and trump of God,' the departed saints of either dispensation will rise from their graves to meet Him,—alike patriarchs, and prophets, and apostles, and martyrs, and confessors, all at once and in the twinkling of an eye: and then instantly the saints living at the time will be also caught up to meet Him in the air: these latter being separated from out of the ungodly nations, as when a shepherd divides his sheep from his goats,2 one person

Xen. Anab. vi. 5. Ελαμβανον τα επιτήδεια εντος της φαλαγγος as Zeunius renders the word, behind it.

"Citra aciem,"

Cyrop. vi. 1. EVTOS TWV OKUTwv of one advancing from the enemies' side within the piquets.

Anab. 1. 10. 'Ων εντος εδενι εσιν εισιέναι των μη τετιμημένων· within the ranks of guards that lined either side of the road.

Anab. 1. 10.* Παντα όσα εντος αυτών, και χρήματα και ανθρωπος, εσωσαν said of Greeks in the camp preserving from the invaders all that was locally within their station.

To which I will only add a similar phrase from the Latin: "Ea intra se consumunt Arabes:" Plin. II. 21: i. e. within their own borders.

Thus to designate a locality it is perfectly legitimate to use evros, with the genitive, of the inhabitants ; e. g. εντος των Γαλιλαίων, for εντος της Γαλιλαίας ; εντός ύμων, for εντος της χωρας ύμων.

To the whole of the passage, thus interpreted, the 24th of St Matthew (verses 26, 27) offers so exact a parallel, both as regards the lightning-like coming of Christ, and the incongruity with such a manifestation of surmisings and doubtful rumours on the subject, as both to illustrate and confirm what has been advanced. "If they say to you, Behold He is in the desert; go not forth! Behold He is in the secret chambers; believe it not!" Why? Not because his kingdom was spiritual, within their hearts, and so not to come with observation; but because, as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be in his day."

"

1 1 Thess. iv. 16, 1 Cor. xv. 52.

2 Matt. xv. 31; "When the Son of Man shall have come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory and before him shall be gathered all the nations (Ta Ovn); and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats."

I conceive this to be distinctly a judgment on the living in Christendom; the same as that mentioned in Joel iii. 11, "Assemble yourselves, all ye heathen: thither cause thy mighty ones to come down, O Lord: let the heathen be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat: (Heb. God's judgment :) for there will I sit to judge all the heathen (e0vn) round about. Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe," &c.-For 1st, the term "all the nations," here used by our Lord, can scarce be construed of individuals; as must be the case if we suppose the dead included, or the term used in any other sense than that in which he used it before in the same discourse, Matt. xxiv. 14, "This gospel shall be preached to all nations," or all the Gentiles, (maσi Tois eveσ;) Luke xxi. 24, "Jerusalem shall be trodden down by the Gentiles, (imo e0vwv,) till the times of the Gentiles (καιрoι ε0vwv) be fulfilled; " or ended: i. e. I presume, the parenthetic times of

This is quoted in Elsley from Macknight; incorrectly, however, as from the Cyropædia. Nor is Macknight's translation exactly correct. Εντος αυτων is not "things with them in the camp ; " but things within them; i. e. within their position.

+ I take the Anpwowo in its more usual sense when applied to nouns of time;

2

snatched from his company or occupation, and another left and all, both dead and living saints, changed at the moment from corruption to incorruption, from dishonour to glory, though with very different degrees of glory; and all welcomed alike (the faithful receiver of a prophet, as well as the prophet himself3) to enter on the inheritance and kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world; and so, in a new angelic nature, to take part in the judging and ruling of the world.5 --Meanwhile it would also appear that with a tremendous earthquake accompanying, of violence unknown since the revolutions of primæval chaos, (an earthquake under which the Roman world" at least is to reel to and

6

the Jews' exclusion, and committal of the gospel to the Gentiles.-2. The nature of the judicial process implies the fact of the gospel having been made known to all the parties judged, and of Christ's disciples having been among them, and opportunities existed of showing them kindness or unkindness the which could by no possibility be predicated of the great mass of the dead, or indeed of the living, I mean of those living or dead in heathen lands; but might fitly be predicated (compare Apoc. xviii. 24) of the people of Christendom.-3. The judgment here past on the wicked appears, on comparison, to be the same as that described Apoc. xix. 20; which says, "The Beast and False Prophet were both cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone." For in Apoc. xx. 10. St. John declares, “And the devil was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the Beast and False Prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever;" thereby identifying the lake of fire into which Antichrist and his adherents were cast alive, with that intended for the devil's place of punishment; just as the penal fire adjudged to the wicked of the nations is identified with the same in Matt. xxv. 41, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels."-Compare too Isa. lxvi. 24.

An individual judgment on the parties interested is described, I conceive, in the two preceding parables.

21 Cor. xv. 42.

3 Matt. x. 41.

1 Matt. xxiv. 40, 41. Luke xx. 36, "They are wayyeλor, being children of the resurrection." 5 Compare Heb. ii. 5, "He hath not subjected to angels the world to come whereof we speak ; "also Matt. xix. 28, Luke xix. 17, Apoc. iii. 21, xx. 4.

6 The structure of the earth's crust seems clearly to indicate violent previous revolutions: nor, I conceive, is there any thing whatsoever in the Mosaic history of creation opposed to this view; as it only takes up our earth's history from its preparation for man's habitation. On the word 2, created, it will suffice to compare its use in Isa. lxv. 17.

7 It is well known that the words yn and ouksμevη are often used in a limited sense of Judæa, or the Roman earth, (compare Matt. xxvii. 45, Mark xv. 33, Luke iv. 25, Apoc. xi. 10, Luke ii. 1. &c,) just as the Romans themselves called their world the orbis terrarum: and, after careful consideration of the various prophetic descriptions of the consummation, I incline to think that the meaning of the term, when used in these prophecies of the concluding revolutions of the earth on Christ's advent, is thus limited, and that it refers to the Roman world

as in Acts vii. 23, 30, ix. 23. So Cyril, (Catch. xv,) ¿τаν màŋpwowow ol kaipoi της 'Ρωμαίων βασιλειας.

fro like a drunken man,1) the solid crust of this earth shall be broken, and fountains burst forth from its inner deep, not as once of water, but of liquid fire; of fire now pent up within it as in a treasure-house, and intended

2

alone-with this modification, moreover, that the circumstance of the separation of the Eastern and Western Empire, and political destruction of the former by the Turkish invasion, having caused the phrase to be used in the later Apocalyptic prophecies of Western or Papal Christendom only, it may be so in those of the consummation also. -The idea of some other and more universal conflagration at the general judgment is not hereby excluded.

How the thrill in such case would be felt through the whole habitable earth may be judged from the circumstance of the noise and shock of the great earthquake connected with the eruption of the volcano at Sumbawa in 1815 having been felt and heard 970 miles off.

Isa xxiv. 20. In the 22nd verse we are told, "They shall be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in the prison, and after many days shall they be visited."

2 2 Peter iii. 7; "The heavens and the earth which now are" (i. e, contradistinctively to those that were overwhelmed by the flood) "are by the same word stored with fire” (Telnσavpioμevol πup, so I understand the phrase) "being kept unto the day of the judgment," &c. It is only by this rendering of the τεθησανpioμevoi Tupi that the apostle's evidently intended antithesis can be expressed, between the whole world stored with water, by which as the instrumentality, it in its appointed time perished; and the present world stored with fire, by which it, in its time, is also to perish: besides that in the received sense Tenσavρioμevoi is a word not merely superfluous but inappropriate; "stored up" being a phrase used of things laid aside from present use, which certainly our present earth and atmosphere are not.*-Compare, as to the water, Psa. xxxiii. 7; (Sept.) TibEIS Ev OnTaupois aßurσes and, as to the fire, Job xxviii. 5; rendered by the Chaldee, "Beneath the earth is Gehenna." (So Gaussen's Theopneustie.) Also Isaiah xxx. 33; "Tophet is ordained of old: for the king it is prepared: he hath made it deep and large; the pile thereof is fire and much wood: the breath of the Lord, as a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it."

Similarly Tertullian, Apol, 47; "Gehennam, quæ est ignis arcani subterranei ad pœnam thesaurus." In which view of the fiery interior of the earth, other fathers agreed as Jerom on Jonah ii: "Infernus in medio terræ esse perhibetur."-As to the fact of its being stored with fire, it seems indubitable.

For, while the earth's form of an oblate spheroid, the chrystalline character of its primitive rocks, the evident action of heat on its earliest strata, and absence of organic remains from them, as if at that time from heat uninhabitable, and the proofs, alike in the animal and vegetable fossils of other subsequently formed strata, of a temperature once greatly higher than that of the earth's present surface, but gradually diminishing and approximating to it,-while, I say, geology presents to us in these phænomena a body of evidence irresistible, (if only we suppose the laws of matter the same formerly as now,) to the fact of our earth having been originally fluid from intense heat, and having gradually, in the course of ages, cooled down so as to allow of an outer crust, solid and mild in temperature, such as we now experience it,-geology also calls attention to another fact, viz. that this cooling down is only superficial. Of this the gradual increase of heat observed on descending to any depth below the surface,† and the ejection from time to time in all quarters of the globe of boiling streams of lava,

* Ας θησαυρισμα means a treasure-house, as well as treasure, θησαυρισμα τεθησαυρισ μενον πυρι is in construction like τειχισμα τετειχισμενον τείχει.

"In round numbers we obtain an increase of more than 1o of Fahrenheit's thermometer for every 100 feet of sinking." Edinb. Rev. No. 165, p. 27.

1

2

as the final habitation of devils: that this, I say, shall then burst forth and engulph the vast territory of the Papal Babylon, and the godless of its inhabitants; thence spreading even to Palestine,3 and every where, as in the case of Sodom, making the very elements to melt with fervent heat: and that there the flame shall consume the Antichrist and his confederate kings, while the sword also does its work of slaughter; 6 the risen saints being perhaps (as would seem not improbable from both Enoch's and the Apocalyptic prophecy 8) the at7

5

and other minerals from below the primitive granite, furnish sufficient indication. And the irresistible violence of these eruptions of the more central earth's boiling and inflammable materials, shows that there is as it were a train laid, that waits but the bidding of the Almighty to break up the earth's solid crust, and wrap this our world, or any fated part thereof, in a universal conflagration.-I may refer to the first Plate in Dr. Buckland's Bridgewater Treatise, as very illustrative of this point. He who has familiarized himself with it can scarcely, I think, help realizing the fact, that the ground he treads on is underwrought with volcanic agencies; ready, the instant the Almighty may please to employ them, to execute the predicted judgment. See the end of Note 2

p. 226. 2 Apoc. xviii.-To this same catastrophe Walter Brute, A. D. 1391, applied Ezekiel's denunciation, xxviii. 18, against the Prince of Tyrus; "I will bring forth a fire from the midst of the whole earth, and will make thee as ashes upon the earth, in the sight of all that behold thee." Foxe iii. 138. The time noted (verses 25, 26,) seems very remarkably to be that of the final restoration of Israel.-Compare what was said of the King of the North's ultimate perishing at the same time and place, according to Dan. xi. 45, pp. 165, 166, suprà. Also Dan. vii. 11, and the passages referred to at p, 108. 3 Zech. xiv. 4. 5. 5 Apoc. xix. 20.

4 2 Pet. iii. 12.

6 Ibid. verse 21; also Isa. lxvi. 16, Joel iii. 11-13, &c.

7 Jude 14, "Behold the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints," &c. 8 It is said, just before the description of the Beast's destruction, Apoc. xix. 11, 14, “And I saw heaven opened; and behold a white horse, and one that sate on it. . . . and the armies in heaven followed him on white horses, clothed with linen (Buσσov) clean and white." On this, the questions arise, What coming of Christ was this, and what hosts these that accompanied him;-angelic hosts, or hosts of the risen saints? On the first question, Mr. Bickersteth exclaims, "Here can be no mistake :" as if the coming must be personal. And though we cannot surely, on the mere evidence of a symbolic picture, conclude on the rapsora being Christ's personal advent, yet it seems not improbable: the heaven now for the first time being said to be opened, as if to permit the passage to earth of some one seated beyond the visible heaven; according to Acts iii. 21, "Whom the heaven must receive until the times of the restitution of all things."

Connected with this is an argument of Daubuz, drawn from the dress of the hosts that followed Christ. He says that the Buoσos, or byssine linen dress now ascribed to them, is here mentioned for the first time; white robes, sodai λeukal, being the dress specified as given to the souls under the altar previously: also that this byss, woven from a plant in Palestine, (so Pausanias tells us,) made the very finest whitest linen in use among the ancients; that it is spoken of in Gen. xli. 42 as worn by Joseph, in 1 Chron. xv. 27 as worn by David, and in Luke xvi. 19 as worn by the rich man in the parable; also in Exod. xxviii. 39 as appointed for the priests under the Jewish law. Thus, from its being the finest linen, and that both of the royal and the pontifical robe, he infers that it signifies

tendants of the Lord's glory in this destruction of Antichrist, and assessors in his judgment on a guilty world.And then immediately, it would seem also, the renovation of this our earth is to take place: its soil being purified by the very action of the fire,' in all that shall remain of it, for the nations of the saved," i. e. the Gentile remnant and restored Israel; and the Spirit too poured out from on high to renew, in a yet better sense, the moral face of nature: and that so the millennial commencement of Christ's eternal reign with his saints is to begin3 the Shekinah, or personal glory of Christ

2

the bridal dress of incorruption and purity, given to them that are to be kings and priests at the resurrection; and so betokens the hosts with Christ to be the risen saints, now associated with Him in judgment, as afterwards in reigning. (I have just alluded to this, Note 1, p. 113, suprà.)—Elsewhere, angels too seem noted as attendant. See Matt. xxv. 31, John i. 51. But I think what is said Apoc. xix. 19 of the Beast and his allied kings being gathered to make war with Him that sate on the horse, and with his army," better suits the view of Christ's attendant hosts in this Apocalyptic vision being his saints: the war of the Beast against Christ and them being, as I suppose, against their cause.

1 I have already at p. 177, suprà, noted this as one characteristic point in the premillennial views of the early Fathers. Let me here quote Methodius, as a specimen. "Magnus Patriarcha Methodius," says Andreas in Apocal. xxi, “in Sermone de Resurrectione de his ita disserit : Non placet quod nonnulli asserunt, nempe rerum universitatem totam simul interituram, cœlumque et terram et aerem amplius reliqua non futura. Inflammabitur sane ad repurgationem universus orbis; igni, quasi diluvio quodam, mundatus." B. P. M. v. 628.

Very much the same seems to have been the view of the early Reformers of our Church. In King Edward the Sixth's Catechism, to the question, By what way, and with what fashion and circumstances, there is to be brought about the renewing of all things, and introduction of the new heavens and earth of which St. Paul speaks, the following answer is made. "I will tell you as well as I can, according to the witness of the same apostle. The heavens shall pass away like a storm the elements shall melt away: the earth and all the works therein shall be consumed with fire as though he should say: As gold is wont to be fined, so shall the whole world be purified with fire, and brought to full perfection. The lesser world, which is man, following the same, shall likewise be delivered from corruption and change. And so for man this greater world (which for his sake was first created) shall at length be renewed, and be clad with another hue much more pleasant and beautiful." P. 510. Parker Ed.

The supposed fact of the earth's purification by fire is another point on which geology offers interesting illustration. For it is a fact, I believe, that volcanic fire will sometimes make the most sterile parts fertile: so that it has been said, for example, of the great African Zahara, or Desert, that nothing more than fire of this kind is needed to turn it into fertility.

2 As distinguished from the newμα Twν evov of Rom. xi. 25, or Gentile complement, gathered into the Church of the redeemed under the present dispensation; the which, together with the older Jewish complement, is to partake at Christ's coming of the glories of the first resurrection. This distinction is important, but too often overlooked.

3 At p. 177 suprà I have already referred to Justin Martyr, Irenæus, and Lactantius, as examples from the early premillennarian fathers, showing that they did not hold the 1000 years to be any more than the commencement of an