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imagery, without introducing the slightest degree of obscurity. But, if, on the contrary, the same symbol be used to express many different things which have no necessary analogical relation to each other; it will be utterly impossible to understand a prophecy couched in such ambiguous terms: because the context can never lead us, as is the case in verbal languages, to a certain interpretation of it. Accordingly, this distinction is carefully preserved in the symbolical language of prophecy. Daniel and St. John, whose writings exhibit the most perfect and systematic specimens of Hebrew hieroglyphical composition, frequently use different symbols to express the same thing: but they never use a single symbol to express different things, unless such different things have a manifest analogical resemblance to each other. Hence the language of symbols, being purely a language of ideas, is in one respect more perfect than any verbal language ever known and employed: it possesses the varied elegance of synonyms, without the obscurity which springs from the use of ambiguous terms.

The phraseology of prophecy is constructed, partly on abstract ideas, and partly on direct bols or hieroglyphics.

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I. Such phraseology, as is constructed on abstract ideas, is in fact purely metaphorical or allegorical.

1. Thus parturition signifies the birth of a community, either ecclesiastical or civil, according as the tenor of the prophecy shall determine'.

Isaiah Ixvi. 7-10.

2. Life denotes existence: and, since existence may be either moral or political, it thence variously denotes either moral or political existence 1.

3. Sores are ill-digested humours in the body politic after they have broken out into overt action. In a theological sense, they denote various degrees of open profligacy and apostasy according to their various degrees of putridity 2.

14. Sickness is a low state of political health. In a theological sense, it is a low state of piety and religion 3.

5. Death is the extinction of existence, whether that existence be moral or political*.

6. Slaying denotes the infliction of moral or political death".

7. Revival signifies the recovery of the life which has been lost by moral or political death o.

8. The resurrection of the dead means the resuscitation of a defunct body ecclesiastical or political'. 9. The lying unburied for a short time is the remaining politically or ecclesiastically dead for a short time.

Dan. vii. 12.

2 Isaiah i. 6. 2 Chron. vi. 28.

32 Chron. vi. 28. Isaiah i. 5.

✦ Isaiah xxvi. 19. See Med. Comment. Apoc. in myst. duor.

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5 Dan. vii. 11. Rev. ix. 15. xi. 7. xiii. 3.

6 Isaiah xxvi. 19. Rev. xi. 11. xiii. 3, 12, 14.

7 Isaiah xxvi. 19. Ezek. xxxvii. 1–14. Rev. xi. 11. xx, 4, 5, 6.

Rev. xi. 9.

10. The being not only dead but buried is the being politically or ecclesiastically dead for a long time 1.

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11. The exposure of dry bones from which all the flesh is wasted away is the being politically or ecclesiastically dead so long that nothing remains to the defunct community of its former substance and strength".

12. Ascension to heaven is the ascending of a revived body politic, after its figurative resurrection, to power and authority 3.

13. The occurrence of the day of judgment and the coming of the Lord in glory are employed to represent the temporal judgment of any wicked empire or community through the agency of second causes*.

14. Blasphemy is apostasy, whether idolatrous or of any other description 5.

15. To hate, after having once loved an object, denotes the ceasing to be under that influence to which a person was before subject o.

16. To measure signifies to take an exact account of the thing measured. When something

1 Isaiah xxvi. 19.

2 Ezek. xxxvii. 1-14.

3 Rev. xi. 12.

Isaiah xiii. 1—13. xix. 1. xxx. 27-33. Luke xvii. 22-37, John xxi. 22.

"Rev. xiii. 1,6. xvi. 9—11, xvii. 3. Acts xxvi. 11. Ezek. xx. 27-32.

6 Rev. xvii. 16.

VOL. I.

else is left unmeasured, it involves the idea of ration1.

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17. To seal or to set a mark upon a person imports the separation of such a person to the service of him who has imprinted the seal or mark".

18. To devour the flesh of any allegorical per→ son is to plunder him of his substance 3.

19. To eat a prophecy signifies to receive and digest it for the purpose of communication*.

20. To seal up a prophecy is to suffer it to remain unintelligible till its accomplishment 5.

II. But prophecy not only borrows its phraseology from abstract ideas: it likewise reveals futurity through the medium of various absolute symbols or strictly proper hieroglyphics.

These are for the most part contrived with the closest attention to systematic regularity. Though there may be some hieroglyphics, which cannot be classified, but which stand insulated and independent: yet, for the most part, we find class comprehending division, while division not unfrequently comprehends subdivision. Nor is this the only peculiarity to be observed. Since prophecy relates both to things temporal and to things spiritual, the symbols employed in prophecy have ordinarily a

1 Ezek. xliii. 10. xl. 5, 6, 8, 9. xli. 3, 4, 5. Habak. iii. 6. Zechar. ii. 2. Rev. xi. 1, 2. xxi. 15.

2 Rev. vii. 3. xiii. 16. xiv. 1.

3 Micah iii. 1-3. Zechar. xi. 9, 16. Rev. xvii. 16. Dan. vii. 5.

Ezek. ii. 8-10. iii. 1-3. Rev. x. 8-11.

4 Jerem. xv. 16.

5

Isaiah xxix. 11.

Dan. ix. 24. xii. 4, 9.

Rev. v. 1.

double relation also. Yet, whenever this is the case, the principle of analogy is always carefully preserved: for, what a symbol temporally denotes in the State, it equally denotes spiritually in the Church, so far as an evident correspondence between those two bodies social can be preserved. Thus, to exemplify both these peculiarities, the hieroglyphic of a wild-beast is the leading symbol of a class; and this class comprehends, as so many divisions, the several hieroglyphics of heads and horns and wings and claws: but, at the same time, each symbol may be employed either civilly or ecclesiastically; for a wild-beast denotes either a persecuting civil Empire or a persecuting ecclesiastical Empire, and a horn denotes either a temporal kingdom or an ecclesiastical kingdom.

1. One of the largest of these symbolical classes is that, which is constituted by the natural world with its several divisions and various inferior dependencies.

(1.) Agreeably then to the principle which has been laid down, we will begin with noticing the temporal interpretation of the present class.

The natural world, when interpreted temporally, denotes a secular Empire or a complete civil body politic'. But this world, according to the ancient arrangement both sacred and profane, resolves itself into three principal divisions: the heaven, the earth, and the waters.

1 Isaiah xiii. 11. xxiv. 4. Rev. iii. 10. xii. 9. xiii, 3. xvi. 14.

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