Confutation of Grotius on the 17th chapter of the Apocalypse.
Has or has not Grotius been overrated? If Grotius applied these words (
magnus testis et historiarum diligentissimus inquisitor
) to Epiphanius in honest earnest, and not ironically, he must have been greatly inferior in sound sense and critical tact both to Joseph Scaliger and to Rhenferd. Strange, that to Henry More, a poet and a man of fine imagination, it should never have occurred to ask himself, whether this scene, Patmos, with which the drama commences, was not a part of the poem, and, like all other parts, to be interpreted symbolically? That the poetic — and I see no reason for doubting the real — date of the Apocalypse is under Vespasian, is so evidently implied in the five kings preceding (for Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, were abortive emperors) that it seems to me quite lawless to deny it. That [Greek: Lateinos] is the meaning of the 666, (c. xiii. 18.) and the treasonable character of this, are both shown by Irenæus's pretended rejection, and his proposal of the perfectly senseless
Teitan
instead.
Folio. 1708. — Ed.