Revelation 11:2

There is no great doubt, but the same persons are here to be understood by the court which is without the temple, (that is, without the inward court), and the holy city; and by them, both the generality of those people who come under the name of the Christian church, who are all of them, in some sense, a holy people, 1 Corinthians 7:14, as all the Jews were; yet, for the greatest part of them, John is commanded to omit, or neglect them, as those who would not endure a measure by the reed, and of whose preservation God would take no such care, but give them up to the Gentiles, to be trodden under foot; by which many learned and good men understand God's suffering antichrist to have a power over and against them. I find some understanding by the altar, and them that worship therein, the primitive church, that for some hundreds of years after Christ kept close to the Divine rule, whom God preserved, though in the midst of the ten first persecutions: and by the outward court, the church after that time, which God suffered to fall under the power of the beast, and antichrist, that is, the papacy; which are well enough called the Gentiles, as bringing in Gentilism again into the church, and hardly differing in any thing, saving that the old heathens owned many supreme gods, and these new Gentiles but one. God showeth John here, that he would give up the outward court, or this holy city, the generality of Christians, to these Gentiles, that they should rule and domineer over them for forty and two months, the meaning of which we shall by and by show. A late pious and learned writer differs a little in his sense, as thinking that God here showeth John something further, viz. that under the sixth trumpet he would give the generality of those called Christians, that will not endure the measure of the reed, so over to antichrist, that they shall turn papists, and help to kill the Lord's witnesses; of which we shall speak, Revelation 11:3. So as this is not a new prophecy, but a continuation of what shall happen after the sounding of the sixth, and before the sounding of the seventh trumpet: if so, I conceive that those words, shall they tread under foot forty and two months, must be understood, until the end of the forty-two months; for the forty-two months being the whole time of antichrist, or the beast, must be in a great measure spent before the sounding of the sixth angel. But it seems to be the opinion of this learned man, that a very great part of those who pretend to constitute the Reformed protestant church at this day, but are but as the outward court, not such as worship within the oracle, shall, before the sounding of the seventh trumpet, apostatize, and fall off to popery, until antichrist's one thousand two hundred and sixty days shall expire, and join with papists in the killing of the witnesses. The truth of which we must leave to the providence of God in time to discover; although whoso considereth the face of things this day in Europe, (within which the greatest part of the Christian church is), will judge there is too great a probability of what this learned man saith; but I dare determine nothing in it.