The Revelation Unrevealed Concerning the Thousand Year Reign, Section 5
§. 5 Some Expositors then and those, neither few, The divers constructions of the thousand years of Satans shutting up.nor meane, have taken the thousand yeares of Satans shutting up to be the same thousand wherein the Saints shal raigne: Others, not fewer, make the Saints raigne to follow this binding of Satan for many hundreds of yeares; And for the time of this chaining up of Satan, some take the thousand yeares for a long time, but indefinite, Fulk in loc. Deodati in loc.so Fulk and Deodati; others construe it literally, of that determinate number of years specified, some define it to be the whole time since the first publishing of the Gospel to the end of the world, so Nicolaus Zegerus; Zegerus, Sa, Estius, in locum.Emmanuel Sa and Estius. Some determin it to be the whole time of the Gospel published untill the days of their Antichrist; Ribera in locum. Haymo l. 7. in Apoc.wch should be three years & an half before the judgment; so Ribera out of Augustine, so Haymo and Joannes Gagnaeus a Divine of Paris. Some define this number of the 1000 years to begin the 36 year or thereabouts after our Saviours death, when the Jewish Church being overthrown, Satan rushed impetuously upon the Church Christian, and was restrained till the days of Hildebrand, so Junius; some define it to begin from the time of Constantine (whom Mr. Brightman conceives to be that Angell, which coming down from Heaven, and having the keyes of the bottomlesse pit lay'd hold on the Dragon, and bound him in chaines) till the thousand years expired; which ended in the 1300th. year of Christ, in the days of Boniface the eighth, and the Ottoman Empire, so Napier, and Brightman, and Mr. Foxe; some reckon it from first preaching of the Gospel by Christ, and his Apostles untill the time of Gregory the 7th, (otherwise called Hildebrand, and the time of Satans losing to be 400 or 500 yeares, so Dent: Others, ending the time of Satans shutting up in the year 1300, make the time of his rage to be an houre, a day, a monethmonth, and a year, that is about 390 years after, so Brightman, some others make the loosing of Satan to be when Mahomet and the Pope grew so great; which was at the end of the thousand years after Christ; in all which time the syncere doctrine was taught, till Antichrist came, in which the doctrine of the sacrifice of the Masse, and the doctrine of Merits, Satisfactions, &c. so Fulk; some place the beginning of Satans binding, upon the year 1517; when the witnesses were raised; for that, from that time all People have not generally drunk any new poyson of heresie, which mightweaken or overthrow their faith, so Matthaeus Cotterius; some others imagine the beginning of this chaining up of Satan to be after the taking of Rome by the Gothes, and after Augustulus, whowas the last Emperor of the West: affirming (though upon fickle grounds) that after the fall of the Roman Empire; yea after Mahomet, there was peace in the Church for a 1000 years; so as Satan was bound, and shut up in the bottomlesse pit, till this last age now passed. So Mariana: Others hold that this thousand yeares of Satans binding up is not yet begun, but shall be in this age wherin the Saints raign shal enter about the year 1694. So Alstedius and his followers.
These are some of those varieties of constructions (for if I listed to look after them, it were easie to cloy the Reader with many more; these tendred themselves to me suddenly, and as it were unsought) which have passed concerning the thousand yeares captivity of Satan, whereby it pleased the Spirit of God to make way to the thousand yeares raign of the Saints; In the determinatiō whereof, there is no lesse multiplicity of judgement amongst learned and Christian Interpreters: Some few whereof I shall lay forth before my Reader.