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years after Christ the Jewish state is judged, in the destruc tion of Jerusalem; and 1260 and 75 make 1335, the greater number of Daniel,'

Perhaps this latter observation furnishes the reason for that which has perplexed all students of prophecy-namely, that no event marked the end of the 1290 days of Daniel, which were generally supposed to be cut off from the 1335, and that, there fore, some striking historical fact would mark that epoch; but none which is reckoned satisfactory has been mentioned hitherto.

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Seventy-five years appears, then, the period which intervenes 'between the appearance of a new dispensation and the fulness of its institution, by judgment of what is gone by. It does not come into the primary calculation; it would come, as the mathematicians express it, into both sides of the equation.' Also, it appears to be appended to any thing to which the number of 1260 is appended.

The author does not mean to tie events to chronological periods very closely, partly because there are not materials for doing so in many instances; and partly because, as he justly observes, Scriptural phrases may depend upon things of very little apparent importance in ordinary history. He makes one general observation, as to the mode in which God is pleased to present his church in the world, which elucidates his ways-namely, that He reckons the date of spiritual desolation from its first establishment, and fixes the time of temporal judgment by the last degree of corruption of state, and, indeed, to wait beyond it. He does not mean by first establishment, first development.

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In proceeding to the first particular of the calculation, the number 1260 is deducted from 2000, the last division of the 6000 years, and gives the 740th of the Christian ara. I would here ask the mind of any one that hears or reads, of how ordinary, a matter the passages in the history of the world 'seem, when compared with the denunciations of Holy Writ. When men and actions are treated of, how conscious should be 'the danger of considering them but as of themselves, and not as open to the eye of the Almighty, as weighed in his balance, as making up the ways that shall guide all things to his final purpose, and and receiving every one its judgment. I do not know a greater benefit from the habit of perusal of his work in all its parts, than the exercise of this habit of considering every trifle that occurs.' The year 740 is the period when the sovereignty of Greece ceased at Rome. Rome became independent of the Eastern Empire on the division occasioned by the Iconoclasts. Gregory the Second, as an historian calls bim on this account the first Pope, having promoted that

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'division, became in a material degree (indeed efficiently, as to the indication of character which day by day proceeded to its 'perfect independence and full claim of empire) sovereign of Rome. He was defended against the Lombards by the French, who received at a distance from Rome the title of the empire shortly after. This course of things is pointed out very ⚫ remarkably and distinctly in Vertot's Grandeur de la Cour de Rome. I have considered, then, that 740 is the year which the period of Scripture would mark as the establishment of some character which is a spiritual desolation, and from which final "judgment proceeded; and it does appear that the Babylonian character of fornication with the kingdom, or kingdoms, of the earth, is that character.

.....The great city in the wilderness is that city. The ❝ church fled to it to be nourished in the persecution: it was a gradual approximation to a union which might protect its profession, but ended in the last ruin of carnal contamination, as a kingdom that confessed itself not of this world.'

The author has missed the mark here, although he seemed at one time to shoot very near it. Many expositors of the Apocalypse have overlooked the fact, that up to the year 740 the East was the heavens, or place of rule. In that heaven the woman was, till by the Spanish Council, the Eastern church' being declared apostate, she was cast out of those heavens, and obliged to fly into the West. The wilderness, however, to which she fled, is not typified by that of Sinai, but by that of Shinar. Here, indeed, "they nourished her"-not God, even if it be granted that the place was prepared by Him, ητοιμασμένον από το θεό, να εκεί τρέφωσιν αντην: the last plural noun to which τρεφωσιν can refer is cov, in the preceding verse: and when the figure passes from a woman in the wilderness to a city, there was no city in Sinai; but the great city of Babylon was in the plain of Shinar. The author observes, that the process had a point of completion when Constantine professed himself a Christian,' which he did in 306. It was at this period that the Waldenses first separated themselves in one part of the empire, and so many thousands fled to the deserts of Egypt and Palestine.' Neither of these, however, can be called an outward separation: and perhaps the author does not mean that it was, for we cannot understand the remarks which he makes in page 27. The conclusion is, that the danger to faith, when the Emperor Constantine declared himself a Christian, was subtle, and felt only by the heavenlyminded. The prominence of the evil in 740 is marked to the "face of the church and the world. Prideaux, in his Connections, after a very long discussion on the period of the com❝mencement of the Babylonish captivity, and of the restoration

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' of Jerusalem, relative to the completion of the seventy years 'of that judgment-there having been two invasions, and two 'leadings into captivity, and two decrees of restoration-has the following passsage: "And therefore, if we reckon from the beginning of the captivity to the beginning of the restoration, "we must reckon from the fourth year of Jehoiakin to the first ' of Cyrus, which was just seventy years; and if we reckon from 'the completion of the captivity to the completion of the resto'ration, we must reckon from the eleventh of Zedekiah to the fourth of Darius, which was also just seventy years: so that 'whether we reckon from the beginning of the captivity to the 'beginning of the restoration, or from the completing of the 'captivity to the completing of the restoration, Jeremiah's prophecy of the seventy years' captivity will be both ways equally accomplished; and therefore I doubt not but that both ways were equally intended therein, though the words of the prophecy seem chiefly to refer to the former." (Part i. 6. iii). It is therefore by no means incompatible that such a mode of ⚫ fulfilment should be looked for in other periods of God's judg'ments.'

Having marked the period of A. D. 740, it gives also the 'character subject to the judgment. Having also looked to see when the process began, I reverse the order of the calculation. I remark it in the year 306, when the Emperor Constantine called himself Christian, and made the church 'which suffered his adoption, ROMAN.'-This observation must be received with some qualification. The act of Constantine made it quite as much Grecian as Roman. If, however, the author means that the Emperor made it imperial, and Roman as synonimus, there is no objection to his position. And he has himself previously said, 'The year 740 is the period when 'the sovereignty of Greece ceased at Rome.'-'Add 1260, and it 'gives 1566, a day of judgment, or its corruption. It is the 'period of the close of the Council of Trent, by which the church ' of Rome entrenched itself within all it could keep. I add 75, and it gives me the period of the establishment of the powers. that had been the instrument of its judgment; I mean, the peace of Westphalia....At what moment, during the period that that peace was carrying on, it was essentially concluded, I 'know not: the negociations were carrying on during eleven years, and in the course of those eleven years the year 1641 falls. And what did that peace effect? The formal recognition ' and establishment of Protestantism by the nations of Europe; and as such Rome considered it: Rome condemned it as infringing her claim and right to universal authority in both 'kinds; and it was not, and never has been, admitted by that

power, but denounced by it. The particulars I leave to be examined by historians; it was the close of the so-called thirty years' war. I give these things as little place as possible: the terms of the world are a means of bringing our thoughts to its own ways.'

In the way of double application of prophetic passages, it is known that the wilful king of Daniel is held by the received 'writers on prophecy to foretell one of the family of Antiochus, ⚫ and also the Antichrist of the latter ages. The only objection, 'if it be one, to such an assorting of the prophecy, is, that there 'would be an anachronism as respects the application; any of 'the Antiochi being so long anterior in comparative chronology 'to the expectation of Antichrist.....I recur, then, to the days of 'the week of 6000 years, and, taking the last of the periods, namely 2000 years, I deduct the same number of years from this as constituted the lapse of time between the end of the preceding 2000 and the era of Antiochus the Great, who is generally 'fixed upon; and his death occurs in the year 187 before the ⚫ birth of Christ, which synchronizes with 1813, the close of the * career of Napoleon, and with that of the judgment of the French "Revolution on the Papal states of Europe.'

The author proceeds to give Azosarns as the sum of the number 666, without appearing to be aware that the same explanation has been given by others. This solution, however, is open to all the objections that can be made to that given by Clarke, in his "Dragon, and Beast," n Aarεin Baoiλɛia, without much of the exclusive appropriateness of this latter.

The tract contains a Supplement, on the Signs of the Times; in which the writer takes much the same view that has been set forth by Coleridge in his "Church and State;" and by Southey, in his "Colloquies; and by the author of "Social Duties; shewing that the evil of the Atheistical and Evangelical parties consists in their having a common point, which is individualization, instead of communion of hope, love, and fellowship, which is the bond of Christian perfectness. The whole publication is full of good thoughts, but expressed in language oftentimes unintelligible, setting all grammar at defiance; so that the thoughts are to be guessed at, rather than received from the writer.

CHRONOLOGICAL SYSTEM OF CLEMENS ALEXANDRINUS.
To the Editor of the Morning Watch.

SIR,-I shall be obliged by your insertion of the enclosed Table
of the chronological system adopted by Clemens Alexandrinus,
referred to in the "Criteria" (Morning Watch, No. IX. p. 175);

and by requesting your readers to note the following Errata in
that article.

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...........

520y. Om.Od.

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50 0 0

1696 Birth of Moses to Captivity at Babylon 1085y. 6m. 10d.
1616 Exode to Foundation of Temple...... 566 0 0
1570 Conquest of Canaan to Foundation of Temple ........
1050 Thence to Captivity at Babylon............................................... 439 6 10
610 Thence to Persian Era of Cyrus

610 Captivity at Babylon.....

560 Persian Era of Cyrus to Death of Alexander........ 235 00
540 End of Captivity and II. Darii

325 Death of Alexander to I. of Claudius................ 365 0 0

A.D.

41 Thence to Destruction of Jerusalem and II. Vespa:ian
72 Thence to Writings of Clemens ......

200 Clemens writes A.D. 200, A.U.C. 954, A.M. 5784

588 7 01. 48
588 An. 1
538..Babyl Era

518 of Cyrus.

325

A.D.

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In this 666 years, 215 are added to the period of the Egyptian bondage. (See Criteria,
p. 175.) The period from the Call to the Exode given as a result of the system; not as a
statement of Clemens.

It will be seen that, by deducing the corrected dates of Clemens from his original date of
creation, the judicial period will come out 588 years, differing two years only from the same
interval, 590, in the system of Josephus, whom Clemens follows in the patriarchal period.

ERRATA.

No. VIII. p. 899, l. 14 from bottom: for 42, read 24.

904

17 from bottom: for 40, read 50.
21: for nearly 30, read about 40.
34: for 144, read 1440.

35: for 1070, read 2070.

39: for 108, read 106.

No. IX. p. 162, 1. 28 : for series, read sums.

164

165

168

169

171

172

175

177

7 from bottom: for 5000, read 5500.
19 from bottom: for 153, read 253.
22: for ennis, read annis.

21: for sequel, read Syncel.

8 from bottom: for 3347, read 2347.

2: for Euergetes, the second, read Euergetes the second.
19 from bottom: for 115, read 215.

4 from bottom: for 608, read 5608.

J. CULLIMORE.

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

NOTWITHSTANDING the discouraging aspect of all without, circumstances more
and more encouraging are daily occurring within the Church, which confirm
our previous expectation that all the endowments of the Spirit are about to be
restored in all their fulness. Fresh instances of Divine power are continually
coming to our knowledge, and we hope for permission to publish many of
them very soon. In the interim, we take occasion from these fresh manifesta-
tions of Divine goodness to call for the prayers and thanksgivings of our
readers, hoping to have much to communicate in our next Number.

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