subjects, in what an impossible condition doth he make them! They must be mortal, and yet sinless. What man Ninth Paraor angel can reconcile these two? They must still dox. The Liv have original corruption in them; that cannot be ing Saints, denied: but it shall be so yoked and restrained, mortal, and that it shall get little or no ground of them.

yet sinless.

What a paradox is this! If little, if any at all, surely they are sinners and sin, wherever, whatever it be, defileth! now nothing that defileth, or worketh abomination shall be there; Rev. xxi. 27. None shall be in this kingdom, but such as shall be saved, such as are elected: but is it the privilege of election, to exempt from sin? I had thought the fruit of God's gracious election had been the remission, not the freedom from the commission of sin. All here shall be Saints: no one, he saith, shall be a hypocrite: O happy kingdom, where there is no taint of hypocrisy! But shall men have hearts then? and are not the hearts of men deceitful above all things? Though Satan be never so close chained up, yet the innate corruption of that deceitful heart, is able enough to breed store of hypocrisy. But what news is it, that no person excommunicate shall be there? what place can there be possibly imagined for an excommunication in a kingdom, after a sort heavenly, wherein there shall be no use of Sacraments? no use of any other ordinances? wherein all shall immediately feed from God in Christ? wherein Christ will hold them all up in fulness of grace"? Yea, when there shall therefore be no use of pastors, doctors, elders, deacons, preaching, censures in this holy and glorious estate, what spiritual government is that, which the raised Saints shall exercise in the New Jerusalem? Neither shall the persons only of the then-living Saints be freed from depravation by sin, but all their children, in all the succeeding generations: none of them shall prove bad; none reprobate: all shall be called the seed of the blessed. What! though they be begotten and conceived in sin? what! though they propagate sin to the fruit of their loins? yet their issue shall not prove sinners. As much as to say, there shall be fire, but neither heat nor smoke: there shall be a poisonous fountain, but it shall yield no unwholesome water. Neither can there be any danger of their languishing in grace, though they have neither Word nor Sacraments. Neither shall they have use of any improvement by the heavenly counsel or examples of those glorious and immortal Saints which they shall converse with, which one would think should avail much to the continuation and increase of their holiness; but they shall have an immediate fellowship with God, and shall be edified immediately from God in Christ". But what! shall there be any use of their prayers? are not those a Bp. 28, 29.

Page 27.

m

Pp. 17, 29.

part of God's Ordinances? and the fellowship, he saith, which they shall have with God is not by Ordinances, but by God and the Lamb and what need they pray for that, which they do indefeasibly enjoy? However, let it be scored up for none of the least paradoxes, that God's Ordinances should be useless unto God's people any where out of heaven.

Tenth Para

That, under this monarchy of Christ, there shall be to the Saints for a thousand years all fulness of all temdox. The Ful- poral blessings; as peace, safety, riches, health, long life, and whatsoever else was enjoyed under any monarchy, or can be had in the world, or may make their lives comfortable, savoureth too strong of a Jewish or Mahometan Paradise; as being extended, in a fairer and more modest expression, to those carnal pleasures, both of the bed and the board, which have been dreamed of by those sensual Turks and Talmudiges.

ness of all Temporal Blessings of riches, honour, long life, under this Monarchy of Christ.

It is true, that God hath been as exceeding rich in mercies, as no less large in promises, of all blessings to the children of the kingdom: but those riches and delights are of another nature; purely spiritual; such as may be proper for the fruition of Saints. As for those outward favours, they are such, as the worst may have, and the best may want: such, as that a man may be happy without them; and he, that enjoys them, most miserable: such, as wise Solomon tells us, bewray neither the love nor hatred of the Almighty P. And, surely, if Gog and Magog did not find themselves enabled with strength and health of body, with vigour of spirits, with outward wealth and power, they would never offer, during the time of that kingdom, to rise up against the Saints in an open war. Shortly, we know the kingdom of God doth not consist in meats and drinks, in houses and lands, in mines and metals, in flocks and herds; but in righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost; Rom. xiv. 17. The enjoyment of good things for a moment, is scarce to be reckoned amongst blessings; since the grief of their cessation doth more than counterpoise the contentment of their fruition. But, here, a long life shall make up the happiness of the rich, honourable, frolic patriots of this new kingdom: for not one of them shall die early. What! not though it be to be translated from mortality to eternal blessedness? Is it an advantage to be held off long from heaven? But who told this man, that no one should die under a hundred years old? It is true, he finds in the letter of Isaiah, There shall be no more thence an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days; for the child shall die a hundred years old; Is. lxv. 20: but he might have found also in the

next words preceding, In Jerusalem the voice of weeping shall be no more heard, nor the voice of crying; v. 19. Well, then, the husband, or wife, or child must die, at the last: and shall there be no tear shed for them? shall all the subjects be exempted from all afflictions whatsoever; and yet be obnoxious to death, the utmost of all terribles? And how doth that promise extend to a freedom from all outward violences, and inward sicknesses, grief and trouble, which are the means and harbingers of dissolution; and yet give way to that worst of evils, to which all these are but the gentle preparations? The truth then is, these are high allegorical expressions, whereby it pleaseth the Spirit of God to set forth, under bodily resemblances, whether the prosperous and comfortable condition of the Evangelical Church, or the happy estate of the glorified children of the Resurrection; which, whoso shall construe literally, shall in vain expect to see the wolf and the lamb to feed together, and the lion to eat straw like the bullock; Is. lxv. 25.

That

May it not well pass for a further paradox, that, while there are so many thousand Saints reigning upon earth, Eleventh Paand endued with so much majesty and power to radox. govern the world, the slaves and underling-tribu- so many thoutaries should be suffered to grow up under them, sands of gloto such a head, as to defy their governors, and to rious and imbid battle to all those immortal rulers, any one whereof were able to quell a world of weak sin

ners?

mortal Saints Wicked,slaves reigning, the

and tributa

ries, should be

war against

Who can think, that the malice of these men should so far exceed their wit, as that, knowing, able to raise by long and daily experience, that these raised and them. glorious Saints, under whose iron sceptre they lived, are immortal, and utterly impassible, they should yet hold it safe or possible to oppose them with any hope of success? And, if, to make the matter more credible, it shall be suggested, as it is by this author, that they are drawn in by some deceitful trick of Satan; they could not but know the wisdom and knowledge of these glorious Saints to be such, as that they might, much better than the Apostle, say, We are not ignorant of his devices: so as, if Gog and Magog shall hope, either by wiles or violence, to prevail against invulnerable, spiritual, and half glorified powers, they shall approve themselves more mad than malicious. And, to make this paradox perfect, how strange is the intimation, that this shall be taken for the occasion of Christ's coming the third time to his General Judgment; even the ruin of these assailants, whom he will come from heaven to destroy! as if this witless and vain insurrection of Gog and Magog could not be suddenly and powerfully crushed, by so over-puissant opposites: as if

the blowing upon all the legions of earth and hell could not scatter them in an instant: as if one of God's mighty angels, who, in one night, destroyed a hundred fourscore and five thousand Assyrians, could not as easily turn Gog and Magog into heaps or ashes; and yet the Son of God still keep his heaven.

The third time, then, he saith, Christ shall come down from Twelfth Para- heaven to earth, for his final judgment of the dox. The Day World: the day whereof shall dawn immediately of Judgment to upon the expiration of the Thousand Years' hold a Thou- Reign; but may, for ought he knows, last another thousand years, as the former. The Scripture indeed, he confesses', sets not down the time, how long it shall last; but long, certainly, it must last.

sand Years.

And why so very long? and what do we talk of years, when the angel before this, swore that time should be no more? What a bold weakness is this, to measure the Infinite God by ourselves! The necessity of the length of that time of judgment is evinced, he saith, by the great work to be accomplished in it for therein God's mercy, justice, truth, power, &c. is to be gloriously revealed before all mankind and devils; and the truth of every Scripture cleared; and sinners silenced or convinced. And, secondly, this is the time in which Christ Jesus is to triumph and lord it over all reasonable creatures, and wherein every knee shall bow to him: as if the Almighty should be limited to do his acts by leisure: as if he, that made the world in six days, and could have made it in an instant, cannot as well in that space of time judge it. Alas! what is time, but a poor circumstance of finite mortality; not reaching up to the acts of the Eternal? That Ancient of Days may not have his workings confined to hours, days, months, years: and, justly do we say, that he, who is of himself one most pure and simple act, works in an instant: he can therefore gloriously reveal his justice, truth, power, to men and devils, without any such leisurely respirations; and if in an instant he can raise all flesh from their graves, why should we question whether he cannot as soon judge them? As for the triumph of the Lord Jesus over all his enemies, as it is partly accomplished already; when he ascended up on high, and led captivity captive: so shall it be fully perfected in the act of his Last Judgment; when his foes shall be made his footstool, without any such lingering forms of a protracted solemnity. For the performance whereof, it is supposed by this author, and his contests in opinion, that, whereas the Lord Jesus, in his first coming down from heaven, stayed not full thirty-four years upon earth; and, in his second coming down, continued his visible presence

92 Kings xix. 35.

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amongst men, but till he had settled his government here in the world, and then returned to his heaven; now, upon his third descent to judgment, shall, for some thousand years, remain visibly upon earth, out of the local heaven from whence he descended: a conceit, that would have sounded very strangely in the ears of our unenlightened forefathers: who were ever wont to conceive, that this great business of the Last Judgment, being managed by the Infinite Wisdom and Power of the Son of God, should be of a speedy dispatch; and that their returning Saviour should come to fetch up the bodies and souls of his elect to the instant fruition of their glory in heaven, not to call them to a thousand years' attendance on his visible presence here on earth; and, if they found the thrones set, and the books opened, and all the process out of records, they were wont to construe these expressions as such, wherein the Spirit of God meant to condescend to our weakness, setting forth his own incomprehensible acts, by the forms of our human judicatures, which must necessarily both take up time and require open evidences and convictions, whereof there is no more use when we speak of an Infinite God, than of parchments, scribes, registers.

Well, then, towards the end of the second thousand years, the Judgment is ended, the final sentence passed Thirteenth both of life and death, the elect are carried up to Paradox. A their bliss, the wicked sent to their place; both settled in their eternity.

new determination of a But here, I confess, I stand amazed at the con- Double Hell, fident and peremptory assertion of this author, and the place and other favourers of his opinion, concerning the thereof. place of the present and future hell. Doubtless, the departed souls of wicked and unrepentant sinners are not in custody only, but in torture; as being both separated eternally from the face of that God in whose presence is the fulness of joy, and seized upon immediately by the dreadful executioners of divine vengeance: although not in that full exquisiteness of torment, which awaits for them in that great day, when their bodies, which were partners with them in their crimes, must also partake of their everlasting punishments. Tophet, we know, is prepared of old; and there is a peculiar place of unconceivable horror for the Devil, and his angels, and vassals: but where this place is, I have not so much warrant as to enquire; much less to determine. I must, therefore, wonder whence these men receive their light: certainly, (that which was denied to the damned glutton in the gospel,) no man hath been sent thence to them, to inform them of these infernal regions of darkness; and, I am sure, God hath no where revealed this to them in his Holy Scripture. As not daring, therefore, so much as to scan this point, much less to unlock