[171:3] See Mosheim, Cent. i. part i. ch. 5.
[171:4] According to Baronius ("Annal." ad. an. 92, 98) John was six years in Patmos, or from A.D. 92 to A.D. 98. Other writers think that he was set at liberty some time before the death of Domitian, or about A.D. 95. According to this reckoning, had he been six years in exile, he must have been banished A.D. 89. This conclusion derives some countenance from the "Chronicon" of Eusebius, which represents the tyrant in the eighth and ninth years of his reign, or about A.D. 89, as proscribing and putting to death very many of his subjects. If the visions of the Apocalypse were vouchsafed to John in A.D. 89, the interval between their revelation and the establishment of the Pope as a temporal prince is found to be 755-89, or exactly 666 years. See Rev. xiii. 18. There is another very curious coincidence in this case; for the interval between the fall of the Western Empire, and the establishment of the Bishop of Rome as a temporal prince, is 755-476=279 complete, or 280 current years, that is, 40 prophetic weeks. But it so happens that the period of human gestation is 40 weeks, and this would lead to the inference that the Man of Sin was conceived as soon as the Western Empire fell. See 2 Thess. ii. 7, 8. I am not aware that these remarkable coincidences have yet been noticed, and I therefore submit them to the consideration of the students of prophecy.
[172:1] See Burton's "Lectures," i. 361.
[172:2] 2 John 1; 3 John 1.
[172:3] 1 Pet. v. 1; Philem. 1.
[172:4] Acts xx. 28.
[172:5] Mark iii. 17.
[172:6] Jerome, "Comment. on Galatians," vi. 10.
[172:7] See Vitringa, "Observationes Sacrae," lib. iv. c. 7, 8.
[173:1] Rev. iii. 16.