Revolution. According to him, the Papacy commenced in A.D. 533, which, with the 1260 prophetic days or years of its continuance, brings Popery down to the year 1793, the year when the French Revolution commenced, at which date Mr. Irving considers the reign of Popery to have been superseded by that of Infidelity, and the judgments upon Babylon to have commenced. From that period to the date of his preaching, comprising a period of thirty
years, six vials, as he imagined, had been poured out upon the seat of the
beast. The seventh and last vial, which was reserved for the destruction of
Infidelity, he calculated would occupy forty-five years more, thus bringing the
consummation of judgment to the year 1868, when the millenial kingdom was
to commence on earth, with Christ himself, and in person, as its sovereign.
Such is but a brief sketch of that system expository of the fulfilment of prophecy into which Irving now threw himself with headlong ardour, and of which he talked as if it were the sum and substance of revelation. His pulpit rang with it, and with it alone; his whole conversation was imbued with it; and while his fervent imagination revelled with almost superhuman excitement among pictures of Armageddon and the millenium, the Inferno and Paradiso of his preaching, his finger incessantly pointed to the year 1868 as the date emblazoned upon the heavens themselves, at which all old things were to pass away, and all things become new. And with what desire he longed to live to this year, that he might behold its glories with his own bodily eyes! Besides his work, also, of "Babylon and Infidelity Foredoomed of God," his active pen was soon resumed upon the same subject. In the course of his studies on the completion of prophecy, he had met with a production that in some measure accorded with his own views. This was a large work, written by a Spanish ecclesiastic, who shrouded his liberal and Protestant sentiments under the character and name of a Jewish convert, to escape a controversy with the Inquisition ; and, deeming it well worth the notice of the British public, Mr. Irving immediately studied the Spanish language, translated the volume into English, and published it in 1827, under the title of "The Coming of the Messiah in Glory and Majesty, by Juan Josafat Ben Ezra, a Converted Jew." It was not long before his zeal and eloquence procured many converts to his opinions, who held their stated meetings at Albury, near Guildford, in Surrey, in the mansion of Mr. Drummond, the banker, a warm friend and coadjutor of Mr. Irving. The result of these meetings was given to the world by Mr. Drummond, in three volumes, entitled "Dialogues on Prophecy." A quarterly periodical, also, called the "Morning Watch," was soon commenced by the "Albury School of Prophets" and their supporters, in which their peculiar views about prophecy and the millenium were advocated and illustrated with great talent and plausibility.
Well would it have been for Mr. Irving if he had now stopped short. As yet his views, if eccentric, had been comparatively harmless; and even if his calculations had been erroneous, he had only failed in a subject where such men as Bacon, Napier, Sir Isaac Newton, and Whiston had been in fault. But here he could not stop. He had commenced as an independent expounder of prophecy, and he must needs be the same in doctrine also. It was about the year 1827 that he was observed to preach strange sentiments respecting the human nature of our blessed Redeemer, as if the Holy One, while on earth, had been peccable like any son of Adam, although completely sinless in thought, word, and deed. It may be that his ideas of the second advent of Christ, in
