The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

II. Downham Expounds Stone, Daily, Turkish and Papal Periods

GEORGE DOWNHAM, or Downame (d. 1634), English theologian, whose A Treatise Concerning Antichrist, the second book of which was a refutation of Bellarmine, leads the van guard of English Protestant works on prophecy over in the seventeenth-century line, was born in Chester. He was professor of logic at Cambridge. James I appointed him one of his chaplains and nominated him bishop of Derry in 1616. Written to prove that “the Pope Is Antichrist,” and “against all the objections of Robert Bellarmine,” this treatise by Downham denies the Catholic position that “the stone that smote the Image be Christ at his first coming, and his Kingdom immediately following unto the end.” On the contrary, in it he contends that the kingdom is “to be set up at the fall of Antichrist, it appeareth by these Arguments.” ² PFF2 535.1

1. POPE TAKES AWAY DAILY TILL PROPHETIC PERIOD ENDS.

Downham gives the standard interpretation of Daniel 2, with the following listing of the divisions of Rome—“Britons, Saxons, Franks, Burgundions, Wisigothes, Sueves and Alans, Vandals, Alemans, Ostrogothes, Greeks,” and cites a number of reasons why the Little Horn of Daniel 7 is “Antichrist, or the Pope of Rome.” ³ This power in Daniel 8 Downham presents as the exceeding great horn that takes away the “daily,” which he defines as the “true Doctrine and Worship of God according to his Word,” and which point is repeated and emphasized as the other characteristics of the Papacy are outlined; this interference with the “daily,” he contends, would last to the end of the 2300 evening-mornings, or 1150 “compleat days,” and these “days are years” ⁴ * (reaching to the Protestant Reformation). PFF2 535.2

2. ALSO IDENTIFIED AS KING OF NORTH

Also depicting the Papacy as the “King of the North” in Daniel 11, Downham has him coming to his end. ⁵ And over in Revelation 13 Antichrist follows the imperial Roman emperors, or sixth head. ⁶ PFF2 535.3

3. YEAR DAY PRINCIPLE IN TIME PROPHECIES

In explaining the 1260 year days, or forty two months, or three and a half times of Revelation 11, 12, and 13, as well as those of Daniel 7 and 12, Downham contends that a time is a year, “which in propheticall use containeth 360 dayes.” ⁷ Seeking to find the starting point of the 1260, 1290, 1335, and 391day periods all of which are recognized as based on the prophetic year day principle—Downham suggests several possible dates. The 391 years (360 + 30 + 1) “do appertain unto the solution [loosing] of the Turks,” and this Downham puts from about 1169, or from about 1300. The 1335 years will, he believes, end in the “glorious state of New Jerusalem.” ⁸ PFF2 536.1

4. DOWNHAM DATES 1260 YEARS FROM JUSTINIAN AND PHOCAS

The “time, two times and half” of the “Beast or little horn, that is, the Pope,” are placed by Downham after his “rise into his Kingdom after the ten horns.” The time of Justinian is suggested, when there came the “open manifestation of his King dom.” This would be from about A.D. 600, “according to the round number,” when Phocas recognized the pope as universal bishop, and when Gregory began to “deform the Church with rites and superstitions.” On the thousand years, however, Down ham still holds the Augustinian view, dating them from Constantine, in the fourth century. ⁹ PFF2 536.2