| Revelation of John 12:18
| And he stood upon the sand of the sea.
| And he stood upon the sand of the sea;{ Ver. 18. Et stetit super arenam maris. The ordinary Greek copies, estathen, steti, which the Protestant translators followed, beginning chapter xiii. with these words, and I stood upon the sand of the sea, as if St. John spoke of himself. But Dr. Wells, in his amendments, has corrected the Protestant translation, and restored the reading estathe, stetit, as we find it in the Latin Vulgate. I have reckoned near upon a hundred places in the Apocalypse only, wherein Dr. Wells has preferred those readings in the Greek manuscripts which are conformable to our Latin Vulgate.|} that is the dragon seemed to be at a stand, to rest a while, not being able to raise any more persecutions. Now as to the time that these things should come to pass, many by seven heads and ten horns understand many powerful wicked kings, who should persecute the good, especially about antichrist's time, when the faithful at different times should be oppressed, and forced to fly as it were into the wilderness to worship God in private. And when the end of the world seems to draw near, the devil with greater malice will persecute God's servants, his time being short. Others apply these predictions to the particular persecutions in the Church by the Jews, and by the heathen emperors in the first three Christian ages[centuries] before Constantine's time, when idolatry was destroyed, when the face of the Church was changed, and when she became victorious, and publicly triumphed over her former enemies, the heathens; and by the man child, whom God took under his special protection, they will have to be understood Constantine himself. (Witham)
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