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1. How great the success of Christ's purchase is, chiefly appears in this. The success of Christ's purchase does summarily consist in the salvation of the elect. But this bestowmentof glory is eminently called their salvation: Heb. ix. 28. "To them that look for him, shall he appear the second time, without sin unto salvation." So it is called redemption, being eminently that wherein the redemption of the church consists, So in Eph. iv. 30. "Sealed unto the day of redemption ;" and Luke xxi. 28, and Eph. i. 14. "Redemption of the purchased possession."

2. All that is before this, while the church is under the means of grace, is only to make way for the success which is to be accomplished in the bestowment of glory. The means of grace are to fit for glory; and God's grace itself is bestowed on the elect to make them meet for glory.

3. All those glorious things which were brought to pass for the church while under the means of grace, are but images and shadows of this. So were those glorious things which were accomplished for the church in the days of Constantine the Great; and so is all that glory which is to be accomplished in the glorious times of the church which are to succeed the fall of Antichrist. As great as it is, it is all but a shadow of what will be bestowed at the day of judgment: And therefore, as I have already often observed, all those preceding glorious events, by which God wrought glorious things for his church, are spoken of in scripture as images of Christ's last coming to judgment.

But I hasten more particularly to show how this kind of success of Christ's purchase is accomplished.

1. Christ will appear in the glory of his Father, with all his holy angels, coming in the clouds of heaven. When the world is thus revelling in their wickedness, and compassing the holy city about, just ready to destroy it, and when the church is reduced to such a great strait, then shall the glorious Redeemer appear. He through whom this redemption has all along been carried on, he shall appear in the sight of the world; the light of his glory shall break forth; the whole world shall immediately have notice of it, and they shall lift

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up their eyes and behold this wonderful sight. It is said, "Every eye shall see him," Rev. i. 7. Christ shall appear coming in his human nature, in that same body which was brought forth in a stable, and laid in a manger, and which afterwards was so cruelly used, and nailed to the cross.

Men shall now lift up their eyes, and see him coming in such majesty and glory as now is to us utterly inconceivable. The glory of the sun in a clear firmament, will be but darkness in comparison of it; and all the glorious angels and archangels shall attend upon him, thousand thousands ministering to him, and ten thousand times ten thousand round about him. How different a person will he then appear from what he did at his first coming, when he was as a root out of a dry ground, á poor, despised, afflicted man! How different now is his appearance, in the midst of those glorious angels, principalities, and powers, in heavenly places, attending him as his ordinary servants, from what it was when in the midst of a ring of soldiers, with his mock robe and his crown of thorns, to be buffetted and spit upon, or hanging on the cross between two thieves, with a multitude of his enemies about him triumphing over him!

This sight will be a most unexpected sight to the wicked world: It will come as a cry at midnight: They shall be taken in the midst of their wickedness, and it will give them a dreadful alarm. It will at once break up their revels, their eating, and drinking, and carousing. It will put a quick end to the design of the great army that will then be compassing, the camp of the saints: It will make them let drop their weapons out of their hands. The world, which will then be very full of people, most of whom will be wicked men, will then be filled with dolorous shrieking and crying; for all the kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him, Rev. i. 7...... And where shall they hide themselves? How will the sight of that awful majesty terrify them when taken in the midst of their wickedness? Then they shall see who he is, what kind of a person he is, whom they have mocked and scoffed at, and whose church they have been endeavoring to overthrow..... This sight will change their voice. The voice of their laugh

ter and singing, While they are marrying and giving in marridge, and the voice of their scoffing, shall be changed into hidebuis, yea hellish yelling. Their countenances shall be changed from a show of carnal mirth, haughty pride, and con tempt of God's people; It shall put on a shew of ghastly ter ror and amazement; and trembling and chattering of teeth shall seize upon them.

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But with respect to the saints, the church of Christ, it shall be a joyful and most glorious sight to them: For this sight will at once deliver them from all fear of their enemies, whơ were before compassing them about; just ready to swallow them up. Deliverance shall come in their extremity : The glorious Captain of their salvation shall appear for them at a time when no other help appeared. Then shall they lift up their heads, and their redemption shall be drawing nigh, Luke xxi. 28. And thus Christ will appear with infinite majesty, and yet at the safite time they shall see infinite love in his countenance to them. And thus to see their Redeemer coming in the clouds of heaven, will fill their hearts full of gladness. Their countenances also shall be changed, but not as the countenances of the wicked, but shall be changed from being sorrowful, to be exceeding joyful and triumphant. And now the work of redemption will be finished in another sense, viz. that the whole chutch shall be completely and eternally freed from all persecution and molestation from wicked men and devils.

2. The last trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised, and the living changed. God sent forth his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, to gather together his elect from the four corners of the earth in a mystical sense, before the destruction of Jerusalem; i. e. he sent forth the apostles, and others, to preach the gospel all over the world.

in a mystical sense the great trumpet was blown at the beginning of the glorious times of the church. But now the great trumpet is blown in a more literal sense, with a mighty sound, which shakes the earth. There will be a great signal given by a mighty sound made, which is called the voice of the archangel, as being the angel of greatest strength, Thes: iv. 16. VOL. II 2 X

«For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God." On the sound of the great trumpet, the dead shall be raised every where. Now the number of the dead is very great. How many has death cut down for so long a time as since the world has stood! But then the number will be much greater after the world shall have stood so much longer, and through most of the remaining time will doubtless be much fuller of inhabitants than ever it has been. All these shall now rise from the dead. The graves shall be opened every where in all parts of the world, and the sea shall give up the innumerable dead that are in it, Rev. xx. 13.

And now all the inhabitants that ever shall have been upon the face of the earth, from the beginning of the world to that time, shall all appear upon earth at once; all that ever have been of the church of God in all ages, Adam and Eve, the first parents of mankind, and Abel and Seth, and Methuselah, and all the saints who were their contemporaries, and Noah, and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the prophets of Israel, and the saints in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, and all that were of the church in their times; and all the holy apostles of Jesus Christ, and all the saints of their times; and all the holy martyrs under the ten Heathen persecutions; and all who-belonged to the church in its wilderness state, during the dark times of Antichrist, and all the holy martyrs who have suffered under the cruelty of the Popish persecutions; and all the saints of the present time, and all the saints who are here in this assembly among the rest; and all that shall be from hence to the end of the world......Now also all the enemies of the church that have or shall be in all the ages of the world, shall appear upon the face of the earth again; all the wicked killed in the flood, and the multitudes that died all over the world among God's professing people, or others; all that died in all the Heathen nations before Christ, and all wicked Heathens, and Jews, and Mahometans, and Papists, that have died since; all shall come together. Sinners of all sorts; demure hypocrites, those who have the fairest and best outside, and open profane drunkards, whoremasters, heretics¿

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Deists, and all cruel persecutors, and all that have died or shall die in sin amongst us.

And at the same time that the dead are raised, the living shall be changed. The bodies of the wicked who shall then be living, shall be so changed as to fit them for eternal torment without corruption; and the bodies of all the living saints shall be changed to be like Christ's glorious body, 1 Cor. xv. 51, 52, 53......... The bodies of the saints shall be so changed as to render them for ever incapable of pain, or affliction, or uneasiness; and all that dullness and heaviness, and all that deformity, which their bodies had before, shall be put off; and they shall put on strength, and beauty, and activity, and incorruptible unfading glory. And in such glory shall the bodies of all the risen saints appear.

And now the work of redemption shall be finished in another respect, viz. that all the elect shall now be actually redeemed in both soul and body. Before this, the work of redemption, as to its actual success, was but incomplete and, imperfect; for only the souls of the redeemed were actually saved and glorified, excepting in some few instances: But now all the bodies of the saints shall be saved and glorified together; all the elect shall be glorified in the whole man, and the soul and body in union one with the other.

3. Now shall the whole church of saints be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and all wicked men and devils shall be arraigned before the judgment seat. When the dead saints are raised, then the whole church, consisting of all the elect through all ages, will be standing together,.on the face of the earth, at least all excepting those few whose bodies were glorified before; and then they shall all mount up as with wings in the air to meet Christ; for it seems that Christ, when he comes to judgment, will not come quite down to the ground, but his throne will be fixed in the air, in the region of the clouds, whence he may be seen by all that vast multitude that shall be gathered before him. The church of saints therefore shall be taken up from the earth to ascend up to their Saviour. Thus the apostle tells us, that when the dead in Christ are raised, and the living

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