Memoirs of John Napier of Merchiston. 263 



tiliously whether the number, already not inconsiderable, of 

 elements admitted as fundamental positions, augmented, in the 

 course of the discussion, with a good many other hypotheses, do 

 not weaken very much, humanly speaking, the mathematical 

 probability of the final deductions. I admit it all, if you will, 

 confessing myself unequal to the dispute ; and thus am I, of 

 logical necessity, constrained to admit, with the Inventor of the 

 Logarithms, that the Pope is certainly Antichrist ; that he is 

 also Gog, as the Emperor of the Turks is Magog, and his sol- 

 diers the locusts of the Apocalypse ; and, besides all this, that 

 there were two-and-twenty Popes, horrible necromancers, who 

 sold themselves everlastingly to the devil, that they might be- 

 come Popes ; seeing that all this is equally established in Napier's 

 book, at the places I have noted below.* 



But, among all these conclusions, there is one which ought to 

 be equally indubitable, and which, by its logical connexion with 

 the others, obviously communicates to them its own character of 

 infallibility. It is, that, according to the fourteenth Naperien 

 proposition, ** The day qf judgment ought to arrive between the 

 years of Jesus Christ 1688 and 1700; and hence, according to 

 the tenth proposition, the world will come to an end rather be- 

 fore than after the year 1786." That is a consequence of 

 which, it is true, I cannot dispute the necessity, as flowing logi- 

 cally from the premises ; but I must confess, that, to my mind, 

 it appears difficult to admit, and because it produces the same ef- 

 fect upon other simple souls is the reason, perhaps, why Na- 

 pier's Commentaries on the Apocalypse is not in the present day 

 read so frequently as one would desire, a neglect of which his 

 biographer also complains. Newton too, as is well known, wrote 

 a commentary on the Apocalypse ; but he had not the hardihood 

 to attempt so comprehensive a task as his Scotch predecessor has 

 done. " The folly of former interpreters," says he (Jolly, that 

 is a hard word), " was the aspiring to predict times and events 

 by their prophecies, as if God had intended to make prophets 

 of them." So Newton limits himself to the explanation of the 

 past, and the greater number of those who have studied his 

 work appear to have found even that no very easy task. 



* M. Biot here quotes some instances from Napier's Commentaries. 



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