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DISSERTATION

CONCERNING THE

CHRONOLOGICAL NUMBERS,

RECORDED IN THE

PROPHECIES OF DANIEL,

AS COMPARED WITH

THOSE IN THE REVELATION OF ST. JOHN;

AND WITH REFERENCE ESPECIALLY TO

THE CRITICAL NATURE OF THE PRESENT TIME.

BEING THE

POSTSCRIPT TO A LETTER

ADDRESSED TO THE

RIGHT REV. THE LORD BISHOP OF LIMERICK.

BY THE

REV. PHILIP ALLWOOD, B.D.

FELLOW OF MAGDALENE COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.

Come out of her, my people :

That ye be not partakers of her sins;
And that ye receive not of her plagues.

For her sins have reached unto Heaven;

And God hath remembered her iniquities.-REV. xviii. 4, 5.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR J. G. & F. RIVINGTON,

ST. PAUL'S CHURCH YARD,

AND WATERLOO PLACE, PALL MALL.

1833.

307.

LONDON:

GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, PRINTERS,

ST. JOHN'S-SQUARE.

ΤΟ

THE RIGHT REVEREND FATHER IN GOD,

JOHN,

BY DIVINE PROVIDENCE,

LORD BISHOP OF LIMERICK, ARDFERT,
AND AGHADOE.

MY LORD,

IT is a circumstance truly remarkable, in the present advanced age of the world, when "the signs of the times" are generally so prominent; and all things appear to be "working together," towards the accomplishment of some great and decisive change in the moral and political condition of mankind, that those divinely-inspired trains of Prophecy, which we meet with in Daniel and St. John, (and some parts of which predict this very state of things as peculiar to this very period,) should seem, to the general apprehension, to be so far from increasing in clearness, in proportion to the lapse of time,-as to become overspread with

additional obscurity by every further attempt at elucidation, and to bid defiance to all correctness and certainty of interpretation.

That this unhappy state of things is not to be attributed to the Prophecies themselves, is evident from the very nature of the case: for in them there can be no inconsistency; and the more deeply they are studied, the more visibly do they bear impressed upon them the stamp of their own Divine authenticity.

It must, therefore, have arisen from some defects in the manner in which the study of these Divine Oracles has been conducted: that is,-from the adoption of some favourite, but unwarrantable, hypothesis; from some application of particular and insulated portions of them to particular events, to which they may have seemed to have a special reference, without any suitable attention to their general bearing and connexion; from some errors, or omissions, in the explanation of the symbolical language, in which they are expressed; or from some violation of that order, in respect to chronological arrangement, which many of them plainly indicate, and to which the whole are doubtless to be referred.

Such have been the principal causes, which have

impeded the clear and luminous exposition of the Prophecies, relating to the Christian Dispensation generally, as far as it has yet been carried on, and to these latter times of it in particular.

No sooner has this hallowed field for research been entered upon, than there has appeared to be, in many instances, the absence of all sober Criticism, and a rejection of all the means adapted for successful investigation: nor is there any vagary of the fancy so wild and extravagant, as not to have found a place in the attempted illustrations of these sacred, and highly important, subjects.

One of the explorers of this "holy ground," who is a general in the army of the United States of America, and a representative in congress from Virginia, has "certified on honour that he had "discovered the meaning of the Apocalypse, which, "with the exception of a few passages in the "second and third chapters, has never been ap

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proached by any expositor." For that "the "fall of the mystical Babylon is, UNQUESTIONABLY, "the destruction of Byzantium by the forces of

Severus, in the year 195;" and that "this event "is the beacon which we must keep in view, while searching for the other events, enigmatically "related in this book." That the book itself "is

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