hills, I shall produce no permanent impression on any mind that has hitherto believed itself to read in those words a declaration that Rome, Papal Rome, is the city described in the Apocalypse." Assuredly not. And what then his solution? 66 That Rome is

the city intended," says he, "I have no doubt: but I believe Rome to be symbolically used for the seat of all anti-christian political power." That is, that not the symbol only, but the very thing symbolized by the symbol, according to a revealing angel's own explanation, is itself to be only construed as a symbol of something else! Fatal principle! and one by which indeed not this scripture prophecy only, but all scripture prophecy may be utterly and altogether 66 explained away." For example; "The ram which thou sawest," said Gabriel to Daniel, "having two horns, are the kings of Media and Persia; and the rough goat is the king of Grecia." 2 But, on Mr. Arnold's hermeneutic principle, the kings of Media and Persia, and the king of Grecia, are not really meant; but are mere symbols of something else quite different. Again in Pharaoh's dream, the seven lean kine were said to have signified seven years of famine. But not so, on Mr. A's principle. The seven years of famine were but themselves a symbol! so in case of other divinely explained symbols universally.—A principle like this no names can justify, German or English. It is one which will make anything or nothing, as it pleases, of God's blessed word. And, as it is essential in order to the extrication of the Popes and Popedom and Rome from the charge of being Antichrist and Antichrist's kingdom and city, may I not most fitly conclude this long Section on Antichrist with the selfsame words, already before cited, with which Mr. Arnold begins his Section on Antichrist, one little "not" only being inserted in addition ? "The opinion that the Papal system (or rather the Pope 3) is [not]

And

1 Compare Mr. Arnold's remonstrance against my "explaining away," in not construing the city where also Christ had been crucified,' in the history of the Witnesses, to be Jerusalem: and that, says he, "in a clause that seems from its position to be evidently explanatory." See my page 41 supra. Here the clause not only may seem to some to be explanatory; but is expressly declared to be so.

2 Arnold, page 29.

3 Terms ought to be used on this subject a little more exactly. The succession of Popes (on the usual Protestant view) answers to Antichrist and the Apocalyptic Beast's ruling head; the Papal population and kingdom to the Beast's body; the

Antichrist, cannot be maintained without doing such violence to the sacred text, as should call forth the indignant remonstrances of all who honor the word of God with any approach to that reverence which is its due." 1

SECTION VI.-The Conclusion.

In concluding this Reply to Mr. Arnold, it is not my intention. to discuss his brief criticisms on that last Part of my work which concerns the Jews' restoration, the Millennium, and generally things future. It is the past that I consider as my chief province; it being that in regard of which I may test the correspondence of prophecy and historic fact: while in regard of the future there must necessarily be less material for checking fancy, and guiding the reason to just conclusions. Moreover while on the subject of the Jews and the consummation, Mr. A. offers some observations temperately expressed, and that may fairly call for careful consideration on the part of the expositor, there are certainly more which show that Mr. Arnold's views on the general subject are not at present wrought into any thing like a consistent form, or such as might promise fruit from the examination. 2

Papacy to the ecclesiastical system of the consummated apostacy connected in prophecy with Antichrist.

1 Mr. A. alludes to the late Dr. Arnold's general agreement with him in this view of the Apocalyptic Babylon. A fitter opportunity for more full examination of Dr. Arnold's generalizing scheme of prophetic interpretation, and Dr. Oldhausen's too, will occur in the Appendix to my new edition of the Hora. 2 The following are the chief views exprest by Mr. A. on this head; pp. 58–60. 1. That the first resurrection of Apoc. xx. must be a literal resurrection, not figurative. But, adds he," that the saints of the first resurrection will reign on earth is a supposition that has no foundation in the Apocalyptic description: nor is a single word said that either states, or (so far as I can see) implies, that Jesus Christ and his saints will reign on the earth in the body during the millennium." Has Mr. A. then forgot the song in Apoc. v. 10, "And we shall reign on the earth: 99 a declaration well accordant with that petition of the Church in our Lord's prayer, "Thy kingdom come, and will be done, on earth as it is in heaven ? " 2. That Christ's coming will be accompanied with "that blessed state of the Church's glory, when Satan shall be bound, and God's ancient people converted to their Messiah," and the creation itself delivered from the curse. But he doubts whether this shall be at the millennium, or after the dissolution of the present

I revert therefore to the subjects of the past. Mr. A.'s Pamphlet, like his own amphisbæna,1 has at its end, as well as at its beginning, a somewhat serpent-like looking head, in the shape of a heading and a closing Paragraph, that drop upon the Horæ a critical distillation, in the latter case at least, not altogether devoid of acrimony. The introductory Paragraph speaks (as we saw long since)? "of the mode of investigation in the Hora as perverse and uncritical," and its interpretation such "as will not stand the tests of grammatical construction, common sense, and the ordinary works of historians." The concluding Paragraph reprobates its "phantastic and utterly unfounded mode of interpretation; one whereby this noble and blessed work of inspiration is turned now into a field for the petty ingenuity of the commentator, hunting for fancied coincidences: now into an armoury for the disingenuous 3 polemic; now into unhealthy food for the fancy, revelling in pictures of millennial

heavens and earth; and utterly rejects all idea of any other than a total destruction of this whole world by fire at the time of Christ's coming:-thereby leaving (so far as I can see) no earthly place and standing ground for the Jews that are yet, as he admits, to be converted at this very time to the Messiah; nor, I think, any possible reconciliation of St. Peter's promised new heavens and earth with those noted in Isaiah lxv, lxvi, where the promise was made.

"I cannot at all agree," he adds, "with Mr. E.'s explanation of Teeno AvoμEVOL Tup, as meaning not reserved unto fire, but stored with fire: i.e. charged with fire that is to destroy the Roman earth." Reason for disagreement he gives none. Whereas it is certainly ground for agreement with it that so only is the antithetic parallelism brought out that was evidently intended by the apostle, between the old world provided with the aqueous element that was to destroy it; and the present world charged with the igneous element that is to destroy it.-Since the publication of my first edition I have been pleased to find Tertullian's similar view of the passage. "Gehennam, quæ est ignis arcani subterranei ad pœnam thesaurus." Apolog. 47. Jerom too seems to have had a similar idea of the interior fire of the earth: "infernus in medio terræ esse perhibetur." In Jon. ii.

Let me note, in passing, a difficulty that Mr. A. makes respecting the literal return of the Jews to their own land,in connexion with that passage in Zech. xiv. 6, which states," that every one that is left of all nations that come against Jerusalem shall go up from year to year to worship the king." "Judea," says he, after Dachs, "could not hold them."-But how could all the nations and languages, said to be assembled in the plain of Dura (Dan. iii. 7) to worship Nebuchadnezzar's image, have found room there? They attended, as is evident from verses 2, 3, by representatives.

See page 34 suprà.

2 See my page 1 suprà.

3 66 Disingenuous!" Will Mr. A. explain and justify this charge?

blessedness, and even, as is too often the case, turning its own creations into a creed,2 and scorning those as unspiritual who cannot find its articles in the Bible."-Whether these charges be true, or not, the candid and intelligent reader of this Reply, on comparing it with Mr. Arnold's Remarks, will be pretty well able to judge; seeing that my Critic must of course have set forth in his Remarks his strongest matter of charge against the Hora. Much more will he be competent to do it, who has also read with care my Work itself.

But, in truth, the question involved is one too surpassingly important to admit of the matter stopping here. I feel thankful that the rapid sale of my first Edition has so soon enabled me to direct my attention to the revision and improvement of the Work: and very soon my new Edition of the Hora will be before the public; one in which, as I hope, what was weak in the argument here and there will be found strengthened, what was imperfectly developed opened out more fully, and what was incorrect in detail exhibited more correctly. Thus there will then be open for the critical examination of Mr. Arnold, or any other, a fairer, better, development of the subject; and consequently a fairer, better, opportunity for deciding the great question of its general truth, as an Apocalyptic exposition, or falsehood. And such an examination I not only do not deprecate, but call for. Only let it be really critical critical in that highest and best sense of the word on which I have before spoken: 3 that to which Mr. A.'s ex parte attack in his present Pamphlet presents so perfect a contrast; and of which the very model and beau ideal is the fair, comprehensive, yet searching summing up of evidence by an English

:

1 "To revel" in them! Surely the verb is a very strange one in such an application. Nearly all that I have said on the subject is on the one page, 1411, and this chiefly a cento from scripture. At page 1412, I expressly decline dwelling on the subject, "as one too high and holy for my own rude touch." And I quote from Cowper instead,

O scenes surpassing fable, and yet true,

Scenes of accomplished bliss, &c.

So that the "revelling" is Cowper's, not mine.

2 Where is this scorning? Surely Mr. A. himself will not deny that the general tone and spirit of the work is of a very different character from, indeed the direct opposite to, scornful? 3 See page 8 suprà.

Judge. Let me frankly say, of such an examination I fear not the issue. It will of course begin with my Seals; and I shall expect that the examiner will test their truth by not one only, but each of those three criteria which I have indicated at page 26 of this Pamphlet. Next I shall expect that he will take up (after Mr. A.'s example) the first or scorpion-locust woe; and distinctly encounter my main argument, from the asserted fact of all the characteristics of that symbol answering to the Mahomedan Saracens of the seventh Century, so as they can be shewn to answer to no other nation that ever existed on the face of the earth.1 Then will come up the Vision of the sun-beaming Angel of Apoc. x, xi; and enquiry whether my assertion that the five or six chief æras of progress in the Reformation are there unfolded with an exactitude the most surprising, be true or not. Then we shall have renewed the question of the Death and Resurrection of the Witnesses; and then again, the whole question of the Beast, Beast's Image, and Antichrist.-Of course if Mr. Arnold, or any other profest Critic, shun, so as Mr. A. has thus far done, the main evidence and arguments, and only seek to pick off here and there, if it may be, some straggling and less defended statement, then it will be on his part a silent confession of failure. And what if, on careful examination, finding the main strength of the evidence impregnable, and that all through, take what point he will, the coincidences between the Apocalyptic symbols and the historic subjects to which I refer them, whether secular or ecclesiastical, concerning the world or the Church,2 are indeed, so as I assert, most singular and marvellous,-what I say, if he yet choose to refer them rather to accident, or the expositor's ingenuity and craft, than to the direct designing and intent of the all-wise Author of the revelation? In such case then let him not be surprized, if it be suggested as thenceforward his fitting employment, to inculcate the rejection of all the laws of both direct and circumstantial evidence that have hitherto been most recognized amongst men ; and to astonish the world by proving that even the fittings and combinations of a watch are to be regarded as but the result of chance. 1 See page 27.

2 Which the symbol of a temple like that in the Apocalypse, Mr. A. himself allows. p. 67, might fitly figure.

THE END.