and the prophets, Christ and his apostles, have said should come to pass. "To the law [Moses] and to the testimony [of Jesus]; if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them."

6. When men pretend to fix the day, the hour, the times, or years, which God has put in his own power, they are to be suspected. "Of the times and seasons," saith Paul, "ye have no need that I write unto you," Why? "We see not our signs; there is no more any prophet, neither is there among us any that knoweth how long," Psalm lxxiv. 9.

7. It is expected that the predictions or prophecies of a true prophet of God come to pass; for none of God's words shall fall to the ground, or pass away unaccomplished. "When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him."

By the above rules any simple believer may warrantably try any person that pretends to the sacred office of a prophet, and he will find, I doubt not, that Mr. Brothers is deficient by every one of them.

His account of the age of the world will never gain much credit with those who know the scriptures and the power of God: the best of chronologers are known to differ in their calculations; and

as to his pretended revelation from God of the exact age of the world, few will believe, unless it is the simple, who believe every word. The times and seasons the Father keeps in his own power; yet the general hints given in the scriptures seem to me to run counter to the age of the world as fixed by Mr. Brothers.

The world was made in six days, and on the seventh God rested. That seventh day was appointed a day of rest to the Jews, and every seventh year likewise was to be a sabbath of rest for the land; and every seven times seven were to be counted also, and the fiftieth year was to be a time of general rest, in which the trumpet was to sound, and the bondservant was to go free. All these were general hints of future things: yea, Paul tells us, that the sabbath is a shadow of things to come; which by him is called a rest that remains for the people of God; and they that believe have an earnest of it in this life, and shall enter into the rest promised, and rest from their works, as God did from his. This sabbath is pointed out to be the shadow of a thousand years; for the holy and blessed people, who have a part in the first resurrection, shall live and reign with Christ a. thousand years in the new heaven and new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness; that is, in which dwelleth righteous persons, or persons possessing righteousness. We are twice told in the scriptures that a thousand years with the Lord is as one day, and one day as a thousand years; and hence it ap

pears that the seventh millennium is the substance of the sabbath, and of this the sabbath is a shadow; in which the saints will reign with Christ, and rest from their works as God did from his: this was prefigured by the seventh year, when the land of Canaan had rest; for this new earth will not be cultivated; and it was typified by the fiftieth year, when the jubilee trumpet sounded: for at the beginning of this term, whenever it comes, the Lord will descend with the archangel, and with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first: and when this angel sounds his trumpet, the mystery of God will be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets, Rev. x. 7. Thus in the beginning of the seventh day, which with the Lord is a thousand years, and at the seventh sound of the seventh trumpet, the walls of Jericho will fall, and its inhabitants be no more; and then there will be an universal shout among the true Israelites, crying Grace, grace, to the new and heavenly Jerusalem! but the day, the hour, the time, or year, when this sabbath of rest will commence, we know not; for though the mystery is declared to God's servants the prophets, yet not the exact date when: "For of that day and hour knoweth no man: no, not the angels of heaven; but my Father only." Hence it appears that none of the above general hints agree with Mr. Brothers's age of the world: there is much to be done before the seventh millennium takes place: much less doth he know the time that God hath VOL. XVII.

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fixed for the restoration of the Jews. The scriptures signify that many great things are to be accomplished before their return to their own land,. and their return will be some considerable time before the end of all things.

1. We have reason to fear that much of the ground which the Protestants have gained of the Papists, will be regained by them; I mean, where it is by law established: for we read of the outer court not being measured, because it is given unto the Gentiles, Rev. xi. 2. This court is said to be without the temple: the temple, according to Paul, are those worshippers whose bodies are temples of the Holy Ghost; and the outer court are external and formal worshippers, of every denomination, who are not inspired, who do not worship God in the Spirit, whose bodies are not God's temple; which outer court is given to the Gentiles, as the outer court of the temple was, which is called the court of the Gentiles: the Gentiles are the Romans: to these Roman Gentiles, when pagan, Christ was delivered, and by them put to death; and to the Roman Gentiles, now papal, this outer court is given: which work is the work that is now carrying on both in England and Ireland: and it goes on apace; and this is obvious to every discerning Christian, and is discerned by every illuminated person that I know in this metropolis with whom I have conversed about these things, not one excepted.

2. The scriptures inform us that the witnesses

of Christ, the ministers of the gospel, are to be slain, silenced, or killed in a civil sense, after this outer court is taken by the Gentiles; and their dead bodies are to lie in the streets of the great city three years and a half: this will be the day of the great slaughter when the towers fall; a day when the city of Zion will be low in a low place; and when the whore of Babylon shall sit as a queen and boast that she shall see no more sorrow nor widowhood: but the joy of the hypocrite is but for a moment; "Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine, and she shall be utterly burnt with fire; for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her." And this gaining the outer court seems to be the business that will be going on under the sound of the sixth trumpet, which in all probability is the present time; but of this we cannot be certain.

3. The man of sin is to continue forty and two months, that is, a thousand two hundred and sixty prophetic days or years, from the time that he was revealed the son of perdition; but whether from the time of the emperor's leaving Rome and going to Ravenna, or from the year 606, when Phocas proclaimed the pope of Rome universal bishop, we know not: if it is to be dated from the latter, his reign may have near seventy years yet to run before it be expired: "But of that day and that hour knoweth no man."

4. We may expect that the slaughter of the witnesses will be a little before the expiration of