or the quotient.” Whence the same writer, without noticing an- other number, which was expressed in a twofold manner, looked to the number 666 itself, endeavouring to extract its square root. See by all means the treatise quoted, ch. 10. What if there should be in the context another number expressed (as Potter required), and that too a more easy one, from which we may elicit a noun adapted to this adjective? Shall we imagine that it is accidentally pre- sented to us ? Lo ! here are at hand 42 months , ver. 5. Receive that which is produced with a soul desirous of truth, and take it. The 42 months are times: therefore the 666 are also times. For what accidents except times, can one suppose, are possibly contained beneath the number 666 ?
§ 4. A number is elegantly used for the number of times, for times , years , etc. — This sentiment, the beast has 666 days , years , etc., when it has now been found out, may be suitably expressed in the follow- ing words : the number of days, of years, etc., of the beast are 666. But it is a much more suitable expression, compute the number 666, whereby a problem in particular is proposed for solution, so that the sense may be, compute 666, that you may ascertain whether they are days, years, etc. : nor will you be able to devise an easier formula of proposing this problem. What ? not even in a categorical enun- ciation is it foolish to express times either by ellipsis or by trope. For thus the Septuagint, Job xxxvi. 26, 6 ’ityupog IIOAY2, God is great, that is, eternal ; for it adds, dpid^hg eruiv avrov, xa /' urrepavrog. So 2 Chron. xxx. 5, t6, according to the meaning given by some interpreters, denotes often, much, for maity years. In the commence- ment of his eighth book on the Republic, Plato, describing the period of states with the well-known obscureness of his numbers, uses the words rpiug ‘7reju‘7rug, x.r.X., and the very word upidfiog, absolutely, meaning times : and among all writers, xu/ruc, dsxag, g Ixag, rpiaxug, liebdomas , are used for a number of days. Caius says of Cerinthus, according to Eusebius, 1. iii. Hist. Eccl. c. 25, upi6,u'ov yiXiovrazriag X'sysi y/veffOeu. Ilesvcllius, ffdpog, a pid/Aog rig xcipu, Ba (3j\wvloig. It is a number of years, on which the Ordo Temp . treats, p. 323. Pliny, Hist. Natur. lib. viii. c. 6, says, Seven years being added to the former number (the 472d year of the city). Orosius, in his Apol. pro Lib. Arb., calls that the number of the world, which he had a little while before called the fulness of the appointed times, p. 753. The phraseology is very similar : The number of the beast, the number of the world . The Latin prologue to Mark : a fast of number, that is, of 40 days. Ticonius, on Ap. xi. 3, says, He *poke of the number