An humble attempt to promote explicit agreement and visible union of God's people in…

The grand Objection against all this, is, that it is said that the Witnesses should prophesy twelve hundred and sixty Days clothed in Sackcloth; and when they have finished their Testimony, the Beast should make War against them and kill them, &c. and that it seems manifest, that after this, they are no longer in Sackcloth, for henceforward they are in an exalted State in Heaven: And that therefore, seeing the Time of their wearing Sackcloth, is twelve hundred and sixty Days, which is the Time of the Continuance of Antichrist; hence their being slain and rising again, must be at the Conclusion of this Period, and so at the End of Antichrist's Reign.

The grand Objection against all this, is, that it is said that the Witnesses should prophesy twelve hundred and sixty Days cloathed in Sackcloth; and when they have finished their Testimony, the Beast should make War against them and kill them, &c. and that it seems manifest, that after this, they are no longer in Sackcloth, for henceforward they are in an exalted State in Heaven: And that therefore, seeing the Time of their wearing Sackcloth, is twelve hundred and sixty Days, which is the Time of the Continuance of Antichrist; hence their being slain and rising again, must be at the Conclusion of this Period, and so at the End of Antichrist's Reign.

In answer to which I would say, that we can justly infer no more from this Prophecy than this, viz. That the twelve hundred and sixty Days is the proper Time of the Church's Trouble and Bondage, or being clothed in Sackcloth; because it is the appointed Time of the Reign of Antichrist. But this don't hinder but that God, out of his great Compassion to his Church, should, in some Respect, shorten the Days, and grant that she should, in some Measure, anticipate the appointed ⟨p. 124⟩great Deliverance that should be at the End of those Days. As he has in Fact done in the Reformation; whereby the Church has had a great Degree of Restoration granted, from the Darkness and Power of Antichrist, before her proper Time of Restoration, which is at the End of the twelve hundred and sixty Days. Thus the Church of Christ, through the tender Mercies of her Father and Redeemer, in some Respects, anticipates her Deliverance from her Sorrows and Sackcloth: As many Parts of the Church are hereby brought from under the Dominion of the antichristian Powers, into a State of Power and Liberty; tho' in other Respects, the Church may be said to continue in Sackcloth, and in the Wilderness, 'till the End of Days; many Parts of it still remaining under grievous Persecution.