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 happiness: 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 reunited to his body; and after his resurrection, he continued on earth forty days, shewing 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 any thing of the latter could be conceived of, the purifying fire may reach so far as intirely to remove that; and as for the bodies of the wicked, which will be burnt to ashes at the conilagration, 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 Mai. iv. 3. will be literally fulfilled, which respects this very case. 11. 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 Isai. Ixvi. 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. 1 1. is a rhetorical exaggeration of the glory and greatness of the Judge, which ap.peared 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 un usual, 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 at my 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 now resume 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 laid 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 enterprize, 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 ur.dertaking.-3. What the fire will be, which shall come down from heaven, and destroy the Gog and Magog army? Not material fire; 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 propably become again a comet for the future ages of the world, New Theory, b. 4. ch. 5. p. 451. Theory of the Earth, b. ch. 10. p. 313. 4. 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. 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 hås 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, I. From reason: and it be observed, may 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 Minas, 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 whichlead, 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 de"clare unto us, that the soul is immortal, and has its judges, and will undergo very great judgments or punishments, when any one is separated from the bo"dy.". 2. That there is a judgment to come, appears from the accusations of a natural conscience for sin, and from the fears and terrors men are possessed of, and cannot free themselves from; as witness the consternation and dread Belshazzar was thrown into on sight of the hand writing upon the wall; which could not arise from the fear of any temporal evil coming upon him from men, but from a guilty conscience, and the apprehension he had of being called to an account by the divine Being, for his impiety and wickedness; so Felix trembled when he heard the apostle Paul discourse of judgment to come; for the doctrine met with the light and conviction of his own conscience, which caused distress and terror. 3. The truth of a future judgment, may be argued from the justice of God, which requires it; for it is easy to observe, that the justice of God, is not clearly displayed in the dispensation of things in the present state. Good men are afflicted and evil men prosper; which has been a stumbling of saints, and an hardening of sinners: it seems reasonable to believe, that there will be a future state, when justice will take place, and the tables will be turned; and such who have had their evil things now will have their good things; and such who have had their good things here, will have their evil ones hereafter; for it is a righteous thing with God, to render tribulation to them that trouble his people, and to reward his saints according to his gracious promises.-4. This may be concluded from the relation men stand in to God, as creatures to a Cre ator. As God is their Creator, he has a right to give them a law; which he has, either written or unwritten, for the breach of which they are accountable to him so that whether they have sinned without the written law, or in it, they will be judged accordingly; for every one must give an account of himself to God.-5. This may be reasoned from the judgments of God in this present life; and especially from the chastizements of good men, sometimes called a judging them, I Cor. xi. 32. from whence an argument may be framed in the words of the apostle; If judgment begin at the house of God, &c. 1 Pet. iv. 17. if the one are judged, most certainly the other will be.-6. The desires of the saints after it, implanted in their hearts by the Spirit of God, furnish out an argument in favour of it; for however dreadful the thought of it is to Christless w Plato de Republica, 1. 10. p. 761, X Epist. 7. p. 1283. Ed. Ficin. W sinners, saints can look upon it, and for it, with pleasure; it is now their pri vilege, that they can come to God, the judge of all, in the righteousness of Christ; as he is, through that, the justifier of him that believes in Jesus; and they know that the Lord, the righteous Judge, when he comes, will be their advocate and friend, and give them the crown of righteousness laid up for them; --and therefore, in the view of this, most earnestly desire his coming to judgment; and importunately pray, saying, Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly? Now such desires are not implanted in vain. 11. The truth of this doctrine will more fully appear from divine revelation. In Gen. iv. 8. in the Hebrew text, after these words, And Cain talked with Abel his brother; there is a mark for a pause, as if something was wanting, and to be supplied; and which some ancient versions have supplied thus, Let us go into the field: but the Chaldee paraphrases add more, and give us an account of the conversation that passed between them in the field; how that Cain said to his brother, "There is no judgment, and there is no Judge, nor another world, &c." but Abel said, "There is a judgment, and there is a Judge, and another. world, &c." upon which, Cain rose up and slew him. Now though this is not to be depended on, nor do I lay any stress upon it; and only observe it, to shew the sense of the ancient synagogue concerning this article; we have a more sure word of prophecy to take heed unto, for our direction in this matter; and where this doctrine clearly appears; as, 1. In the prophecy of Enoch, the seventh from Adam, recorded in Jude, which, as it is to be understood of the second coming of Christ, since it will be with all his saints; so of his coming to judgment, which will be general; for he will then execute judgment upon all; and will judge men, both for their ungodly deeds, and for their hard speeches. 2. The character Abraham gives of Jehovah, as the Judge of all the earth, who will do right, Gen. xviii. 25. shews that there is a Judge, and that there will be a righteous judgment; and which is committed to the Son of God, who at this time appeared to Abraham in an human form, and was known by him. — 3. It may be concluded from the faith of Job, in his living Redeemer, who believed he would stand on the earth in the latter-day, and raise the dead, and himseit among the rest; and would have his friends know, that there was a judgment, which would then take place, Job xix. 25, 26, 29.4. Also from the declaration of Moses, in his song, The Lord shall judge his people, Deut. xxxii. 36. vindicate their cause, render tribulation to them who have troubled them, judge their persons, and introduce them into his glory.-5. Likewise from the song of Hannah; The Lord shall judge the ends of the earth, i Sain. ii. 10. even all the inhabitants of it, who have lived in the uttermost parts of it; and that by the Messiah, as is suggested; since it is added, He shall give strength to his King, and exalt the horn of his anointed! 6. From some passages in the Psalms; in which God calls to the heavens and earth to be witnesses of his judg ing his people; which will be, when he comes with a fire devouring before him, and he himself will be Judge; when he will come to judge the world with |