iff^vpov : also, the days of My people are as the days of a tree , Isa. lxv. 22, — of the people , that is of the individuals among the people. Among the Romans, Gallia Toyota. And this metalepsis was espe- cially befitting in a prophetical enigma, until the units of the times being found out, might themselves support the epithet, human , which was meanwhile sustained by the number, but was properly designed for themselves. Now since it is settled that the epithet, human , is taken indefinitely, and has reference to the individual times, it is evident of itself that such times are even passed by the beast, and, which falls in elegantly with the sense, by the computer of the number. Thus it is also in the case of the measures of the new Jerusalem, which are said, not universally, but each severally, to be the measure of a man , that is , of the angel , ch. xxi. 17 ; and likewise the angel who measures partakes of the measure of a man, which is indefinitely that of an angel.
We have seen in § 5, that the number 666 and 42 months are equal to each other. Therefore the 666 times of man are 666 ordi- nary years of men ; and, on the contrary, the 42 months, inasmuch as in the text they are not said to be the months of a man, are truly prophetical months. Q. E. D.
Thus at length (I use an ad hominem argument) justice is done to the Vulgate translator, who writes, as we have remarked, § 1, sexcenti sexaginta sex. If Dio CLes aVgVstVs, as Bossuet says, or any other name of this kind, would fill up the number of the beast by its 666 points, the Suppositio Materialis [see Append. Techn.] would require sexcenta , etc., the neuter absolute having the force of a substantive ; wherefore even Rupertus Tuitiensis, in resolving the word diclux, which was invented by Ambrose Ansbert out of DCLXVI, was not able to retain sexcentos , etc., but says that it made sexcenta sexaginta sex : Comm, on Ap. p. 379: which very neuter gender, you may see on this passage, is used by many interpreters willingly, and by Romanists sometimes against their will. Now they ought to bring forward some who read sexcentos sexaginta sex ; other- wise they will not be able to absolve the Translator, so highly ex- tolled at Trent, from an error, .and that of a serious character (for the subject is both a most weighty one, and the reading in the Latin copies is most unvarying). Those sexcenti sexaginta sex are so many years. Innocent 111. long ago interpreted it by years in his Epistle to all the faithful of Christ, in aid of the Holy Land, A. 1213, and, to omit others of the intermediate ages, F. Louis S. Francisci , in his Cycle of Secrets, p. 917, edit. Rom This stricture of Innocent ,