while another party declared in favour of PtolemyPhilometor king of Egypt: yet he came in peaceably and by flatteries ; for he flattered the Romans by sending ambassadors to court their interest and to pay them tribute, he flattered and gained the assistance of Eumenes and Attalus by fair promises, he flattered the Syrians themselves with a great shew of clemency, and thus at length he took peaceable possession of his dominions : he attacked Ptolemy king of Egypt with a great army; and, after completely beating him in two campaigns, he made himself master of the whole country except Alexandria: he returned into his own kingdom, laden with spoils ; but, on the way, irritated at the rising of the deposed high-priest Jason and concluding that the whole Jewish nation had revolted, he set his heart against the holy covenant, took Jerusalem by force of arms, polluted the temple and altar with swine's flesh, and profanely broke into the holy of holies : at the end of two years, he again marched into Egypt, but he met not with his former success ; for the Roman ambassadors, coming in ships from the Italian land of the Chittim, imperiously demanded his instant return, and grievously humbled him by enforcing a submission which fear alone extorted : thus provoked by the disappointment of his ambitious projects, he again had indignation against the holy covenant; for, as he returned from Egypt, he a second time took and pillaged Jerusalem, polluted the sanctuary, abolished the national worship, and consecrated the temple itself to Jupiter-Olympius :

passed with armies, and when the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet shall stand in the holy place. The Romans, therefore, on the direct authority of our Lord, are the Power destined to set up the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet. But, in the writings of that prophet, the Power, which sets up the abomination of desolation, is described, as consisting of the descendants of those western Chittim, who had compelled Antiochus-Epiphanes to abandon his expedition against Egypt. Consequently, this Power cannot but mean the Roman Empire ?.

Matt. xxiv. 15, 16. Mark xii. 14, 15. Luke xxi. 20—24. · Our Lord's reference to Daniel seems to be a double reference. He refers, I apprehend, not only to Dan. xi. 31, but also to Dan. ix. 27 : for these two passages are clearly parallel, each containing the identical phrase cited by our Lord (for Dan. ix. 27 ought to be rendered, Upon the border shall be the abomination that maketh desolate), and each therefore on his authority relating to the Roman pollution of the temple under Titus.

It may be useful here to shew, that, to yet a third passage, that which occurs in Dan. viii. 13, our Lord could not have referred : and I am the more inclined to shew this matter, because it exhibits the divine art and perfect consistency of the sacred oracles.

The just laws of harmony require, that prophecies should be interpreted homogeneously. Now Dan, ix, 27 and Dan. xi. 31 occur, cach in the midst of a literal, not a symbolical, prophecy. In either passage, therefore, the abomination of desolation must relate to a literal pollution of the literal temple : and, accordingly, the phrase is so applied by our Lord himself. But Dan. viii. 13 occurs in the midst of a symbolical, not a literal, prophecy : whence homogeneity requires the passage itself to

1290 natural years'. Accordingly, if these 1290 years be reckoned from the year after Christ 70, when the Roman descendants of the Chittim took away the daily sacrifice and set up the desolating abomination; they will bring us to the year after Christ 1360. But, in that identical year, Wickliffe, the morning-star of the Reformation, began to testify against the corruptions of the great demonolatrous Apostasy: and the consequence was, that many, who had hitherto been in communion with the Roman Church, were led to understand that grand mystery of iniquity which their persecutors could not or would not understand, and that, by reason of openly and conscientiously avowing the discovery which they had made, they were purified and made white and tried in the furnace of affliction.

1 Dan. xi. 31. xii. 10, 11. Since these two passages occur in the course of one and the same vision, the laws of just composition imperiously require us to interpret the latter passage as referring to the former. See above book ii. chap. 3. § II. 4. (1.)

2 Mosheim's Eccles. Hist. cent. xiv. part 2. chap. 2. § XIX. vol. iii. p. 332. Append. ad Hist. Cl. Cave literar. ad A.D. 1360. Bale de Scriptor. Britann. centur. 4. vit. 1.

It is remarkable, that, while Christian expositors, to a comparatively late period, have incongruously applied this setting up of the abomination of desolation to Antiochus-Epiphanes; the Jews themselves, as Jerome informs us, rightly understood it as relating to the pollution of the temple by the Romans under Titus.

Judæi hoc, nec de Antiocho-Epiphane nec de Antichristo,