N04757:208
An humble attempt to promote explicit agreement and visible union of God's people in…
An humble attempt to promote explicit agreement and visible union of God's people in extraordinary prayer for the revival of religion and the advancement of Christ's Kingdom on earth, pursuant to Scripture-promises and prophecies concerning the last time. By Jonathan Edwards, A.M. Minister of the Gospel at Northampton. ; With a preface by several ministers.
printed for D. Henchman, 1748
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.
'Tis said of that Head of the Empire that shall be next after the sixth Head, and next before Antichrist, and that is not reckoned as properly one of the Number of the Heads of the Beast, that when it comes, it shall continue a short Space, Chap. xvii.10. By which we may well understand, at least, that it shall be one of the shortest in it's Continuance, of the successive Heads. But the Government seated at Ravenna, in the Hands of the Goths, or of the Deputies of the Greek Emperors, (which Mr. Lowman supposes to be meant by this Head) continued, as Mr. Lowman himself takes Notice, very near 300 Years. And if so, it's Continuance was one of the longest of the Heads mentioned.
'Tis said of that Head of the Empire that shall be next after the sixth Head, and next before Antichrist, and that is not reckon'd as properly one of the Number of the Heads of the Beast, that when it comes, it shall continue a short Space, Chap. xvii.10. By which we may well understand, at least, that it shall be one of the shortest in it's Continuance, of the successive Heads. But the Government seated at Ravenna, in the Hands of the Goths, or of the Deputies of the Greek Emperors, (which Mr. Lowman supposes to be meant by this Head) continued, as Mr. Lowman himself takes Notice, very near 300 Years. And if so, it's Continuance was one of the longest of the Heads mention'd.
And besides if the Government that Rome was under, from the Time that Augustulus abdicated, to the Time when the Pope was confirmed in his temporal Dominion, ⟨p. 139⟩was meant by that seventh Head that was to be between the Imperial Head and the Papal, there would doubtless have been two different Heads mentioned, instead of one, between the Emperor and the Pope; viz. First, the Gothic Princes, which reigned near an 100 Years; Secondly, the Exarchs of Ravenna, which governed for about 185 Years. The Gothic Kingdom was much more properly a distinct Government from the Imperial, than the Exarchate of Ravenna. For during the Exarchate, Rome was under the Government of the Emperor, as much as it was in Constantine's Time.