Hence this period of three years and a half, fortytwo months, or 1260 days (resting on a solid historical basis), is employed in the Apocalypse as a typical exponent of an idea; just as the numbers four, seven, twelve, and twelve times twelve, do not represent a precise sum, but a well-defined principle '.

I do not venture to affirm, that the Church may

borrowed phrases from Daniel, who so expresses the three and a half years of Antiochus' persecution (Dan. xii. 7); and they mean times of trouble, and are used to express that, and not any fixed time. The Jews have learned to make the same construction of it: and this also, that comfort might stand up against mercy, was the time of our Saviour's Ministry. Christ preached three and a half years in trouble. (cp. also Lightfoot on Matth. iii. 16.) So the Two Witnesses in sackcloth. He having finished His ministry was slain; so they. He revived and ascended; so they likewise. Their case is paralleled with Christ's, their Master's. See also Lightfoot's Chorographical Inquiry, chap. vi. sect. iv. "This waste of sacred things by Antiochus lasting for three years and a half, the Jews retained that very number as famous, inasmuch that they often make use of it when they would express any thing very sad and afflictive. . . And perhaps it had been much for the reputation of the Commentators upon the Book of Revelation, if they had looked upon that number and the forty and two months, and the thousand two hundred and sixty days as spoken allusively, and not applied it to any precise or determinate time." See also his Serm. on Dan. xii. 12, p. 1250. Vitringa, pp. 449. 463. 1 Macc. xiii. 50, 51.

1 Haymo in loc. Dies 1260.] In hoc tempore Ecclesiâ in solitudine a curis temporalium rerum quiescente, pascunt eam Doctores exemplo et doctrinâ per Epistolas, Evangelium et expositiones librorum pabulo divini sermonis. Sicut Antichristus 1260 diebus regnabit, ita et Christus 1260 diebus, i. e. tribus annis et dimidio prædicavit, ideoque totum præsens tempus possumus accipere per hoc numerum a quo divina prædicatio cœpit. Desertum populi ex Ægypto egressi significabat hanc vitam, in quâ pascimur vero Manna, id est, corpore Christi; adsunt quoque igniti serpentes, &c.-See also Aquinas.

not be called hereafter to endure severe suffering, condensed, as it were, in the period of three years and a half; and so a second, literal, fulfilment may be given to this prophecy; but, on the whole, we arrive at this conclusion, that we cannot safely deduce any precise arithmetical results, with regard to the future, from this number of three and a half years, forty-two months, or 1260 days'.

Let us not, however, imagine that these numbers are superfluous. Nothing in Scripture is so. God has ordered all things in measure and number and weight. We cannot now understand all the harmonies of the divine Arithmetic, yet some we can. These numbers in the Apocalypse are of great use. They do not indeed gratify the illicit cravings of human curiosity. They do not enable us to construct a prophetical Ephemeris, or an Apocalyptic Almanack. But they present to us certain parallelisms. They show that the sufferings of Scripture coincide with those of the Church. They remind us of our own ignorance, and of God's knowledge. They teach us patience. They tell us that the days of man are few, and that a Millennium is a moment to the Eternal. They warn us that we are not to expect sabbatical perfec

1 I do not advert here to the supposed period of “ an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year." (Rev. ix. 15.) They who understand this literally cannot have carefully considered the Greek Original.

2 Wisdom xi. 20.

3 The true temper of a Christian, in regard to future “times and seasons," is beautifully pourtrayed in the admirable letter of St. Augustine to Hesychius, De fine Sæculi, Epist. cxcix.

tion in this World. They have also an analogical value. They remind us that here we are to look for trials-trials such as were endured by the Ancient Church of Israel in her forty-two sojournings in the Wilderness;-trials such as were endured by Elias under Ahab, by the Maccabees under Antiochus, and by Christ from His own countrymen. And they encourage us with the joyful assurance, that if we are true to Christ, and maintain His cause with zeal, courage, and charity, then, though we suffer, we shall conquer also; that our sufferings will soon be over; that they will appear like a few days; then even for us there will be a chariot of fire, and a heavenly Feast of Dedication, and a cloud of heavenly glory, and an eternity of joy.

6. We now return to the train of the Prophecy. And the red Dragon (we read) poured a flood after the Woman, to drown her; but the Earth helped her, and drank up the flood. And the Devil departed, to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandment of God2.

The Power of the red3 Dragon here is the same as that before represented in the second seal, as riding, with a sword in his hand, on a red3 horse-the horse of fire and blood-the power of Rome 1.

1 Cf. Isaiah viii. 7. ἀνάγει Κύριος ἐφ' ὑμᾶς τὸ ὕδωρ τοῦ ποταμοῦ τὸ ἰσχυρὸν καὶ πολὺ, τὸν βασιλέα τῶν ̓Ασσυρίων.

2 Rev. xii. 15-17.

3 In both passages the word is the same, πuppós, red as fire.

4 See above, on the Second Seal, p. 107.

Here we see the stream of Roman persecution, with which the Devil endeavoured to overwhelm the Church in the first ages of Christianity. Then the Waters, the deep waters of the proud,—would have drowned her, and the stream went over her soul1.

But the Earth helped the Woman, and swallowed up the stream ; that is, the Roman Empire became Christian, and the Church was protected by the civil power; and therefore the Devil departed, to devise some other mode of attack upon the Church.

He soon found what he desired. This is now revealed by St. John. He proceeds with the Vision

1 Psalm cxxiv. 4.

2 Constantine, in one of his letters to Eusebius, speaks of the Dragon being ejected from the government of the World by God's Providence and his own ministry-τοῦ δράκοντος ἐκείνου ἀπὸ τῆς τῶν κοινῶν διοικήσεως τοῦ Θεοῦ τοῦ μεγίστου προνοίᾳ ἡμετέρᾳ δὲ ὑπηρεσίᾳ ἐκδιωχθέντος.—De Vit. Const. ii. c. 46. And Constantine placed before the vestibule of his palace a representation of the cross over his own head, and of the Dragon beneath him, thrust down to the abyss.— iii. c. 3. τὸν ἐχθρὸν καὶ πολέμιον θῆρα, τὸν τὴν ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ Θεοῦ διὰ τῆς τῶν ἀθέων πολιορκήσαντα τυραννίδος, κατὰ βυθοῦ φερόμενον ποιήσας ἐν δράκοντος μορφῇ· δράκοντα γὰρ αὐτὸν καὶ σκολιὸν ὄφιν ἐν προφητῶν Θεοῦ βίβλοις ἀνηγόρευε τὰ λόγια. διὸ καὶ βασιλεὺς ὑπὸ τοῖς αὐτοῦ καὶ τῶν αὐτοῦ ποσὶ βέλει πεπαρμένον κατὰ μέσον τοῦ κύτους βυθοῖς τε θαλάσσης ἀπεῤῥιμμένον διὰ τῆς κηροχύτου γραφῆς ἐδείκνυ τοῖς πᾶσι τὸν δράκοντα, ὧδέ πη τὸν ἀφανῆ τοῦ τῶν ἀνθρώπων γένους πολέμιον αἰνιττόμενος.

A.D. 313 Constantine issued his edict at Milan in favour of the Christians ; he decreed the observance of the Lord's Day, A.D. 321 ; from A.D. 323 the heathen symbols disappear from his coins. The adoption of the sacred monogram, the Labarum, was another public profession of Christianity. Heathen sacrifices were prohibited by Constantius A.D. 353.

of the Church, and displays a new Form of Danger to her. He stood on the shore of the sea, and I saw a BEAST rising from the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and on his horns ten crowns, and on his heads a name of Blasphemy. And the Beast was like a Leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a Bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a Lion; that is, he combines the emblems of the first three Empires described by Daniel, and is himself the Fourth Empire, or Empire of Rome.

And the Dragon (that is, the Devil) gave him his power, and his throne, and great authority.

7. This Vision is afterwards more fully expounded by St. John himself, as follows:

I saw a Woman sitting on a scarlet Beast, full of names of Blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns3. The seven heads are declared by the Angel to represent the seven Mountains, where the Woman sitteth 1; and they also represent the seven Kings, or forms of Government which precede the power of the Beast;

5

1 He, i. e. the Dragon. See Notes to the Harmony, xiii. 1. Rev. xiii. 1, 2.

2 Dan. vii. 1-6.

3 Rev. xvii. 3. That this Beast is the same as that in cap. xi. 7, and cap. xiii. 2. 5, is proved by Bp. Andrewes, "satis liquet non duas ibi Bestias," &c., p. 174, and p. 196.

4 ὅπου ἡ γυνὴ κάθηται ἐπ ̓ αὐτῶν. Rev. xvii. 9.

5 The seven successive forms of Government of Rome. 1. Kings. 2. Consuls. 3. Dictators. 4. Decemvirs. 5. Military Tribunes. 6. Emperors. 7. The German Emperors, who were Kings of Italy. This is the exposition approved by Bishop Andrewes. They who censure this interpretation as incorrect, as far as regard the first five