the whole race of men, small and great, whoever have died, and wherever buried, or however held in a state of death, as Christ says, (John v. 28, 29.) "Shall come forth, they who have done good, unto the resurrection of life, and they who have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation." The first resurrection is a spiritual one, metaphorically called a resurrection; it will be effected by the spirit of Christ accompanying the gospel on the hearts of sinners, causing them universally, (or at least generally) to possess the true spirit of piety and religion, like the martyrs of old, who stood and bled and died for the cause of Christ. The second will be a metaphorical resurrection, and it might be called with propriety, a diabolical resurrection, because it will be effected by the influences of Satan loosed from his prison, inclining the hearts of the children of men to evil, stirring them up to persecute the church, with the same disposition as used to reign in the old heathens, Mahometans, and Papists. The third and last resurrection will be a literal one, effected by the almighty power of Christ, who will sound his trumpet and summon all the dead, to come to Judgment, when all, both quick and dead, shall be judged according to their works.

The abettors of this theory attempt to support their point from 1 Thess. iv. 16. where Paul says, "The dead in Christ shall rise first." It is always a sign of a weak, or a bad cause, when arguments are far fetched, or texts distorted to maintain it. Let us, however, examine this passage. "This we say unto you, by the word of the Lord; that we who are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord," [that is, we who remain alive when the day of judgment comes] "shall not prevent" (PHTHASOMEN, come before) "those who are asleep." They will not come to judgment before those who are dead. "For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first." The dead in Christ, means, all true believers who die interested in Jesus; they shall rise first, before they who are alive will be called, to meet the Lord. Those who are alive must wait until the dead are first raised. "Then," when the dead are raised, "we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them;" both the living, and those who were dead and are now raised, will be caught up

together "In the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. So that the one will not come before the other; but all will be in one company "and so shall we ever be with the Lord." If any man can see a first and second resurrection in this passage, he must have eyes good enough to see a phantom; at least I must confess that he has keener eyes than I have.

It is always a happiness when we can find parallel passages of scripture to confirm, and explain one another. In the eleventh chapter of Revelations we have a corresponding description of the Millennium, from the eleventh verse to the eighteenth, exactly coinciding with the construction which I have given to this passage. The apostles sometimes paid but little attention to order in their narratives, but often stated facts in a promiscuous manner. The natural order of the facts stated in this chapter is as follows, to wit; verses 7-10, 14, 15, 1113, 16-18. the 19th verse probably belongs to the next chapter. First, we have an account of the Beast slaying the witnesses, (ver. 7-10.) Then it is stated that the second woe is past. The woes were special judgments on the Papal and Greek churches. The first woe was the Saracens, or the Arabian Mahometans, who overran Arabia, Egypt, Jerusalem, a great part of Asia, and part of Europe. (Chap. ix. 1-12.) The second woe was the Ottoman Turks, generally called the Euphratian horsemen who overturned the kingdom of the Saracens, overran all Asia, Africa, and a considerable part of Europe, and fixed their capital at Constantinople. (Chap. ix. 13-21.) This woe is to continue until the time when the final judgments of God will be about to be poured out on the Papal kingdom. This will constitute the third woe, and will be the grand introduction of the seventh trumpet, and will completely destroy the kingdom of Satan, the Beast, and the false prophet. (ver. 14, 15. Chap. xix. 17-21.) After the sounding of the trumpet, when the Pope will be destroyed, Christ will bind Satan, and pour out his spirit upon the witnesses, and raise them spiritually from the dead. Thus the same spirit which were in the witnesses before they were killed, shall arise in a glorious succession of men, who will be witnesses for Christ and his gospel all over the world. (Ver. 11, 12.) A great revolution will take place, which is represented by a great earthquake, by which

revolution, the church of Rome will be brought to ruin, and probably the city will be destroyed, and no doubt thousands of the vassals of the Beast will be slain. (Ver. 13.) Then will the church of Christ, which is represented by the four and twenty elders, rejoice and give thanks to God, because he will have taken to himself his great power to subdue his enemies, and reign over the earth; (ver. 16, 17) and because the time was come to execute his judgments on the papal and antichristian nations, who had been angry, and were violent persecutors of the saints; and to vindicate the cause of the dead saints who were revived in the spirit of the witnesses, who were spiritually come to life; and to render his church glorious and triumphant over her wicked enemies, as a blessed reward given to the martyrs and saints, and all the servants of God; because it will appear that the cause for which the martyrs suffered and died will triumph over the whole world, and finally prevail over all opposition. Ver. 18.

It is very evident that this chapter contains an account, and gives a statement of the very same things which are described in the first part of the twentieth chapter, and shows the true meaning of it. Here the witnesses, who had suffered for 1260 years, and had now come to the close of their testimony, were killed and were lying dead. These are the self same succession of men who, in the twentieth chapter, were beheaded for the witness of Jesus and for the word of God, and who would not worship the Beast, nor his image, nor receive his mark, and their souls lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. These witnesses revived and stood upon their feet, and were called to ascend up to heaven in a cloud, and their enemies beheld them, and great fear fell upon their enemies who saw them rising and ascending to heaven. All agree that this is a spiritual resurrection, meaning that the same spirit of religion will appear in a succession of witnesses that will spring up in the church after the former witnesses are slain. Bishop Newton acknowledges the resurrection of the two witnesses, in chap. xi, to be figurative. See vol. 2, p. 238, and 346. And no man under heaven can tell how they can make the one a spiritual resurrection, and the other a literal one, when nothing is more evident than that both are the very same thing, and that the very same resurrection is predicted

* ્

in both chapters. Upon the whole, I, for my part, am thoroughly convinced that there is no scriptural ground for a literal resurrection of the bodies of the saints at the commencement of the Millennium; and it is highly improper to perplex the church with theories of such interesting importance, when there is no ground for them in the word of God, on a fair, candid investigation. At the time when Burnet, Waple, Newton, and some others wrote, there was a considerable time to go and come on, before the Millennium would commence, especially according to their calculation; they may be excused for letting their imagination play, and there was plenty of time for their whimsical theories to rise and fall again without doing either much good or harm to the church. But now the Millennium is coming so nigh to us, that we have need to study the prophecies, and understand them pretty well, that we may tell the truth, and not deceive the world with our own whimsical notions, without good authority from the word of God.

SECTION III.

Another part of their theory is, that Christ will come personally from heaven and dwell in his bodily presence, with his risen martyrs and saints, during the thousand years of his reign here below. I must confess that I feel too many substantial objections to this doctrine to admit it. This doctrine is of too great importance, to be received on human authority, and nothing but the authority of the bible can overthrow the objections which evidently lie against it.

1. When Christ was with his disciples on earth, they wished him to stay; and he no doubt would have stayed, had he thought it expedient for him to do so. But he told them that it was expedient for them that he should go away to his Father that he might send the comforter unto them. Neither did the spirit come, in any great degree until the day of Pentecost, and when Christ did send him he was to abide forever, and his business is, and ever will be, while the world lasts, to convince the

world of sin, of righteousness and of Judgment. Therefore, the plan of God appears from the scriptures to be, for Christ to go to his Father to intercede for his church and people, and to send his spirit down to carry on the affairs of his kingdom by his spiritual presence, and for him to occupy his seat at his Father's right hand, as the apostle says, ever to live to make intercession for us. (Heb. vii. 25, and x. 12.) Therefore for Christ to leave his seat as our intercessor, at his Father's right hand, before the general Judgment, would undoubtedly be contrary to the plan which the scriptures has evidently held up to our view. Christ, according to this theory, would cease to be our Interccessor before God. The Church would lose her Advocate before the Father, and Christ would take the place which the scriptures have always assigned to the Holy Spirit. To authenticate such a change as this in the established economy of the gospel, would require very strong and positive proof from the word of God, before any man could believe it, who has as weak faith as I have on such subjects.

2. For Christ to come in his second appearance before the general Judgment, contradicts the general account which the word of God has given us relative to the coming of Christ, and the end of the world. Christ said to the Jews (John v. 28, 29,) "The hour is coming, in the which, all who are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth, they who have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they who have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation." If Christ intended to give us the idea, in this passage, that the second coming of Christ will be a thousand years before the final Judgment, and that he will raise the righteous a thousand years before the wicked, and that there will be two resurrections, one in raising the saints and martyrs, and the other, a thousand years afterward, in raising the wicked to pester the righteous a little season before he will take them to heaven; his language is by no means constructed so as to give us such ideas; and no man could ever take such ideas from the words of this text, unless he had first formed his theory in his own head, and then force the text, by absolute straining to agree with his notions.

The parable of the ten virgins, in Matt. xxv. gives the idea, that all the virgins snbered and slept until the