N01184:37
A dissertation concerning the future conversion of the Jewish Nation. Answering the objections of…
A dissertation concerning the future conversion of the Jewish Nation. Answering the objections of the Reverend and learned Mr. Baxter, Dr. Lightfoot, and others. : With an enquiry into the first resurrection. / By Increase Mather, president of Harvard-College, at Cambridge, in New-England. ; [Three lines from Jeremiah]A dissertation concerning the future conversion of the Jewish Nation. Answering the objections of the Reverend and learned Mr. Baxter, Dr. Lightfoot, and others. : With an enquiry into the first resurrection. / By Increase Mather, president of Harvard-Colledge, at Cambridge, in New-England. ; [Three lines from Jeremiah]
London: printed by R. Tookey for Nath. Hillier, 1709
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
Notwithstanding the rare Accomplishments wherewith Mr. Baxter was adorned, it is not to be marvelled, if in a Subject of this Nature, he did not so clearly discern the Truth as perhaps some others, his Inferiors, •ave done. Nec omnia poss••us o••es. His Talent did not lie in the Interpretation of Prophesies: •or was be happy in his Choice of Authors who have hand••d this Argument. I remember at my first Acquaintance with him, (which was in the Year 1688.) he told me that a Provocation of Dr. H. M•r• 's who had reflected on him for his Ignorance, or Unacquaintedness in Apocalyptical Mysteries put him upon the Study of the Revelation, and that he had read Two and Thirty Authors who had written on that Part of the Scripture; I prayed him to tell me whom of all the Thirty Two he did chiefly value; he told me […] was Mr. Fox (the famous Martyrologist) and he was wonderfully taken with […] Exposition of the Forty Two Apocalyptical Months, supposing Mr. Fox had the discovery by Divine Instinct. It is indeed surprising to read Mr. Fox's Relation ⟨p. 7⟩of that Matter; he makes a solemn Protestation in his […] in Apocalyp. p. 216. and Acts and Monuments, Vol. 1. p. 1•9. That […] •e was […] on a Lord's Day concerning the Persecutions of the Churches and the Forty Two Months which he once thought made but Three Years and a half, there seemed something to say to him, (yet he heard no Voice, only a vehement Impression on his Mind, which was attended with a strange Majesty) Number as Daniel doth his Seventy Weeks. Hereupon he concluded, that since one of Daniel's Weeks was Seven Years, by the Forty Two Months must be meant Seven Times Forty Two, that is Two Hundred and Ninety Four Years; and finding that the Primitive Persecutions continued so long, he concluded that to be the true Interpretation of the Forty Two Months. Suppose this strange Impression on Mr. Fox's Mind were (as I am apt to believe it was) from a good Angel, his Way of numbering was very strange. Daniel's Seventy Weeks made Four Hundred and Ninety Years: Had Mr. Fox followed Daniel's Rule in numbering, he would have found that Forty Two Months was in the Prophetical Stile, Twelve Hundred and Sixty Years, and that therefore they related not unto Rome Pagan, but Rome Papal. Now Mr.