first resurrection, peculiar to the just. Now, it would be better for Mr Faber, if he desires to overthrow this ancient doctrine, instead of concocting a syllogism founded upon false principles, as we have seen it to be, to take a large and comprehensive view of all the passages of Scripture which bear upon the question, and show the consistency of his own view, with the testimony of the word of God. CONCLUDING PRETATION OF DANIEL. CHAP. VII. OBSERVATIONS ON MR FABER'S INTER- It is time for me now to draw to a close my strictures on Mr Faber's work, as I feel that for a tract which is essentially controversial, I have already spun out these remarks to a length almost too great for the patience of my readers. I have at least exhausted my own patience, as few things are more irksome to me than controversy; nor could any consideration but a sense of duty induce me to engage in it. It never was my intention to go through Mr Faber's volumes, but to limit myself to the consideration of great leading principles, which must decide the controversy between Mr Faber's novel system of interpretation and those which have preceded it. I cannot, however, conclude, without a very few remarks on what the learned author has offered with regard to the chronology of the other sacred numbers of Daniel. The 2300 years revealed in ch. viii. 14, are by him computed from the supposed rise of the Persian empire in the year A. C. 784, to the imagined begun cleansing of the sanctuary in A. D. 1517.* Now, if we were willing to grant to Mr Faber the truth of the Sacr. Cal. vol. II. p. 170-181. two main principles of his argument, first, that the vision of the ram begins from the rise of the Persian monarchy, and, secondly, that the cleansing of the sanctuary commenced at the Reformation, we acknowledge that it would follow as a necessary consequence, that Mr Faber's chronology is right, even though we should not be able to discover how, consistently with the analogy of prophecy, and the testimony of history, Mr Faber places the rise of the Persian empire at so remote a period as the eighth century before Christ. But as we cannot grant to Mr Faber as true, principles which we believe to be contrary to truth, and as we believe that neither the vision of the ram does commence to run from the rise of the Persian monarchy, nor that the sanctuary did begin to be cleansed at the reformation, it follows that we must contend that the whole of the learned author's argumentation upon this point of prophetic chronology being founded upon principles which are gratuitously assumed, is destitute of evidence. I have no intention, however, of entering further into this controversy, but shall content myself with one simple remark, namely, that the first of Mr Faber's principles above mentioned, seems to me to rest upon a false rendering of a Hebrew phrase in Dan. viii. 3. Mr Faber renders the words m and behold THERE STOOD UP before אחד עמד לפני האובל the river a ram.* I believe the correct rendering to be, and lo, a ram WAS STANDING before the river. I * Sacr. Cal. vol. I. p. 292. am willing, however, to refer this point to Dr Lee, or any competent Hebraist, and if the decision shall be in favour of my rendering of the phrase, it seems to me that it will be fatal to Mr Faber's principle, that the vision of the ram commences at the rise of the Persian monarchy. With regard next to the 1290 days revealed in Dan. xii. 11, Mr Faber deviates no less from the sentiments of nearly all commentators of note who have written during the last century, than in most other points of his system. They have one and all, I think, conceived that the 1290 years commence to run from the same point of time as the three times and a half, viz. from the period when the Papal abomination of desolation was set up in the sanctuary of the visible church. Mr Faber entirely rejects this idea, and for it substitutes the hypothesis that the 1290 days are to be computed from the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple by the Roman arms, in the year of our Lord 70.—and he carries down this period consequently to the year 1360, when Wickliffe began to preach against the abominations of popery. His principal argument for this conclusion is derived from Dan. xi. 31, where it is mentioned, that the Ro-man power shall pollute the sanctuary of strength, and shall take away the daily sacrifice, and shall place the abomination that maketh desolate. This language is applied by Mr Faber exclusively to the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple by Titus; and finding the same expressions made use of in ch. xii. 11, to mark the commencement of the 1290 days, he infers, that it would be contrary to the rules of good composition to refer the expressions in the passage last mentioned to any other abomination of desolation than the one mentioned in xi. 31. The answer to this argument is plain and obvious : -The taking away of the daily sacrifice, and the placing of the abomination of desolations by the Roman power, were fulfilled literally by the destruction of the literal Jerusalem and its temple in the days of Titus. But they were fulfilled also spiritually when the same Roman power corrupted the worship of the Christian church, by the introduction of the worship of the Virgin Mary and the saints, and placed in it the desolating abomination of the Papal authority; and if any more special declaration of the Scriptures be required to warrant this assertion, I shall refer to Rev. xi. 2, 7. xiii. 7. 2 Thess. ii. 3, 4. Both events are intended in Dan. xi. 31; for to suppose otherwise, were to imagine that the prophet had received a communication of the smaller event, while the greater one was unaccountably left out in the revelation given to him. Now, that the spiritual abomination set up in the Christian church is the greatest of these two series of events is manifest from this, that when the literal Jerusalem was desolated by Titus, the kingdom of God had already been taken away from the Jews, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof;* and further from the fact, that the abomination of Popery is in the New Testament called emphatically the MYSTERY OF INIQUITY, † and |