Thus have we in this short Prophecy, a prediction of all the main periods relating to the coming of the Messiah; the time of his birth, that of his death, that of the rejection of the Jews, the duration of the Jewish war whereby he caused the city and sanctuary to be destroyed, and the time of his second coming:  and so the interpretation here given is more full and complete and adequate to the design, than if we should restrain it to his first coming only, as Interpreters usually do.  We avoid also the doing violence to the language of Daniel, by taking the seven weeks and sixty two weeks for one number.  Had that been Daniel’s meaning, he would have said sixty and nine weeks, and not seven weeks and sixty two weeks, a way of numbring used by no nation.  In our way the years are Jewish Luni-solar years, [11] as they ought to be; and the seventy weeks of years are Jewish weeks ending with sabbatical years, which is very remarkable.  For they end either with the year of the birth of Christ, two years before the vulgar account, or with the year of his death, or with the seventh year after it:  all which are sabbatical years.  Others either count by Lunar years, or by weeks not Judaic:  and, which is worst, they ground their interpretations on erroneous Chronology, excepting the opinion of Funccius about the seventy weeks, which is the same with ours.  For they place Ezra and Nehemiah in the reign of Artaxerxes Mnemon, and the building of the Temple in the reign of Darius Nothus, and date the weeks of Daniel from those two reigns.

The grounds of the Chronology here followed, I will now set down as briefly as I can.

The Peloponnesian war began in spring An. 1 Olymp. 87, as Diodorus, Eusebius, and all other authors agree.  It began two months before Pythodorus ceased to be Archon, Thucyd. l. 2. that is, in April, two months before the end of the Olympic year.  Now the years of this war are most certainly determined by the 50 years distance of its first year from the transit of Xerxes inclusively, Thucyd. l. 2. or 48 years exclusively, Eratosth. apud Clem.  Alex. by the 69 years distance of its end, or 27th year, from the beginning of Alexander’s reign in Greece; by the acting of the Olympic games in its 4th and 12th years, Thucyd. l. 5; and by three eclipses of the sun, and one of the moon, mentioned by Thucydides and Xenophon.  Now Thucydides, an unquestionable witness, tells us, that the news of the death of Artaxerxes Longimanus was brought to Ephesus, and from thence by some Athenians to Athens, in the 7th year of this Peloponnesian war, when the winter half year was running; and therefore