CHAPTER VI ANTICIPATIONS OF THE YEARS 1848, AND 1866-7, AS THOSE OF THE FINAL FALL OF PAPAL DOMINION

The application and adjustment of the prophetic times to the order of historical events has, during the last nineteen centuries, advanced continually in the degree of its correctness. This was of course to be expected. The mysterious form in which the prophetic times in Daniel and the Apocalypse are stated, and the ignorance of the church as to the duration of her pilgrimage, and of the long apostasy which was to cast its shadow on her career, account for the errors of her earlier interpretations of these times; while the growing revelations of history explain the gradual advance in her comprehension of prophetic chronology so distinctly visible in later centuries, and especially during the last 700 years.

From Cyprian’s time, neat-the middle of the third century, as Elliott reminds us, “even to the times of Joachim and the Waldenses in the twelfth century there was kept up by a succession of expositors in the church a recognition of the precise year-day principle of interpretation; and its application made, not without consideration and argument, to one and another of the chronological prophetic periods of days, including the shorter one of those that were involved in the prophecies respecting Antichrist; though not, so far, to that of the 1,260 predicted days of Antichrist’s duration. An inconsistency this very obvious; and only to be accounted for, I think, by the supposition of some providential overruling of men’s minds; whereby they were restrained from entertaining the view, and carrying out their own principles, so long as it would necessarily have involved the conclusion of Christ’s advent being an event very distant. Further it appears that so soon as ever it was possible to entertain the year- day principle, and yet to have an expectation of Christ’s advent being near at hand, so soon the application was made of it to the 1,260 days predicted of Antichrist’s duration in Daniel and the Apocalypse. At the close of the twelfth century Joachim Abbas, made a first and rude attempt at it; and, late in the fourteenth the Wicliffite Walter Brute followed.”

The commentary on the Apocalypse by Joachim Abbas, Abbot of the monastery of Curacio in Calabria, was written about the year 1183. 2 Having become famous for his gift of scriptural research he received permission from Pope Lucius III, in 1182, “to retire awhile from the abbacy and its active occupation in order to give himself more entirely to these studies.”Nearly 1,260 years had elapsed from the nativity of Christ to the period in which Joachim wrote. Had Antichrist already come? “We may probably conclude,”says Joachim, “that Antichrist is even now in the world,”though the hour of his clear manifestation has not yet come. The holy city trodden down during the prophesying of the witnesses he held to be the Latin Church and Empire, and the forty-two months in which the witnesses preach clothed in sackcloth signify “so many generations of the cleric and monastic witnessing orders”; i.e., according to his own explanation elsewhere of the five months of the scorpion locusts, a period of 1,260 years. It was impossible, of course for Joachim, the abbot of a Roman Catholic monastery, to apply the 1,260 years prophesying of the witnesses to definitely anti-Romish testimony. He saw that the harlot city of the Apocalypse meant Rome; that the Antichrist would be the counterfeit of Christ; and that false prophets would issue out of the bosom of the church; but to rightly value the Protestant testimony which had even then commenced among the Waldenses, and was to grow in later times to such gigantic proportions, was beyond his power. Not so, however, with Walter Brute, the Wicliffite, in 1391, whose testimony is given to us by the venerable Foxe from original documents. To him the 1,260 and 1,290 days of prophecy were so many years, to be reckoned from the Hadrian desolation of Jerusalem to his own day. 1 But what if the Hadrian date was too early a starting point? To reckon the 1,260 years from the rise of the papacy would throw its termination into the distant future. Who should be bold enough to do this? A hundred and seventy years roll away. The Reformation has come, and the Romish anti-Reformation movement is in full flood. The massacre of the Huguenots in France is imminent; the dreadful massacre of St. Bartholomew. It is the year 1571. David Chytreus ventures to indicate the decree of Phocas as the possible commencing point of papal domination. He says that if reckoned from the beginning of the overthrow of the Western Roman Empire by the Gothic Alaric, in 412, the termination of the 1,260 years would be in 1672, or a hundred years later than the date at which he wrote, while if reckoned from the Pope exalting decree of Phocas in 606 its termination would fall in 1866, or 295 years later. According to this there might remain about 300 years of the fatal dominion of Antichrist.

Bullinger in 1573 states strongly the view that the Pope exalting decree of Phocas is the initial date of papal dominion, and refers to the notable preceding action of Gregory the great.

“The Byshop of Constantinople blynded wyth ambition, required to have the supremacie given hym, whom Palagius and Gregory Byshops of Rome wythstode: And this latter so impugned the supremacie of the Patriarch of Constantinople, that he slicked not to call hym the vauntcurrour of Antichrist, which would usurp the tytle of generally byshop. There remaine not a fewe espistles written of this matter, in his register. Nevertheless, a fe.we yeares after, when the Byshops of Rome were sore afrayde, least the dignitie should be geven to the Byshops of Constantinople, Boniface the 3, obteyned of the Emperour Phocas the murtherer, that he which was byshop of olde Rome, should be taken for the universal bishop, and Rome for the head of all churches: which constitution set up the Pope in authoritie, so as he was now taken of the most part of the west by shoppes for Apostolicall, and many matters were brought before hym to determine: whereby he got in favour of many princes, chiefly of Fraunce, by whose ayde he drove out of Italy both the Emperour of Greece, and the kings of Lumbardie, and brought Rome, and the best and most flourishing parts of Italy under his owne subjection.”

Such too had been the view of Bishop Bale, who in 1550 called Phocas “the first Pope maker,”and of that of the Magdeburg Centuriators in their monumental history published in 1559-1574. Napier, the famous inventor of Logarithms, in his remarkable work on the Apocalypse dated A.D. 1593, powerfully advocates the year-day theory. “In Prophetic dates ofdaies, weeks, moneths and yeares, everie common propheticall day is taken for a yeare.”He thought that the interval 1541 to 1756 would be marked by the downfall of Romish power.

Pareus in his commentary on the Apocalypse A.D. 1643 boldly reckons the 1,260 years of papal dominion from the decree of Phocas in 606. His work represents the substance of lectures delivered in the year 1608 to the Academy of Heidelberg, over which he presided. Boniface III, he says was exalted by a decree of Phocas to “the chaire of universal pestilence “in 606. “From the yeare of Christ therefore 606, untill this time the holy citie hath been trodden under foot by the Romane Gentiles, which is the space of 1,037 yeeres and is yet to be trodden down 223 yeeres more, to wit, untill the yeere of Christ 1866.”A bold prediction, based on the prophetic times! There is no hesitation about the language. From his chair at Heidelberg, in the seventeenth century, Pareus looked forward 223 years into the future, and guided by the sure word of prophecy pointed out the year 1866 as that which would witness the overthrow of papal dominion. And history in the events of 1866-70, justified his anticipation.

Seven years later, in 1650, Holland in his work on the Apocalypse says that according to prophecy “there remain 216 years more “for the papal power; which calculation also places the termination of the 1,260 years in 1866.

Forty years later Cressener in 1690 stated that the years of the period should in his view, be reckoned as prophetic years of 360 days each, which would shorten the 1,260 years to 1,242. Following in the same line Robert Fleming in his memorable work on the “Rise and Fall of Papal Rome,”published in 1701, anticipated the year 184.8 as a critical year in the downfall of the papacy. He added, “Yet we are not to imagine that these events will totally destroy the papacy, although they will exceedingly weaken it, for we find that it is still in being and alive when the next vial is poured out.”He also indicated the year 1794 as one which would witness some notable papal overthrow. There was not a sign in the political heavens when Fleming wrote that such events were impending; he foresaw them only in the light of chronological prophecy. Both his anticipations proved correct: 1794, and still more 1793, the year of the Reign of Terror in France, and 1848, the year of the great Revolution, witnessed ttie preliminary overthrow of the papacy. Events further showed that the 1,260 years of prophecy should be reckoned both as calendar years of 360 days each, and as solar years; and that reckoned in these two forms from the decree of Phocas in A . D . 606 the period terminates first in the revolutionary year 1848, and secondly in the year 1866, so long anticipated as that of the end of papal power.

In the year 1746, Dr. Gill in his well known voluminous commentary, similarly placed the ending of the 1,260 years in 1866. The beginning of the Pope’s reign, he says, was in the year 606; “if to this we add 1,260 the expiration of his reign will fall in the year 1866, so that he may have upwards of a hundred and twenty years yet to continue. But of this,”he adds, “we cannot be certain; however the conjecture is not improbable.”

Reader in his Apocalyptic commentary ( A . D . 1778) placed the 1,260 years in the interval A . D . 606—1866.

Twenty four years later Galloway at the commencement of the nineteenth century, in 1802, also points to 1866 as the termination of the 1,260 years of papal dominion. So did Faber, in 1805, Frere in 1816, Holmes in 1819, Bicker-steth in 1823, Irving in 1828, and Elliott in 1844. Burder in 1849 says, “The year 606 appears to me to be the grand and momentous date from which it is most satisfactory to compute the 1,260 years of the Papal Antichrist^ If this be agreed then the eventful termination of his reign will be in the year 1866, and we are now approaching a period most momentous to the Church and to the world.”

Five editions of Elliott’s great work on the Apocalypse were issued between 1844 and 1861. I have before me Elliott’s diagram of the prophetic times in his last edition, (Vol. IV, p. 240), tracing their termination in the year 1866. That diagram of the convergent ending of the chief prophetic times stands as a last witness to the marvellous anticipation whose existence we have traced for three hundred years, in the writings of Chytraeus, Pareus, Holland, Fleming, Gill, Reader, Galloway, Faber, Frere, Holmes, Bickersteth, Irving, Burder, and Elliott, or from the middle of the sixteenth century down to within five years of 1866; the anticipation that that year, as terminating 1,260 years from the decree of Phocas, would bring about the predicted fall of papal power. We have now to trace the fulfilment of this remarkable and long continued anticipation, in the events of the years 1848, and 1866-70.

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