave it in Wrath after a Time an Antichristian King its former Imperial King being taken away in Wrath first 5. The precise Time of Sealing that is of covering all the True visible Glory of Christianity in the Christian Empire is hereby set viz. until the First Trumpet For till all was sealed no
Wind could stir when therefore the first blasting Trumpet sounded all true Christian Glory was cover'd shut and seal'd and Apostate Christianity alone in any splendid publick Appearance could be hurt 6. At this very joynt of Time upon the Christian Empire is grafted a Pre-Appearance of the Glory of the New Jerusalem in the innumerable Palm-bearing Company 7. That Glorious Kingdom is notwithstanding the sixth Seal open'd apparently stay'd and estopped in sealing the 144000 of Gods Servants that the Glory of Christ in them could not appear For the Glory of a King is in the Multitude of his People the sealing therefore this square Israelitish Apostolical Number is the sealing and estoppage of the Kingdom it self The seventh Seal is the last Portion of this sealed Time and it keeps its hold on all future Time till the Book and Kingdom are resign'd In which the Visum or Thing seen was the seven Angels that stood before God to whom were given seven Trumpets and these Angels preparing themselves to sound till they just began to sound make up the Representation of this Seal The State of Christs Kingdom is to be understood 1. By the Silence as Characteristick a Note as any of the former Voices For in the structure of this Divine Prophecy the symbols are not only drawn and taken from the Events but He that both manages the Events by his supream Power and erects the Schemes upon them hath design'd provided and contriv'd so much of Event and Symbol one for another that it is a great Symbol that there is no more of such or such Event That while it looks as if it were a Reason why the Symbol goes no further because the Event goes no further It is even yet a Symbol through the admirableness of this Mystick Prophecy that just then and there where the Event ceases the Cessation of the Event comes in the place where that Cessation may create a Symbol And this could be no way thus modelled but by so supream an Authour who is not only the Artificer of the Symbols but the Opifex the absolute Operator of the Events themselves The Reason why the living Creatures spoke no more after the Fourth Seal was not only because there were but Four living Creatures but also because the Pure Apostolical Ministry there ceas'd The Reason why the Souls cryed under the Altar was not only because the Martyrdomes under the Pagan Empire were then compleated That all of that Roll might joyn in that appeal to God but because that was the most Pure and Excellent Voice the Church had then left to speak to God in the Voice of Martyrs Blood that when they were dead yet spoke for after this the Church spoke no more so as to be heard till after the Apostacy nor did the four living Creatures or twenty four Elders appear any more after this Seal till then c. 11. 20. And this Cry was tim'd just before that amazing change in the World that Constantines Conversion produc'd The Reason why an Angels Voice remarqu'd the sixth Seal except only as that so wonderful Event of the Desolation of Heathenism spoke it self was because the Kingdom of Christ was greater in the sealing of so many of his Servants to be hidden under the Antichristian Kingdom then that very Conversion of Constantine which as it let out the Kingdom of Christ so far as in an Emblem let out the Apostacy and Antichristian Kingdom also by accident that just then the 144000 were seal'd and the Woman took her Flight into the Wilderness Lastly the Reason why Silence and Prayers without any audible Voice solemnize this Seal is because the pure Service was reducing to the silent private Prayers of the measured Temple Altar and its Worshipers and the publick Tammith Daily or continual Pure Worship was about to be taken away by the Gentiles Intrusion into the outward Court Chap. 11. 1. Compar'd with Chap. 8. 1. Yet at this Time the Worship was both publick and pure in Gods Account and the Prayers of all Saints came up as Incense before him and the Prosecution the Kingdom opened in all the Seals had made against Heathenism was completed in Theodosius's Famous Victory against it imported in the scatter'd Altar-Incens'd Fire of his and all Christians memorializ'd Prayer in the midst of the Battel with Eugenius upon which followed Voices Thunderings Lightnings and an Earthquake the usual Symbols in this Prophecy of all the Acquists and Prevalencies of Christs Kingdom So the State of the Empire was during this Time a State of Respite Quiet Peace or Victoriousness and Greatness under the Favour of the Precept given to the four Angels that held the four Winds which Precept was yet in full Force and Vertue But all this was but for an Half-hour an imperfect decurtated Time seiz'd and surpriz'd from its Perfection as the Beast's Times have been and much more shall be yet within the Half time The Purity of Worship was surpris'd by the Apostacy the Kingdom of Christ by the Antichristian Kingdom being immediately in Preparation The Glory and Peace of the Empire no sooner vindicated from Paganism but merg'd in Antichristianism and so pursued by Vengeance that punish'd the former in the latter and so also made way by a high mysterious Counsel of Justice for the Antichristian King while it destroy'd the Antichristianiz'd Empire Now the just Time of the whole Course of the Seals opened from the last half Week I estimate at 400 Years For the Decency of the Type of sealed Time it is indeed given in no numeral Account Even as the seven Thunders seal'd are ever after conceal'd and under the Name and explicite Series of seven Thunders never open'd and yet as we shall see produc'd in the seven Voices So this sealed Time and of this seventh Seal ending may be understood 1. By comparing that great opening of the Kingdom of Christ at the first Seal in the Apostolical Preaching and the magnificent Appearance of it in the sixth Seal in Constantine's Conversion and except that short Nubecle that little Cloud of Julian's Apostasie all along the Christian Empire to Theodosius's Death Parallels to each of which nothing appears throughout the Time either in Common or Ecclesiastick History wherein the Christian Church is concerned as shewing Christ's Kingdom 2. By comparing all along the 2300 Ev. and Mor. the 75 of the Word going forth the 490 of the Weeks the 1260 of the Witnesses and its concurrent Numbers and the 75 of the Voices and Vials we have and shall farther find the sealed Time determin'd to 400 Years and ending at 437 when the Trumpets began to sound which ought to be shewn 3. By the Signature of the half Time of the Churches Purity and of the Western Roman Empires Duration before the Vacancy at which Vacancy it enter'd in the New and last In Augustulus form viz. the Bestian we may compute the Sealed Time This I account given by the Voice in the midst of the
it is our Loyalty to God in the first place so it is not Disloyalty not to be of the Princes Religion if it be not according to the Word of God when we render All but our Religion He can require And this we need not fear to do because we cannot lose by it our Reward will be great from our Father who is in Heaven and as Christians we should be asham'd to deny it but in Religion even to the least Ceremony of it except determined by natural decency or order we have but one Father and Master God and Christ and here he hath neither Vicar nor Vice-gerent but his Spirit in his Word We should be content in this time of the Apostasie with a Remark 3 mean Condition upon the account of Religion not to seek Grandeur and Honour upon that Title If God casts it on us we should improve it to his Glory and the support of the Service and Servants of Christ it is the Beast and his Adherents that carry the Pomp and Greatness of this World in a Religious Equipage it is even a suspition upon what is high and stately and in Opulency by Christianity for Christs Witnesses are in Sack-cloch it is the Time of the Delay of his Kingdom and all his Servants are with him in the Patience of it they ought not to ravish Glory and surprise Dignity before the time but to stay for it till the appearance of Jesus Christ the 1260 Days of Mourning and of the Church in the Wilderness are not yet run out the Beast is yet in Power the Tenthliness of the City is not yet fallen the Kingdom of Christ is not yet proclaimed It is no wonder there is yet so great a Rent and Division Remark 4 in Christian Religion that any thing unreasonable or a frame of things most contrary to it bears up against all the urgencies of Scripture and Reason and will not be bafled nor ashamed but vouches high and pretends aloft so it should be that Prophesie may be fulfilled The Beast and his Adherents are obstinate to the last even when the Elevation of things against them shall be much higher then now when Evidences from Heaven shall be much more sensible they blaspheme and repent not Christianity from so long an Antiquity and the profession of it shields and defends their Pretensions and carries a shade over them even wherein they depart from it and most Apostatize this keeps up the Controversie and perpetuates the Dispute But within a Time a short Time it will be decided it will come to that publick Declaration of the Witnesses Ascention of their Song before the Throne the positive Denunciation If any man worship the Beast and his Image He shall drink of the wrath of God and c will put an end to all Dispute Revel 14. 9. In the mean time let not any pretence stagger us The man of sin ought to sit in the Temple of God his seat then must be founded in a profession of the true Religion his Antiquity signifies nothing for he ought to be a Beast of forty two months of years or above twelve hundred years standing His Pretences from any thing said or done before that 1260 how early soever if it be not found evident in Scripture is of no avail for the Mystery of Iniquity the Womb out of which He came was at work and in a Mystery so secret so cunning as not to be discern'd by many good men and all to bring him to what he was and is the Spirit of Antichrist was then in the World It is no wonder Princes continue so devoted to him and his City he calls a Church the words of God are not yet fulfilled concerning him but they shall consider and change their Minds when God puts it into their Hearts and therefore we ought earnestly to pray for them whatever their Perswasions are now that God would continue their Lives for they shall then be Instruments in his hand that change so near approaching shall be most orderly most regularly by Princes themselves induced by Evidences from Heaven of an extraordinary nature God will not be help'd herein but by his own Vicegerents whom he hath appointed whom he hath ordain'd no Sedition Rebellion may grow from hence It is to be quieted appeas'd and even rooted up by this Doctrine even as it is utterly condem'd by it for God will appear and Princes with him But yet on this nor on any other Account can there be a Reconciliation a Composition with this false state of Christianity there may be such Attempts for there will be a Synagogue of Satan rising a-new at the very approach of Christ's Kingdom before the end yet of the 1260 Days It appears as if there would be so for Philadelphia the best State of the Christian Church before the New Jerusalem and with which it united shall receive Acknowledgment from such a Synagogue that Christ hath lov'd it Revel 3. 9. But this Representation of Bestianism obstinate impenitent to the Last in the Body of it as it is the decisive Argument and beyond all Volumes of Dispute because it is divine perpendicular down-right swift and sudden in its Determination so it shews the impossibility of meeting half-way accepting Terms to any good Effect We know not what may be between this present Time though but a Remnant and the end of the 1260 Days There may be an Eye of the Witnesses kill'd and lying dead three days and a half a return of former Darkness in some parts at least I apprehend it not in this Nation yet God only knoweth it is not so far reveal'd so far as I have found but I hope not There may be a Synagogue of Satan a Project of Compounding this I more fear but let us obtain and maintain a full Victory over the Image the Mark the Name and the Number of the Name But it is certain it is but ten prophetical Days and the Witnesses shall not only every where rise but every where come out of their Sackcloath out of which the true Witnesses of God are no where yet come Then they shall for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it So many certain Notes Characters and Boundaries of Time as I have drawn together in the compute of this Line of Time with it self and that are given as Assistants to it though not immediately of the Essence and Body of it can be no more by chance than many Pictures exactly resembling several Persons pertaining to a Family and found in the Mansion of such a Family and at such Times when such Persons were known to be so appertaining to it can be by chance Forc'd they are not for things themselves conspire Fancyful and Arbitrary they are not for they cannot be chang'd or remov'd at Pleasure nor any like them made If then they are truly Scriptural and Divine How certainly shall they be fulfilled in their Season All counter-Appearances can signifie no more than the Israelites severer
them the course of historical Time and its Events all along so curiously painted out in this Prophecy I propose this Method of Progress 1. To apply to the sealing to the Altar of Incense and the Temple-worshipers to the Witnesses in Sack-cloth and to the Woman in the Wilderness the Notes of History correspondent to their Beginning according to the Prophetical Symbols and beginning together with the Gentiles forty two Months 2. From this Epoch or beginning to pass by the Prophetical Symbols in agreement with the historical Records to the Beasts forty two Months and to demonstrate their Epoch Continuance and Period 3. By the same supports from Prophecy and History to pass to the beginning of the five and five Months and the space of Time thereby denoted granted to the Locusts Revel 9. 5. 10. 4. Within which space the beginning of intimate Time the reason of it and its whole duration will fall under Examination and its 666 by Prophecy and History 5. About the midst of intimate Time the Hour Day Month and Year of that vast Army of the Horsemen will encounter our Enquiry and the whole Duration require to be stated from their beginning to the killing the third part of men or the end of that space of Time but not of that Power figured by them nor of the Woe they brought 6. At the end of intimate Time and after the killing the third part of men we shall be brought upon the Time of the aforesaid solemn Oath that Time shall be no more which will carry us to the end of this whole Line and wind us up with its self and by every one of these we shall find the Line of this black Time must end at 1697 as it began 437. All which by the guidance of the Prophecy it self and the assistance of the Holy Spirit of it will assure us by the most illustrious and stately products of that whole Time and of greatest Concernment to the Christian World that these 1260 years are a most definite space of so many and no fewer nor more in number and that seeing they must be either Natural or Prophetical Time according to the Standard of a day for a year for the Scripture-Register knows no other sort of Time nor can any instance be given of any other therefore they must be prophetical days or days of years and months of years since the Events destin'd by God to them are so much too great and large for natural Time in their own Nature and in the prophetical descyphar that no more then a year can be a year and yet be crowded up within a Month a Day or Hour no more can those long Tracts of Time-some Action be fettered within three years and a half the highest amount of those Characters of Time if naturally understood without a Contradiction in the very Nature of things SECT V. WHerein it is proved the sealing so intermatched with the inner Temple and Altar measured with the Witnesses in Sack-cloth and with the Woman in the Wilderness and the three first Trumpets in which the Efficacy of the sealing entered intermatched with the Gentiles treading the outer Court with the Dragons persecution of the Woman at her first flight into the Wilderness must according to History begin the whole Time Times half Time the Gentiles forty two Months the 1260 of the 1290 Days when the daily Service Dan 12. 11. was taken away and the Witnesses and the Womans 1260 Days altogether at 437 and so move forward till the fourth Trumpet when the Beasts forty two months began at 475. THat I may settle the beginning of the 1260 Days c. aright the Contents of this Section must be answered and made good in the Body of the Discourse within it I must endeavour these five things then to attain that End by these Enquiries 1. How far the seven Seals had brought down Time from Enquiry 1 our Lord's Resurrection to the first of the seven Trumpets must be diligently enquir'd and settled seeing one follow on the other 2. The Importance of the sealing the Sevants of God after the seven Seals open'd and the conspiring of that Symbol with the Retirement of the Worshippers within the Temple the Witnesses under Sackcloth and the Woman into the Wilderness must be determin'd and settled for the Sealing's Efficacy begins All even the very Trumpets which could not sound till the sealing over 3. The Scope and Intention of the Trumpets is to be carefully estimated in the strict Attention to the Emblem it self and seeing the first four and the sixth display upon third part of Men what third part of Men it is they play upon must be found for the Trumpets play upon that Third of Men runs along the whole Line we are upon and why all this Play upon a Christian Empire 4. It must be duely research'd what the Symbols of the three first Trumpets convey to our notice to what Time History directs us that we may find their Effects 5. It must be justly stated what the Dragon means and how his Persecution of the Woman can agree with the Explanation of the Trumpets seeing both must be at the beginning of the Line because then was the Womans first Flight into the Wilderness which was at the first of the 1260 Days Now if all these can be rationally according to this Prophecy and the Argument of History resolv'd so as to unite with the Gentiles forty two Months and all of them to determine the beginning of this Line to be at the beginning of the Trumpets sounding and both to be at Ann. Dom. 437 and to reach in the three first Trumpets to the Beasts rising at 475 then that will be done which ought to be done for by necessary Consequence the Line must end at 1697. I begin with the first viz. to enquire How far the seven Seals open'd had brought down Time from our Lord's Resurrection to the first of the Trumpets sounding for the Trumpets must needs follow upon the Seals as is most apparent Now since it is very evident the Resurrection of Christ begins the whole course of Apocalyptical Time I know not what can be more demonstrative of any point of Time than to find the Prophecy by the most lively Pictures and Emblems to draw the course of Events from a Time given as from the Resurrection Ann. Dom Vul. 33 to a Time given viz. to the Trumpets suppos'd to be Ann. Dom. Vul. 437. that is from the Resurrection the Apocalyptical Epoch or Time beginning 404 Years Now what could more congruously and even undeniably follow the Resurrection than Christ riding out in his Majesty and Glory in the universal preaching of the Gospel by an Apostolical Ministry and thereby claiming his Kingdom according to the first Seal opened What follows more uninterruptedly upon that than that warlike sett of Emperours and upon the red Horse of War arm'd with a great Sword given them viz. Vespasian Titus Trajan Hadrian respecting especially
still preserv'd on the other side that the Imperial Torch however Flaming yet falling into the Water would be soon quenched while a burning Mountain resisted the contrary Element so Rome liv'd but the Emperour dy'd Rome Burns as a Mountain in the Sea and though it turn'd the Waters into Blood yet it surviv'd to ride aloft upon a new Universality The Flaming Taper did hurt while it flam'd but falling into Water must needs be short-liv'd And it was to dye that another sort of Principality might succeed it upon which Romes Grandeur a City Reigning over the Kings of the Earth might have the Guaranty of Prophecy even as of Providence to secure it for a longer time than by all Computation it had made the Epoch of Vrbs Condita or it had been Built I am yet to state justly and more at large what the Dragon Enquiry 5 means and how his Persecution of the Woman can agree with the Explanation of the Trumpets seeing both must be at the beginning of the Line because then was the Woman's first flight into the Wilderness when the Dragon persecuted her from whence arise these two Doubts How can these Trumpets that are the Alarms of Divine Doubt 1 Judgment and Displeasure upon the Antichristianiz'd Empire as was before declared be the Dragons Persecution of the Woman When the Beast or his Gentiles have the whole Time Doubt 2 Times Half Time and so the 1260 of the Womans Wilderness-state under their Domination and Tyranny does not the Dragons Persecution of the Woman and then of the Seed contradict the Assertion of this Time to the Beast That these two Doubts may be substantially resolved and so as to clear the whole progress of this Time with Relation to the Beast we must understand aright concerning the Dragon for a mistake in that confounds the whole order of the Prophecy The Dragon then as it is presented Revel 12. 3. with Seven Heads and Ten Horns hath a double meaning One proper to it as the sixth or Imperial Head of the Roman Empire which headship is always accounted to the whole Roman Beast in this Prophecy But when the Christian Emperour arose That Head became wounded and by degrees the Power and Conduct of it Transmigrated from the sixth to the seventh Head and Eighth King as is to be shewn upon the Symbols of the Beast But in all this it is of great Influence to the right understanding of this Prophecy to be known there is a more abstract signification of Draconism or of the Dragon viz. the Old Serpent deceiving the Nations into the Worship of himself under the disguise of those many Idol Gods and Demons they sacrificed and did service to when therefore this Idolatry and Demonolatry was demolished by Constantine and the Christian Emperours and the only True God in Jesus Christ and his Kingdom acknowledg'd at the Head of the Roman Empire Satan that Old Serpent was cast down from Heaven and Christ the manly Birth caught up thither Satan therefore as an Intelligence within at the Head and Spring of all is to be understood in this Dragon Revel 12. 7. The Roman Cesars as having the Imperial Monarchick Government of so great a part of the World at the Birth of Christ so along in the first Times of Christianity lay indeed in the midst of Nations and People and watched all the effects of the Kingdom of Christ and were ready to devour the manly Birth that was to rule the Nations with a rod of Iron and who had right to do so at his Resurrection and all along since But at the Time this Cesarian Dragon was acted by that Satan that invisible Spiritual Dragon and his Angels who made War against Christ who carried the Cesarian Dragon in a perpetual Hostility to the Kingdom of Christ and also most devoted to Idolatry While therefore Devils were worshipped under those several Names of Jupiter Mars c. and an Idolatrous Power was at the Head of the Roman Power Satan is accounted in Heaven and the rather so because the Title of Satan is not reckon'd purely of Fraud and Usurpation but By Permission and not only so but even in regard of Justice and divine displeasure against the Apostacy of humane Nature as it were of Commission so that he was overcome and cast down by the Blood of the Lamb as the true meritorious Cause appeasing that Wrath satisfying that Justice expiating the World by the Word of his Testimony as the Grand instrumental Cause and by the Martyrdom of Christians who loved not their Lives unto Death as a subordinate dispose of God in honour to his Justice against the horrible degeneracy of Mankind From hence whatever Power acted by Sathan to an aspiring to a supreme Residency in the Fourth or Roman Monarchy in the days of which Christ's Kingdom was foretold to be set up and of all Right ought to have been so speaking as to the Duty and Obligation of all Mankind because of his Sovereign Resurrection after his Death and Sacrifice of himself for the Life of the World and that then the Roman Monarchy was the Monarchy of the Oecumene or habitable Earth in Symbol of Prophecy whatever Power therefore did not then acknowledge that Kingdom nor that Truth of Christianity any way either seated in or attempting that Monarchy is under a Character of Draconick the Notion of which came into especial date since that Resurrection of Christ and his Right thereby to an universal Monarchy at which Time the Roman Cesareate arisen to that universal Monarchy from the Time of the more publick Notices of the Right of Christ inspir'd by Sathan with a Draconick Subtilty and watchfulness waited to devour that princely Birth of which Pharaoh's Cruelty to Gods typical first-born lying as a Dragon in the Egyptian Nile was a Type and was therefore by the most notable signancy of the Symbol invested with the Draconick Title But when the Acknowledgment of Jesus as Christ and Lord was made by the Christian Roman Emperour Constantine and his Successors Christ was then in eminent Type caught up to the Throne of God never to be dethron'd as we see he is not to this day notwithstanding the Combat of the Dragon and his Angels by Julian Argobastes the Roman Senate and others with Michael and his Angels But for all this the Woman the Church was persecuted by the rolling of the barbarous Nations upon that Empire who were Enemies to the Profession of Christianity at the first and so to the Kingdom of Christ and their Invasion upon the Rights of the Empire as Christs and on the Roman Church as eminent in the Profession of Christianity and having produc'd the Christian Emperour was both as design'd by Satan and reputed by God a Draconick Persecution of the Woman even as after the Mahometan Flood which came out of the Dragon's mouth to have swallowed up Christianity and that Empire together as it were wherever it could be found was on the very
Beast that hath Fourty two Months determin'd to Him and though there needs nothing to make that good but to take the two Chaps c. 13. and c. 17. of the Apocal. and to write down all the particulars of agreement between those two Beasts and it will be impossible for so much as the thinking Mind to doubt of their being one and the same But I will only insist upon the former Argument in this matter that Beast that is so destroyed as the Beast in the c. 17. is to be destroyed must needs according to the former Argument be the same Beast But the Beast that hath Fourty two Months determin'd to his Continuunce c. 13. v. 5. hath such a Destruction affix'd to him as the Beast c. 17. hath For who can assume the Effrontery or Boldness to deny that the Beast c. 19. who is taken and cast into the Lake v. 20. is the same with the Beast c. 17. And the Beast c. 13. hath this very same Destruction foretold to him For he is to be Taken and to go into that Eternal Captivity of the Lake with his False Prophet inseparable from him according to v. 10. and his Ten Crowned Horns or whole Circle of Kings are to be killed with the Sword of Christ's Mouth c. 19. v. 21. compar'd with ch 13. v. 10. he that leadeth into Captivity shall go c. and he that kills with the Sword c. now Christ's Captivation and Killing are such as argues Divine Justice and Power and such is that declar'd c. 19 20. The Apostle John hath declar'd that so obstinate unyielding Bar to the Man of Sin being reveal'd still in his Time as the Apostle Paul most emphatically speaks signifying the impossibility of his Coming till that his own proper Time Now the occasion of that great Apostolical Paragraph was an Expectation of a sudden Appearance of the 2 Thess 2. Glory of Christ's Kingdom this very Kingdom of which we are now speaking which was the great Expectation of the Apostles till they were better Instructed and of other Christians after them upon a general but not particular Apprehension of Scripture Prophecy For that this Day was the day of Judgment there is no Sense for in those lightsome Days before the Apostacy seeing all the Prophecies are big with a Glorious state of Christianity in this World To this the Apost for their Information and of after Ages much more speaks punctually That it could not be expected so soon and does most vehemently obtestate by the very coming of Christ and our gathering unto him against the Expectation for saith he There must be an Apostacy first and the Man of Sin must be reveal'd but that must be in his own proper Time and not before for there is a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Person witholding and a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an effectual Thing witholding or each of these taking such Fast Hold of their proper Space and Time that the Bestian Prince cannot come forward till they by going off let go their Hold and then shall be reveal'd that lawless one that Man of Sin which is an Exposition of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 when it is to be understood of a Body of Successors So this is the Apostle's Sense The day of Christ viz. of his Glory and Kingdom cannot come till the Man of Sin come The Man of Sin comes indeed out of the Apostacy as out of a Womb but as no Birth can so he cannot come till his own Time Sathan is eager enough every thing works to it as fast as it can the Mystery of Iniquity is now already at this very moment at work But every Thing that God hath ordain'd will hold its own it s own Time it s own Place and such a Holding Thing there is and such a Holding Person there is that possesses and fills that Time and Place Thus far the Apostle Paul goes in his Epistle so far he was order'd by the Holy Spirit to go and no farther the rest he refers to former Personal Discourse Now whatever prudential reason there might be of saying no more The great Reason was the Holy dictating Spirit order'd no more but that all Scripture might be search'd and compar'd Holy Writers say so much in one place so much in another so much one Holy Writer says so much more is said by another by every ones part the Harmony is made up The Apostle John therefore speaking as I have prov'd of the same great Matter and aiming at the Glorious Kingdom of Christ the grand scope of all Prophecy declares the Reason why the Kingdom of Christ could not Come because there was an unalterable Succession determin'd by God before that Kingdom There were seven Kings five of them he gives in the Lump because Prophecy was not concern'd in them or in the manner or order of their Succession they are only a Character of the Monarchy a distinctive of the Fourth Beast by its seven Heads or Forms of Government in a Succession as Kings signifie Dan. 7. But in three of them the Prophecy then in motion by the Apostle John was highly interested The first was then and it was in its course according to five of the seven Seals The seventh King was not yet Come it was not very far off comparatively but it was not as yet Come it was to come in the sixth Seal and when it came there was a necessity upon him he must continue by the same Comparativeness but a short space viz. during only the time of the sixth and seventh Seals Now this seventh the Spirit is industrious to assure us He was the Christian Emperour though he was a King of that great City and Empire yet he pertain'd not to the Beast indeed there was a Declination to the Apostacy in his time but the Church was yet pure all those Seals as appears by them it appears too it was declining the Apostacy drew near a declining from one Degree to another there had been from the first Operation of the Mystery of Iniquity forming the Antichristian Prince no with great Curiosity in the lowest parts of the Earth where no Eye saw the way of the Sathanick Spirit but he before whom Hell and Destruction have no Covering However this Christian Emperour was none of the Heads but wounded the Pagan sixth Draconick Head The Beast he is the eighth and is of the seven Seven what but Heads Clearly joyning this Vision with the seven Heads of Chap. 13. He that as the Son of Perdition goes into Perdition I say again Goeth into Perdition that Perdition just before the Kingdom of Christ and so hath no Successor but Christ consuming him Now this Succession stands firm God himself had fix'd it As then no Prince can succeed till the former is avaunted in so exact a Succession one cannot crowd out another no more than one Month or a Day following can crowd out the precedent but when any goes off the next succeeds immediately there can
be no Vacuity Rex nunquam moritur where God holds the Succession and its Law firm and so it is to the very Kingdom of Christ Just then when the Christian Emperour deceas'd tht Bestian Emperour succeeded and that was indisputably at 475 and then his forty two Months of Duration succeeded and it was a large Time as Prophecy draws them out and they are still current they must have been yet a long time ago begun for there was the sixth King in Being when the Apostle wrote signifying his Time then in spending The seventh had no long time That end of things the Apostle declares Ch. 18. c. 19. c. 20. c. 21. is beyond all Controversie upon due yea but small Consideration not yet come Therefore this eighth King must have been long upon the Throne and now near the end of his forty two months For he came at the very first of them He came then though as an Infant Prince a Prince as in the Cradle yet then he came Humane History is not more competent to declare the Time when Antichrist was born than the Jews could pronounce aright when the Christ was born yet some chosen Observers there were of the one and of the other some or alarming Indications The Father Jerom sounded it aloud or rather by Inspiration before hand proclaim'd it but God hath judg'd it he hath declar'd it and there can be no incertainty in it When the short-liv'd Christian Emperours and their Empire dyed in the West then it was The true Seat of the Roman Empire being at seven headed seven hill'd Rome was by a wonderful Operation of Providence quitted by the Dragon to be the Seat of the Beast the Christian Emperours resided elsewhere most for still that was the Metropolis of the Bestian Empire Constantinople did but borrow the Name by a secret of Providence of Nova Roma as useful for some Types of Prophecy when the Christian Western Empire was cessated then the Eighth King succeeded his Fourty two Months then began I come now to the second Head of this Discourse The Head 2 Kingdom of Christ must come immediately after the Beasts Fourty two months ended The Law of the Succession requires it it must be then immediately proclaim'd It does not appear all at once no Kingdom does so But its Preparations are seventy five Years So great so glorious an Empire so just so even and cubical in its Thousand Years must have an honourable Preparation And it is but short in comparison During this time all sorts of warnings are given by the seven Thunders unseal'd Revel 14. all kind of Justice done upon Offenders by the Vials c. 16. The Beast hath a kind of dying Life as an outdated Usurper not yet executed but that hath lost his usurped Empire and then Lak'd for Ever This Succession of the Kingdom of Christ is dated by Prophecy to the end of the 1260 Days For then the Witnesses rise go out of their Sackcloth are array'd in a white Cloud Ascend to Heaven they cannot Ascend in Sackcloth but for 1260 Days Sackcloth was their Shrowd it is then certain the 1260 Days End It is certain also the Kingdom of Christ is then proclaim'd for when the second woe past away the third comes quickly No delay and the third woe Trumpet brought it and the first Sound or Report is The Kingdoms of this World are become the Kingdoms of the Lord and of his Christ therefore lastly the forty two months must end with the 1260 days for Christ abated nothing of them by his Kingdom overhastily as is to be shewn and the Beast was to have so many for his Reign The 1260 days and the forty two months ending together Head 3 and the forty two Months beginning at 475 they must be adjusted one to the other as one being Time of the Sun the other as Time of the Moon For as in all Languages and parts of the World Days must and do signifie most properly the Time measured by the Sun so in the eastern and most especially the Jewish and Scripture Language Months signifie only and solely the Time as measured by the Moon and are call'd Novitates Newnesses or Times measured by each new Congress of the Moon with the Sun or new Moons so that however another way of speaking hath prevailed with us a Month of the Sun is as improper as a day of the night or a day measured by the Moon so that if words can signifie as they are always in Scripture us'd to signifie Months must signifie Time according to the motion of the Moon And further as hath been already shewn the Symbol is of the peculiar use in this Prophecy to semble Time of the Night of the Moon that the True Church hath under its Feet and as shall be more seen in a great Remarque upon the Mahometan Moon Because therefore days months years as they are within this Line of Time must all lye within Time Times half Time and equal 1260 days or years There are twice Forty two Months that knitting one within another will supply the shortness to 1260 Days or Years of the Forty two Months either of the Gentiles ending thirty eight years sooner or those of the Beast beginning thirty eight years later than those 1260 Days And as the Moon could be no Moon if there were no Sun to lend it Light so the Sun on a body prepared and moving to it as the Moon casts a Light like that of the Moon certainly and without fail In the same manner there could be no Antichristian months or Church if there were not a true Church and its Seed the Witnesses cloth'd with the Sun of Righteousness all those 1260 Years which cast those Months And if there be such a body as the Antichristian Church moving to the Christian Church as that does it must needs derive Months from its Days equal one to the other And it is most apparent that waving Scriptures round Number Unto the exactness of considerably less than a Years difference the Time of Forty two prophetical months adjusted by the strictest Accountant to the time of 1260 prophetical Days measured by the Moon 's motion from one new Conjunction with the Sun to another will be as 1222 Years to 1260 Years so that if the forty two months of the Beast begin at 475 the 1260 days beginning at 437 they will both end necessarily at 1697 which is the thing that ought to be shewn so great an Exactness so surely arguing the true Calculalation of this Line I hope all will agree cannot be bychance I request then I say a strictness of Account which to avoid both longsomness and perplexity in this Discourse I do not give but by so strict Account two mistakes will be escaped which may arise from a general apprehension of this Matter For it will then be found the Calculation is not to be made by accounting the Time of a Synodical Month to twenty nine days so many hours c.
Allowance of the Name of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the other Beast to him who is erecting this seventh Head into its Supremacy and Dignity because he is so one with him as the false Prophet and but for the time he is so erecting him 3. That the prophetical Scheme may be understood concerning this Beast it is to be duely stated where the Situation of each part of this multiplice Scheme is to be there must be the Trunk or Body of this Beast and that hath its feet of many Nations and People spread far and wide the People of the Ten Horns like the feet of a Bear and by those many sorts of People its Body is variously spotted about like a Leopard this is the Populacy with their subordinate Magistrates There are the seven Heads or supreme crowned Authorities each having successive Dignity and Sovereignty as the Romans had Kings Consuls Decemvirs Tribunes of the People perpetual Dictators all fallen in the Apostles Time and so they signifie no farther than the making a Character of the Monarchy intended In the Apostles Time were the Emperours or the Dragon in the Language of Prophecy and the sixth Head and the Beast the seventh and last whose Mouth speaking as the Lyon Nebuchadnezzar acts the Body and Feet to the Cruelty of the Leopard and Bear by his idolatrous and fiery Decrees There are the ten crowned Horns whose Scite is in this Head absolute independant Monarchs and Princes only as they agree to give their Strength and Power to the Beast Now all these have so close an Union with the Grand Beast that the Body is so his that he is the Beast because he is the Head of the Body the ten Horns are his while they are Horns for their Situation must be in the Head the former Heads are his the five fallen to make him a Character the sixth the Imperial Dragon lives in him is worshipped in him continues to the last in him viz. the Monarchickness the Idolatry the Enmity to Christ's Kingdom especially even as he at the first is wounded in him And the other Beast is his negotiating his Dignity and Supremacy and at that compleat subsiding into his False Prophet the Dragon the Beast the False Prophet sending out each the Spirit of Devils and the False Prophet taken as inseparable one from the other with him and cast into the Lake Thus he is every way the grand Apocalyptick Beast Having laid this Foundation by way of Premisal I come now to define this Grand Apocalyptick Beast according to his certain essential invariable Characters most eminent in Prophecy most conspicuous in History for I dare not adventure so great a weight on History without Prophecy nor suspend it on my Interpretation of Prophecy without observing Divine Providence conducting the Event at every swelling Period into most undoubted History When both meet to such Perfection it is hard to doubt and even sullen Obstinacy to deny The Beast must be the Apostle John's Great Antichrist that Charact. 1. was to come into the World agreeing with the false Christs our Lord prophesied of and the Apostle John's many Antichrists 1 John 4. 2 3. Mat. 24. 24. who would steal the Kingdom of the Messiah from Him by pretending themselves to be Christs and so denying that great Article that Christ was come in the Flesh to which the Kingdom of his Father David is assur'd without end as being his Root and Off-spring Now this can be no way so effectually done as by pretending to be the Vicar of Christ and holding his Kingdom in his Right and as in Honour of him And he that does that is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Opposite to Christ and if it should be disguis'd under Servus Servorum Dei it would not excuse it Now those open bare-fac'd False Christs the Judgment of God immediately seiz'd and gave up to Destruction But of such an Antichrist as this Christ hath sworn There shall be Time Times Half a Time for Him and that Christs Kingdom should not come or the Wonders of it be accomplish'd till these are past and fully past And the Apostle Paul assures us before the Day of Christ can come the Apostacy must bring forth such an Antichrist who must therefore sit in the Temple of God viz. the outward Court and Holy City or the Profession of Christian Religion and in Christendome and there must exalt Himself must usurp above All that is called God viz. Christ even in his humane Nature called and carrying the Name on his Vesture and on his Thigh but not Written or set in publick view till just before the Beast's Ruine King of Kings Lord of Lords whom God Sanctified and sent into the World as Supreme Prince and under him truly Christian Supremes who are also called Gods John 10. 35 36. If then all History and all Knowledge of Time successively for several Ages declare such a pretended Vicar of Christ This is the most essential and original Character of Antichrist without searching farther into his Quality and Action For as whoever should pretend to be deputed to be a Divine God is an Idol so whoever pretends to be a Spiritual Plenipotentiary Lord of Lords and above Princes as Vicar of Christ is Antichrist for whoever says thus of Himself says He is God For Christ can have no Vicar General on Earth any more than God one Universal Deputy of his Power claiming Divine Honour Such an Antichrist must needs Sit at Rome For he must Charact. 2. bear aloft the Woman as a false Church that was a Wilderness to the True Church when it was Hid and yet Fed with hidden Manna a howling Wilderness where the Lyon the Leopard and the Bear Inhabit In this Wilderness John saw sitting on the Beast this Woman under the Name of that City that in the Appocalyptical Time or when that Prophecy was Given sate upon many Waters or People and upon the Seven Mountains or the City so fam'd for being Septi-Collis or seven Hill'd Rome and which Reign'd over the Kings of the Earth as no other City at that Time could be once suppos'd to do so Character'd either by its Hills or being Drunk with the Blood of the Saints and Martyrs of Jesus * Call'd on that Account Sancta Roma as that City in all Ages hath been A City whose Freedom was purchas'd at great rates in all parts of the World and so fitly said to sit on many Waters and to draw the Confluence of People to it to receive Law from it Here therefore for the fulfilling Prophecy the Beast must have his Throne even as under Pontius Pilate the Governour of Judea constituted by the Emperour of Rome Christ suffer'd and Rose again into his Kingdom according to the Prophecy of Daniel That in the Days of those Kings God would set up an everlasting Kingdom the right of which then began so that till Constantine that Roman Empire was a Dragon watching to devour the
the Inhabitants of the Earth wonder whose Names were not written c. When they behold the Beast that was c. This by compare with c. 13. must be when he came to be worshipped and that was not till he came to his number when the Image had Life given to it spoke and caus'd and then it must be answer'd And in this very Inscription the Wisdom of God is much to be ador'd shewing so exactly the gradual rising of the Beast first out of the Sea in his Succession then out of the Abyss or bottomless Pit at his Vniversality then at his number 666 when he came to be worshipped as a Head 4. For in the first he is truly said to be the Beast that was that is subsisted in the general Bestianism of the Roman Monarchy that had been in six heads was to survive forty two months under this seventh head and so in the prophetick Scheme had a Being Is not for the Beast had at this time as little appearance as could possibly consist with his Succession succeed he did because that name of headship under which the Beast was to live so long was left at that Time to Him the supream Name alone in Rome and so continued ever since For after the Cessation of the Christian Emperour neither the Kings of the barbarous Nations nor the Greek Emperour ravish'd the Title of Rome but contented themselves with that of Italy Lombardy Exarchy of Ravenna in which the care of Providence over Prophecy is worthy admiration yet in the Time of the Chasm Interreign or Gap between the sixth Head the Pagan Emperour wounded by the Christian Emperour the seventh King and no Head and the Beast the seventh Head but eighth King It might well be said Is not For this Beastian Head in Prophetical Scheme felt that Wound both by Sympathy as the Beast that having no Head in Dignity was truly Mottoed Is not as also upon himself as seventh Head the Wound fell because he succeeded not being fore Let and when he did succeed he was but in Infancy the Kings of Italy and the Grecian Exarch held him under that it might well be said of him Is not but yet he so Is that he goeth into Perdition that is he is in his forty two months current which end in his Perdition and of which the State under the Christian Emperour was a great Pledge as of Christs Kingdom so of his Perdition In the second place when he riseth out of the bottomless Pit and hath universal Supremacy as Head of Rome he eminently carrieth the Roman Woman aloft in the same Supremacy and yet in the former senses may be said Was Is not but shall ascend at his Time 606 out of the bottomless Pit and as a Character most evident upon him as always inseparable from him goes into Perdition for out of the Abyss he rises into it he is thrown for ever this was after Phocas gave universality to him as is next to be discoursed In the third when the Dragon lives in the Beast who converts Paganism into Antichristianism exercising the same Idolatrous universal Power in the Earth in an Image at 666 as we shall see They worship both the Dragon and wonder after the Beast admiring the artifice when they see the Beast that Was viz. in the Draconick Head Is not the very same Pagan idolatrous or imperial Dragon and yet Is is All. That very same thing is an Antichristian and Pontifical Image at 666. His Perdition is not herein named both for the Grace of the Type at his Inauguration and because it is express'd before and after in this engraving upon him I leave therefore every one to judge how admirably Prophecy and matter of Fact agree in these Inscriptions He must be a Horn in the Seed and Bud at his very Charact. 5. Succession so design'd by Providence so of right as a supreme though but in Infancy and in an Image yet being a small and feeble Horn he could not get up but under the favour and shelter behind and in the midst of the other Horns and then they became his Horns in open view Then he was one among Ten into which the Empire being variously divided fell so as to make that number at any time after its division and Ten as a complemental number is chosen Three were pulled up by him by his Influence and Instance before him by the strength and martial Prowess of others Let History then declare what Three eminent Horns were pull'd up and we shall find the Gothick Horn pull'd up by Justinian the Emperour the Lombards a second and the Greek Exarchy the Third for this little Horn by Charls Martill by Pipin his Son who was made King of France by him Charles the Great Son and Grand-son to the two former invested with the titularity of Western Emperour For let History further declare for whose sake they were pull'd up and whose Patrimony they became Nor let it be any blemish in Prophecy that Daniel does not speak openly of the Headship of this little Horn nor John of the Hornship of this Head for one Type was peculiar to one Prophet the other to the other and could not without manifest Injury to either Type be conjoyn'd or confounded But Daniel subindicates his Headship whom he stiles a little Dan. 7. 8. Dan 8. 23. Dan. 11. 36. c 7. 24. Horn by the Eyes of a Man by a Countenance stout above his Fellows by a Mouth speaking great things by his understanding dark Sentences by his being a King doing after his own Will in all which he was a Horn diverse from all the rest On the other side the Apocaliptick Prophet does not dissemble his being a little Horn while a Head for the Dragon gave him his Seat the Ten Kings agree to give him their Power and Kingdom neither of which he could win by puissance and when the Words of God are fulfilled they resume all with ease and at Pleasure for he prosper'd only by Craft and Serpentine Dan. 8. 24. Subtilty inspir'd into him by Sathan The Beast is always united with false Prophecy that he Charct 6. himself is the Head and principal of it from the first and therein negotiated his own universal Monarchy Within his Purple there lies a rough Garment to deceive he is full of the Spirit of Antichrist and so surprises the Kingdom of the true Prophet Priest and King He is Sathan transform'd into an Angel of Light a false Apostle coming with lying Signs and Wonders his Eyes are as a Seers his Mouth speaketh great things His Efficacy is by the deceivableness of Vnrighteousness in them that perish his Name Son of Perdition is deriv'd from the Traytor Apostle Judas who betrays Christ with the hail Master and a Kiss he Blasphemes he is worshiped by those who are not written in the Lambs Book of Life he is made supreme by calling Fire from Heaven in false Anathemaes he is inseparably united
convey us upon this Line this wonderful Line we have discoursed so long upon the Line of the 1260 Days with which the forty two Months of the Beast are now combin'd Prophecy will I say very speedily in the fifth Trumpet convey and set us upon a new Line of the Mahometan Hegira or Computation of Time so that we shall run upon it for the space of eight hundred and thirty Years together with the 1260 Days and with the Bestian Line comprehending in short the most Oecumenical and illustrious Points of History at that Time in the Universe viz. of the Bestian and the Mahometan Grassation or Invasion into the same kind of Universal Power and both upon the Account of Pseudo-Prophetism the due Observation of which will persuade us of the Divineness of this Prophecy and that we are upon the true Explication of it As it were then between the ending of the Time of the fourth and the beginning of the Time of the fifth Trumpet there was a loud Voice as of an Angels flying through the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that upper Region like the Voice of Thunder reaching down to the Earth and saying Woe Woe Woe to the Inhabiters of the Earth because of the Voices of the Angels that are yet to sound Now it were wonderful if merely by the chance of Imagination running such a Path so great and remarkable Configurations both of Prophecy and History should meet it so often just where it would choose and desire to be so met For at this very Time Gregory call'd the Great Bishop of Rome a Personage of so great Eminence for Vertue Learning and Eloquence declar'd aloud in his Epistles to the Emperour Mauricius and to John the Bishop of Constantinople So also to the Bishops of Alexand. and Antioch That Antichrist was near That the Title of Vniversal Bishop was a certain Indication of him That it was Pride to assume such a Title It was like Lucifer Son of the Morning ascending the heights of the Stars setting his Throne above the other Angels above the other Stars affecting to be like the Most High Now seeing no such could be fix'd in the Firmament or Heaven of the Gospel he must needs Fall How close then is this to the prophetick Language I saw a Star fall from Heaven or as Christ in a like case speaks I saw Satan fall as Lightning from Heaven as the Dragon fell but found in the Beast a Kingdom on Earth as before said Just as when Satan fell from Heaven he had a Kingdom assign'd him by the Divine Permission and Decree viz. God of this World Ruler of the Darkness of this World This Star who is the Son of Perdition whose coming is after the manner of Satan had the same in Proportion the Key of the bottomless pit is given to him that is permitted to him given judiciarily into his hand by God's wise and holy sufferance and over-rule of all things to his Glory This Fall then of this Star is like the Angels leaving their own Habitation their first Estate or true original Principality Jude v. 6. a Fall not like that of the Stars the Dragon swept down with his Tail or of the Star Wormwood an involuntary Fall a Fall from the Heaven of a political Order and Supremacy to a low State without Power but a Fall of Apostacy from his due Station a planetary Defection from his own Orb v. 16. into a Kingdom of the bottomless Pit to which Darkness is reserv'd for ever And whenever the Antichrist came the Beast rose out of the bottomless pit or which is the same this Star had fallen there must be then Woe Woe Woe for the Vengeance of God at the same time made him way and pursued him every Trumpet sounded against him The first was to hurt only the Revel 9. 4. Men that were not seal'd of which he was the Prince the second was upon those who were guilty of Murthers Sorceries v. 20. Thefts Idolatries The Woman whom the Beast carried was guilty of all these was impenitent in them although c. 11. v. 15. compar'd with c. 14. c. 15. c. 16. God gave her space to repent The Third Woe-Trumpet brought with it the Kingdom of Christ and the Destruction of Antichrist or the Bestian Kingdom so there was Woe Woe Woe on the Bestian Earth whenever Antichrist came Immediately after this Remonstrance of the Bishop Gregory the Bishop Boniface accepts from the parricidick Emperour Phocas this Vniversality so that in his sense Antichrist then came and the first Woe-Trumpet according to Prophecy is dated from his Fall What can be more wonderful as Gregory was at all a good Man his Prediction must be own'd to a better Spirit and to the Knowledge Divine Prophecy gave him and to the Impression it had made upon him As he was himself part of that Body upon which his own Prediction ran it was like Nebuchadnezzar's prophetick Dream of Dan. 2. the Ruine of that Image by the Stone of which he was the head of Gold or like the Prophecy of Caiaphas a very bad Joh. 11. 51. part of which himself was concern'd in however his eminent Station gave the Rebound of his Prediction as through the World And the time of Rome lying so low is noted most emphatically by Prophecy viz. Rome without any eminent Light of Government and then follows such an immediate Appearance of Antichrist according to the Signal given of him by that Bishop of Rome and according to Prophecy the Star Fell. This is in some sense I may say but too remarkable in so plainly declaring who is Antichrist and that his Kingdom holds by the Key of the bottomless Pit It is true the Beast had been in his forty two months above a hundred Years yet as a Tyrant prophetically declar'd to be a Tyrant is not yet so in his Infancy or Under-state no more than Hazael was a Tyrant when Elisha told him what 1 Kin. 8. 11. he as such a Tyrant should do no more was the Beast such a Beast while he was under the Inscription Is not So that though he was a Beast by way of Succession and some presagious Actions He might yet not be a falling Star till he now fell and receiv'd this Key for the whole Bestian Body or Succession is consider'd in the whole Beast not in its several Ages nor in the single Persons making it some better some worse all that enter its Composition are consider'd as one Beast in the prophetick Scheme in any Age in any Bestian Qualities more or less yea though so moderate as that they should only bear up the Title and maintain the Succession And this removes all possible Objection as thus Was he that had been a Beast so long a Star yet to Fall You see he might be so while he was the Beast Is not and yet not a falling Star for this fall prepar'd his rising out of the bottomless Pit and so
having the Key of the bottomless Pit not judicially given but committed to him not to open the bottomless Pit and let out the Smoak not to loose nor draw out at greater liberty and by provoking God to give the Malice of Devils greater scope by the Angel of that Pit raging like a roaring Lyon in a hellish Mahometanism but to lay hold on him to bind him to cast him into the bottomless Pit to shut him up and to set a Seal upon him that he may deceive the Nations no more for the 1000 Years which very Consideration of that so opposite Vision does much inlighten this of the fifth Trumpet we are now upon It remains that we consider now what the Service of the two Witnesses might at this time most agreeably with Prophecy be and as so considering it I look upon this joynt of Time this Proclamation of the three woe Trumpets to be the very entrance of the Witnesses in the second Type of that eminent Binary or Pair of Witnesses and Prophets Elijah and Elisha The Witnesses had now a long time as the Sons of Oyl emptied their golden Oyl by way of preparatory Furniture of those two golden Candlesticks the true Churches of Pergamus and Thyatyra that stood this whole Line of Time before the God of the whole Earth and though we have not the clear and unmixed Records of any such Testimony for that were to lessen the Prophecy besides that the Indignation of the Apostate Church must needs have suppress'd them they must needs have suffer'd more so than under the Injuries of Time but I say it were to lessen Prophecy which says They were cover'd with Sackcloth they were seal'd they were retir'd within the Temple the Church was in the Wilderness through the scattering of its Seed It is not then possible according to the Prophecy there should be pure liquid Remains of their Testimony But now the Antichristians like Sanballat and Tobiah and other the Enemies of the Jews disturb'd their Service and in building with them hinder'd the Operation and infus'd their Venome in some part into the Writings and Discourses of Persons of a much more excellent temper in the main Now the Witnesses therefore as we may in part see by Gregory praised before passed into the Spirit and Power of Elijah and Elisha they began now to have fire proceed out of their Mouths to devour their Adversaries They began to declare the Wrath of God against Idolatry and Antichristian Pride and Blasphemy And this entred as Fire into the Consciences of their Enemies that in this manner they were kill'd as it were by the Sword of Christ's Mouth which he threatens to the Balamites in the Church of Pergamus and herein they imitated the Zeal of Moses and Phincas against the spiritual Fornication and Nicolaitanism of that time and also prepar'd the Servants of God in Thyatyra with a holy Zeal against the Jezebelism and Idolatry and Fornication of that Time also when the Apostacy was increas'd But how can we hope for much of Monument hereof The Prophecy of Gregory is more than we could expect and were it not that he serv'd the Apostacy to many other great purposes we had not had so much of him but God over-rul'd so far Now the Witnesses were coming into the closest time of being seal'd and therefore we have the mention of it reviv'd within the fifth Trumpet They were sed with hidden Manna They were hardly known one to another at the very Time Elijah knew not of the seven thousand Knees that had not bowed to Baal nor their Mouths kiss'd him but thought himself alone How much less then can we now know them And which is very characteristical of this Period of the Witnesses Prophecy and Testimony They have Power to shut Heaven that it rain not in the Days of their Prophecy so that there arises a Famine not of Bread but of hearing the Word of the Lord and this endured for the intimate Time of which we are to speak in the next Period of the Witnesses and the Remark of shutting Heaven for three Years and six Months will be of great Conduct to us SECT X. Wherein is undertaken to be prov'd That the Mahometan Sarazens are the Locusts design'd in the fifth Apocalyptick Trumpet and that the five Months given to them comprehend Four hundred-thirty five Years from the Mahometan Hegira at 622 and so reach to 1057. upon Rev. c. 9. v. 1. c. I Pass on from this joynt of Time engraven with the real and substantial Characters of the Angel proclaiming the three Woes the Star falling the Key of the bottomless Pit given to him All which I have explain'd I come now to speak of the Descent of this Star to the opening the bottomless Pit and of that Smoak that issued out upon it and the unexpected Events of Locusts coming out of the Smoak which produce a new Line of Time beginning at 622 and not ending till 1453 but divided by Prophecy into two parts the five Months and five Months of the Locusts and the Hour Day Month and Year of the Army of Horsemen between which will come in the Account of intimate Time and so we will discourse each in their order Antichrist then appearing in the Star fallen to the Earth to shine there as an universal Pastor of which sort the Firmament of Heaven knows none nor can bear any such so he must needs fall to the Earth and the Beast here transmigrated into by the Dragon and beginning to exalt the Woman by carrying his Vniversality in an Image inscrib'd with the Name of the Woman and having receiv'd the Key of the bottomless Pit in place of the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven he immediately proceeds to open it and le ts out Error Falsehood Blasphemy the Doctrine of Balam Nicolaitanism Antichristianism spiritual Pride and Tyranny like the Smoke or perpetual Vapour of the Abyss and its open Mouth that darkned the whole Air of the Christian Doctrine and Profession and in this by degrees he ascends higher and higher till he comes to his number 666. But Sathan above him in this bottomless Pit turning every way and moving more ways than one to advance his Kingdom especially over-rul'd and govern'd by God in fulfilling the course of his Judgment so impregnates this Smoke in that time of spiritual drought and of the Heaven shut as Brass and the Earth as Iron a Time specifick for these Locusts as drought is for the natural ones that unawares to this fallen Star there comes a swarm of Locusts out of the Smoke and they prove armed crowned Locusts dreadfully annoying and Tormenting the Antichristian World viz. by the Mahometan Saracens Having thus far then prepar'd to it I come to the main position of this Section the proof of which I am to undertake that these Locusts are the Mahometan Saracens whose five and five Months measure from 622 to 1057 The first Argument I derive from the Style in which
this Argu. 1 Prophecy speaks of their King He is the Angel of the bottomless Pit whose Name is Abaddon in the Hebrew Tongue and in the Greek Apollion Now by this Description it is most evident some Potentacy is describ'd that hath its place in the World and whose very Constitution should of all that hath ever been in the World be such a one as Sathan himself who is the only proper Angel of the bottomless Pit hath and would choose to appear in be the immediate Intelligence of and the Spirit that acts it above any Potentacy that hath been in the World to this day But it is in the first place to be consider'd that as the Locusts and Horse-men we shall find plainly united in their empoyson'd Tayls of Serpents so they are in their King and his Title is therefore set in the joynt between the fifth and sixth Trumpet to communicate with both The Potentacy then must be a Potentacy on Earth and it must seat it self in the Hebrew and Grecian Acropoles or chief Cities as the Hebrew and Greek Tongues imports like as the Inscription upon our Saviour This is the King of the Jews was providentially written in Latin Greek and Hebrew to shew the chief Residency of his Kingdom in those so known parts of the World I appeal then to all Christians whether since the days of Christ or indeed since the Creation there hath been an Empire in the World that may be compris'd in one word viz. Mahometan that for the foule fordid base Impostures of its Religion and Alchoran the ignorance and bruitishness of its very Profession the Cruelty and ravage it hath made upon humane Nature to the utmost signification of the Words Abaddon or Apollion or wherein Sathan hath most immediately appear'd as the Enemy and Destroyer of Mankind can be said to be under the Angel of the bottomless Pit as its King with such propriety as the Mahometan Abating the confession of one God and the abhorrence of Image-Idolatry there is not any thing in which the utmost Effects of the Angel of the bottomless Pit have not been seen and even that good in that Confession of one God is improv'd by his Malice against the Knowledge of the true God in the Son and Holy Spirit and so may well be couch'd in the very Words Abaddon and Apollion as the every way most incomparable Dr. More hath with highest Ingeny and Learning observ'd The fallen Star that had the Key of the bottomless Pit who is sathanick enough in whom the Dragon also inhabits who hath been bloody to great Extremities yet is even essentially enough distinguished from him He is a Star fallen from another Sphere descends with the Key and ascends and lets out the Smoke but is in regard of the true Religion he professes still and maintains however debauch'd by Antichristianism not a Native of the Abyss as this Angel is he holds the Scripture while he lets out the Smoke also But this Angel of the bottomless Pit hath no more of God but what Hell hath that believes one God trembles in the acknowledge of him All else is perfect Hell The Time most eminently and illustriously agrees For after the Roman Western State was in Justinians Time so wholly unenlightned after the Christian three Woes proclaimed by Pope Gregory the first after Vniversality given by Phocas and receiv'd by Boniface and that there was some time for opening the bottomless Pit and letting out the Smoke out of that Smoke comes Mahomet the false Prophet and King of the Locusts inhabited and possessed by the Angel of the bottomless Pit of which his Epileptick Fits were an Emblem if not the Effects of a very possession according to the eminently judicious Mede upon the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the possessed in the Gospel he comes I say a false Prophet in Armour leading these Men-locusts who have a King over them for Solomon observes Proverbs 30. 27. those natural Insects have no King that we may thereby know These are Men-locusts This Mahomet upon his Persecution for his hellish Imposture makes a flight from Mecha and sets up for Prophet and King that flight becomes in the Judgment of God a famous Hegira an Era or Date of Time at Anno Dom. 622. from thence this Prophecy draws a Line to the taking Constantinople 1453. of just 830 years of which allowing five Months and five Months to the Locusts and their Action and an interspers'd five months after the manner of Locusts before between and after the heat and height of their Action their share will be to 1057 that is Four hundred thirty five Years when the Turkish Sultany entred into a remarkable Appearance in the World in Tangrolipix as then prepar'd for an Hour a Day a Month and a Year Which is most exact as to point of Time as will appear in that part to 1453 when Constantinople became the Ottoman Port. The Symbols or Parables of the Prophecy and the Parallels of History are most exact The Locusts came out of the Drought and Smoak of the Apostacy Thus Mahometanism sprung as is observ'd out of the Idleness Stupidity and Superstition of Monkery for Sergius the Monk incubated the Alcoran Their Power as the Scorpions of the Earth have Power their having Stings in their Tails and their hurting with them are all significant of their false serpentine Religion and their false Prophetism which Scripture compares to a Tail Now the propagation of this their Venome is the great pretence for their Cruelty and this envenom'd Syrma of a devilish Religion strikes under and for the sake of which their enslaving is worse than Death it self Their hurting neither the Grass of the Earth nor any green thing nor any Tree speaks the universal Blast of the Apostacy and its Drought that there was no such thing in Appearance to be hurt the Witnesses the Worshippers the Servants of God were all close The Woman in the Wilderness where the Serpent could not find her as before explain'd No green Olive Tree appeared tho' still secretly they emptied their Oyl but in the Time of these Locusts Elijah's Drought had withered all Appearances but what was secretly in the Temple in the House of God Psal 52. 8. The Emblems of their Warlikeness are very admirable their Likenesses were as Horses prepar'd to the Battel on their Head was the Glister of their Helmets like Crowns of Gold their Faces as of Men their Arabian Locks like the Hair of Women their Teeth as of Lyons their Breastplates of Iron the noise of their Wings was as the sound of Chariots and Horses running to the Battel and a warlike King over them All these are demonstrative Emblems of armed men The description of Locusts Joel 2. is so like this of the Apocal. 9. that I cannot think but that besides the litteral sense it had a prospect upon them And These as They came out of the Drought describ'd c. 1. of that Prophecy viz. the universal
Wither of all the Greenness of Religion For so Scripture Prophecy both designs before-hand for and after derives from it self The Distribution of their dreadful Effects to a five months of Torment upon men like the stroke of a Scorpion while it was a vexation to understand the Report we suppose according to History was their first invading the World in general and hovering over the Apostate Kingdom The swiftness of their Success was so prodigious that it could not but be thought that the Lord uttered his Voice before his Army and that as his Camp was very great so he was strong that executed his Word that the Day of the Lord was very terrible and none could abide it before their Face all People were much pained and all Faces gather'd Blackness The continual Tidings of their Victories and Successes was to be continually tormented as with Job's Messengers or with the stroak of a Scorpion a not being kill'd but a living in pain But when this Army drew nearer into Italy and even to Rome it self in the second five Months when it enter'd the very Gates of that great City they ran up the Walls and enter'd in at the Windows to pillage and plunder and were also perpetually striking with the Tails of not only their false Religion but in Contempt and Scorn of the Antichristian Idolatry and Image-worship it was worse than a speedy Death or a total Conquest the prophetical Death here intended especially when it came to cruel Slavery It was no wonder then men sought for Death that is a quiet State although of being conquered and in Subjection and could not find it it fled from them for God had determin'd them this lingring Torment and not a speedy Death or Conquest over them and even these Locusts could do no more than what was commanded them and given to them Now their Power the five second Months was more than the first it was not only to torment with their terrour and report but to hurt with a real Presence but it was only to hurt and not to kill as the Turkish Cavalry was to do at Constantinople so they could do no more than hurt they could not kill the Bestian Rome and Empire were to survive them Thus they had five Months and five Months of Action eminent grand Action but seeing they had the space of five Months more in their Fourhundred and thirty years they must be suppos'd to come out of a first Formation and rude Preparations or to be at a distance from the effects of Torment and Hurt upon the unsealed Anticbristian especially Western State And at their latter end of Power a winterly Torpor and Deadness seis'd them and the Turkish Power drove them into a desolate Land and their stink as of an Army of dead Serpents came up that yet in their Time had done great things and so is their Memory at this day And thus History and Prophecy will agree in the account of their Time at least in relation to the Bestian Kingdom besides supposable Interspersions or Truces of their Impressions upon the Earth of the fallen Star or Antichrist The just and natural ensuing Woe upon this first as close Arg. 4 as the two Bestian Times one to another and yet distinguish'd too under the very same Mahometan King or Angel of the bottomless Pit and in the Entail of the same serpentine Religion is a very persuasive Argument of the due Explication of these things in Prophecy whose Situation Connexion and Sequence one upon another even as the Hour Day Month and Year upon their Five Months Five Months and their Vacation or Non-Term of Action is close and inseparable but this will rise into a farther Observation upon that part of the Line in the mean time as a strong support it helps to sustain the Point we are upon The very great fitness of these Locusts under their King Mahomet is every way most admirable to be a Scourge and Arg. 5 Woe upon the Antichristian Empire and their Months or Half-Moon to be a portentous Paraselene or another Moon upon them They are a mock-state every way to them by the severe Vengeance of God an Antichrist to Antichrist coming by Sergius the Monk out of their very Smoak let out by the Key-bearing fallen Star Their King an Angel of the bottomless Pit rivals the Star of the bottomless Pit the Monarchy of the Beast and his ten Horns is mated by the Monarchy of this King and one Vniversality by the other the pseudo or false Prophetism of the one by that of the other the Miracles of the one by those of the other the Superstition of the one and the Cruelty and Bloodiness of the one by those of the other both are sharers in the Roman Empire each hath his Rome one old Rome the other new Rome each of which Imperial Cities are in this prophetick Emblem Thirds of Men. Both aspire to the Possession of Jerusalem as having the promise of Universal Monarchy and Dominion but both mistake the Jerusalem in Bondage for that which comes down from above at which both will be vanish'd Both are Draconick and oppose and stave off the true Kingdom of Christ both oppress the Witnesses and Servants of God but the Beast by single War with them the King of the Locusts in the general and mistaking the false Church for the true and its earthly Glory for the Glory of Christ and so cannot hurt the true Glory both last the one as a Bestian Kingdom the other as a Woe till the end of the 1260 Days Both are to be utterly destroy'd before the Glorious Kingdom of Christ But the latter is a Judgment and a Woe-Trumpet on the former both as it is Christian in Pretence and Profession to which Mahomet is a profess'd Foe and as it is Antichristian Idolatrous and Superstitious for so it is scorned and abused and derided as well as persecuted by Mahometanism Now to ballance these two Antichristianisms one with another and the Interest of Satan in them it is thus to be settled in one Satan is as an Angel of Light falling from Heaven and making use of the Key of the bottomless Pit as if it were the Key of the Kingdom of Heaven in the other he is plainly the Angel of the bottomless Pit and acts as the Destroyâ—r Now the first must be necessarily the most hateful to God because it is the greatest Blasphemy its Moon eclipses the Kingdom of Christ most directly and as it were in the Draconick Nodi surpris'd it when it was to appear at the casting down Satan from Heaven and the manly Birth caught up to the Throne of God upon which Antichristianism as the Finess of Sathanism Mahometanism was provided as a Scourge and Woe of the coursest and thickest of the bottomless Pit and the blackest Appearance of the Angel of it and therefore though Mahometanism shall be finally destroyed and sent back to the bottomless Pit yet Antichristianism shall receive greater
although they are as overflowings of the Prophecy beyond its Conduct of things within the Trumpets yet it is most demonstrable They must all return within the Trumpets and Time at large begin with the Trumpets and intimate Time be guided by the Pillar of Time erected within the fifth Trumpet For seeing the Woman and the Witnesses 1260 days must needs be equal in their Beginning and Ending and the Beasts Intimate Time must be plac'd where the Witnesses Vanquishment and Death are and that these must be within the Trumpets nay in that all Time must be before the seventh Trumpet and end at it All Time therefore from thence in account recoyls backward so as to find room for it self even to the first of the 1260 Days within the first Trumpet which beginning at 437 ends with 42 the Concent of all Periods at 1697. All which ought to be evinc'd all along and I do more then hope hath been so evinc'd I have already prevented my self in the Remarques of this whole Line by placing them early in the first Views of it and therefore now make only these short ones as a Conclusion We may be heal'd of any dangerous Wonder that an Remark 1 Apostacy from Christian Religion so foul and thick as to need no Confutation of its Figments and Fables the very Title his Holiness Vicar of Christ do so loudly proclaim Antichrist That such a one hath endur'd so long a Time hath captivated the Wise the Learned the Politick the Noble the Royal the Imperial we see in this Prophecy It was to do so and by this Oath of Christ it was and is to last Time Times half Time even till the end of it It is to do so e're its Decem Principality It s ten horn'd Kingdom Fall And although it began by degrees yet it hath two most sudden Downfalls one at the Reformation as but in preparation and beginning the other at the end of that Half time then begun viz. at 1697 when His Fall shall be exceeding great Seeing it is most impossible Intimate time should return Remark 2 whatever Sufferings there may be of the Church of Thyatyra how great how dismal soever yet there cannot be a slaying of the Witnesses any more for Christ hath sworn with the Rainbow cap. 10. 1. on his Head It shall be as the Waters of Noah to him Isa 54. 9. There shall be no such Return for ever nor can I apprehend the Church of Sardis can in any parts of the Reform'd Nations Rev. 3. 3. v. 9. lose its State by a Return of that Apostacy its only danger is its shame that without Repentance will befall it at the more glorious Appearance of Christ's Kingdom and especially those Parts of it that have relapsed to a Synagogue of Sathan shall with double shame be forc'd to come and worship at Philadelphia's Feet and to know Christ hath lov'd it who endeavour'd to shut its Door Seeing we are compassed about with so great a Cloud of Witnesses Remark 3 let us with great Confidence wait hope expect pray for the great Glory that is to be brought unto us at that great Appearance that will be made of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ at the end of the half time or half day or at the last of the last 180 of 1260 Days viz. at 1697 so often memorializ'd although but in preparation to that Kingdom it self 75 Years after And if we shall not live to it in this World yet we shall lose nothing by it for in Heaven and with the Lamb on Mount Zion we shall with the other Witnesses rejoyce in Rev. 14. 1. so happy a Change as will even then be made and so rejoyce for ever each in our Lot of the Land of Promise or the New Jerusalem The end of the second Point of this Line of Time or its Period SECT XIV Wherein is contained a brief Disquisition upon the seven Voices as they run along Apoc. ch 14. THE last Line of Time upon the grand Line of Daniel's 2300 Ev. Mor. stretches out it self beyond the so often repeated Prophetical Line we have been upon and yet it is most justly and according to the Reason of the Line to be joyned with it because the holy Spirit hath in Daniel so joyned to 1260 30 more making 1290 and then 45 making 1335 as hath been so often observ'd so that from hence however joyn'd rises a distinct Line of 75 Years consisting of its lesser Distinctions 30 and 45. And with great Wisdom and Design they are undoubtedly thus joyn'd and yet distinguish'd for hereby is shewn 1. That it is the same principal Line of 2300 Ev. Mor. thus protended 2. That the managements of Divine Power as to the Divine Kingdom are of a distinct nature from what they were any part even the last and best part that is the Half-time of the 1260 Days or since the Reformation and yet that there is an Agreement too so that the Kingdom is distinctly advanc'd in the first 30 above the State of it along the Half-time and still farther and higher advanc'd in the last Distinction or the forty five and yet that the Kingdom does not appear in Glory until the End of the 1335 all which appears very plainly both in Daniel and this Apocalyptick Prophecy where seeing the Voices and the Vials come after the 1260 Days we may conclude by the Union and by the Distinction together That the latter end of the sixth Trumpet adheres close to the seventh and then by the Voices first and the Vials after them both of the seventh Trumpet following so close one upon another and by the Blessed State coming upon all we may be most assur'd the Voices and the Vials answer to the Thirty and the Forty five Years of Surplusage to the 1260 Days so distinguish'd and so conjoyn'd Now that these Voices and Vials of the seventh Trumpet are yet to come and to come in the Order laid down and within the Time laid down these six Things may indubitably convince us 1. We may be fully assur'd nothing so great as the seven Thunders could be heard before the Reformation so high so loud for the Kingdom of Christ so they must be with the Reformation beginning 2. There is most apparently a space allowed for the Thunders remaining seal'd after their Voices uttered which space hath so great reason as hath been given to be rated at a Half-time or 180 Years and so cannot be run out yet since the Reformation 3. Nothing so eminent since the Reformation as the Fall of the Tenth of the Great City or the Turkish Woe ceasing whatever hopes now appear nor of the seventh Trumpet so closely lynck'd with both hath yet been seen 4. The Oath of Christ that Time should be no more cannot possibly allow such a space of Time or Delay as the Half-time after Time Times Half-Time within the seventh Trumpet or indeed any Time at all wherein every thing should not be in
his mighty ones according to Rev. 19. comes down and the whole Air is full of Divine Judgments so that this Battel just before the Kingdom v. 17. of Christ is with Burning and Fewel of Fire and not Garments roll'd in Blood of which all the immediate Judgments from Heaven as on Midian as on the Assyrians Esa 9. 5. are Types which last is joyn'd to a clear Prophecy of this Glorious Kingdom of Christ. I can give no fitter Remark upon so unfathomable a course Remark of Judgments than the recording that Song of Moses the Servant of God at the final Overthrow of the Egpptians in the Red Sea and of the Lamb c. 15. 9. Great and marvellous are thy Works Lord God Almighty just and true are thy ways oh King of Saints Who shall not fear thee Oh Lord and glorifie thy Name for thou only art Holy and all Nations shall come and worship before thee for thy Judgments are made manifest And this course of Judgments comprehends all the Dead both small and great to that very 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 IT IS DONE and at last to these Dead at the seventh Vial are gathered All whose Names are not found written in the Book of Life and are cast with Death it self into the Lake of Fire and Brimstone which is the second Death SECT XVI Wherein is given in a most brief Account the state of the thousand Years both as to Time and Excellency On c. 20. THE Time of the Duration of the Kingdom which is the Sabbath of Time when all Anti-sabbatical Time shall be at an end and NO MORE is a thousand Years Now it may be a great doubt How this Time is to be understood whether literally or mystically if literally How then will it agree with the whole Frame of the Prophecy which hath very little that is not mystical and of a typical Signification and most particularly all the Lines of Time But if the thousand Years be mystical either they shall express no definite Time or they shall if mystically multiplied set the State of Eternity at incomputable Distances yet from the last Time and Ends of the World we are now subsisting upon contrary to all the Reason and Faith of Christians and the whole Analogy of the Scriptures Now that which I would reconcile the Thoughts of all the serious Considerers of Prophecy in this matter by is That here The literal and the mystical Sense conspire and closely embrace one another The literal 1000 Years comprises highest Mystery in it for besides that in round Number as we compute Time it comes in as the sabbatical thousand for which I perceive there is a general Favour of all Christians if not Jews that have any Estimation of mystick Types of Prophecy Besides this and that the millenary Number hath great Reputation in Pythagorick mystick Numbers as a cubical Number rising from 10 and filling up the Perfection of Number even as the millenary State is the perfectest State of Conformity to the Law of Creation given by God in the 10 Words we call the Decalogue in which Sabbatism hath so great Place and Reason It is also the Time wherein Sathan is bound chain'd and seal'd up the Sanctuary is cleans'd in the other 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or IT IS DONE in the New Jerusalem Besides all this It is the great Emblem God hath chosen to represent his own and his Servants blessed Eternity in This thousand Years is as one day to him to represent his and his SECT VIII Wherein the 42 Months are measur'd by the exactest Rule of Prophecy and found to begin at the Cessation of the Christian Western Empire and to end whenever the 1260 Days end the Date of the Kingdom of Christ immediately ensuing and by compare with the 1260 Days at 1697. Page 90. SECT IX In which the Time from the 42 Months beginning is set out till 622 or the Mahometan Hegira by Rome's dark State in the fourth Trumpet by the Angels proclaiming the three Woe Trumpets by the Beast becoming a fallen Star at 606 and the Key of the Abyss given him viz. in the universal Pastorship by Phocas and the Ministry of the other Beast to him herein and the State of the Witnesses are also declar'd Revel c. 8. v. 12. c. c. 9. v. 1. c. Page 114. SECT X. Wherein is undertaken to be proved That the Mahometan Saracens are the Locusts design'd in the fifth Apocalyptical Trumpet and that the 25 Months given to them comprehend 435 Years from the Mahometan Hegire at 622 and so reach â—o 1057. Vpon Rev. c. 9. v. 1. c. Page 124. SECT XI Of the Number 666 shewing the Certainty it gives to the whole Line of Time both as to the Nature and Time of the Beast upon a true and right Explanation of it Rev. 13. v. 15 16 17 18. Page 132. SECT XII In which is given an Explication of the Woe of the sixth Trumpet especially to the taking of Constantinople and by proportion to the Reformation and to the End of that Woe and an Adjustment of the Hour Day Month and Year to the whole Time Vpon Revel 9. 12 13 14 c. Page 149. SECT XIII This Section enters into the Half-time of the Reformation and by the Agreement of Prophecy with the Event demonstrates the Beginning and End of that Time On Rev. c. 10. Page 155. SECT XIV Wherein is contained a brief Disquisition upon the seven Voices as they run along Apoc. c. 14. Page 177. SECT XV. VVherein is given a very brief Display on the Vials Page 185. SECT XVI VVherein is given in most brief Account the Time of the 1000 Years both as to Time and Excellency Page 189. FINIS
Conversions to Christianity though so great as to be a very strong Argument of its Truth were small in comparison of what this shall be for the Mistery of Iniquity began early to work Ephesus the Type of the Apostolical Church left its first love as soon as the Apostles went off the World and notwithstanding all the sufferings of the Primitive Christians under the Type of Smyrna yet a Synagogue of Satan an authoritative Ecclesiastick Apostasie then overshaded it till in the times figur'd by Pergamus all was cover'd with the Throne of Sathan a Supremacy of Apostacy and so things went on and they are not yet recover'd in the Best Christian Churches but they shall be after the space of ten prophetical Days that is years to that degree that the Kingdoms of this World shall be proclaim'd to be the Kingdoms of the Lord and of his Christ and so things shall go on amain to the Restitution of all things as God hath spoken by his Prophets since the World began the Lord will hasten all this in his own time and if it be wonderful in our Eyes should it be therefore wonderful in Gods The Witnesses shall then put off their Sack-cloth the everlasting Gospel shall be preached to every People and Language the Monarchy of Christ Jesus shall be an Vniversal Monarchy and the Tenfold Principality the ten Kings shall fall perfectly off from the Beast and the City that is born up on high by it that hath so long reign'd over the Nations and Kings of the Earth shall fall Stay then you Atheists and Despisers of all Religion and asswage the high Atheistical Humour see whether God hath not call'd the end and declar'd it from the beginning and declar'd all along the great things to come that you and all may know that he is God have so much Patience as to see what these ten years will produce at their end but if you will not be perswaded take your fill of Atheism and your farewel also for the very Air you breath in will be too bright and hot for Atheism to live any longer in Let us considering at what Door this fatal Apostasie Remark 2 enter'd even at a departure from the Apostolical twelve and so grew up to its number 666 let us I say fear the least remove in Doctrine Worship and Practice from the foundation of the Prophets and Apostles or from Christ the chief corner stone We need not so much mind combating Parties in Religion by names hateful or reproachful to them much less those little snatches at them by trifling Reflections upon them let us center our selves upon Truth it self in the word of God and grow in Grace and in the Knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and that will secure us from this Error of the Wicked and from falling from our own stedfastness this will cut off Offence from all but those who are resolved to take Offence this will preserve us in due regard to Authority if we dissent from it in matters of Religion and yet we shall preserve our Religion while we keep close to those Images of things Scripture hath given us and observe those notes of Time it hath fitted to them and suffer History which is every mans Priviledge to read to hear or to know even by the Law of Nature to declare what fell out and this we cannot be deny'd since God hath furnished us in all things and commands us to search his word and to hear and read the Words of his Prophesie and count the numbers he hath given with Wisdom and Vnderstanding and his Ministers are to expound to us and then we are to search and try whether those things are so or not and in all things receiv'd from the word of God we know and all know it is more reasonable to obey God than Men. These are two things in which the Happiness and Welfare of Man consists for this World and for that to come both which he hath made as certain and evident to us as the Light One and the First and Principal is true Religion fix'd in his Word with the present Consent of Natural Conscience and the Awes of that even whether we will or no. If we would but rest in the clear plain and undoubted Truths of it and not be hasty of removing from them till we have full Evidence from them to conduct us farther into Divine Knowledge without suffering our own Fancy to mislead us or our Credulity and sudden Belief of others to hurry us according to their Impositions The Second is Loyalty or Subjection to the Sovereign Power set over us by God and what that is we may easily know For the Sword of Justice is Supremely in the Hands of it and the Government of that World in which we live that the Disorders of Mankind may not swallow up it self depends upon it It carries before it a Terrour to evil works and a praise to them that do well Upon which account we must be subject not only for wrath but for Conscience sake And when this is in the Hand of a Prince whose Ancestors have been Princes throughout many Ages when the Succession is Clear and Lineal we can have no greater Assurance The Power that is is ordain'd of God And such blessed be God is the Case of our Nation that we can have no possible Scruple Now our Subjection is clear what it ought to be even in all things but our Religion whether Reveal'd or Natural for that is Gods and to be rendered to him onely All things else are Caesar's A Christian as a Christian can have no Scruple or Doubt in any thing else whatever it be This he can by no means submit It is to impeach Sovereignty in its highest Orb even as it is to obey a Subordinate Magistrate sent by the King against the King and his Supremacy But in all things else he needs as a Christian ask no Question for Conscience sake What men may as men as the Subjects of such Laws such Establishments as every Nation hath peculiar to it self insist upon I leave to those Laws I know as Christians the rendering our Lives our Estates if call'd for by God and the Edicts of Princes cannot hurt our Consciences but rendering our Religion to any but God and his Word will So these two things Religion and Loyalty can never clash can never interfere for to deny the surrender of our Religion can never hurt our Loyalty for to be Religious according to the Word of God onely and Natural Conscience guided by that is the highest Loyalty This is all the Loyalty Man can require to render All things else without Resistance and to Love Honour Pray for the Prince that requires all our Loss God will recompence in the Resurrection of the Just So a Christian hath no need to be Disloyal if he understand his Religion aright It is not our Loyalty to our Prince to be of our Prince's Religion though it be right
manly Birth that had Right to Rule all Nations Now with this Dragon the Beast was to be united to receive his Throne Power and great Authority from him and in Him the Dragon must Live and be Worshipped Therefore He that is the Beast must be Roman and Sit at Rome from which the Christian Emperours by Divine Conduct receded that this Character of the Beast might be left free to the Beast alone And under Him it must be Antichristian until the very Glorious Kingdom of Christ and then is to be Burnt when the Beast is Taken and Cast into the Lake that it may answer the whole Ichnography or Description Rev. c. 17. c. 18. Now that we may throughly understand this Character and the certainty of it By the Woman that sits on the Beast must be Apprehended Rome as a City and a Church a False and Antichristian Church fix'd in and made inseparable from this City No other can answer the Prophecy so that the other Beast called the False Prophet cannot be conceived by it For whereas this City must be burnt as from Heaven the False Prophet was taken with the Beast and cast into the Lake That it must be the very City is plain by the whole Prophetical Type This had the Seven Kings united with the whole Empire that by their Residence in it did also carry it and bear it aloft This Sate on many Waters This Reigned over the Kings of the Earth This had its Merchants and its various Merchandises its Pomp and its Pleasures This is the Eternal Rome that after its being Thrown a burning Mountain into the Sea at above twelve hundred Years old was preserv'd and rescu'd and hath stood twelve hundred Years more so Great as it is at this Day and shall not be totally Destroy'd till the Appearance of Christ It s Epoch of Restitution is in Sacred Prophecy as Chronicular and Monumental as is its Building or Vrbs Condita But as it is a City so is it an Apostatiz'd Church fix'd to that City For on its Forhead is written Mystery the sense of which is Church in a City opposite to the Mystery of the Seven Churches but agreeable to the mystery of Iniquity It is the Great Whore and mother of Harlots with which the Kings and People of the Earth have committed Fornication And this we know is the constant description of an Idolatrous Church in the Old Testament as of Aholiab and Aholibah Ezek. 23. It is Babylon the Great in this Mystery and it is spiritually call'd Sodom the Impure City in its Spiritual Fornications as well as corporeal Nicolaitanism and Aegypt the enslaving cruel City holding the Israel of God in Bondage It is Spiritually that Apostate Jerusalem that is in Bondage with its Children where our Lord was Crucified It covers the true Church call'd for its sake Pergamus and the high-rais'd Throne of Satan so it is Thyatyra the Spiritual Jezebel Daughter of Eth. Baal King of the Sidonians Daughter of an Ethnick Idolatrous City whose Merchandises are the Instruments of Idolatry and Superstition sum'd up in the Bodies of men not only attending its State as the Scarlet Fine Linnen Gold Silver Ivory Precious Wood does but its blind dark Religion requiring servile stupid Brutes for men and Souls of men perishing for ever in its service against Light and Convictions of Truth and defending it with a violated distorted Reason abus'd Parts and Learning Revel 18. 13. And this Rome must be both the City and Church for here and in it the Primacy of St. Peter residing as Bishop laid the Foundation of its so long Greatness under the Name of the Apostolick See Constantinople was but an Eminence as small as the Fame of it Seven Hills but as little Risings compar'd with this Eternal Church of Eternal Rome The Ottoman Port has swallowed that Flames from Heaven rest upon this so that the Smoke of its Burning shall ascend for ever and ever as both City and Church For so Prophecy hath read its destiny and it cannot be revers'd Strong is the Lord that Judgeth it This City then is to be a Pyramid Pile of Smoke and Flame ascending for ever and ever an eternal City of burning as the City Sodome a Lake of Brimstone settling in its very Room Place and Scituation a Jerico so curs'd as to be no more built and an Apostate Church suffering as spiritual Sodome the vengeance of eternal Fire He The Beast must carry universal monarchy as the Emperours 〈…〉 of Rome did over as it were the habitable World for so his Union with the Dragon imports and yet that this may not be mistaken it must be in an Image a real martial natural Cesareate is not in the prophetical Portraicture of Antichrist but in the Image of a Pontificate or a Vicarship to Christ on Earth even as the Caesars carried a Pontificate enchas'd into their Imperialism or Cesareate so the Beast bears a Cesareate or imperial Power enchas'd into his Pontificate The other Beast therefore ministring to the Worship of the first Beast viz. the Roman Empire as to be under the seventh head but not yet erected into publick Dignity and Supremacy found no way to do it but by saying to the Antichristian Earth and its Inhabitants that they should make an Revel 13. v. 14 15. c. Image to the first Beast that was wounded with a sword and did live was wounded in the sixth head liv'd in the seventh but was not yet in Dignity to be worshipped to this entire Beast as in the seventh head was to be made an Image of Idolatry and an Image of Imperiality an universal Power under the Image of an in ordine ad spiritualia resident in a pontifical supremacy and infallibility And when this Image had by the continuing service of that other Beast Life given to it to speak and to cause That all that would not worship this Image c. 14. v. 9. c. 15. v. 2. c. 16. v. 2. c. 19. v. 20. c. 20. v. 4 should be kill'd and that all should receive a mark c. Here arose the universal monarchy in an Image and from this time the Prophecy joyns continually the Beast and his Image together The Beast must answer that prophetick motto or Inscription Caract 5. upon him thrice given and pointing at three several Seasons 1. The Beast that Was Is not he is the eighth and is of the Ch. 17. 11. seven and goeth into Perdition this is determin'd to the point of time proper to his Succession and then he must answer it 2. The Beast that was is not shall ascend out of the bottomless v. 8. Pit c. This is determined to the times in which the Beast first bore the Woman For the Beast that thou sawest viz. with the Woman sitting upon him was c. Then therefore he must answer that Inscription 3. The Beast that was is not yet is This is determined to v. 8. the time when