sions, we cannot rationally suppose the present to conclude with the death of Antiochus; for Antiochus died only 370 years after Daniel saw this last vision, while each one of the three preceding visions reaches to the very time of the end or to the close of the latter 1260 years. Therefore, as the three preceding visions severally reach down at least to the year after Christ 1861: had the concluding vision reached down no lower than to the death of Antiochus in the year before Christ 164 ; we may be morally sure, that Daniel could never have said of it that the time appointed was long. Thus radically erroneous must be every exposition, which makes Daniel's last vision terminate with the death of Antiochus.

Jerome, indeed, and the Christian expositors of his day, avoid, no doubt, this palpable incongruity, by making Antiochus the type of Antichrist, and by ultimately referring to the antitype what they suppose to be primarily said of the type! But,

Hucusque ordo historia se sequitur, et inter Porphyrium ac nostros nulla contentio est. Cætera, quæ sequuntur ad finem voluminis, ille interpretatur super persona Antiochi qui cognominatus est Epiphanes-Nostri autem hæc omnia de Antichristo prophetari arbitrantur, qui ultimo tempore futurus est-Cumque multa, quæ postea lecturi et exposituri sumus, super Antiochi persona conveniant : typum eum volunt Antichristi habere, et quæ in illo ex parte præcesserint, in Antichristo ex toto esse complenda. Hieron. Comment. in Dan. xi. 21.

It is, however, only justice to say, that, from Dan. xi. 36 to the end of the vision, Jerome himself seems strongly inclined to

calendar of prophecy, and is therefore to be spanned and measured by the gage of that calendar. It omits, indeed, the first large Empire; because the vision was seen in the third year of Cyrus, and the Babylonian monarchy had already fallen : but, while it begins only with the Medo-Persian Empire as that Empire was existing at the date of the vision, it passes, in strict chronological order, first through the descending history of that Empire ; then through the history of the Grecian Empire, specially as prolonged by its two chief members ; and lastly through the history of the Roman Empire, specially as prolonged, in its proper western seat, under its most powerful horn and under its short-lived though eventually reviving seventh head, down to the very time of the end or to the close of the latter 1260 years ”.

In short, as the object of the vision of the image was mainly, to define and to mark out, like a general chart and scale of anticipated history, the grand calendar of prophecy; as the object of the vision of the four great beasts was, to conduct us, by the fixed standard of that calendar, to the era and actions of the little western horn of Popery ; and as the kindred object of the vision of the ram and the he-goat was, to conduct us, by the same fixed standard, to the era and actions of the little eastern horn of Mohammedism, and to the epoch of the incipient cleansing of the sanctuary : so the

Rev. xvii. 10. xiii. 3, 12, 14. xvii. 10, 11.

prince Michael will stand up for them synchronically with the last expedition and final overthrow of the wilful Roman king of the West, and that the period of their scattering will be accomplished at the close of the latter three times and a half'.

When the whole antichristian faction shall hare been thus destroyed, and when the brief time of the end shall have expired; then will commence that grand concluding term of 1335 prophetic days, respecting which the interpreting angel says: Blessed is he, that waiteth and cometh to it?.

I. The Babylonian Empire having recently fallen at the time when the vision of the things noted in the Scripture of truth was revealed to Daniel, the angelic speaker consistently begins with the then actually standing Empire of the Medes and Persians.

Cyrus, as the prophet himself had informed us, was the reigning king: for it was in the third year of that sovereign, that he saw the vision. After Cyrus, then, are to stand up yet three other kings in Persia, whose actions are not peculiarly specified : but the fourth is described as being wealthy above all his predecessors, and as stirring up the whole world against the realm of Javan or Greece.

It is worthy of remark, that this prophetic enumeration is more minutely accurate, than either the Canon of Ptolemy or the native Persic account of the Caianian dynasty. The former, indeed, fully

Dan. xii. 1,6,7. ? Dan. xii. 12.