Imatges de pàgina
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lypse, an olive-tree and a candlestick are alike hie roglyphics of a Church 1.

5. Various other symbols are used by the pro-, phets, which cannot be brought under any very regular, or at least under any equally regular, classification. I shall notice the most eminent of these, arranged, so far as they can be arranged, in orderly mutual connection.

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(1.) A woman denotes a community or a body politic. Hence a chaste woman is a type of the true Church, whether composed of Jews or of Gentiles or of both: and, as such, she is esteemed the wife of the Lord and the mother of his spiritual children. A harlot or an adulteress, on the other hand, is a symbol of an apostate and idolatrous Church: for, the union of Christ and his Church being represented under the figure of a marriage, apostasy and idolatry will be spiritual whoredom and adultery. The flesh of such a harlot denotes her temporal possessions: whence the devouring of her flesh is equivalent to the confiscation or the secularisation of her temporalities 5. Her intoxicating cup represents the blandishments by which she seduces men into idolatry. And the circumstance

1 Jerem. xi. 16. Rom. xi. 17-24. Rev. i. 20.

2 Isaiah xlvii. 1-3. Micah iv. 8.

́3 Isaiah liv. 1—6. Ephes. v. 32. Rev. xix. 7. xxi. 9.

18.

4 Ezek. xvi. Jerem. iii. Rev. xvii.

5 Rev. xvii. 16. Compare Dan. vii. 5; and see above, § I.

• Rev. xvii. 4.

of her riding a wild-beast denotes her influence over the temporal Empire thus symbolised1.

(2.) An inclosed garden or vineyard is the Church, which is inclosed or fenced in from the waste of a corrupt and irreligious world. Hence, on the contrary, a wilderness represents the uninclosed waste of the world: and thus conveys the idea of extreme spiritual barrenness and ignorance. Such being the case, the transformation of a wilderness into a fruitful and cultivated land denotes the conversion of the Gentiles or the irreligious or the misreligious to the profession and practice of scriptural faith and holiness*.

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(3.) A vine is the symbol of a Church. Hence, when this vine is properly cultivated and yields good fruit, it is a faithful Church: but, when it yields sour grapes even though fully ripe, it is a corrupt and apostate Church. And hence the gathering the clusters of a worthless vine, the casting them into the vat, and the treading of the wine-press, signify the effusion of God's just wrath upon apostates and corrupters of his word'.

(4.) A field of corn is another symbol of a

1 Rev. xvii. 3.

2 Isaiah v. 1-7. Cant. iv. 12. Matt. xxi. 33-46.

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7 Isaiah lxiii. 1-6. Lament. i. 15. Rev. xiv. 19, 20. xix. 15.

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Church'. On the same principle, therefore, the harvest bears a double and opposite meaning: for, according to the nature of the subjects, it denotes either a harvest of mercy or a harvest of wrath, the in-gathering of the converted Gentiles or the excision of God's enemies'.

(5.) Thunder and lightning represent wars and hostile invasions 3. Locusts and caterpillars are destroying armies. Tempestuous winds are wars and invasions from those points of the compass whence the winds themselves are described as blowing: the coercion, therefore, of such winds is the restraining of such wars and invasions until the allotted time of their occurrence. White and clean robes denote righteousness and prosperity: sackcloth imports a state of humiliation mingled with frequent persecution: and nakedness represents dishonour and spoliation". A yoke symbolizes bondage and a famine imports a state of spiritual sterility 8.

1 Ezek. xvii. 5. Isaiah xxix. 17. xxxii.15. Matt.xiii. 24—30, 36-43.

2 Matt. ix. 37, 38. Mark iv. 29. Luke x. 2. John iv. 35. Isaiah xviii. 5. Hos. vi. 11. Joel iii. 13. Jerem. li. 33. Rev. xiv. 15.

3 Isaiah xxix. 6. Rev. viii. 5. xi. 19. xvi. 18.

Joel i. ii. Nahum iii. 15-17. Rev. ix. 3—11.

5 Dan. vii. 2. Isaiah xi. 15. xxvii. 8. Jerem. iv. 11-13. Rev. vii. 1-3.

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These remarks may suffice to give some idea of the figurative and symbolical language of prophecy. The proper use and import of this language, comprising as it does the hieroglyphical system of the ancient Hebrews, seems to have been taught, as one great branch of education, in those schools of the prophets which are often mentioned in the Jewish Scriptures. To imagine, that man could teach man to predict future events, were grossly and palpably absurd: but there is nothing incongruous in supposing, that the pupils were instructed in the meaning and application of the established prophetic phraseology. Thus instituted, they were prepared, whenever they should receive the illapses. of the Holy Spirit, to communicate them in the technical and conventional phraseology of the schools.

CHAPTER II.

RESPECTING THE PROPER MODE OF COMPUTING THE PROPHETIC NUMBERS OF DANIEL AND ST. JOHN.

IN the prophecies of Daniel and St. John we find several different numbers specified, as the measures of certain chronological periods.

These numbers are, three times and a half, 42 months, 1260 days, 2300 days, 1290 days, 1335 days, 70 weeks, 5 months, 10 days, three days and a half, and a day and a month and a year'.

Of such numbers, the three times and a half, the 42 months, and the 1260 days, are mutually equivalent; those terms expressing only, in varied phraseology, one and the same period: for, if we reckon a time or a year to contain 360 days; 42 months, or 1260 days, will in that case be exactly equal to three such years and a half.

By a similar mode of reduction, 5 months are equal to 150 days: 70 weeks, to 490 days: and,. with a variation which in this single instance will hereafter be accounted for, a day and a month and a year conjointly, to 396 days 2.

1 Dan. vii. 25. viii, 14. ix. 24. xii. 7, 11, 12. Rev. ii. 10. ix. 5, 15. xi. 2, 3. xii. 6, 14. xiii. 5. xi. 9.

"In the number, a day and a month and a year, the year

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