He shall speak great words against the Most High Symmachus reads, He shall speak great words, as the Most High; “setting himself above all laws, divine and human: arrogating to himself godlike attributes, and titles of holiness and infallibility; exacting obedience to his ordinances and decrees, in preference to, and in open violation of, reason and Scripture; insulting men and blaspheming God. In Gratian's Decretals, the pope has the title of God given to him. And shall wear out the saints By wars, and massacres, and inquisitions, persecuting and destroying the faithful servants of Jesus, and the true worshippers of God; who protest against his innovations, and refuse to comply with the idolatry practised in the Church of Rome. He shall think to change times and laws Appointing fasts and feasts, canonizing saints, granting pardons and indulgences for sins, instituting new modes of worship, imposing new articles of faith, enjoining new rules of practice, and reversing at pleasure the laws of God and man.” Bishop Newton.
And they shall be given, &c. “A time, all agree, signifies a year; and a time, and times, and the dividing of time, or half a time, are three years and a half; and the ancient Jewish year, consisting of twelve months, and each month of thirty days, a time, and times, and half a time, or three years and a half, are reckoned in the Revelation 11:2-3; Revelation 12:6; Revelation 12:14, as equivalent to forty-two months, or twelve hundred and sixty days; and a day, in the style of the prophets, is a year; (see Ezekiel 4:4;) and it is confessed that the seventy weeks, in Daniel 9. are weeks of years, and consequently twelve hundred and sixty days are twelve hundred and sixty years. So long antichrist, or the little horn, will continue: but from what point of time the commencement of these twelve hundred and sixty years is to be dated, is not easy to determine. It should seem that they are to be computed from the full establishment of the power of the pope, and no less is implied in the expression, given into his hand. Now the power of the pope, as a horn, or temporal prince, it hath been shown, was established in the eighth century; and twelve hundred and sixty years from that time, will lead us down to about the year of Christ 2000, or the year of the world 6000: and there is an old tradition, both among Jews and Christians, that at the end of 6000 years the Messiah shall come, and the world shall be renewed; the reign of the wicked one shall cease, and the reign of the saints upon earth shall begin. But, as Irenæus says in a like case, it is surer and safer to wait for the completion of the prophecy than to conjecture and divine about it. When the end shall come, then we shall know better whence to date the beginning.” Bishop Newton.