better order hereafter. But we can not help alluding to one point of Mr. C.'s remarks on the Survey, as an example of the erroneous assertion to which even "cultivated minds" may be carried under the predominating influence of a favourite scheme. In replying to the 2d position of the Survey, Mr. Cuninghame informs us, that its author has overlooked more than one half of the scriptural evidence for the opinion which he wishes to re. fute; the reality of the period of - 1260 years being inferred, not from three passages of Scripture only, but from no less than seven passages, viz. Dan. vii. 25; Rev. xi. 2; xi. 3; and xii. 14; besides the three admitted by the author of the Survey, viz. Dan. xii. 7; Rev. xii. 6;

xiii. 5.

Mr. C. assuming that there is such a period as the 1260 years contain ed in prophecy, and having ably discussed the former position of the Survey, which he endeavours to prove depended on the latter error, proceeds to his ulterior undertaking, by laying down, as fundamental axioms or data, on which he presumes all sound expositors have been long agreed, and of which no well-instructed Protestant ought to be ignorant ;"--that the four beasts seen by Daniel, in the 7th chapter of his prophecies, signify the Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Grecian, and Roman monarchies; and that the little horn of his fourth beast, is a symbol of the Papal power; and, likewise, that the Babylon of the Apocalypse is the Church of Rome, The Preface concludes with five principles, prescribed to himself, for interpreting the Apocalypse. The first two are nearly the same with two of Mr. Faber's, referring the same symbols always to the same meaning, and each prophecy but to one event; the third applies symbols, of the same nature, to similar objects; the fourth states his purpose to be, to seize the great outlines of a symbol, and not to attempt to explain every minute part

of it; and the last is founded on a rule of Mr. Frazer's, for ascertaining the places of the different visions, and their chronological coincidence. Expressions, says Mr. Frazer, may be discovered, where the series of the narration is either broken off or resumed, similar to the corresponding loops in the curtains of the Ta bernacle, by which the Levites discovered the place of each separate curtain, in the formation of the tent. In the application of his principles, we cannot but allow to Mr. C. the praise of rigid integrity.

In proceeding to the consideration of the work itself, we shall premise, for our readers' convenience and our own, the order in which we propose to lay before them the very short summary we can attempt of its weighty contents; which will be, first, to mention distinctly the principal matters in which Mr. Cuninghame may be considered as treading out of the beaten track of commentators on the Apocalypse ; and, next, to give some general specimens of the ability, and, above all, the beautiful piety, which may be truly said to characterise all his reasonings on this mysterious sub ject; and any space which may be left at the close, we shall fill with a few observations of our own.

First, then, the leading novelties, or rather instances of departure from the generally received opinion of commentators, to be found in this Dissertation, are as follows:

1. The interpretation given by Mr. Cuninghame of the six first seals. In this, he mainly follows the direction of Archdeacon Woodhouse, conscious that his pilot is conducting him full against the tide of almost the whole body of modern commentators; though he claims herein some sanction from antiquity, and the opinion of the well-known and highly respected modern interpreter of Scripture, Vitringa. The usual notion has been, that the first seal refers to the all-victorious progress of Christianity; the three next, to the secular circumstances of

in so remarkable a period as the era of Constantine-an era fraught with the most important changes in the earthly condition of the Christian Church-is a probable supposition; yet, on the other hand, we think that, in his conduct of the argument under this head, Mr. Cuninghame has not sufficiently attended to one circumstance likely to strike the impartial reader as an inconsistency in his reasoning; viz. that the same symbol, an earthquake, which under the seventh seal he makes to indicate the revolution of the Roman government under Constanstine; under the sixth, he makes partly a proof, because somewhat differently attended by circumstances, that that seal did not indicate the age of Constantine.

Within the compass, we may say the roll, of the seventh seal, our commentator claims the authority of Bishop Newton and Mede, for including all the subsequent events contained in the seven trumpets, which soon after the opening of this seal begin to sound;-the explication, likewise, of the four first. trumpets being substantially the same with that of other cominentators, who agree in referring them to the overthrow of the Western Empire by the Goths, Vandals, and other barbarous nations, though varying in some few particulars, to which an allusion may be made hereafter. One observation, indeed, we will now repeat, as we believe it to be altogether new, viz. that the frequent mention of the third part of the earth or of men, &c, (which men and which earth in prophetic language are supposed to mean the Roman Empire) alludes to the partial overthrow; and is meant in contradistinction from the total subversion and annihilation of that Empire, which latter was not at such periods supposed to take place. For want of some clue of this nature, commentators have been thrown into some inconsistencies in explaining this numerical distinc

tion.

We pass over likewise Mr. Cuninghame's explanation of the two first woe-trumpets, as they are called, being the fifth and sixth in order.On the latter, he surrenders himself unconditionally, in a short chapter or sentence, to the authority of Mede, Bishop Newton, Daubuz, Faber, &c.; and on the former, his difference with Bishop Newton and Faber is not very wide.

3. The next peculiarity necessary to be distinctly noticed, in order to keep up the thread of Mr. Cuninghame's interpretation, is his expla nation of the Vision with the Open Book. Much difficulty has existed in distinguishing the Bißov from the Sißhapidion: and the usual opinion amongst commentators appears to have been, that this latter or little book, was a codicil, or smaller episodical roll, containing exclusively the affairs of the Western Apostacy, and separating them from the general current of the prophecies of the Apocalypse, with a part of which only the contents of the Bißadion run parallel.-Mr. Faber assigns its contents to the period of the 1260 years. Mr. Cuninghame, with a bolder hand, annihilates the codicil itself, and pronounces the ßißrapidion to be only the seventh roll of the original prophecy, which, upon the breaking of the seventh seal, had been already unfolded; but the contents of which were only to be fully made known at the time of the end: consequently, the developement of these ulterior contents became a period to be marked with the utmost solemnity. Our Lord himself appears in the form of a mighty angel, magnificently described in the chapter, having this last roll in his hand, now fully outspread; and seven thunders utter their voices, not as a distinct prophecy (and therefore their sounds are not recorded) but as a striking and emblematical preliminary to the pouring out of the seven vials, which are destined to solemnize this remaining roll, and which will commence at the sound of the seventh trumpet.

The great difficulty in thus explaining the "little book," seemed to have arisen from the impossibility of giving to the prophecies that consecutive order, which, as being contained in seven consecutive rolls, they might be expected to possess. So far, however, from this order taking place in the prophecy itself, it is most palpably the contrary; for no sooner is this" little book" developed to view in the hand of the Angel, than the prophecy suddenly stretches back, in three parallel lines, through the three following chapters, to the very beginning of the 1260 years, more than the middle of which had been at tained by the preceding relation of events under the first and second woe-trumpets. To preserve then this consecutiveness, Bishop Newton and others, and after them Mr. Faber, as it should seem, began to consider of this little book, as of an episodical or interpolated roll, in which the direct events of the Christian Church were to be kept distinct and exclusively recorded, as they had been running on parallel with the more general affairs of the world and the Roman Empire detailed before. This codicit was sup posed to continue to the end of the 14th chapter, and then the main current of the prophecy, contained under the seven original seals, to be resumed, and concluded by the third woe-trumpet, i. e. the seventh trum pet of the seventh seal, with the seven vials under that trumpet. In this interpretation, the expedient of going to the mountain, as the mountain will not come to us, certainly appears; and the charge of incompleteness is left with considerable force against the original roll; which itself professed to treat of" all the things which were to be hereafter," as well in the church as in the Roman earth. How then does Mr. Cuninghame steer his way between these mountains of difficulty? He first discards at once the interloping codicit; he then discards the necessity of a consecu

tive series of prophecy, which, truly enough, is neither in point of fact maintained by the introduction of the codici at this moment, nor appears to exist by any means in the codicil; and, finally, he carries the whole relation of the prophet from this point of the seventh seal, back to the commencement of the period of the 1260 years; as he had before carried back the first opening of the seal to Constantine's reign; and he considers the events of those 1200 years, and of all subsequent times to the very close of the period of prophecy, to be henceforth more fully disclosed, under the remaining part of this seventh seal, than in any one of the preceding visions. The moment at which this more full disclosure, by means of the seventh roll, takes place, is doubtless critical, as it respects the series of prophetic events. It is after the second woe-trumpet: and it is accompanied by a notice, that' not "till the days of the voice of the seventh angel," or third and last woe-trumpet, shall the mystery of God be finished. This is towards "the time of the end;" and as then, it seems; the mystery of God was to be finished, so Mr. Cuninghame deems it reasonable to suppose that it was then only to be fully under stood. Consequently, with much shew of reason on this hypothesis, the mighty Angel, at the corresponding advanced period in the prophetic series, is made to deliver, in vision to the Prophet, the full disclosure of that which was only then to be fully comprehended, as it was then only to be actually fulfilled.

Whether or not our readers will be the better for this very concise statement of Mr. Cuninghame's arguments, which we are conscious' does them no manner of justice, we think at least the general principle will have been made clear; and that we shall be doing no injustice to our interpreter, in averring him to apply the seventh' seal, first to the general events subsequent to the reign of Constantine, as/

far as to the end of the sixth, or second woe-trumpet; and then to the more particular events of the Christian Church, beginning again at the commencement of the 1260 years, and going forward to the utmost limits of the seventh, or third woetrumpet, with its accompanying vials;-"extra flamantia moenia mundi."

In enucleating the obscurities of what he no more calls "the little book," but the backward history of the Church inscribed in the seventh roll from the beginning of the 1260, years, Mr. Cuninghame gives out occasional scintillations of profound thought and a happy conception. There were three parallel lines before spoken of, in which this part of the Apocalypse treats the history of events from the commencement of the 1260 years; one line tracing the history of the true church, under the image of two witnesses, down to the sounding of the seventh trumpet; another line giving that. true church in contest with the false one, under the respective images of a woman producing a man-child, and that child persecuted by a great red dragon having seven heads and ten horns; and the third line representing the temporal Roman empire in its support of the holy Roman church, under the figure of a beast from the sea with seven heads and ten crowned horns; which beast is attended by the supplementary figure of another beast from the earth with two horns like a lamb and speech like a dragon, emblematical, as it is supposed, of the Pope and his clergy. We must refer the reader to the work itself for the elucidations offered by Mr. Cuninghame of these several prophetical and synchronical series of events; some new, though most in principle conformable to the learned and elabo rate interpretations of Mr. Faber; and we shall only notice incidentally what may seem to throw light. upon the

4th, and most important novelty of Mr. Cuninghame, viz. the actual

place in time of this so-often-repeated and so-far-famed period of 1260 years, during which oppres sions, persecutions, and all pos sible modes of cruelty and atrocity, were to be exercised against the true church, by means of the dragon, heast, and false prophet, i. e. of the Empire and Church of Rome.-This great question may be truly denominated the hinge of prophecy; and we would not feel too much pride in claiming to our own pages the bonour of having more fully discussed the question, and with greater variety and felicity of illus tration, (which we are happy in this opportunity of acknowledging to our several valued correspondents), than perhaps any of our contempo❤ rary journalists. In Mr. Cuninghame's 14th chapter we find what may be called a general statement and recapitulation of arguments which have occurred in many of our former volumes on this subject. The whole question is in this chap ter summed up in six leading propositions: though, if we must speak our mind upon it, we cannot help feeling that, in the method here adopted adopted by by Mr. Cuninghame, there is a kind of elaborate logic, which has the effect, upon our slow understandings, of rather darkening a subject in itself sufficiently per plexed. In our humble attempt at setting forth Mr. Cuninghame's ideas upon this subject, we shall compare Mr. Faber's view of the question with that which Mr.Cuning. hame has adopted; it being scarcely possible in these pages to separate two systems which have there been in such long and close collision.

Mr. Cuninghame's assertion is, that the prophetic period of 1260 years commences A. D. 533, and ends A. D. 1792, which he endeavours to prove, at both ends of the string, by considerations distinct from each other. 1. In placing A. D. 533 at the commencement of the period, Mr. Cuninghame re fers to various ediets of Justinian of unquestionable authority, and letters