CHAPTER XI.

Measuring rod or confessions of faith.— Rome condemned all who differed from its creed. Reformers appealed to the Bible alone.· · Allowed that the fathers held essential truth, but could not decide in a controversy.— Measurement of the true Church.-Reformation revived the distinction between the true and false, &c. - Unction of the Spirit. - Rome depends on works, the reformers on faith. Standard of the Romish faith. Contradictory. Its practice opposed to the truth, and determines its character. Whether a true church or not. - - The reformers did not found the true Church. Its previous existence implied. — Two witnesses parts of the Reformation. Within the boundaries of the Roman empire. - Not the Waldenses or Paulicians.-Perhaps England and Switzerland. Their ministry relies on argument and persuasion. - Not yet slain. The street not Jerusalem, but the Western empire. The Jesuits revived the papacy, which is now sanguine. — End of the Turkish religion and power. Parallel between the sixth seal and sixth trumpet.

Seventh trumpet. Yet future. Will explain the divine proceedings.-Reveal the true Priest-king, Jesus Christ. Conversion of the world. Final struggle.

Verses 1, 2. "AND there was given me a reed like unto a rod: and the angel stood,

saying, Rise, and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein. But the court which is without the temple leave out, and measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles: and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months."

A new symbol is introduced here—a rod, by which the prophet, guided by the angel or by the Reformation, measures the visible Church. Now to measure is to define what was indefinite or unascertained, and to bring to light what was obscure or entirely lost in darkness. This probably denotes the confessions of faith which the reformers composed for the Protestant Churches of Europe. What is a confession of faith? It measures or defines the Christian Church and its members. It distinguishes the true from the false Church, on which subject there had been much error and obscurity from the commencement of the great departure from the faith. Every member of Rome had been regarded a true servant of God as long as he complied exactly with the rules of the priest

hood; but no purity of life, no zeal for the honour of God, was of any worth, if found out of the pale of that corrupt Church, or though found in one of its members, who called in question any of its dogmas. The Waldenses and others were not slaughtered for immorality or false doctrine, but for rejecting the inventions and absurdities of Rome. Now the reformers advanced the novel opinion, that it is not what Rome asserts, which they denied was any thing more than the opinion of an individual Church, (for they sometimes allowed it is a Church, whilst they saw in it the great apostasy, or the antichrist,) but what may be clearly proved out of Holy Scripture, that is binding upon mankind as divine, authoritative, and true; and when the Papists fell back upon the fathers, the reformers showed that, with all their contradiction and obscurity, the doctrines of the Bible might be gathered from their works. They would not, however, allow, that the opinion of any of the fathers was decisive in a controversy, though they

thankfully received their testimony as historians or witnesses of facts, just as our Saviour, as a man, thankfully received the canon of the Old Testament from tradition, whilst at the same time he condemned traditionary fables, but firmly maintained that the Old Testament alone is a perfect and sufficient guide to every Jew in faith, discipline, and practice.

The temple and city of Jerusalem here denote the worship and government of the Western Church, or of the visible Church generally, of which the prophet is commanded to measure the holy, and the most holy place, the altar of sacrifice, and the worshippers of the inner court, or the Jews; but he is to leave the rest, the Gentile or the outer court and the city, unmeasured. It is remarkable he should be required to remeasure exactly those parts of the Christian Church, and those only, that were corrupted by the great departure from the faith; first, the temple, where stood the throne of God, sup

ported by the four seraphim, which together denoted God's residence in the midst of his people or of the Church, and the altar of incense whereon was offered the prayers of saints, dictated by the seven spirits of God, but which the corrupt Church had associated with the mediation and prayers of saints in heaven; and, secondly, the altar of sacrifice and its worshippers around it, who, when rightly taught, saw there, in the whole service, the one only sacrifice for the sins of the whole world; but, as it had been altered by the gradual introduction of error, was perverted by the intrusion of the souls of the saints to share in the merits of our Saviour. These were remeasured, or the service of God was restored to its condition as given us in chapters iv. and v. By this measurement the visible Church was divided into the circumcised and uncircumcised, into the Gentile and Jew, or into the true Christian who is circumcised in heart, and the mere

a Ezek, vi. 4.; xxvi. 27. See p. 14. and note.