been disappointed of one prey, he seized the more fiercely upon another, and wreaked his wrath and vengeance on the helpless Jews, as we learn from a Jewish historical record. "He fell suddenly upon Jerusalem, and smote it very sore, and destroyed much people of Israel. And when he had taken the spoils of the city, he set it on fire, and pulled down the houses and walls thereof on every side." He decreed that all, under the penalty of death, should conform to the idolatrous worship of the Greeks. And in league with Menelaus and other apostate Jews, he abrogated the worship of God in the temple of Jerusalem, and by the severest persecutions manifested his indignation against the people of Israel.

The history of the kings of Syria and Egypt is thus prophetically traced down to the time of the introduction of the Roman power, which, in the days of Antiochus Epiphanes, exercised a high control over the destinies of the kingdoms of the east. Macedon, the original and patrimonial kingdom of Alexander the Great, from which the rest took their rise, became a province of the Roman empire during the very year in which the firm remonstrance of the Roman ambassador drove the mortified and indignant Antiochus from Egypt. The third great kingdom, the Macedonian or Grecian, was thus, in its order, subverted at that period. The previous prophecies of Daniel leave no room for doubt that it was to be supplanted by the Romans. They not only subdued Macedon, but stretched their arms into Asia. And, as in the commencement of the vision, the angel passed over, without noting, the successive kings of Persia from the days of Xerxes to those of Alexander, and took up the history of his kingdom, so soon as ever the connecting link between the history of Persia and Greece was formed by the first great collision of these empires, which ultimately

terminated in the subversion of the one, and the establishment of the other; so, in like manner, the same heavenly messenger, on the anticipated extirpation of the kingdom of Macedon, and the extension of the Roman influence and authority over Syria and Egypt, quits the history of the kings of the north and of the south, and marks the standing up of a new power, which had already been ushered upon the scene, as well as it had previously been described by the prophet, in other visions. The international alliances and conflicts between the kings of the north and of the south, chiefly as affecting the interests of the Jews, having been minutely detailed with more than historical fulness and precision, the prophet records the more destructive domination that was subsequently to prevail over the east, and to become the instrument, when the measure of their iniquities was full, and when the appointed time was come, to break the Jewish polity to pieces, to desecrate and destroy their temple, and to lay their land desolate.

CHAPTER VI.

AND arms shall stand on his part, (or shall stand up after him,) and they shall pollute the sanctuary of strength, and shall take away the daily sacrifice, and they shall place the abomination that maketh desolate. Ver. 31. The term, translated arms, de

* No one historian hath related so many circumstances, and in such exact order of time, as the prophet hath foretold them.Bishop Newton.

notes the arms of the human body, not armour, and is derived from a verb which signifies to spread abroad. The fourth kingdom was to subdue all the rest: Macedon had been subdued before it, and its wide extended influence was spread abroad, and reached from a distance, to Syria and Egypt. The identical word,— shall stand up-which marked the rise of the Macedonian empire, and of successive potentates, is repeated for the last time, to denote the establishment of the Roman authority, at the appointed time, in the east. Rome, whether republican, imperial, or papal, was henceforth, without the intervention or succession of any new and universal monarchy, (for none else are said to stand up after this period till the final restoration of the Jews) to connect and to complete, in its aggrandizement, its acts, authority, government, decline and fall, the whole series of historical events, from the days of Antiochus Epiphanes, their great oppressor, to the final restoration of the Jews.

The angel was to declare unto the prophet what should befall his people in the latter days, for the vision was for many days. And the blank in the scriptural record of the history of the Jews and of the world, from the era of the Babylonish captivity to the time of the Romans, having been filled up by a prophetic historical narration concerning the kingdoms which alternately held Judea in their possession, the angel then made known to Daniel the things which should befall the Jews, on the dissolution of their state by the Romans. It is known to all that they polluted the sanctuary of strength, took away the daily sacrifice, and placed the abomination that maketh desolate. Pompey entered the holy of holies; the idolatrous Roman ensigns were spread over Judea; the temple was rooted up, and not one stone was left upon another; and on its site a temple was after

wards erected to Jupiter Capitolinus. By the massacre of myriads of Jews, and the expulsion of all their race from the land of Judea, the daily sacrifice, which could be offered up only there, was taken away; Judaism was overthrown; and the abomination of desolation, concerning which Christ warned the Jews AS SPOKEN OF BY DANIEL THE PROPHET, was set up, and became a signal for the Christians to flee from Jerusalem; and the judgment of God, by the instrumentality of the Romans, fell upon that wicked, impenitent, and therefore devoted city; and when they would not hear the messenger of the Lord, the land, as the last word of the law and prophets told, was smitten with a curse.

And such as do wickedly against the covenant, shall he corrupt by flatteries: but the people that do know their God shall be strong and do exploits, and they that understand among the people shall instruct many; yet they shall fall by the sword, and by flame, by captivity and spoil many days. Ver. 32, 33. Conjoined with the subversion of Judaism is the announcement of insidious and successful attempts to cause some to apostatize from the faith;—of the propagation of the knowledge of God by men strengthened for that purpose, and doing exploits to accomplish it,—of the great success of their teaching, and of the severity, variety, and long continuance of their sufferings. The abolition of the old covenant was accompanied by the wider promulgation of the new. The Romans exercised their ingenuity and their power to suppress, in its origin, a holy religion; and tried to gain over both Jews and Christians to pagan idolatry. It is recorded by heathens, admitted by unbelievers, and complained of by Christians, that, whether won by flattery or awed by threats, 66 some who said that they had been Christians denied it again; and worshipped the image of the Roman

emperor and the images of the gods. *

It is universally known, that at that very period the purest faith on earth was first taught to man in the land of Judea ; and that the only true spiritual light on earth emanated from that country at that time. It was the age of miracles and of light. The people that knew their God, or they that understood among the people, the converted Jews, both did exploits and instructed many. Pagans believed in all or in any gods but the only living and true God. And the propagation of religious knowledge, in a manner previously unknown to paganism, was followed by persecution for conscience sake; and when flattery failed, when incentives to vice did not prevail over Christian steadfastness and virtue, the worshippers of lords many and of gods many persecuted to the death those who knew their God and instructed many in turning them from the darkness of paganism to the light of the gospel. The champions of the cross assailed heathenism with no other weapon than the sword of the Spirit, and their sufferings and death promoted the triumph of their cause. They were opposed by all the weapons of an unholy warfare; every mode of punishment was put in action, and every engine of cruelty was set at work against them. In the persecution under Nero, about thirty years after the death of Christ," they were put to death," according to the description of Tacitus, "with exquisite cruelty; and to their sufferings Nero added mockery and derision. Some were covered with the skins of wild beasts, and left to be devoured by dogs; others were nailed to the cross; numbers were burnt alive; and many covered with inflammable matter (flame), were lighted up, when the day declined, to serve as

* Pliny's Letter to Trajan, ep. 97.