"I am aware that a year is sometimes used in its litéral sense, as in Isaiah vii. 8, xxiii. 17, Jer. xxv. 11, 12, and even by Daniel himself, when predicting the punishment of the individual Nebuchadnezzar (Dan. iv. 25;) yet other instances may be brought, as well as those already adduced, to prove that days, in the language of prophecy, mean years.

After the number of the days in which ye searched the land, even forty days, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years." (Numb xiv. 34.) "Lie thou also upon thy left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it; according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon it, thou shalt bear their iniquity. For I have laid upon thee the years of their iniquity, according to the number of the days, three hundred and ninety days: so shalt thou bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. And, when thou hast accomplished them, lie again on thy right side, and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days: I have appointed thee each day for a year." (Ezek. iv. 4, 5, 6.)

"The only writers, that I have met with, who are unwilling to allow the three times and a half to be the same period as the 1260 days, are Mr. Burton and Mr. Galloway. The former asserts, without a shadow of authority from Daniel, that each time comprehends 70 prophetic weeks, or 490 years, merely because the famous prophecy relative to the Messiah, includes a period of 70 weeks; (Dan. ix. 24) and he dates the three times and a half from the year 49, or the preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles: consequently they bring him down to the year 1764, when the Jesuits were suppressed. Now, independent of his having no warrant for asserting, that a time comprehends 70 weeks, the event itself has shown him to be mistaken: for, whenever the three times and a half shall expire, the Jews will begin to be restored. (See Dan. xii. 7.) A time, however, as we learn from Daniel himself, is a year (Dan. iv. 25.) But, a year,

according to the old computation, comprehends 360 days, not 70 weeks. Each time, therefore, must comprehend 360 prophetic days. Consequently three such times and a half are exactly equal to 1260 days. Whence we may naturally conclude, that the two expressions mean the same period. In addition to these objections to Mr. Burton's scheme, it may be observed, that Daniel directs us to date the three times and a half from the era when the saints were delivered into the hand of the little horn. (Dan. vii. 25.) The little horn, however, was not to arise until the Roman Empire was divided into ten kingdoms. (Dan. vii. 8.) It will follow, therefore, that the three times and a half cannot be dated from the year 49, which expired long before the Empire was thus divided. (Burton's Essay on the Numbers of Daniel and St. John, p. 247, et infra.) Mr. Galloway maintains, that the three times and a half are merely three natural years and a half. Yet he asserts, that the 1260 days are not natural but prophetic days. The use which he makes of this separation of the two periods from each other, shall be considered hereafter. The Papists maintain the 1260 days to be mere natural days. This they do for obvious reasons.

"The period, therefore, assigned both by Daniel and St. John to the tyrannical reign of the man of sin, or the little horn of the Roman beast, and the dominance of the great western Apostacy, is three times and a half, or 1260 years. Here, therefore, we must define the proper mode of dating that period.

In prophecies, which are strictly chronological, the overt acts of communities, or the heads of communities, are necessarily alone considered in the fixing of dates; because it would be impossible for us to know how to date any particular period from the insulated and unauthorized acts of individuals. But in prophecies which are not strictly chronological, the scope is much more wide, and much less definite; extending, not merely to communities and their heads, but to every individual whose actions the prophecies may

describe. On these grounds there are two entirely different dates to the Apostacy, The first is its date when considered as relating to individuals: the second is its date, when considered as relating to that community over which the man of sin presides. St. Paul describes the apostacy in its first, or individual character; Daniel and St. John specify its triumphant duration in its second or general character. Now it is manifest, that the date of the Apostacy, when considered individually, is the very day and hour when any single Christian individual was first guilty of any one of those acts which characterize the Apostacy; and it is equally manifest, that this date never can be ascertained by man, but is known unto God alone. We can say, indeed, in general terms, that monkish celibacy, and a superstitious veneration of saints and angels, were creeping fast into the church during the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries; but we shall find it impossible to point out the precise year of their commencement. Such being the case, Daniel and St. John, in their chronological prophecies, consider the Apostacy only in its public and authorized capacity; and teach us to esteem the 1260 years, as being the period of the public dominance of the Apostacy, not of its individual continuance. Accordingly they both specify, with much exactness, the era, from which those years are to be computed. Daniel directs us to date them from the time when the saints were by some public act of the state, delivered into the hand of the little horn: and St. John, in a similar manner, teaches us to date them from the time when the woman, the true church, fled into the wilderness from the face of the serpent: when the mystic city of God began to be trampled under foot by a new race of Gentiles, or idolaters; when the great Roman beast, which had been slain by the preaching of the gospel, revived in its bestial character, by setting up an idolatrous spiritual tyrant in the church; or, as Daniel expresses it, by delivering the saints into the hand of such a tyrant; and when the witnesses began to prophecy in sack

cloth. A date which will answer to these concurring particulars, can certainly have no connexion with the mere acquisition of a temporal principality by the Pope. It seems most probably to be the year in which the Bishop of Rome was constituted supreme head of the church, with the proud title of Universal Bishop: for by such an act, the whole church, comprehending both good and bad, both the saints of the Most High and those who were tainted with the gentilism of the Apostacy, considered individually, were formerly given by the chief secular power, the head of the Roman Empire, into the hand of the encroaching little horn. This year was the year 606, when the reigning Emperor Phocas, the representative of the sixth head of the beast, declared Pope Boniface to be Universal Bishop: and the Roman church hath ever since shown itself to be that little horn, into whose hands the saints were then delivered, by styling itself, with equal absurdity and presumption, the Catholic or universal Church. The year 606 then seems to be the date of the 1260 years, and the era of what St. Paul terms the revelation of the man of sin. The apostacy, in its individual capacity, was already in existence previous to such revelation; hence he represents it as commencing before it: but, as soon as the man of sin was openly revealed, by having the saints delivered into his hand, then apparently commenced the 1260 years of the Apostacy in its public and dominant capacity. "Hitherto I have spoken only of the western Apostacy of the Romish church, predicted by St. Paul, and represented by Daniel under the symbol of a little horn springing up out of the fourth or Roman beast, which should exercise a tyrannical authority over the saints during the period of 1260 years. I must now notice the contemporary Eastern Apostacy of Mohammedism.

"In the Apocalypse, St. John describes the origin of this false religion at the beginning of the first woetrumpet; the blast of which introduces, in the selfsame year 606, the universal episcopacy of the Roman prelate, and the commencement of Mohammedism

Like

From the description which he gives us of the rise of Mohammedism, it appears that we are to consider it in the light of an apostacy, no less than Popery, though an apostacy doubtless of a very different natúre. A star which had fallen from heaven, or an apostate Christian minister, is said to open the bottomless pit, and to let out Apollyon and his figurative locusts; and we shall find, in exact harmony with the prophecy, that Mohammedism is in reality a sort of corrupted and apostate Christianity: Like the divine religion of the Messiah, it claims to be a revelation from God, at the hand of an inspired prophet, to call the world from the vanities of polytheism to the worship of the one true God, and to declare authoritatively a state of future rewards and punishments. the gospel, it professes to build itself upon the law of Moses; and allows the divine commission both of the Jewish legislator, and of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. But, borrowing the peculiar tenet of the fallen star, it pronounces the Saviour of the world to be a mere mortal, and makes void the whole of the Gospel; it contaminates, with licentious impurity, the doctrine of future retribution; it presumptuously thrusts the Messiah from his office; and, like its fellow apostacy, Popery, it propagates and upholds itself by the sword. It appears, moreover, from a computation which will hereafter be made from the numbers of Daniel, that, like Popery, it is to reign precisely 1260 years; and consequently, since both these apostacies commenced in the same year, that they are both likewise to begin to be overthrown in the same year. Of this period, nearly twelve centuries have already elapsed: we are therefore fast approaching to the time of the end, and to the day of God's controversy with the nations. The prosperous duration, then, of Mohammedism being the very same as the prosperous duration of Popery, and each being considered by the inspired writers as an apostacy or deflection from pure Christianity, we shall not wonder to find them both represented by the very same symbol of a little horn.