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quaintance with theology; so, properly to distinguish the two prophetic periods intimately related to them, and exactly corresponding with them, is of the utmost consequence in acquiring the right knowledge, and adjusting the true exposition of prophecy. The distinction is not, however, at all times, in either case, easy or obvious; and more particularly in respect of prophecy, for it depends on the design, the use, and the completion, and not always, nor necessarily, upon the site or the date of the vision, or of the prophecy; nor even upon the occasion of its being delivered, nor upon its connexion with that which immediately precedes or follows it. Enoch, the seventh from Adam, announced to the ancient world more distinctly than most subsequent prophets, Christ's second advent; leaving it to his future harbingers to announce his first advent, and all his previous and subordinate visitations.

Hence the order of place or of time is not an essential and invariable rule of interpretation; for it is not the constant and immutable order of the Spirit who spake by the prophets; it is not the certain criterion of his object, nor the fixed and invariable rule and standard of his meaning. Being the supreme teacher and guide of the church, the gracious and merciful Lord God of Israel, who invites and encourages prayer, he has frequently yielded to the earnest supplications and intercessions of his saints and prophets, and condescend

ed, in answer to their petitions, to announce more distinctly, and to reveal more clearly, what had been but briefly noticed and obscurely signified before. At the ardent and repeated solicitations of Daniel, an angelic messenger was commissioned to convey him ampler and brighter manifestations of the plans of Providence, and exact prescience of the subsequent state of the world, and of the future destinies of the church; and the mandate was issued. Gabriel makes this man to understand; and the last and most important and most profound book of prophecy, the Apocalypse, has passed to us through successive channels or instruments of conveyance. God gave it to Jesus Christ, who gave it to his angel, and he delivered it by successive visions to St. John, from whom it has been received and transmitted to us by the Catholic church. It has therefore come to us through several hands; and some of these, viz. the ministering angel, and the holy apostolic prophet, who conferred together, might have probably each in his turn required farther light and clearer discoveries of the truth, and in consequence might have obtained, as Daniel had done before, more ample information, and more adequate and satisfactory guidance and foresight, from the spirit of prophecy. "After these things," therefore, so frequent in that book, does not mark the time of the completion, but the time of the vision or of the prophecy, when those objects

and characters, or those circumstances and events, which had been at first perhaps but obscurely intimated or imperfectly developed, are afterwards in future and consecutive visions or prophecies more fully declared and more exactly detailed and particularized. And to this purpose is the just and solid observation of St. Augustine. "Sic eadem multis modis repetit, ut alia atque alia dicere videatur, cum aliter atque aliter hæc ipsa dicere vestigetur *." He so variously repeats the same things, that he appears to treat of different subjects; while, on investigation, he is found to treat of the very same subjects in a different way. And, moreover, the old Covenant, and the Jewish Church, having been the types and preludes of the new Covenant and of the Christian church, the prophets frequently intermix the properties and adjuncts of the sign with those of the thing signified, and make no distinction between the type and the antitype, the shadow and the substance; having, 'in general, enveloped their presages and foretokens of the Christian church, in proverbs or in parables, or having veiled them in the various objects and characters of their own religion, and the peculiar history and circumstances of their own church; and, therefore, having set out the Gospel in the showy drapery of the Law, and the gorgeous ceremonies and services of the temple.

* Augustin de Civitat. Dei, Lib. xx. Cap. 17.

The two periods, however, if not always distinguishable by the time, or the date, and by the connexion or location of the vision or prophecy, may be fixed and ascertained by the object and the design of it, by the reference and the application; the one period being restricted to the Jews, and designed for the support of their religion, and the defence of their church against the surrounding idolatry, and to assure them of the first coming of Christ; and the second period taking in the Gentiles and the whole world, and assuring them of his second and last coming: the first period pointing him out in his humiliation, in the sufferings and weakness of humanity on earth; and the second period pointing him out in his exaltation, in his majesty and glory in heaven, in characters so distinct, and conditions so opposite, as to furnish some colour and pretext to the Jewish fancy and fable, as they employ it, of two Messiahs; the one the son of Joseph to suffer and to die, and the other the son of David to rise and to triumph *. Another weighty and essential distinction between these two periods, depending on the former, and seldom sufficiently noticed and carefully digested, is, that the first period presents him to us, who is the grand object and centre of prophecy, as "the way" of his church; whilst, in the second, he is

* See Section 10.

"the truth and the life" of it: in the one he is the example, in the other he is the fountain of influence and of authority-in the first he is the individual, in the second he is the corporate and the collective person, the shepherd feeding and guiding his flock, the high priest interceding for and blessing his people, the king ruling his subjects; the head, in fine, united to his members, and one with his church. "For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body being many are one body, so also is Christ."

The first and the most important and necessary inquiry in the investigation of prophecy, must therefore be the nature and extent of that corporate relation and mystical union which subsists between Christ and his church. Without the authority of inspiration none would have ventured to have denominated the church his λnpwua, or his complement, or have dared to insinuate that he was incomplete and imperfect without it; and that his office and character, and even his very name and glory, depended on it. So that the existence and constitution of the church force themselves upon our attention with paramount weight, and from unavoidable necessity, not only as composing a particular and definite object of prophetic interest and foresight, but as being an integral part of the complex notion, and scriptural character, of Christ himself. And as it is

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