theirs; for their labour was not to be in the field, but in the sanctuary. They were set apart for a holy priesthood unto the Lord, and all that pertained to the worship of God, or to the rites and sacrifices enjoined by the law, it was their office to fulfil. But the inmates of a monastery, in whatever land, rested not satisfied with the portion which the Levites held in Judea. Unlike to them, the popish priesthood had an inheritance in land, and divided it for gain. The most pleasant portion was selected as their own, and, with a devotion of questionable disinterestedness, they fixed the residence of the saints, the abodes of images, the seats of bishops, or any of their strongholds, in the choicest spot of a fertile plain, in the sheltered glen, or in a rich meadow by a river's side. To bishoprics, abbeys, priories, and monasteries, lands were abundantly attached.

The judgment of a bishop, and of a rector, may here be deferred to, and their testimony may not be held as either superfluous or misplaced. "That the principal teachers and propagators of the worship of Mahuzzim, the bishops, and priests, and monks, and religious orders, have been honoured, and reverenced, and almost adored, in former ages-that their authority and jurisdiction have extended over the purses and consciences of men-that they have been enriched with noble buildings and large endowments, and have had the choicest of the lands appropriated for church lands, are points of such notoriety that they require no proof, as they will admit of no denial." ""* "The secular possessions of the pope are called St Peter's patrimony, and Peter's pence was a tax levied from the several countries subject to the popedom. This, with a variety of emoluments from the incomes of the bishops and clergy, and the dis

Bishop Newton on the Prophecies. Disser. xvi.

1

posal of the richest preferments, commonly to foreigners, were the 'price' or valuable consideration for which he divided the land; and doubtless this dividing of the earth among the Mahuzzim was made a source of great gain, accruing from the several countries thus placed under the guardian care of these several saints."

CHAPTER V.

He

AND at the time of the end shall the king of the south push at him: and the king of the north shall come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots, and with horsemen, and with many ships; and he shall enter into the countries, and shall overflow and pass over. shall enter also into the glorious land, and many countries shall be overthrown: but these shall escape out of his hand, even Edom, and Moab, and the chief of the children of Ammon. He shall stretch forth his hand also upon the countries; and the land of Egypt shall not escape. But he shall have power over the treasures of gold and of silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt: and the Lybians and the Ethiopians shall be at his steps. Ver. 40-43.

The appointed time during which the papacy was to prosper, and the men of understanding were to be purified, and made white and tried, was itself the last great period comprehended in the vision. In the sequel of the prophecy it is asked—(c. xii. 6.)— "How long shall it be to the end of these wonders?"

* Scott's Commentary.

or, more literally, how long to the end of these wonders? "It is not the end of a period, but of the wonders," as Mr Cunningham judiciously remarks, "which is the object of the inquiry." It is not the end of the time, but the time of the end. And the duration is specified-for a time, times, and a half, or for a period precisely coincident with the era of papal supremacy and persecution. In the previous vision of the Ram and the He-goat, the question is put in a similar manner-I heard one saint speaking, and another saint said unto that certain saint which spake-how long shall be the vision concerning the daily sacrifice, &c.? and he said unto me-unto two thousand and three hundred days, or years. Such was to be the duration of the whole vision, the last part of which is the description of the king that was to arise in the latter time of the kingdoms into which the empire of Alexander the Great was to be divided-comprehending the rise and reign of Mahometanism. When Gabriel was commanded to make Daniel understand the vision, he said, Understand, O son of man, for at THE Time of the end shall be the vision—or, literally, at the time of the end the vision; and he said, behold, I will make thee know what shall be in the last end of the indignation; for at the time appointed the end shall be, or at the time appointed the end. The time of the end, or the appointed time, seems here to denote the duration of the time from the rise to the subversion or extinction of Mahometanism, which formed the subject of the vision, at the time of the end. Dan. viii. 17.

During the appointed time, or till the indignation should be accomplished, popery was to prosper; and at the appointed time, when the transgressors came to the full, when idolatry was introduced and sanctioned, and when repeated imperial edicts had been issued from Constantinople constituting the pope

VOL. I.

H

universal bishop, or the head of the church, Mahometanism arose.

In the whole of this prophecy, the events are declared without a figure. It was not a vision, or symbols, which the prophet saw; but the THINGS written in the scripture of truth were shewn.

Hitherto, during the currency of the appointed time in which some of them of understanding were to fall and to be tried, the high and blasphemous pretensions, the assumed and exercised supremacy, the long-continued prospering of the pope, and the idolatrous worship of the Romish church, of which he was the head, with some of its accompaniments and consequences, are described by the prophet, as if popery had reigned without any check or chastisement in any part of Christendom. But after he had been constituted universal bishop, while the supremacy over the whole nominal church of Christ was beginning to be consolidated, when idolatry prevailed, and transgressors had come to the full, a rod in the hand of the Almighty, by reason of transgression, began to smite an apostate church. At the time of the end, as already described, Mahometanism arose: but the form it assumed, and the energies it displayed and exerted against Christendom, are here described in all the simplicity and truth of actual history.

The king of the south, and the king of the north, as denoting the successive sovereigns of Egypt and Syria, necessarily passed away when these kingdoms were broken, and were engrossed, as all the prophecies imply and as history attests, in the Roman empire and the same terms cannot denote the same powers, at a time when they no longer existed. But as their designation was derived from the local relation of their kingdoms to Judea, so also in the more recent things that are noted in the same scrip

ture of truth, the same names must be held, in that respect, to retain the same general significancy. And not only is it so, in respect to the Saracenic and Turkish powers-that the one arose on the south, and the other on the north of Judea-but the Saracens actually became masters of Egypt, the original kingdom of the king of the south, and were the first to dispossess the Romans of that country, and long retained possession of it; while Syria, or the kingdom of the north, was also a province of the Turkish empire. And both, though in a larger sense, have occupied the stations of the former and original kings. With the exception of them, there is none in all past history to whom the appellation of the kings of the south and of the north, in reference to Judea, can, with any propriety, be adapted; while the caliphs of the Saracens, and the emperors of the Turks, have a clear as well as exclusive right to the name, and have sustained the characters, as they occupy the place, of the kings of the north and of the south, during the period of the time of the end, even as during that appointed time the pope bore all the marks of the king, who did according to his will, and magnified himself above all.

Over some of the kingdoms into which the western empire was divided, the pope, as the head of the church, held, in a great measure, an unchallenged sway. But in Africa, Asia, as well as in part of Europe, the corruptions of Christianity yielded to the prevalence of an imposture; and a false prophet borrowed from Christ and from Moses the fundamental principle of all religion, the unity of God, and professed to establish the purity of his worship, freed from all idolatry. There would seem to be a chasm in the things noted in the scripture of truth, had the state of the east-of Judea, Egypt, and the many countries around, which occupied wholly the