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

The Period of Antichrist's Reign, as this Author has fixed it, seems to be the main Point insisted on in his Exposition of the Revelation; which he supposes a great many Things in the Scheme of Prophecies delivered in that Book do concur to establish. And indeed it is so, with Respect to the Scheme of Interpretation of these Prophecies, which he goes into, and finds it requisite to maintain, in order to confirm this Point. But there are several Things in that Scheme, that appear to me justly liable to Exception.

Whereas 'tis represented, Rev. xvii.10, 11. that there are seven different successive Heads of the Beast; that five were past, and another was to come, and to continue a short Space, that might on some Accounts be reckoned a seventh; and that Antichrist was to follow next after this, as the eighth; but yet the foregoing not being properly one of the Heads of the Beast, he was properly the seventh; Mr. Lowman don't think with others, that by the seventh that was to continue a short Space, which would not be properly one of the Heads of the Beast, is meant Constantine and the other Christian Emperors; (for he thinks they are reckoned as properly belonging to the sixth Head of the Beast) but that hereby is intended the Government that Rome was subject to under the Gothic Princes, and the Exarchate of Ravenna, after the Imperial Form of Government in Rome ceased in Augustulus, 'till the Pope was invested with his temporal Dominion, called St. Peter's Patrimony, by Pepin King of France, in the Year 756. And he supposes, that that wounding of one of the Heads ⟨p. 134⟩of the Beast with a Sword unto Death, that we read of Chap. xiii.3, and 14. was not fulfilled in the Destruction of the Heathen Empire, and the giving the Imperial Power unto Christians, but in the Destruction of the Imperial Form of Government, by the Sword of the Goths, in the Time of Augustulus. But it seems to me to be very unlikely, that the Spirit of God should reckon Constantine and the Christian Emperors as proper Members, and belonging to one of the Heads, of that monstrous wild and cruel Beast, that is compared to a Leopard and a Bear, and a devouring Lion, and that had a Mouth speaking great Things and Blasphemies, and that rules by the Power and Authority of the Dragon, or the Devil;