kingdom is not yet come; nor are these things to be expected in the present state.

The spiritual reign in the latter day bids fairest for it; and which, indeed, is a branch of Christ's kingdom, when both Pope and Turk will be destroyed; but then Satan will only be destroyed in his instruments; but not in his person bound. Besides, the spiritual and personal reign of Christ, though branches of his kingdom, belong to different periods; and will not both take place in the present state; the spiritual reign will be in the present earth, and of saints in a sinful, mortal state, and in the use of ordinances: but the millennium-reign will be on the new earth, and of saints in a risen, perfect state, standing in no need of ordinances, as now. The millennium-reign will not be till after the first resurrection; and the first resurrection will not be till the second coming of Christ, when the dead in him shall rise first. The personal reign of Christ will not be till the new heavens and the new earth are made, which will be the seat of it; and these will not be till the present heavens and earth are dissolved and burnt up; and this conflagration will not be till Christ comes second time. The reign of Christ with his saints, will not be till Satan is bound, as well as antichrist destroyed; and Satan will not be bound, till Christ the mighty Angel, descends from heaven to earth, which will not be till the end of the world.

a

V. I close all, with an answer to a few of the principal objections to the above scheme; and to two or three questions relative to the

same.

1. To objections.-1. It may be objected, to what purpose will Satan be bound a thousand years to prevent his deception of the nations, when there will be no nations to be deceived by him during that time, since the wicked will be all destroyed in the general conflagration; and the saints will be with Christ, out of the reach of temptation and seduction? I answer, this will not be the case at the binding of Satan, which is the first thing Christ will do when he descends from heaven; first bind Satan, then raise the righteous dead, and change the living saints, and take both to himself; and then burn the world: but as the time between the binding of Satan, and the burning of the world, may be but short, I lay no stress on this. Let it be observed, that the same nations, Satan, by being bound, is prevented from deceiving any more, till the thousand years are ended, are those that will be deceived by him after his being loosed; as appears by comparing Rev. xx. 3, with verse 8; and to prevent their being deceived by him, and put upon schemes to the disturbance of the saints, in their reign with Christ, he and they, that is, their separate spirits, will be shut up together in the bottomless pit; so that the one will be in a state of inactivity, and incapable of tempting and deceiving; and the other in a case and condition not susceptible of temptation and seduction; and both will have enough to do to grapple with their dreadful torments in this confined state: the one will not be at leisure to propose a mischievous scheme, nor the other to hearken

to it; and Satan will full well know, that should he form a scheme, it would be impossible to put it into execution in their present circumstances. That the wicked, in an immortal state, are capable of being tempted and deceived by Satan, appears by a fact, after the loosing of him; for which reason it was necessary he should be bound during the thousand years: and that the saints, in an immortal state, are not exempt from attempts upon them, by him and his emissaries, only when he is under absolute confinement, which made it necessary, during the said term of time; and which will be his case after this affair is over, to all eternity. - 2. That though the saints are said to reign with Christ a thousand years, Rev. xx. 4-6, yet they are not there said to reign on earth. But it is elsewhere said, the meek shall inherit the earth; and righteousness, or righteous men, shall dwell in the new earth; and the redeemed of the Lamb, who are made kings and priests unto God, shall reign on earth; and they are the same with the priests of God and Christ, that shall reign with him a thousand years. Besides, it appears from the context, that this reign will be on earth; the angel that descends from heaven to bind Satan, descends on earth; the binding of Satan will be on earth; for there he deceived the nations before, and will after his loosing: the resurrection, and living again of the dead, will be on earth; and so, in course, their reign with Christ there. Besides, they are manifestly the camp of the saints, the beloved city, the Gog and Magog army will encompass, who will come up on the breadth of the earth; and therefore the saints, the beloved city, must be on earth; and who are no other than the holy city John saw come down from God out of heaven, that is, on earth, where the tabernacle of God will be with them, Rev. xxi. 2, 3.-3. It is objected to the personal reign of Christ with the saints on earth, that they, by reason of the frailty of nature, will be unfit to converso with Christ, in his glorious human nature; but like the apostles Paul and John, who, when he appeared to them, fell down at his feet, either trembling, or as dead. But this objection proceeds upon a supposition, that the saints will then be in a sinful, mortal state; which will not be the case; but as their souls will be perfectly sanctified, so their bodies will be raised in incorruption, power, and glory, and fashioned like to the glorious body of Christ, and so fit to converse with him in it; yea, more so than separate souls in heaven. 4. It is suggested, that for the saints to come down from heaven, and leave their happy state there, and dwell on earth, must be a diminishing of their happiness, and greatly detract from it. No such thing; for Christ will come with them; all the saints will come with him, and dwell and reign with him; and where he is, heaven is, happiness is. Did Moses and Elias lose any of their happiness when they came down from heaven, and conversed with Christ on the mount, at his transfiguration? None at all. No more will the saints, by being and reigning with Christ on earth, in a more glorified state than he was then in yea, so far from being lessened hereby, that the happiness of the saints will be increased; their bodies will be raised, and united to their souls, they had been in expectation of, to complete their happi

ness and this being now done, they will be more like to Christ, and more fit to converse with him. At the death of Christ, he committed his human spirit, or soul, to his Father, and it was that day in paradise; on the third day when he rose, his soul returned, re-entered, and was re-united to his body; and after his resurrection, he continued on earth forty days, showing himself to, and conversing with his disciples. During this time, was his soul less happy than before his resurrection? yea, was it not more so? 5. The bodies of the wicked lying in the earth till the thousand years are ended, may be objected to the purity of the new earth, and to the glory of the state of the saints upon it. The purification of it by fire, will, indeed, only affect the surrounding air, and the surface of the earth, or little more, and the figure of it, and its external qualities and circumstances; and not the matter and substance of it, which will remain the same. And as for the bodies of the wicked, that will have been interred in it from the beginning of the world to the end of it, those will be long reduced to their original earth, and will be neither morally impure, nor naturally offensive; and if anything of the latter could be conceived of, the purifying fire may reach so far as entirely to remove that; and as for the bodies of the wicked, which will be burnt to ashes at the conflagration, how those ashes, and the ruins of the old world after the burning, will be disposed of, by the almighty power, and all-wise providence of God, it is not easy to say; it is very probable they will be disposed of under ground: and this will be so far from detracting from the glorious inhabitation, and reigning of the saints with Christ upon it, that it will greatly add to the glory of that triumphant reign; for now all the wicked that ever were in the world, will be under the feet of the saints in the most literal sense; now they will not only tread upon the wicked as ashes, but tread upon the very ashes of the wicked; and so the prophecy in Mal. iv. 3, will be literally fulfilled, which respects this very case.

II. To questions. 1. What will become of the new earth, after the thousand years of the reign of Christ and his saints on it are ended? whether it will be annihilated or not? My mind has been at an uncertainty about this matter; sometimes inclining one way, and sometimes another; because of the seeming different accounts of it in Isa. lxvi. 22, where it is said to remain before the Lord, and in Rev. xx. 11, where it is said to flee away from the face of the Judge; as may be seen by my notes on both places, and by a correction at the end of the fourth volume on the Old Testament; but my last and present thoughts are, that it will continue for ever: and that the passage in Rev. xx. 11, is a rhetorical exaggeration of the glory and greatness of the Judge, which appeared such to John in the vision, that the heavens and earth could not bear it, and therefore seemed to disappear; the phrase from whose face, which is unusual, seems to suggest and confirm it. I am of opinion, therefore, that the new earth will be a sort of an apartment to heaven, whither the saints will pass and repass at their pleasure; and which agrees with other scriptures, which speak of the saints dwelling on, and inheriting the earth for

ever.-2. Who the Gog and Magog army are, that shall encompass the camp of the saints, when the thousand years are ended? What makes an answer to this the more difficult is that at the general conflagration of the present earth, all the wicked in it will be burnt up, and none but righteous persons will dwell in the new earth; it is to no purpose, therefore, to think of Turks, Tartarians, Scythians, and other barbarous nations, types of these; nor of any remains of the wicked who escaped the general destruction, as supposed; nor of such frightened at the first appearance of Christ, who fled to the remotest parts, and nowresume their courage, and come forth; it is a strange absurd notion of Dr. Burnet", that these will be men born of the earth, generated from the slime of the ground, and the heat of the sun; and increasing and multiplying after the manner of men, by carnal propagation, after a thousand years will become very numerous, as the sand of the sea, and make the attack they are said to do. But there is no need to have recourse to so gross an expedient as this: the persons are at hand, and easy to be met with; they are the rest of the dead, the wicked, who live not till the thousand years are ended; and then will live, being raised from the dead, even all the wicked that have been from the beginning of the world; which accounts for their number being as the sand of the sea and these rising where they died, and were buried, will be in and come from the four quarters of the world; and as they died enemies to Christ, and his saints, they will rise such; hell and the grave will make no change in them: and as they lay down with the weapons of war, their swords under their heads, they will be in readiness, and rise with the same malicious and revengeful spirit; and though it will be a mad enterprise, to attack saints in an immortal state, who cannot die; and Christ, the King of kings, at the head of them; yet when it is considered, that they will rise as weak and feeble, as unable to resist temptation, and as capable of deception as ever; and what with being buoyed up with their own number, and the posse of devils at the head of them; and especially considering the desperateness of their case, and this their last struggle to deliver themselves from eternal ruin; it may not so much be wondered at, that they should engage in this strange undertaking.-3. What the fire will be, which shall come down from heaven, and destroy the Gog and Magog army? Not material fire; but the wrath and indignation of God, which will be let down into their consciences; and which will so terrify and dispirit them, that they will at once desist from their undertaking; like the builders of the tower of Babel, when the Lord not only confounded their language, but smote their consciences for their impiety. The issue of all this will be, the casting of the devil and his angels into the lake of fire, where the beast and false prophet are; and the everlasting destruction of the wicked, soul and body, in the same, after the general judgment is over; which is the next thing to be considered.

The Stoic philosophers speak of the final resolution of all things into fire, into a liquid flame, or pure ether. Dr. Burnet was of opinion that the earth, after the last day of judgment, will be changed into the nature of a sun, or a fixed star, and shine like them in the firmament.-Theory of the Earth, b. 4, ch. 10, p. 317. Mr. Whiston thinks it will no longer be found among the planetary chorus, but probably become again a comet for the future ages of the world.-New Theory, b. 4, ch. 5, p. 451. Theory of the Earth, b. 4, ch. 10, p. 313.

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302

OF THE LAST AND GENERAL JUDGMENT.

WITH respect to the last and general judgment, the things to be considered are,

I. The proof of a general judgment: and it may be observed, that there will be a judgment of men in a future state, which is two-fold.— 1. A particular one, and which passes upon particular persons immediately after death, and to which it is generally thought the apostle has respect in Heb. ix. 27, But after this, that is death, the judgment; though, if the words are to be connected with what follows, they may respect the judgment that will be at the second coming of Christ. However, it seems probable enough, if not certain, that whereas at death the body returns to the earth, and the spirit or soul to God who gave it, Eccles. xii. 7, that then it passes under a judgment, and is adjudged either to happiness or woe.-2. A general one, after the resurrection of the dead at the last day; and this is the judgment that proof is to be given of; and which may be given,

1. From reason: and it may be observed-1. That the heathens, destitute of divine revelation, and who have had only the light of nature to guide them, have entertained notions of a future judgment; or, however, when suggested to them, have readily assented to it, and embraced it. When the apostle Paul preached to the wise philosophers at Athens, upon his discoursing about the resurrection, some mocked, and others more serious, said, they would hear him again of that matter, not being satisfied with what he had said concerning it: but though he had most plainly and fully expressed the doctrine of God's judging the world in righteousness, they did not in the least contradict that, nor make any objection to it. The heathen writers sometimes speak of righteous judges in the infernal regions; as acus, Rhadamanthus, and Minos, who judge the souls of the departed brought before them. Sometimes they represent them as sitting in a meadow, where more ways than one meet, two of which lead, the one to Tartarus, or hell, and the other to the island of the blessed, or the Elysian fields; which, though but fables, have some truth couched in them. So it is storied of Er Pamphilius, what he related after he was restored to life, having been twelve days dead; that he saw two chasms above, and two below, answering one another, between which the judges sat and judged men; and when they had judged them, the righteous on the right hand they ordered to go upwards to heaven, and the wicked on the left hand to go downward"; which is somewhat similar to the account in Matt. xxv.; and it may be, that some of those things said by them, are only some broken remains of a tradition received from their ancestors; or what some got by travelling into the Eastern countries from the Jews, and their writings: and pretty remarkable is that expression of Plato; "We ought always to believe the ancient and sacred words which declare unto us that the soul is Epist. 7, p. 1283, ed. Ficin.

w Plato de Republica, 1. 10, p. 761: