The shaking and translating of heaven and earth. A sermon preached before the Honourable House of Commons, in Parliament assembled April 19 1649. To which are annexed, prophetical extracts: particularly such as relaie [sic] to the Revolution in France and the decline of the papal power in the world / By John Owen.

John Owen

Date:: 1794

Credit: The shaking and translating of heaven and earth. A sermon preached before the Honourable House of Commons, in Parliament assembled April 19 1649. To which are annexed, prophetical extracts: particularly such as relaie [sic] to the Revolution in France and the decline of the papal power in the world / By John Owen. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$*5 Let him that hath underJtatfding count the number of the beafl~\ Whoever has {kill in numbers, let him make ufe of it, that hq may know the name and nature of the antichriftian bead, and the nume¬ rical letters of his name, or the number of him, and of the time when he arofe, and when he will expire. For it is the number of a man\ Either a num¬ ber that may be reckoned by man, or which is in common ufe among men ; fee chap. xxi. 17. or that which is contained in the name of a man. And his number is fix hundred three fcore andfix'] \yhich fome think refers to the time of the rife of antichrift, in the year 666; but that feems rather to be in the year 606, when the bidiop of Rome obtained the name of univerfal bidiop; others have been of opinion that it refers to the expiration of the bead, which they thought would have been in the year 1666, the number of the thoufand being dropped, as it is in our common way of fpeaking; as when we fay the Spanifh. invadon was in 38, meaning 1588, and the civil wars began in 4 r, that is, 1641: But time has {hewn that this was a mif- taken fenfe. The more prevailing opinion is that of Mr Potter, who has wrote a peculiar and learn¬ ed treatife upon this paffage, who makes the count¬ ing of this number to be no other than the extract- ing of its root, which is the number 25, which when multiplied into itfelf, and the fraction in working it 41 is added, makes up the fquare num¬ ber 666 ; and now 25 being added to A. D. 33, makes 58, which was the time of the bead’s con¬ ception, to which if 666 is added, it brings us to the year 724, when he arrived to his age of man¬ hood, and when the war about the wordlipping of images broke out: but others think that the nu¬ meral letters in fome man’s name which amount to this date, and which agrees with antichrid, are in¬ tended; and here various conjectures are made; fome have obferved, that in genealogical arithme¬ tic the number of Adonikam’s polterity is 666,$

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