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Chapter 13
Two inquiries concerning the latter times. —1. What
durance they are to be of. —Answer. That the times of the Antichristian state are to last forty-two months, or twelve hundred and
sixty days. —That hereby cannot be meant three single years and a half, proved
by several particulars. —Inquiry 2, When they begin.
Answer. That they take their beginning from the mortal wound of the imperial
sovereignty of
Concerning
these times thus found, we will now further inquire, First, What durance they may be of. Secondly, When they take beginning, and by what mark their
beginning may be known.
For the
first, we will make no question but these are the selfsame times whereof
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Gentiles: lastly, the same time with 1260 days during which the
witnesses of Christ prophecy in
sackcloth. For a time, times, and half a time, or a year, two years, and a
half, are forty-two month; and forty-two months make 1260 days.
If,
therefore, we can find the continuance and beginning of any of these, we have
found the continuance and beginning of them all.
For the
duration and length of them, they must imply some definite time, because the
Scripture follows that use of speech, and useth no number indefinitely, but
those which the use of speech had made such, as 7, 10, 1000. But mixed and
compound numbers, as these are, viz., 3 ½, 42, 1260, are neither in the Hebrew,
nor, I think, in any other tongue, used indefinitely.
Our
adversaries would have them literally understood for three single years and a
half, as though it were an history and not a prophecy.
But, besides the use of prophecy to reckon days for years, I think it would
trouble any man to conceive how so many things as should be performed in this
time, should be done in three single years and a half. 1. Ten kingdoms founded
at the same time with the beast. 2. People, and multitudes of
nations and tongues to serve and obey him. 3. To make war with the
saints and overcome them. 4. To cause all that dwell upon the earth to worship
him. 5.
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yea, the merchants and all those that had ships in the
sea to grow rich by trading with her. Methinks all these things should ask much
more than three years’ work, or four either. To which
I add, moreover, that that king, state of government, sovereignty, or
seigniory, or what you will, of the beast, under which the whore should ride
him, followeth immediately upon a former, which in comparison is said to continue
but a short space. Revelation 17: 10.
But if the Antichristian state shall continue but three years and a half,
literally taken, how short must the time of that foregoing king or sovereignty
be, which should occasion the Holy Ghost to insert so singular a note of the
difference thereof from that which followed, that it should continue but a
short space? Doth not this imply that the next state (wherein the whore should
ride the beast) was to continue a long space? Therefore, three years and a
half, historically taken, cannot be the time of the Church’s apostasy, and the
Antichristian sovereignty of Rome; and if it cannot be taken historically, it
must be taken prophetically, every day for a year; and so 1260 days, counted so
many years, shows the extent of these Latter Times to be 1260 years.
Now for
the second thing proposed, the beginning of these Latter Times;
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whore upon his back, should have a plurality of kings start
up at the same time with him, who should agree to submit their power and kingdom
unto him. And would not he also in the same chapter have us to take notice,
that the Antichristian state of the beast which was to come should be the next
to that of the Cæsars which then reigned? For the angel there tells him, that
the state of the beast wherein the whore should ride him, which then was not in
being, but should afterwards ascend out of the bottomless pit and go into
perdition, that this state or head of the beast should succeed so immediately
upon the sixth state or head, (viz., the Cæsarean then reigning) that howsoever
for some respect it might be called an eighth, yet should it in very deed be
but the seventh. For how could it be otherwise, when the beast in the vision
had but seven heads and no more? —See verses 8, 10, and 11.
Agreeable
to this is
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Antichrist. “He who hindered is taken out of the way; and we
consider not that Antichrist is at hand.”* —The same
in his preface, lib. 8. Comment. in Ezek. “My mind is refreshed, and for the
present forgets the woeful calamities that this last age labors with, groaning
and travailing in pain, till he who hinders, be taken out of the way, and the
feet of the iron statue be broken to pieces by reason of the brittleness of the
clay toes. The world goes to ruin, and yet the haughty neck does not bend, † &c.” Thus he, “after that the most
glorious light in all the world was put out, and the head of the Roman empire
was cut off, and so the whole world was destroyed in the destruction of that
one city,” ‡ —as he elsewhere
deplores that woeful calamity, Pref. in lib. 1, Comment.
in Ezek.
Answerable to that which
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and observed a little horn with eyes and a mouth to
spring up amongst them, and displant three of them; (chapter 7: 8,) the angel
(verse 240 expounds to be ten kings which should arise out of that kingdom, and
another (to whit, Antichrist) should arise behind them (so it should be
translated as the Septuagint doth*) which should be diverse from the first,
(that is, a king of another nature,) and should bring down or humble three
kings, and play those reeks which follow in the text. Thus the Fathers
universally, and from the utmost antiquity, expound this Scripture. Justin
Martyr, Dialog. cum Tryphone, takes it as granted that
this Horn is that Man of apostasy, † “that
would attempt all the mischief imaginable against us Christians.” ‡ Irenæus, scholar to Polycarp, l. 5, c.
21, aliis 25, saith The prophet Daniel, eyeing the end of the fourth or last
kingdom, that is, those ten kings into whom their kingdom should be divided,
and upon whom the Son of perdition should come, [viz. the Little Horn that
should domineer and overtop them] saith (chapter 7) that the beast had ten
horns growing out of his head, and that there came up among them another little
horn, and that before this horn three of the first horns were plucked up by the
roots. § Yea, a little
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after, he tells us that
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dwell entirely and bodily.” * Who these three kings were
which this horn displanted to make himself elbow-room, you shall hear more
anon. But I will not conceal that I have heard of another exposition, which
fits our turn for the beginning of the apostasy no less than that of the
Fathers: namely, that by ten kingdoms may be meant the full plurality of the
Roman provinces, so much whereof as three is of ten should have the imperial
power rooted out of them, and fall under the dominion of the Antichristian
Horn, who should act the sovereignty of the Latter Times, or the last
sovereignty of that kingdom. Now it is most true that the Pope’s patriarchdom
in the west holds just that scantling of the ancient territory of the Roman
Empire, which a man may judge by his eyes or compasses in a map: and yet I
prefer the other exposition before it.
To come
to an issue: it is apparent, by all that hath been said, that these Latter
Times, with that wicked sovereignty which should domineer in them, were to take
beginning from the wound, the fall, the ruin, the rending in pieces or
rooting-up, of the imperial sovereignty of the city of Rome. When that city
should cease to be the lap of that sovereignty which the
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Cæsars once held over the nations, and many new upstart
kings should appear in the place and territory of that once-one empire; then
should the apostasy be seen, and the Latter Times, with that Wicked One, make
their entrance. Now in what age this fell out, I think no man can be ignorant,
who hath but a little skill in history.