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PREFACE.

This second Enquiry is intended to meet some observations which have been made on the first; and I have adopted the arrangement in which its several parts will be found, for reasons which I will briefly state. The Examination of Mede's Arguments has been placed first, because it will make the reader who is not familiar with the subject, acquainted with the "reasons" which that writer considered as

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I clearly demonstrating" that the 1260 days are not to be understood as literal days-the passage in the Dialogues on Prophecy contains, I believe, no new argument; but consists chiefly of a collection of authorities in support of the mystical interpretation-in the Remarks on the Review in the Christian Observer, I have endeavoured to meet some arguments

which the Reviewer considers as having been hitherto inadequately noticed-in those on a Review in the Christian Examiner, I have merely attempted to clear myself from what has appeared to the Reviewer to be a culpable omission in my former Enquiry—these are followed by some Remarks on a Review in the Christian Guardian, in which, on the suggestion of the Reviewer, I have stated, as briefly as I could, some considerations which appear to me to furnish direct evidence against the mystical interpretation to these are added some observations on the common interpretation of the seven heads of the Beast, which are intended as a specimen of the more detailed examination to which it is proposed to submit the various parts of the system.

1..

In this, as well as in my former, Enquiry, I have endeavoured to keep to the single question which I proposed—namely, whether the 1260 days are literal days, or years-and when, in pursuance of this object, I have noticed the inter

1 I observe that in the section referred to I have called it positive evidence-I beg the reader to understand that I only used the word as opposed to negative.

pretation of any particular part of the prophecy, I have (except where the avowed object was to exhibit their discrepancy) selected those parts in which there is the most agreement among expositors; my design, being not so much to impugn the system of any particular writer on the 1260 years, as to investigate that one point, which is the common foundation of all. On this account, I have been prevented from taking specific notice of the "Reply, by a Member of "the Church of England;" I say this, merely that I may not appear to pass it over in disrespectful silence; and I think it will be obvious to every reader that the principles of interpretation for which the author contends, may be either adopted, or rejected, without deciding, or very materially affecting, that one single point, which it is my present object to discuss. For the same reason, I have had no opportunity of offering any acknowledgment to one or two Reviews, to which I have made no reference; but whose favourable notice of my former pamphlet has encouraged me in this undertaking.

At the time when my Enquiry was published,

b

I was not aware that the literal interpretation of the 1260 days had been maintained in a work recently published. I mention this, not only that I may offer my thanks to the author, for that and for other works on the subject, for which I am indebted to his kindness; but because, in some parts, the line of argument is so similar to that which I have myself followed, that the readers of that work might reasonably think me guilty of having borrowed from it without acknowledgment.

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"Hints humbly submitted to Commentators; and more especially to those who have written elaborate Disserta"tions on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Revelation of "St. John: by William Witherby," London, 1821. The same view had been previously maintained in " A Review "of Scripture, in testimony of the truth of the second Ad"vent, the first Resurrection, and the Millennium, &c. by “a Layman”—London, 1818-a work containing many suggestions which I believe to be original, and which certainly well deserve the consideration of the writers on prophecy.

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