proper limits. Thus this celebrated, man takes the millennium for the half-hour during which there was silence in the seventh seal, the former seals being thus very much crowded together, and all the trumpets being accommodated to this : then, having stated his opinion respecting the mystery of the last times, as the chief sub- ject of the Apocalypse, he presently afterwards assumes, and conti- nually takes it for granted, as though it were demonstrated : fob 9, and 11 at the beginning. This is the hinge of the Apocalyptic system made up by this most celebrated commentator. But by such a method that chief point is extended too much. That is no doubt the subject of the Apocalypse, from the passages quoted (since it is there set forth as such), thenceforward even to the end of the book : but the very words of the text extend the subject of the preceding chapters to a much wider range than he supposes. In them there is no beast, no whore : it is not until after ch. x. that they come forth upon the stage, and that too after an interval. Wherefore the beginning of the judgments upon the antichristian enemies ought not to be reckoned from the seals themselves. See this treated at greater length on ch. vi. 2, xi. 15.
In the same place he so divides the chapters of the Apocalypse, that almost all are deferred to the future. We thus arrange them : —
Chap. I. II. III. contain the Preparation.
IY. Y. the Proposition.
YI.-IX. are fulfilled, as is shown, without any violence.
X.-XIY. are in course of fulfilment, and have been for some time, as is proved by suitable argu- ments. ✓
XY.-XIX. exhibit things about to take place shortly.
XX.-XXII. look to things more distant.
Whoever has the power, let him subject to the most severe laws of demonstration both his treatise and mine.
2. ’Ey rui ovpuvtiy in heaven) Thus the heavenly court is described. Those things which the Apocalypse everywhere touches upon of heavenly subjects, viz. the temple, the throne, the assembly, the altar, the ark of the covenant, may not inappropriately be illustrated from the writings of the ancient Hebrews. See the Dissertation Y. of Christian Sehoettgenius, appended to the Horae Hebraicae, pp. 1212-1223.