to the prevalence of the infidel spirit and the wonderful effects which have resulted from it.

On such grounds, I incline to believe, that neither Daniel nor St. John have omitted, in their chronological prophecies, the unhallowed exploits of that God-denying Antichrist, who by the wide diffusion of his spirit should finally identify himself with the apostate Roman Empire, but who in action should chiefly be developed by the principal horn and under the seventh head of that same Empire in its last or divided condition. Daniel, if I mistake not, sets them forth with an extraordinary degree of minuteness and precision: while St. John makes them the leading and preeminent subject of that seventh trumpet, which introduces the third and ultimate great woe to Christianised Europe'.

But, whether prophecy be silent or not relative to that spirit of Infidelity, which, when reduced from theory to practice, has shaken Europe to its very centre; the existence and operations of such a spirit constitute a recorded historical fact: and that fact has occurred within the period, marked out for the second moiety of the seven times of the Gentiles or the broken term of the latter three times and a half.

III. Thus it appears, that, since the seven times, which compose the age of the great metallic image and which form the measure of THE SACRED CALEN

1 Dan. xi. 36-45. Rev. xi. 15—19. xvi. xix. 11–21.

DAR OF PROPHECY, must have commenced with the birth of the golden head at some point between the years 658 and 646 before Christ, and therefore must terminate at some point between the years 1863 and 1875 after Christ: it appears, that, would we know what must be the subject of predictions relative to that period, we need only advert to history. For, since the history of the period in question is the history of the principal events which occur during its lapse; any true prophecy, which relates to it, can only foretell the events which it has been the province of history to record. History, in short, is no other than accomplished prophecy: while, conversely, prophecy is nothing else than anticipated history. If the oracles of God, as professing to be such in Scripture, be indeed the work of inspiration, prophecy and history will answer to each other like the two edges of an indenture.

CHAPTER IV.

RESPECTING THE CHARACTER AND REVELATION OF THE MAN OF SIN, AND THE NATURE OF THE APOSTASY OUT OF WHICH HE ARISES AND OVER WHICH HE PRESIDES.

THOUGH St. Paul was not commissioned to enter

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upon the field of prophecy with a copiousness equal either to that of Daniel or to that of St. John; yet he has left behind him two remarkable and connected predictions, which stand so closely allied to the visions of those two prophets that they must not be passed over in silence.

The first of these predictions relates to a character, whom the Apostle denominates the man of sin, and whom he describes as being revealed subsequent to the coming of a great Apostasy: the second sets forth the nature and peculiarities of that Apostasy, to which in the first he had simply alluded.

We are assured on inspired authority, that no prophecy of Scripture is to be interpreted after an independent or insulated manner, the whole of the sacred oracles forming a single compact and mutually connected body'. This circumstance is, in fact, the necessary result of their having all equally.

12 Peter i. 20.

proceeded from God. Daniel or Paul or John may be severally the vehicles of prophetic communication but their writings are not their own in the same sense, that the writings of an uninspired Author are his own production. Prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake, as they were moved by the Holy Ghost': The true author, in the proper sense of the word author, to whom the whole code of prophecy must be ascribed, is the Spirit of Jehovah while the several human agents, by whom his communications have been delivered to the world, are to be viewed only in the light of amanuenses to whom he dictates. Their own special words, indeed, they may be allowed freely to select: but the matter, which they propound in those words, is not their own. Hence, in treating of the sacred oracles, we are not to consider them as so many insulated Works of independent writers: but we are to esteem them, as jointly forming a single Work the production of a single author.

Now, both on this principle and from the very reason of the thing, we may be sure, that the two predictions of St. Paul stand connected with the predictions of Daniel and St. John. The predictions of those two last writers relate, either to the whole, or to the latter part, of the seven times of the Gentiles: the predictions of St. Paul evidently relate also to the latter part of the same great

12 Peter i, 21.

period. Such being the case, both the man of sin, and the Apostasy out of which he springs, are to be sought for within the limits of the sacred prophetic calendar or within the limits of the chronological measure of the metallic image. But the man of sin is far too prominent and conspicuous a character to have been silently passed over by Daniel and St. John, when professedly treating of the identical period within which the person so distinguished is described as flourishing. We may be morally sure, therefore, that the same character will be found in their writings also, though possibly disguised by a symbol or designated by some other appellation. Hence the predictions of St. Paul are not only intrinsically important; but they are important likewise, as throwing additional light, on the predictions of Daniel and St. John.

I. The prophecy, relative to the man of sin, is addressed to the Thessalonians; who, apparently from an erroneous statement in a spurious letter purporting to have been composed by the Apostle himself, had imagined that the day of Christ was at hand. This, he assures them, is a mistake and he grounds his assurance upon the prophetic circumstance, that the figurative coming of Christ, at the close of the latter three times and a half, could not occur, until there had first been a remarkable Apostasy, and until a cha

2 Thess. ii. 2. iii. 17.