The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 3

III. Charles Maitland-Futurist Historian of Early Interpretation

CHARLES MAITLAND (1815-1866), the son of Captain Charles David Maitland, previously noted, ³¹ was also an expositor, but of the Futurist School. Born at Woolwich, Kent, he was educated at Brighton, and chose medicine as a profession. After graduating from Edinburgh University with an M.D., in 1838, he-visited Malta, Italy, Greece, and Egypt, then returned to Eng land. After receiving his license from the London College of Physicians, in 1842, he practiced medicine successfully at Windsor for a few years. But as his tastes ran toward theology, he-entered Magdalen Hall, Oxford, in 1848, at thirty-three, graduating with a B.A. in 1852. ³² He was ordained a deacon in 1852 and an Anglican priest in 1853. ³³ PFF3 730.1

Maitland served as curate at All Saints, Southampton, then at Lyndhurst, Hampshire, and Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire. While at Rome he had been impressed by the catacombs, and so wrote The Church in the Catacombs (1846), illustrating it with his own drawings. In 1849, in the first year of his theological course, he wrote The Apostles’ School of Prophetic Interpretation (1849) -an attack on the Historical School of interpretation, particularly as represented by E. B. Elliott’s Horae Apocalypticce. PFF3 730.2

1. STRESSES VARIANT POSITIONS OF DIFFERING SCHOOLS

In The Apostles’ School of Prophetic Interpretation Maitland gives a rather full history of the unfolding of prophetic interpretation from the Jewish writers before Christ ³⁴ on through the early centuries, and into the Middle Ages. ³⁵ But he avoids the Reformation school of writers and, picking up Rihcra’s Futur ism and Bellarnine’s attack on the year-day principle, stresses Lacunza, and then the Futurists William Burgh arid S. R. Maitland. ³⁶ PFF3 730.3

Maitland stresses heavily the conflict among Protestant sponsors of the Historical, Preterist, and Futurist Schools of ex position. ³⁷ He capitalizes on the marked variation on the dating of the 1260 years and other prophetic periods, ³⁸ as well as on the identity of the little horn ³⁹ and the two beasts of Revelation 13. ⁴⁰ PFF3 731.1

2. TRACES VARIANT POSITIONS TO ORIGINATORS

Fairly well documented, and the result of extensive investigation, Maitland’s book has much of value to one who is aware of its thesis. It is quite lull in the Middle Ages, especially with Joachim and the Joachimite school, ⁴¹ and the pre-Reformation Catholic writers. But Maitland holds that the “Remains of the Primitive Interpretation” were picked up by the Jesuits and Lacunza, ⁴² and in modern times by Maitland and Burgh, though not generally received. But he fails to note why the early writers held to literal time for the prophetic periods, and why they fixed upon an individual Antichrist, and also why many of those primitive positions were abandoned by Catholic and Protestant alike. PFF3 731.2

Maitland sketches the history of Porphyry’s Antiochus Epiphanes theory of the little horn ⁴³ and traces the idea of Mo hammed, or the Turks, back to Joachim and the crusades, ⁴⁴ and the “papal-antichrist and the year-day scheme” to the Cathari of the twelfth century, ⁴⁵ to Eberhard and Brute. This work is helpful for reference. PFF3 731.3