imply and testify a love to it, a desire of it, a longing for it. When these things begin to come to pass (says Christ, speaking of the signs preceding the last day), then look up and lift your heads, for your redemption draweth near 45. All our dejections of spirit should receive an exaltation in that one consolation, that that day draweth near. Seu velimus, seu nolimus 46, whether we will or no, that day will come: but, says that father in that short prayer of his, the Lord hath given thee an entire petition for accelerating and hasting that day of the Lord. When he bids thee say, Thy kingdom come, he means that thou shouldst mean the kingdom of glory at the judgment, as well as the kingdom of grace in the church. Christ says, If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am you may be also". Now, beloved, hath Christ done one half of this for us, and would not we have him do the other half too? Is he gone to prepare the place, and would we not have him come to fetch us to it? Certainly Christ speaks that in favour, he intends it for a favour, when he says, Behold I come quickly 48. It is one favour that he will come, and seconded with another, that he will make speed to save us, that he will make haste to help us. And, to establish us in that assurance, he adds in that place, Behold I come quickly, and my reward is with me; if the coming do not, if the speed do not, yet let the reward work in you a desire of that day. The last words that Christ speaks in the Bible (and amongst us last words make deepest impressions) are, Surely I come quickly 49; and the last answer that is made in our behalfs, there is, Amen, even so come, Lord Jesus. There is scarce any amongst us but does expect this 45 Luke, xxi. 28. 46 Augustine. 47 John, xiv. 3. 48 Rev. xxii. 12. 49 Rev. xxii. 20.

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coming; they that fear it expect it, but that crown that the apostle speaks of is laid up for them that love the appearing of the Lord 50; not only expect it but love it; and no man can do so that hath not a confidence in his cause. Adventum judicis non diligit, No prisoner longs for the sessions, no client longs for the day of hearing, nisi qui in causa sua se sciat habere justitiæ meritum, except he know his cause to be good, and assure himself that he shall stand upright in judgment. But can we have that assurance? Assuredly we may. He that hath seen the marks of election in both editions, in the Scripture first, and then in his conscience; he that does not flatter and abuse his own soul, nor tempt and presume upon God; he that in a sober and rectified conscience finds himself truly incorporated in Christ, truly interested in his merits, may be sure, that if the day of judgment came now, now he should be able to stand upright in judgment. And therefore let schoolboys look after holidays, and worldly men after rent days, and travellers after fair days, and chapmen after market days: nevertheless we, we that have laid hold upon God, and laid hold upon him by the right handle, according to his promises, expectamus, we look for this day of the Lord; and properamus, we are glad it is so near, and we desire the further hasting of it.

But then, beloved, the day of our death is the eve of this day of the Lord; the day of our death is the Saturday of this Sunday; the next day after my death is the day of judgment; for, between these, these eyes shall see no more days. And then are we bound, nay, may we lawfully wish and desire the day of our death, as we have said, we are bound to do the day of judgment? The souls of the martyrs under the altar 51 Gregory.

50 2 Tim. iv. 8.

in heaven cry unto God there, Usque quo, Domine, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood52 ? That which those martyrs solicit there is the day of judgment; and though that which they ask was not presently granted, but the day of judgment put off for a time, yet God was not displeased with their solicitation; for, for all that, he gave them then their white robes, testimony enough of their innocency. If we could wish our own death as innocently, as harmlessly, as they did the day of judgment; if no ill circumstances in us did vitiate our desire of death; if there were no dead flies in this ointment 53 (as Solomon speaks); if we had not, at least, a collateral respect (if not a direct and principal) to our own ease, from the incumbrances, and grievances, and annoyances of this world, certainly we might safely desire, piously wish, religiously pray, for our own death. But it is hard, very hard, to divest those circumstances that infect it; for if I pretend to desire death merely for the fruition of the glory of the sight of God, I must remember that my Saviour desired that glory, and yet stayed his time for it. If I pretend to desire death, that I might see no more sin, hear no more blasphemies from others, it may be I may do more good to others, than I shall take harm by others, if I live. If I would die that I might be at an end of temptations in myself, yet I might lose some of that glory which I shall have in heaven, by resisting another year's temptation, if I died now. To end this consideration, as this looking for the day of the Lord (which is the word of our text) implies a joy and a gladness of it when it shall come (whether we consider that as the day itself, the day of judgment, or the eve of the day, the day of our death), so doth this looking for it imply a patient attending of 53 Eccles. x. 1.

52 Rev. vi. 10.

God's leisure. For our example the apostle says, The earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the Son of God: it is an earnest expectation, and yet it waits; and, for our nearer example, We ourselves, which have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan within ourselves; but yet, he adds, we wait for the adoption, the redemption of the body. Though we have some ears, we wait for the whole sheaves; and we may be content to do so, for we shall not wait long. This is the last time 56, says St. John, speaking of the present time of the gospel; in the time of nature they were a great way off from the resurrection, for then the time of the law was to come in: and in the time of the law they were a great way off, for then the time of the gospel was to come in. But this is the last time; there shall be no more changes after the gospel; the present state of the gospel shall land us upon the judgment: and (as the Vulgate reads that place), Novissima hora est, if God will have us stay a little longer, it is but for a few minutes, for this is our last hour. We feel scorns, we apprehend terrors, nevertheless we, we rooted in his promises, do expect, we are not at an end of our desires, and with a holy impatience that he would give us, and yet with a holy patience till he be pleased to give us, new heavens and new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness; which are the two branches which remain yet to be considered.

As, in the first discoveries of the unknown parts of the world, the maps and cards which were made thereof were very uncertain, very imperfect, so, in the discovery of these new heavens, the expositions of those who have undertaken that work are very divers. First, Origen, citing for his opinion Clement, whom he calls the disciple of the apostles, takes those 54 Rom. viii. 19. 55 Rom. viii. 23. 56 1 John, ii. 18.

heavens and that earth, which our antipodes (and generally those that inhabit the other hemisphere) inhabit, to be the new heavens and the new earth of this text. He says, Oceanus intransibilis ad reliquos mundos, There are worlds beyond these worlds, beyond that ocean, which we cannot pass nor discover, says Origen; but those worlds, and those heavens, and that earth, shall be discovered before the last day, and the gospel of Christ be preached in all those places. And this is our expectation, that which we look for, according to his promises, in the intention and exposition of Origen. Those that were infected with the heresy of the Chiliasts, or Millenarians (with which heresy divers great and learned men, whom we refuse not to call fathers in the primitive church, were infected), upon the mistaking of those words in the Apocalypse, of reigning with Christ a thousand years after the first resurrection, argued and concluded a happy temporal state of God's saints here upon this earth, for so many years after that day. So that, though there should not be truly a new earth and new heavens, but the same heavens and the same earth as was before for those future thousand years, yet, because those saints of God, which in their whole former life had been in misery upon this earth, should now enjoy all earthly happiness upon the same earth for a thousand years, before they ascended into heaven, these heavens and this earth (because they are so to them) are called a new earth and a new heavens by those Millenarians. St. Jerome and St. Augustine, and after them the whole stream, run in another channel. They say, that these heavens and this earth shall be so purified, so refined, by the last fires of conflagration, as that all corruptible qualities shall be burnt out of them, but they, in their substance, re

57 Rev. xx. 4.