which is
without the temple leave out, and measure it not; for it is given unto the
Gentiles; and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two
months." This time of forty and two months must be expounded by Rev. xiii.
5, where it is said of the beast, "Power was given unto him, to continue
forty and two months;" which, according to the computation of Egyptian
years (reckoning thirty days to each month), make three years and a half,
or twelve hundred and sixty days, and that is the time of the witnesses'
prophesying in sackcloth, and of the woman's abode in the wilderness, Rev,
xi. 3; xii. 6. Now lest it should be thought that the treading down of the
holy city by the Gentiles (that is, the treading under foot of the true
church, the city of God, by the tyranny of Antichrist and the power of his
accomplices) should never have an end in this world, the angel gives John
to understand that the church, the house of the living God, shall not lie
desolate for ever, but shall be built again (for the measuring is in
reference to building), that the kingdom of Antichrist shall come to an
end, and that after twelve hundred and sixty years, counting days for
years as the prophets do. It is not to my purpose now to search when this
time of the power of the beast and of the church's desolation did begin,
and when it ends, and so to find out the time of building this new
temple,--only this much I trust, I may say, that if we reckon from the time
that the power of the beast did begin, and, withal, consider the great
revolution and turning of things upside down in these our days, certainly
the work is upon the wheel; the Lord hath plucked his hand out of his
bosom, he hath whet his sword, he hath bent his bow, he hath also prepared
the instruments of death against Antichrist: so saith the Psalmist of all
persecutors, Psal. vii. 12, 13; but it will fall most upon that capital
enemy. Whereof there will be occasion to say more afterward.

Let me here only add a word concerning a fourth thing which the Holy Ghost
may seem to intend in this prophecy, and that is, the church triumphant,
the new "Jerusalem which is above," unto which respect is to be had, as
interpreters judge, in some parts of the vision, which happily cannot be
so well applied to the church in this world. Even as the new Jerusalem is
so described in the Revelation (Rev. xxi.), that it may appear to be the
church of Christ, reformed, beautified, and enlarged in this