538 



Monthly Review of Literature, 



[MAY, 



Of course, the skeleton the mere incidents 

 of the tale is all that can be regarded as 

 genuine ; the taste and propriety with 

 which they are worked up cau be nothing 

 but European. 



The Apocalypse of St. John ; or, Pro- 

 phecy of the Rise, Progress, and Fall of 

 the Church of Rome ; the Inquisition ; the 

 Revolution of France ; the Universal War ; 

 and the Final Triumph of Christianity : 

 being a new Interpretation. By the Rev. 

 George Croly, A.M. 1 827. Another inter- 

 pretation of these long neglected, and now 

 almost abandoned mysteries, was an event, 

 perhaps, little to be looked for; after so 

 many superior persons of ability and research 

 had laboured, if not vainly, at least very 

 unsatisfactorily. The ill success of his distin- 

 guished predecessors did not dishearten Mr. 

 Croly a ray of light had flashed upon him, 

 which did not and could not illumine them. 

 His interpretation rests upon the events of 

 the last forty years which accounts at once 

 for the failure of the old interpreters, and 

 exonerates himself from the charge of pre- 

 sumption. Whatever we may think of the 

 result of his labours, we are decided enough 

 as to the ability, and energy, and confidence 

 with which he has executed his task. 



On a casual reading of the Apocalypse, 

 some years ago, he was struck, he tells us, 

 with what appeared to him, the manifest refe- 

 rence of the eleventh chapter that of the 

 TWO WITNESSES to one of the most extra- 

 ordinary or, more correctly, to that unique 

 event of our own times the abjuration of 

 religion by a government arid people. But 

 a circumstance, not less striking to him, was 

 the declaration that this event marked the 

 conclusion of an era, in which the whole 

 chronology of the Apocalypse rests the 

 well-known 1260 years. These two wit- 

 nesses (xi. i.) are said to prophecy in sack- 

 cloth 1260 days, and at the end of these 

 days, the beast, who oppressed the saints 

 forty-two months (1260 days) ascends from 

 the bottomless pit, and makes war upon 

 them, and kills them. Their dead bodies lie 

 three days and a-fialf, and then the spirit 

 re-enters, and they stand upon their feet 

 again. Now these two witnesses are the, 

 scriptures and their prophecyiug in sack- 

 cloth, indicates ihe triumph of the beast 

 the papacy ; and the death of these wit- 

 nesses is the abjuration of them an abju- 

 ration which took place in France in Novem- 

 ber 1793, by a public act of the government 

 and people, and continued till June 1797 



THREE YEARS AND A-HALF. At the end 



of this period, the scriptures were re-adopt- 

 ed, and public worship revived. But wh<it 

 period of the papacy do these 1260 days in- 

 dicate ? Deduct 1260 days from 1793, and 

 you have the year 533, the very year when, 

 it is admitted on all hands, the papal power 

 was firmly established, In that year it was, 



In matters of prophecy, the day obviously 

 cnts tLe year. 



that the Emperor, Justinian, first allowed 

 the supremacy of the see of Rome, over that 

 of Constantinople, and not before. There 

 is another number, 666, equally memorable 

 and with respect to which, Mr. Croly will be 

 thought, perhaps, equally felicitous. The 

 thirteenth chapter of the Apocalypse de- 

 scribes the beast that rose with seven heads 

 and ten horns, and on his heads ten crowns, 

 and the name blasphemy. This is the pa- 

 pacy. But in the same vision, the Apostle 

 beholds another beast coming up out of the 

 earth, which had horns like a lamb, and 

 spake as a dragon. This had a number 

 668 ; and the fancy of interpreters has 

 pretty generally led them to suppose this 

 number involved the name of the particular 

 individual or party represented by the beast. 

 Mr. Croly, very naturally at least, takes it to 

 be, as it stands, a date ; and a 666 added to 

 5^3, make 1199, the very year in which was 

 instituted the INQUISITION." This lamb-like 

 and dragon-tongued beast, therefore, is the 

 Inquisition, and very happily is it character- 

 ised that is, by contraries ; and the remain- 

 ing part of the description, at least, tallies 

 well with the qualities of that infernal court. 

 These coincidences led to a farther research. 

 The seals, the trumpets, and the vials, are all 

 carefully and solicitously examined with 

 singular dexterity, and, it may be, appalling 

 success. These prove to be, in many re- 

 spects, parallelisms. The seals are 1. The 

 establishment of Christianity ; 2. The fall 

 of the Western Empire ; 3. Popery ; 4. 

 French Revelution ; 5. An Interval ; 6. Uni- 

 versal War ; and 7. Triumph of the Church ; 

 The trumpets and vials commence later, and 

 are almost wholly parallel; 1. The Papal 

 and French Wars in the fourteenth century, 

 and the plague of the same century ; 2. De- 

 struction of the Spanish Armada ; 3. The 

 War of the Cevennes ; 4. The Wars of Louis 

 XIV. ; 5. The French Revolution, and seizure 

 of Rome ; 6. The overthrow of the Revolu- 

 tion ; and 7. The Universal War. More 

 particularly, the fifth trumpet announces the 

 revolution, and the ninth chapter is a history 

 of its changes and states to the expulsion of 

 Napoleon. Two states are described as be- 

 ing of EQUAL DURATION, which prove to 

 be the Republic and the Empire, each eleven 

 years; the Republic commencing in 1793, 

 and the Empire in 1804, and terminating in 

 1815. By the slight addition of a single 

 letter, the Apollyon of the Apocalypse will 

 give the pronunciation of the most remarka- 

 ble name of the revolution Napoleon. 

 (145.) 



We cannot, of course, give the author's 

 arguments their full force we cau only out- 

 line them ; the reader, who has any curi- 

 osity about the matter, must refer to the 

 book itself: we can assure him he will be 

 gratified by contemplating the ability and 

 earnestness of the writer ; and the air of 

 probability he has thrown over the whole 

 interpretation will add to his surprise, if it 

 do not compel his assent. 



