Works, Book 4 · Letter 10
EPISTLE X.
Mr. Mede's Answer to Mr. Hayn's Third Letter, about several passages in Daniel and the Revelation.
SIR,
I Received yours not till yesterday: whereby I perceive you have more confidence to convince me by this kind of discoursing, than I have you: For I confess freely, I find you so well setled in your opinion, that I have no hope to alter you: and yet nevertheless am as strongly perswaded of the truth of my own Tenet, notwithstanding all you have said, as ever I was before we began; and for all this, am as willing to embrace Truth, where I see evidence for it, as most men; so far as I can judge of my self by experience of my alteration in some points formerly embraced. Thus much I answer to the close of your Letter, where you say, you hope that by the perusal of your Reply I will be more inclinable to a different judgment from my former Tenets.
Mr. Hayn, though I can reasonably well perswade my self of many things I believe; yet had I never so much confidence in me, as to be able to perswade another of a contrary judgment, if he were once studied and setled therein; which made me so unwilling at the first to enter the Lists with you in this kind, where I could expect no other fruit but the loss of much time and pains to no purpose. The wit of man is able, where it is perswaded, to find shifts and answers until the day of Doom; as appears in so differing opinions held amongst Christians, with so much and so endless pertinacity on both sides. It is sufficient therefore for a man to propound his Opinion with the strongest evidence and arguments he can, and so leave it. Truth will be justified of her children. But of these reciprocations of discourse in writing, wherein you place so much benefit for discovery of Truth, I have often heard and seen Truth lost thereby, but seldom or never …ound.
I find by your last Reply, that you and I differ so far, and in so many Principles needful for the discovery of the truth of this Question, that all the time I have for my private studies would be wholly taken up in attending this dispute, if I should go on still therewith. I have had some experience once before, that it is a tenacious piece where it hath taken hold. I would not be entangled again; and therefore desire, with your good leave, to give it over, till opportunity of meeting together, where I should be able to talk with far more ease than I can write. I profess unto you, I contemn not your discourses, but do diligently and apud conscientiam meam weigh your arguments, howsoever it comes to pass I am not perswaded by them. But I cannot find time for such a Collation; and besides, am unwilling to put all in writing which I would utter in a private and a personal discourse. I will say a word or two to your last, but without expectation you should reply again.
1. The opinion of the 70 weeks expiration is not mine, but Scaliger's and divers other learned mens, and amongst the rest Iunius's, who otherwise for the Monarchies is yours. For my self, howsoever in the 70 weeks I have yet followed Scaliger, yet I had a private way to make the 62 weeks to point out our Saviour's Baptism. Howsoever, for the Iews expectation of Messiah, it was enough to know in what age he was to come, though not precisely the year.
2. I shall never believe but all those places of the Son of man's coming and appearing in the clouds of heaven, mentioned in the Gospels and in the Apocalypse, ch. 1. 7. are the same with that coming of the Son of man in the clouds prophesied by Daniel at the extinction of the Fourth Beast, Ch. 7. and that the Holy Ghost in the New Testament hath reference thither, both for words and meaning. If this be so, you know what follows.
3. I say not, the Greeks ruled not after Antiochus Epiphanes, but that the Holy Ghost accounts that Kingdom no longer in the Monarchichal reckoning, and so follows the story of their Kings no further than Epiphanes; from thenceforth the Roman, having now conquered Greece, was to take place.
4. I deny not, but firmly believe, that Christ's Kingdom took place at his First coming. But I utterly deny that to be the Kingdom our Saviour prophesies of Luk. 21. 31. and answerably in the other Gospels; or that whereof S. Paul speaks 2 Tim. 4. 1. I charge thee before God, and the Lord Iesus Christ who shall judge the quick and dead, at his appearing and his kingdom; or that foretold in the Apocalyps *Ch. 11. 15.to be when the seventh Trumpet shall sound, and the like places.
5. Unless it can be shewn me, That the six Seals, seven Trumpets, seven Vials, the treading down of the Temple, two Witnesses, their slaughter and Resurrection, the red Dragon's persecution, &c. were in specie revealed to Daniel; I will still hold those Fates of the Roman Kingdom were sealed, and not revealed to Daniel, though the Roman Monarchy were revealed to him.
6. The ancient Iews did, but the latter Iews hold not the Roman to be the Fourth Kingdom, but the Mahumetan and the Roman to be a continuation of the third.
7. What I alleged of Porphyrie for yours, was to shew the injustice of your disparaging mine, as being held by Iews, who yet when they first held it, were the only people of God, and Custodes oraculorum Dei: If Porphyrie might see a Truth, why not much more they?
8. I never meant to say, That the Kingdom of Christ should appear whilst all the Monarchies were yet standing, but before the times of that succession of Monarchies should expire: Which is true, if it appeared only in the last Monarchy. The confounding of the Gold, Silver, Brass and Iron, in the destruction of the Image, is either the foreign typi (for the parts of the Image could not succeed in time, as the Kingdoms signified by them could, and so all must be broken together:) or because the second kingdom possessed the first, the third the second, the fourth the third; the last is represented as containing all the rest, &c.
9. The Duration of the Four Kingdoms holds no proportion with the parts of the Image typifying them, and therefore the continuance of the Fourth Kingdom makes the legs of the Image neither longer nor shorter.
10. I wonder you should say, there is no Second Kingdom of Christ (which I had rather call the Second State of his Kingdom) mentioned in Scripture. Consider the places I point to in the fourth Paragraph, and add to them Luke 17. 20, &c. where our Saviour being asked of the Pharisees concerning the Kingdom of God, tells them, that he must first be rejected of that Nation, and that the coming thereof should be as in the days of Noah, &c.
11. The Mystery you say you conceive not (in the piece written with another hand) is that Mystery which the Apostle saies was not known till the preaching of the Gospel; namely, That the Iews should be rejected, and the Gentiles surrogated in their stead. Nor did I say (as you mistake) that the Iews had no part in the First state of Christ's kingdom, but that their Nation had not; by which I meant nothing else, but that their Nation was rejected. Doth not our Saviour expresly say, that he should be rejected of that Nation, Luk. 17. 25? It mattereth not though many of their Nation received him, seeing the Body of their Nation acknowledged him not. This is plain enough: I shall not need put you in mind of S. Paul's discourse of the casting off of the Iews, though then there were so many particular Iews believing in him, as I believe never were since.
12. I believe not that ever the Gospel of Christ was preached all over the world; no more than I believe that Augustus Caesar taxed the whole world, because it is said he taxed foreign For in the style of those times the Roman Empire was called foreign, as appears in the Greek Historians; and the Latin call it Imperium orbis terrarum.V…d. D…n. Weeks, Dan. 9. v. 25.
13. Daniel himself interpreteth the Stone to be a Kingdom which the God of heaven should set up in the days of those Kingdoms: and therefore it cannot be the Kingdom of Christ as God coeternal with his Father; but the Kingdom of Christ as foreign, which began not before he was incarnate. In the days of these Kingdoms (saith he) (that is, whilst some of them were yet in being) the God of heaven shall set up a Kingdom which should never be destroyed, nor left (as the former should) to another people; but should break in pieces, and consume all those Kingdoms, and it self should s…and for ever: Forasmuch (saith he) as thou sawest a Stone was cut out of a mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold. Here make the full point; for these words belong not to that which follows, (as our mis-distinction in the verses seems to refer them) but to that which went before of their interpretation. See the same reference of [Forasmuch] in the 40 and 41 verses.
14. I will not now dispute of the Preposition… though I had enough to say against you; but I say, that the words [In the daies of those Kings] are much more likely to be construed by Ellipsis particulae partitivae, usual in the Hebrew and Chaldee, qu…si, In the daies of some one of those Kings. viz. the last of them. So Iephtah is said to have been buried*I…. 12. 7. in the cities of Gilead; that is, in some one of them, &c.
There be some other passages not so principal, though I dissent from you in them, which I omit, as I desire to do this whole Disputation. That I had reserved to have answered in your former Reply, was to that of the Ruffling Horn, which by the express*Dan. 7. 22. words of the Angel was to last until the time came the Saints should possess the Kingdom, that is, until the Son of man came in the clouds of heaven to take a Kingdom; (for this is the Angel's exposition of that part of the Vision) and therefore it could not be Antiochus Epiphanes. Your Answer to this seemed very unsufficient; I desire you to weigh it better: and I make an end.
Yours, I. M. October 13.