non studiose, sed ironice commendavit Irenæus
. Indeed it is ridiculous to suppose that Irenæus was in earnest with
Teitan
. His meaning evidently is: — if not
Lateinos
, which has a meaning, it is some one of the many names having the same numeral power, to which a meaning is to be found by the fulfillment of the prophecy. My own conviction is, that the whole is an ill-concerted conundrum, the secret of which died with the author. The general purpose only can be ascertained, namely, some test, partaking of religious obligation, of allegiance to the sovereignty of the Roman Emperor.
If I granted for a moment the truth of Heinrichs's supposition, namely, that, according to the belief of the Apocalypt, the line of the Emperors would cease in Titus the seventh or complete number (Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, being omitted) by the advent of the Messiah; — if I found my judgment more coerced by his arguments than it is, — then I should use this book as evidence of the great and early discrepance between the Jewish-Christian Church and the Pauline; and my present very serious doubts respecting the identity of John the Theologian and John the Evangelist would become fixed convictions of the contrary.
P. 91. Rev. xvii. 11.
Among other grounds for doubting this interpretation (that
the eighth