Faber shows, by the little horn of Daniel's fourth beast, by the man of sin (2 Thess. ii.) and the Babylon of the Apocalypse.

One word more, and I have done with patristical interpretation. I think the readers of this letter will agree with me that Mr. Faber's still unsettled dispute with Mr. Newman, respecting the interpretation of Clement of Rome's words, shows in a strong light the inutility of the new system which he has adopted, I think he somewhere says, for about the last twelve years. If practical proof be wanted that the fathers are not in point of fact THE interpreters of Scripture, here we have it. I am, Sir, your obliged servant,

PHOENIX.

ROMISH CANDOUR.

To the Editor of the Churchman.

SIR,-I think the public ought to be more generally acquainted with the following singular statement in page 86 of this year's Report of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, as it shows in a strong light the animus which actuates our zealous Romish friends, and which is so apt to display itself wherever it thinks it can do so without detection and exposure:

"I put a copy of your Arabic translation of the liturgy into the hands of a Syrian deacon. He glanced at it for a few minutes, and then said, 'It is not true, then, as we have heard, that in England they have the communion only once in thirty years, and that then everybody present rushes forward and seizes a portion of the sacred elements for himself.' There are hundreds of such stories afloat. The Papists circulate them everywhere with the greatest diligence. The liturgy, wherever it goes, contradicts them; it is a witness which cannot be gainsayed."

Have the Romanists never heard of what shall happen to him who "loveth and maketh a lie ?" If not, it is high time they should learn. But the present is a season in which it is of peculiar importance to trace the wiles and shifts of Romanism, and to mark how adroitly it attempts to take advantage of public feeling and opinion, and to use it for its own advancement. At the present moment Whig-Radicalism is at a discount, and has no longer power to deceive the hearts and blind the eyes of the nation. The members of the Church of Rome, wise in their generation, readily perceive this to be the case; and we have seen of late more than one instance of their ostensible accession to the Conservative ranks. One case is particularly remarkable, that of a nobleman of high rank, whose ultra-destructive and revolutionary speech in the House of Lords (at a time when principles and feelings of that stamp were popular, and he hoped he could take advantage of them to raise a furious storm of hatred and persecution against the Bishops and the Church of England), will be found chronicled in the " Mirror of Parliament," for Tuesday, April 10th, 1832. Timeo Danaos. And remain, Sir, your very obedient servant.

A MEMBER OF THE CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY.

54

LETTERS ON PROPHECY.-No. VII.

(Continued from page 406, vol. 7.)

3. "It would be easy to show that the division of the empire of Alexander into four kingdoms after his death is a fact of which no satisfactory historical evidence has ever been produced: for it was divided into many more than four petty sovereignties, which continued in a state of change for many years; and it would have been as easy to have produced twelve or more, had so many been required by the prophecy."

A separate appendix, of near twenty pages, chiefly taken from Venema, is devoted to the same argument. It also occupies four pages of the following lecture, so that Dr. Todd plainly attaches to it a great importance.

Now it might be enough to remark, with Mr. Faber-first, that the prophecy speaks of four conspicuous horns; and secondly, that where the main outlines of an interpretation are clear, it is contrary to every maxim of sound judgment to reject it because of difficulty in subordinate details. There is no need, however, to rest in this general reply, since a close examination will, as usual, turn Dr. Todd's objection into a fresh argument for the truth of the common view.

We may, doubtless, fancy to ourselves a fourfold division-instantaneous, permanent, and mathematically complete, like the quadrants of a circle; and not finding this in the history, many reject the application on that account. This, however, would prove nothing but our own rashness. It is enough to prove that the event accords fully with the division, as implied in the prophecy itself, in its theatre, its date, and its continuance. A few remarks will then clear away all these mists of learned confusion.

(1.) The theatre in which we are to look for this division is not the whole of Alexander's conquests: for the gold and silver coexist with the rule of the third kingdom; and the two former beasts have their life prolonged after their time of rule is past. We must exclude, therefore, Babylon, Persia, and Media, or the regions beyond the Euphrates, as well as Western Europe. Sir Isaac Newton well observes:-"All the four beasts are still alive, though the dominion of the three first be taken away. The nations of Chaldea and Assyria are still the first beast; those of Media and Persia the second; those of Macedon, Greece, and Thrace, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, are still the third; and those of Europe, on this side Greece, are still the fourth. Seeing, therefore, the body of the third beast is confined to the nations on this side the Euphrates, we are to look there also for the divisions of the third beast: and therefore, at the breaking of the Greek empire, we include no part of the Chaldeans, Medes, and Persians, because they belonged to the bodies of the two first beasts."

These remarks have a transparent clearness worthy of the writer, and are firmly based on the prophecy itself. Hence, more than half the sub-divisions, which swell Dr. Todd's appendix, are at once excluded.

(2.) The date of the prophetic division is clearly implied in xi. 4, which Dr. Todd admits to refer to the same event. The kingdom was to be divided towards the four winds of heaven, and not to his posterity. This teaches, first, that the posterity of Alexander was speedily to be extinct, or cut off from royal dominion. And how strikingly was this fulfilled! But we learn further, that the fourfold division in the prophecy is not to be looked for, while the kingdom was administered in the name of Alexander's children. This mark, drawn from the vision itself, excludes every one of the lists from Raderus, which fill about six pages of the appendix. It also excludes three out of the four divisions in Venema; for the third of them was made, as he tells us, " until Alexander, the son of Alexander of Rhoxane, should come of age." The enquiry is, therefore, now brought within a narrow compass.

(3.) The history of the actual division, at the point of time, and within the theatre which the prophecy assigns, minutely answers to the prediction. The fairest way seems to be to quote Venema at length. His own object, I may just observe, was to detect a tenfold division, but his accuracy is undoubted.

"New troubles presently arising, after the house of Alexander was extirpated, and a war springing up between the allies, Cassander, Lysimachus, Ptolemy, and Silencus on the one side, and Antigonus and his son Demetrius on the other. After Demetrius had defeated Ptolemy with great slaughter, and taken Cyprus, Antigonus, elated with his success, first assumed the diadem, and placed it on Demetrius. Which, when the allies presently imitated, six kings suddenly appeared on the scene, Antigonus, Demetrius, Ptolemy, Lysimachus, Cassander, and last Silencus, who had now enlarged his kingdom through the East. This was B. c. 306. The war was then renewed on both sides with greater forces, and a decisive battle being fought at Ipsus, in Phrygia, Antigonus was vanquished and slain, and his kingdom extinguished, B.c. 301. To use the words of Plutarch (in Demetrio), the victor kings divided among themselves the whole kingdom of Antigonus and Demetrius like a great carcase torn in pieces, and joined it to their own provinces. By this fourth and last division, Ptolemy retained his kingdom, and added to it Colesyria, Phoenicia, and Judea; Lysimachus, besides Thrace, received Bithynia and other regions on the Asiatic side of the Hellespont and Bosphorus; Cassander obtained Macedonia and Greece; Silencus the rest of Asia, so that from that time he founded the Syro-Macedonian kingdom."

From this account, given us by Dr. Todd's own authority, we may draw these evident conclusions:-First, that until after the three former divisions, neither was the house of Alexander extirpated, nor the title of king assumed by his generals. These have none of them any claim, therefore, to be the division in the prophecy. Secondly, that when the house of Alexander was extinct, and six kings first appeared, there was at the time a fierce war raging between them, and nothing like a formal or fixed division. Thirdly, that after the battle of Ipsus, B.C. 301, there was a division by mutual consent,

which Venema calls the fourth and last; but which was the only royal division after Alexander's posterity were cut off; and this division was strictly fourfold. Lastly, that these four conspicuous kingdoms were evidently toward the four winds of heaven-Cassander in the west, Lysimachus in the north, Silencus in the east, and Ptolemy in the south.

Hence, amidst a chaos of perplexing changes, we find, on examination, a minute and punctual fulfilment of the prophecy, within the precise theatre and at the exact point of time, to which the visions themselves lead us.

(4.) But it is urged that "this statement omits altogether the Indian provinces; it omits also the Grecian states, that were at this time independent; and what is more important, it takes no notice of the power of Demetrius, who retained no inconsiderable empire in Alicia, and two years after possessed himself of Athens, and ultimately Macedon.""

The objection, in this form, requires an historical microscope; but let us examine it in detail:-First, the Indian provinces are excluded, as we have seen, by a mere comparison with the former visions. Next, with regard to the independent cities of Greece, Venema says expressly, "Cassander Macedonium et Græciam consecutus est." The temporary freedom of a few cities does not interfere with the completeness of this allotment, any more than the resistance of Tyre, near thirty years after (Ez. xxix. 17), interfered with the prophet's description of the first kingdom (Dan. ii. 38). Again, Demetrius had no kingdom, properly so called, left in Asia. The words of Plutarch, given by Dr. Todd's own authority, are express: "Totum Antigoni et Demetrii regnum diviserunt inter se, suitque provinciis adjuxerunt." His subsequent occupation of Athens and Macedon gave a fresh head to the first of the four kingdoms, but did not affect their number. And besides, the phrase "four conspicuous horns," removes all semblance of truth from these two last objections.

The next objection is drawn from chap. xi.: but as it relates to the same event, it is better to remove it at once. It is, in short, that the king of the North (chap. xi.) ought, in propriety, to be the king of the northern division; while yet commentators expound it to mean the king of the eastern section, or Syria.

4. The simple explanation is, that two of the kingdoms, the northern and eastern divisions, shortly coalesced into one. This, as I will show presently, is implied in the prophecy itself. After this union, the compound kingdom is called, in preference, the kingdom of the north, for three reasons-from its local position with regard to Judea, in contrast with the king of the south, and by way of distinction from the kingdoms east of the Euphrates. For the fact itself we have only to refer again to Venema. "Lysimachus lost both his life and kingdom in a decisive battle (against Silencus) in Phrygia, at the plain of Cyrus, B.C. 281."

5. The short continuance of the fourfold division is the sole difficulty that remains. "Even with this modification it must be ad

mitted, that within a period of twenty years the very semblance of a fourfold empire was at an end; and it is surely difficult to conceive that an event so obscure, and which, after the utmost concessions, was of such short duration, can have been the fulfilment of a characteristic so prominently marked in three successive prophecies."

Here again the visions themselves supply us with a complete answer. What do we there learn of the continuance of these four kingdoms? First, in chap. viii., one only of the four continues prominent to the end of the vision. Next, in chap. xi., two only have their history detailed-Egypt and the kingdom of the north. If the horn from which the little horn springs be the same with either of these, we shall have a twofold division; if it be distinct from both, a threefold division. In either alternative, the prophecy itself implies the short continuance of the fourfold state. The latter view is that which I believe to be correct, and the vision will then exhibit the four kingdoms as presently resolving themselves into three. Now let us hear Venema's further account.

“ From these continual waves of war, stirred up by Alexander's captains, there emerged three most eminent kingdoms, propagated for a long series of years-the Macedonian, which Ptolemy Arannus possessed after Silencus, and which then lasted some time in the house of Demetrius; the Syro-Macedonian (xi. 5), founded by Silencus Nicator; and the Egyptian (xi. 5-8), which Ptolemy Lagi founded and transmitted to his posterity."

Thus the short continuance of the fourfold division is implied in the prophecy itself; and the division that succeeds, if we adopt the simplest hypothesis as to the little horn, precisely accords with the facts of history.

6. The other part of the objection contrasts strangely with Dr. Todd's line of argument in the second lecture.

There his object was to set aside at once all the historical interpretations of eighteen centuries, and his reasons were the following: "We cannot without presumption take upon us to determine whether it may not suit the inscrutable designs of the Most High to pass over without notice ten or twenty centuries, and to crowd into the events of a few short years the fulfilment of all that is foretold. To determine such questions is to assume that we have been admitted into the secret counsels of God, and that we are acquainted with all the ends he had in view in the revelation of futurity to man. Need I stop to point out the danger and presumption of such reasoning? Need I say that the writers who have adopted it have perverted, rather than interpreted, the oracles of God?" (p. 47).

Here his object is to multiply objections against one particular point in the received interpretations, and the argument is suddenly reversed:

"Within a period of twenty years the semblance of a fourfold empire was at an end; and surely it is difficult to conceive that an event of such short duration can have been the fulfilment of a characteristic so prominently marked in three successive prophecies."

This "prominent characteristic" in all the three prophecies toge