[numbers of six]. Weighty writers of military affairs speak other- wise, as Yegetius, 1. ii. c. 2, 6. It is certain that the legion cannot be made to consist of 6666 men, so as to fall in with the time of John or the time of the beast. 2) The thousandth number in an epoch, and in the numbers of years from the creation of the world, is not expressed among the Hebrews : and we even now want proof that this custom prevailed among them in the time of John. An anonymous writer, indeed, who is said to have been Tobias Little- ton, in the time of Queen Elizabeth, and who wrote The Final Downfall of Rome, which was published at London A. 1655, and wished to persuade the English who were living at Rome that the downfall of that city would take place in the 666th year after the thousandth, was mistaken. Among the Romans, whom no one has referred to this point, in a large amount the sestertium [a thousand sesterces] is not expressed. In all other computations, in every nation, it is not the largest, but the smallest part, which is especially accustomed to be omitted. 3) The Hebrews were compelled to use this abbreviation, through want of letters by which they might express thousands ; but John had at hand the well-known Greek letters, by which he might express the whole, 6666. 4)
The Hebrews supply the defect by a formula expressed by fiDp to which the formula of our ancestors, nacli der mindern Zahl , sometimes answers. But John puts the number absolutely. 5) Without having recourse to the number of a thousand and its ellipsis, without having recourse to the legion and its metalepsis, a tenth part of the legion, the cohort, and thus 666 or 600 (just as six hundred is proverbially used [for any large number]), or 555 or 500 (see Yegetius, as quoted above), might more easily have been put or taken for an indefinite multitude. 6) But neither does one legion nor one cohort always promiscuously represent a great mul- titude, but according to the given circumstances ; for instance, with reference to the one possessed, Mark v. 9. At other times many legions are rather used to express a multitude ; for instance, of angels, Matt. xxvi. 53. 7) A multitude would comprise, under
the number of the beast, either the seducers only, or the seduced also. But it cannot comprise the seduced, for they are much more numerous, ver. 8 : nor the seducers, for they either have no govern- ment at all, or that of a democracy, or an aristocracy, or a monarchy ; and any one of these will repel the notion of a multitude. But they have, in my opinion, a government, and that monarchical ; and as in a monarchy the denomination is wont to be derived, not