The Second Part: Introduction

My chief aim in this Exposition being to search into such passages of the Revelation as concern the last days, and to find out under which of these constellations the present times of the church do fall, and what is certainly yet to come; I have therefore been less inquisitive in expounding I he First Part, as containing events long since past, and have now selected all I find in the seal and Joo-prophecy, (enlarging on this happy

notion of Mede for understanding the Revelation,) which may refer to present or future times concerning ourselves. Now that I might begin at the right joint, without mangling the whole, I have chosen the state and period of the church’s reformation, and of the separation from Popery, where the book-prophecy begins; my Exposition of c. vi. — ix. only making way for the understanding of what is now to follow. To ascertain therefore what belongs to these latter times in this prophecy: 1st, The seal-prophecy, (c. vi. — xi.) running over all time from John’s days to the kingdom of Christ, (and the passages in c. x. and xi. being the last under the first prophecy,) belongs therefore to the last times, (as shewn in the General Scheme, p. 563 — 9;) and indeed c. xi. belongs chiefly to the times of the vials in c. xvi. as will hereafter be shewn. 2dly, From c. xiv. 6, of the ioo-prophecy, begins the great restauration of the gospel from under Popery, until Christ’s visible and universal kingdom commencing at c. xx. Thus all these passages in the chapters mentioned out of both prophecies, connected in their due place and order, do fitly fall in together, to make the story of the church complete: and as I have given the more general Scheme and Division of this whole book, I shall now give, as the chief key of interpretation,