come to the full, a king of fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences, shall stand up. And his power shall be mighty, but not by his own power: and he shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper, and practise, and shall destroy the mighty and the holy people. And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace shall destroy many he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes; but he shall be broken without hand." In order to understand either Daniel's vision of the little horn, or the angel's interpretation of it, it is necessary to ascertain what is meant by the indignation spoken of in the following words: "And it came to pass, when I, even I Daniel, had seen the vision, and sought for the meaning, then, behold, there stood before me as the appearance of a man. And I heard a man's voice between the banks of Ulai, which called and said, Gabriel, make this man to understand the vision. So he came near where I stood; and when he came, I was afraid, and fell upon my face: but he said unto me, Understand, O son of man; for at the time of the end shall be the vision. Now as he was speaking with me, I was in a deep sleep on my face toward the ground: but he touched me, and set me upright. And he said, Behold, I will make thee know what shall be in the last end of the indignation for at the time appointed the end shall be." In these words there is a general account of the time when the calamitous part of the

vision shall be fulfilled: it is to "be in the last end

of the indignation;" or, as the Hebrew words

"

may be more literally rendered, “ in באחרית הזעם

the last part of the indignation." By indignation must be meant some signal act of God's displeasure upon the Jewish nation. That it cannot refer to the Babylonish captivity, which was in the time that Daniel had the vision, is evident from the very words" it shall be in the last part of the indignation;" for the captivity was considerably more than half over at the date of the vision, and conse quently the future verb, in this sense, would be totally absurd. The commencement of the captivity was B. C. 606, the date of the vision B. C. 553, or the 53d year of the captivity; what remained, therefore, of the captivity was only about 17 years. That the distress of the Jewish nation under Antiochus Epiphanes cannot be intended, is proved at large by Bishop Newton. In fact the 2300 days mentioned by the angel cannot be accommodated to Antiochus Epiphanes in any proper sense. There remains then the last awful dispensation of the Lord against the Jews, viz. their final destruction as a nation by the Romans, and their dispersion over the whole habitable globe. This indignation is in force to the present hour, and has continued now upwards of 1700 years; the exploits, therefore, of the little horn must be performed some time in the course of the long captivity which now af flicts the Jewish people.

The angel begins his description of the little horn

This the

by saying, "And out of one of them came forth a little horn." This the angel explains in the following words: "And in the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors are come to the full, a king of fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences, shall stand up." This the generality of interpreters, before the time of Sir Isaac Newton, have understood of Antiochus Epiphanes, who, on account of his cruelties to the Jews, was nicknamed by them Epimanes, or Furious. But Sir Isaac Newton and Bishop Newton have demonstrated that the words of the prophecy are not at all designed to represent this king. The most complete refutation of the opinion that Antiochus Epiphanes is the little horn is given by Bishop Newton, when he says that horns signify kingdoms, as the angel expressly declares, "Now that being broken, whereas four stood up for it, four kingdoms shall stand up out of the nation." Consequently, the little horn must be a fifth kingdom. But Antiochus Epiphanes was only monarch of one of the four Grecian kingdoms, and is not, therefore, the little horn alluded to. Though the two Newtons have wisely rejected the common interpretation of the little horn; yet their application of the prophecy to the monarchy of the Romans appears to me highly absurd. For the angel says that the little horn should arise out of one of the four horns of the goat; but the Romans are well known to have arisen out of Latium, no part of which was ever subdued by the ancient Greeks. The greatest ar

gument which the Bishop advances in favour of his interpretation is, that the power of the Romans was the only one of any note, which rose up in the latter time of the four kingdoms of the Greeks, and that it was by this the four horns were entirely subverted, and the Jewish nation destroyed. But upon a close examination of the words of the angel, it will be clearly seen that the Bishop has built his foundation upon an entirely false view of the passage. He considers "the latter time of their kingdom" to refer to the last period of the four Grecian monarchies previously to their subjugation by the Romans. But that this is not the meaning is evident from the word kingdom being in the singular connected with the plural pronoun their. The angel evidently designs to shew that the four divisions of the Greek empire are not meant by saying, "four kingdoms shall stand up out of the nation, but not in his power," that is, as has been before observed; they shall be four independent monarchies. Hence, if the latter time of these monarchies had been intended, the expression would have been, "the latter time of these kingdoms." As the kingdom here alluded to is that of the Greeks according to the interpretation of the angel, their kingdom must mean the Greek empire; and, therefore, alludes to a time when the dominions of the four horns should be again re-united into one great empire, as in the time of Alexander. This did not take place till the fourth century of the Christian æra, when the great Roman empire was divided into two inde

pendent monarchies, called the eastern and western empires; and after the fall of the western empire in the fifth century, and especially after its revival in 800, the eastern monarchy was denominated by the western nations the Greek empire, and the Greeks in return called all the nations, who obeyed the Pope, Latins. It is hence clear that the little horn cannot be before the re-union of the Greeks into one great empire entirely independent of all others. But it is said that the little horn is not to rise up till the latter time of this kingdom; and it is well known that the Greek empire was destroyed in 1453; it then necessarily follows that the first appearance of the little horn is to be sometime in the last half of the period comprehended between A. D. 395 and A. D. 1453, that is to say, it cannot be before the tenth century, nor later than the fifteenth. Hill, Whitaker, and Faber aim at a much more probable interpretation of the little horn, in supposing Mohammedanism, from its first rise to its utter extinction, to be intended. But though two or three circumstances in the prophecy have considerable weight when thus applied, as will be seen in the sequel respecting the taking away of the daily sacrifice, and the casting down of the sanctuary; yet the scope of the prophecy is totally inapplicable to it. 1. It is absurd to translate in the futurity of (i. e. in the period subsequent to,) their kingdom; as this is a sense in which the words were never used, meaning nothing more than the last part of that spoken of.