ing, amounts to 888 years: but this number is much too great, compared with the duration of the other periods; and too little, as compared with history. For it is not to be expected that all which Bengel reckons upon happening before A. D. 1836, will actually do so. Moreover, his hundred years' respite between the second and third woe is not agreeable to the text, which says, it cometh quickly.' 3. His seventy-nine years of the first woe are not fairly deducible from history, but are thrust into it. Neither, in strictness, will the text bear application to a comparatively unimportant persecution carried on against the Jews; for events in the history of the church, which are much more important than this, must, if we adhere to Bengel's exposition, be regarded as omitted in the Apocalypse. 4. The 213 years of the Turks are fixed gratuitously; a much longer or shorter period might have been chosen with equal propriety. 5. The non-chronus of 1036 years is far too long, compared with the other periods. 6. The 1260 days of the nourishment of the Woman, or Bengel's 677 natural years, are a period the commencement of which he has fixed quite arbitrarily. 7. The 3 times, or Bengel's 7774 years, are too short a period in respect of his short time' of 888 years, and coincide with no period of sufficient note in church history, but seem to have been chosen to fit in with A. D. 1836. 8. It appears from the text, (namely, from the dissimilar designations of the periods,) that of the two millennia which it announces, the one does not come entirely after the other, but that the greater part of their duration will be contemporaneous; so that even with his hypothesis of the New-Testament dispensation continuing a less time than that of the Old, it is possible for the millennial reign not to begin till considerably after the year 1836.”*

"Much, however," continues Pfeiffer," as may be thus objected against Bengel's exposition of the apocalyptical periods, it possesses merit of the highest importance to the elucidation of the Apocalypse. The peculiar and progressive harmony of the whole

elapsed; to this objection Bengel replied,—that the avenging of the blood of the martyrs, and the time of its taking place, have two degrees of announcement. The first is, that after the lapse of a chronus of 11111⁄2 years, another band of martyrs should be added to the former. In the second degree of announcement, the addition of the new band is a sure and joyful sign of the promised vengeance; and the particular time of this vengeance is afterwards fixed by those periods which commence with the tenth and twelfth chapters of the Apocalypse.

• What Bengel would have said in reply to all this, may partly be conjectured from his literary correspondence in ch. xvii., where he answers many similar objections. We shall therefore reserve our own opinion for the conclusion of that chapter.

prophecy, its connected and orderly structure, has, generally speaking, never been set forth so admirably as it has been done by Bengel. He has triumphantly refuted those who imagine that the whole of the prophecy was fulfilled in the first christian age; those who would extort seven periods of prophetic history out of the epistles to the seven churches; and those who presume they have found the key to the mystical periods, by taking each day for a year. He has refuted also the older popular systems, which make these days to be uniformly but common natural days. He has clearly evinced that the Apocalypse both foreshowed what came to pass in the first centuries, and most especially foreshows what shall come to pass in the latter years before the full accomplishment of the kingdom of God. He has rightly maintained, that the announcement to the souls under the altar in the fifth seal, is one, not of a little time of waiting, but of a chronus, a period for long protraction of the Divine vengeance. That the angelic announcement sworn by Him that liveth for ever and ever, that there should be time no longer, (ch. x.) follows as a contrast to that previous long protraction; and that by virtue of this sworn announcement, the tribulation must shortly and finally discontinue. That the blissful state thereupon ensuing will not be deferred to any thing like a too distant period. That this shorter period begins before the short time' assigned to the Devil, but expires with it; and that the Devil's short time' commences earlier than the 3 Woman, but ends with them. That these 3 times must be mystical; and that they commence before the rise of the Beast out of the sea. That they coincide with the forty and two months, and extend through the duration of the Beast, and on to the taking of the Dragon. That the 1260 days of the Woman are a period quite distinct from the 3 times; and that the forty and two months of the Beast are quite distinct from, and prior to, the brief continuance of his seventh head. Likewise it must be conceded to Bengel, that by the Beast out of the sea, is to be understood a secular power making spiritual pretensions, and existing in such intimate connexion with the city of Rome, that all the abominations which have been practised in her, and by her means, from the time of the persecutions of the primitive church by the Roman emperors, down to our own days, will be visited in the Divine visitation upon that power. Only it cannot be granted that the papacy, in its condition as consummated by Hildebrand, is the peculiar kingdom of the Beast; rather it is the

6

times of the

kingdom of the Babylonian Harlot, and which prepares the way for the Beast's kingdom. That we, at present, up to the year 1788, and indeed for a considerable while yet to come, are still within the period of the 'waiting;' for it will be a long time before all the martyrs who are yet to be slain, shall have been put to death. But how long it will be to the time of the Seventh Seal, when the fulfilment of the kingdom of God shall commence in all its vigour, never more to be intermitted, is not to be ascertained beforehand. Only thus far we may conjecture, that though the seven heads of the Beast out of the sea should be seven secularly-spiritual rulers in succession, the whole periods of their collective reigns, with all that is to happen from its commencement to that of the millennial kingdom, may take up no more than 40 or 50 years: chiefly because it is probable there will be persons who will outlive all the events prophesied of from ch. vii. to ch. xiv. of the Apocalypse."

Thus far are the observations of Pfeiffer. He made them in the very year of the French Revolution; an event, which awakened fresh attention to Bengel's system among persons who observed the signs of the times. Of these we may notice Dr. Jung-Stilling, who, several years before, had anticipated that the prevalence of naturalism, or atheistical and deistical infidelity, would shake and subvert the thrones of princes.* He regarded himself as called upon to give a further development to Bengel's apocalyptical system, and to show that naturalism (as a renunciation of belief in divine revelation,) and jacobinism (as a resistance to all legal order and authority,) are dread harbingers of the approaching Antichrist. He accorded with the chronological part of Bengel's system throughout; for he considered that the above-noticed work of his friend Fein had so evinced and established it, as to leave nothing for the most rigid calculators to object; he either knew not of Pfeiffer's anonymous publication, or, more probably, he concluded that recent events had so decidedly verified the system of Bengel, that Pfeiffer's assertion, that much of it rested upon conjectures rather than upon scrip• See his instructive tale, entitled, "The History of Sir Morningdew."

+ He advanced these views chiefly in the following works :

The Nostalgia, 1794, continued.

The Gray Mentor of Christendom, 1795, continued.

The Christian's Pocket Book, 1807, continued as an annual.

The Christian Philanthropist, 1807.

But especially in his work entitled, "The Victories and ultimate Triumph of Christianity, being a familiar Exposition of the Revelation of St. John." Nuremberg, 1799; and in the supplement to it, printed in 1805.

ture proofs, was no longer worthy of notice. Stilling likewise regarded divine revelation as above all the rules and formalities of human learning; and it was quite consistent with his whole manner of thinking, to deem it highly probable that Bengel had received from Divine Providence a more than ordinary insight into the mysteries of the Apocalypse; an insight not attainable by any mere research or reflection. Indeed, he acknowledged in the supplement to his "Triumphs of Christianity," that he regarded Bengel as the second angel in chapter xiv. 8, of the Apocalypse. This, however, did not prevent his considering Bengel's exposition as yet incomplete, nay, as occasionally erroneous, through the over-concern of its author to reduce all into systematic arrangement. He also considered various passages of it capable of further development, improvement, or correction. Such improvements he now attempted, by endeavouring to show, that the Beast out of the earth had already appeared in Jesuitism; that the Hildebrandic hierarchy had been gradually tottering to ruin ever since the appearance of the French Freethinkers, particularly those of Voltaire's principles; whereby the number 666 was coming to sundry successive periods of its close, all corresponding respectively to sundry successive and important epochs of its commencement; and, in particular, that things were continually approximating to a domination (anticipated by Bengel) of Roman patricians over the pope. That the harvest and vintage had commenced in the French Revolution; but as this revolution was only a prelude to still greater ones, so the harvest and vintage would extend beyond France to whole countries around; and, in an awful manner, gather in many, "both bad and good," from time to time, even until the Lord's appearing. That the seven vials are to be accomplished figuratively, and not, as Bengel supposed, literally; that they signify events which were to be brought to pass more or less by the spirit of political revolution; events, by which God would fulfil his judgments on the antichristian world, and thus promote the coming of his glorious kingdom. The first vial, he said, was the revolutionary spirit diffused over European Christendom, in the year 1789. It was specially directed against those who by false illumination were making ready for the Beast of the bottomless pit, that is, who bear the spiritual mark of Antichrist; for that this approaching antichristian Beast is that secular hierarchy, which will soon bear `on its open front no bigotted superstition as heretofore, but decided infidelity. The second vial (according to Stilling) denotes

great oppression of maritime countries by revolutionary intrigues and stratagems. The third, the sanguinary character of the revolutionists. The fourth, a manifest falling away of the power of religion from Roman Catholics and Protestants; so that they will lose sight of every motive and encouragement to good. The fifth applies to the papal power, which will terribly suffer by the revolutions. The sixth seems to relate to revolutionary commotions in Turkey; and, with the seventh, the rage of rebellion will reach its crisis; all the bonds of civil society will become loosed, and nowhere will any real property or security be found. The great metropolis of rebellion will then be split into three parties, and the other cities fall to pieces; but Rome will yet all along be spared, as being reserved for its own signal judgment. At length the nations will destroy themselves and one another by civil commotions and foreign wars; but will not even think of conversion to God.

Thus far could Stilling's system partly accord with that of Bengel; but there were other points in which he departed farther from it: as 1. He agreed with Pfeiffer, that the period of "waiting” (ch. vi. 11.) did not commence in A. D. 98, and end in a. D. 1209, but began after sincere Christians had for several centuries been longing and praying for the kingdom of God. But he quite agreed with Bengel, that this period consists of 1111 years; and he placed its commencement between A. D. 689 and 725, when Christendom was growing more and more rapidly corrupt by the adoption of pagan customs, and was menaced with absorption by the Saracens. 2. He embraced an opinion, which both Bengel and Pfeiffer had rejected; namely, that the messages to the seven churches in Asia, typify seven periods in church history; but he so argued for this opinion, that the reasons which Bengel and Pfeiffer have urged against it, are equally forcible against Stilling's defence of it. 3. He considered the two millennia to be not partly contemporaneous (as did Pfeiffer,) but entirely so; and this chiefly, because it enabled him to recur to the old opinion, that the world will continue only seven thousand years, and that the last thousand will be sabbatical. The latter idea was such a favourite one with him, that when he became acquainted with the "Era Jubilæa" (jubilee era,) of John George Franke, and found in that book that Christ, according to this writer's computation, was born in the year of the world 4184, (and not, as Bengel said, in 3940,) he maintained in all his subsequent writings, that the millennium must commence in the year. 1816.