The European Union in Prophecy The EU in Prophecy I | Page 546

The European Union in Prophecy
awaited the kingdom of Judah. The Lord said through the prophet: "Lie again on thy
right side, and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days: I have
appointed thee each day for a year." Ezekiel 4:6. This year-day principle has an
important application in interpreting the time of the prophecy of the "two thousand
and three hundred evenings and mornings" (Daniel 8:14, R.V.) and the 1260-day
period, variously indicated as "a time and times and the dividing of time" (Daniel 7:25),
the "forty and two months" (Revelation 11:2; 13:5), and the "thousand two hundred
and threescore days" (Revelation 11:3; 12:6).
Page 56. Forged writings.--Among the documents that at the present time are
generally admitted to be forgeries, the Donation of Constantine and the Pseudo-
Isidorian Decretals are of primary importance. "The 'Donation of Constantine' is the
name traditionally applied, since the later Middle Ages, to a document purporting to
have been addressed by Constantine the Great to Pope Sylvester I, which is found
first in a Parisian manuscript (Codex lat. 2777) of probably the beginning of the ninth
century. Since the eleventh century it has been used as a powerful argument in favor
of the papal claims, and consequently since the twelfth it has been the subject of a
vigorous controversy. At the same time, by rendering it possible to regard the papacy
as a middle term between the original and the medieval Roman Empire, and thus to
form a theoretical basis of continuity for the reception of the Roman law in the Middle
Ages, it has had no small influence upon secular history."--The New
Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, vol. 3, art. "Donation of
constantine," pp. 484, 485. The historical theory developed in the "Donation" is fully
discussed in Henry E. Cardinal Manning's The Temporal Power of the Vicar of Jesus
Christ, London, 1862. The arguments of the "Donation" were of a scholastic type, and
the possibility of a forgery was not mentioned until the rise of historical criticism in
the fifteenth century. Nicholas of Cusa was among the first to conclude that
Constantine never made any such donation. Lorenza Valla in Italy gave a brilliant
demonstration of its spuriousness in 1450. See Christopher B. Coleman's Treatise of
Lorenzo Valla on the Donation of Constantine (New York, 1927). For a century longer,
however, the belief in the authenticity of the "Donation" and of the False Decretals
was kept alive. For example, Martin Luther at first accepted the decretals, but he
soon said to Eck: "I impugn these decretals;" and to Spalatin: "He [the pope] does in
his decretals corrupt and crucify Christ, that is, the truth."
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