CHAPTER VII. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. "The saints of the Most High shall take the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever, even for ever and ever."—Dan. 7th chap. PRE-MILLENNIALISM rose to much eminence in this century. First and highest on the list stands the illus trious Mede, whom Rev. David Brown, of Scotland, styles "The Prince of Millennarians." Twiss and Usher sit as pupils at his feet, and Baxter modestly says, "I cannot confute him." Bunyan, "the Prince of dreamers," also sides with him in the personal reign, and Taylor makes good concessions. Henry's golden thoughts sustain Pre-millennialism, and Burnet is eloquent upon the theme. Burroughs testifies to the general faith in the year-day theory, which Stuart calls "a general and almost universal custom, so understood by the great mass of interpreters in the English and American world for many years." Some in this century had set times for the advent, but says John Cox, of England, "because some have made mistakes in fixing dates, let us beware of saying my Lord delayeth his coming.' Very solemn are the words of God by Ezekiel 12: 22-28." The "current axiom" of literal interpretation is set forth by Maton, the approaching end by Goodwin, and Alleine and Durant teach us to love our Lord's appearing. Bunyan, in the words of Pilgrim to Apollyon, expressed the hope of the saints: "For present deliverance they do not much expect it, for they stay for their glory; and then shall they have it, when THE ILLUSTRIOUS MEDE-MILLENNARIANISM AGAIN. 167 their Prince comes in His and the glory of the angels." But we pass on. May the mantle of our fathers fall upon us as we go. MEDE, A. D. 1720. Joseph Mede, B. D., styled "the illustrious Mede," was born in Essex, England, 1586. His "Clavis Apocalyptica" is well known to prophetic students, and all his biographers concur in pronouncing him "a pious and profoundly learned man," and add that "in every part of his works the talents of a sound and learned divine are eminently conspicuous." Dr. Elliott gives his Apocalyptic scheme, and says that "his works have generally been thought to constitute an era in the solution of the Apocalyptic mysteries, for which work he was looked on and written of, as a man almost inspired." We extract copiously from his writings. Like the Reformers he interpreted the fifth trumpet of the Saracens; the sixth of the Turks explaining the prophetic periods of both on the year-day theory, referring the smoke and brimstone of verse 17, to the Turkish cannon. Rendering Rev. 11: 7, "when they shall be about finishing their testimony," he makes the two witnesses to be trodden down 1260 years; the drying up of the Euphratean flood, Rev. 16th, meant the exhaustion of the Turkish empire; the seventh trumpet covers the Millennium 1 Thess. 4: 14-18. Paraphrasing verse 17th thus, "After this, our gathering together unto Christ at his coming, we shall from henceforth never lose his presence, but always enjoy it," &c. He argues that the redeemed will reign neither in heaven, nor in the air, but "on the earth,"-Rev. 5: 10, he then gives the cause of this "rapture of the saints on high." "The saints being translated into the air, is to dc honor to their Lord and King at his return, and ** that they may be preserved during the conflagration of the earth, *Hora Apoc., vol. iv. p. 450. and the works thereof; that as Noah and his family were preserved from the deluge by being lifted up above the waters in the ark, so should the saints at the conflagration be lifted up in the clouds, unto their ark, Christ, to be preserved there from the deluge of fire, wherein the wicked shall be consumed."* 2 Peter 3: 8, he paraphrases thus,-" Bat whereas, I mentioned the day of judgment, lest ye might mistake it for a short day, or a day of few hours, I would not, beloved, have you ignorant that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day;" then remarking that the style and sentiment is that of the Jewish doctors, he adds: "The words are commonly taken as an argument why God should not be thought slack in his promise, (which follows in the next verse,) but the first Fathers took it otherwise, and besides it proves it not. For the question is not whether the time be long or short in respect of God, but whether it be long or short in respect of us, otherwise not only a thousand years, but an hundred thousand years, are in the eyes of God no more than one day is to us, and so it would not seem long to God if the day of judgment should be deferred till then."† On the Millennium of Rev. 20, he in his letter to Wm. Twiss, thus argues: "The rising of the martyrs is that which is called 'the first resurrection,' being as it seems a prerogative to their sufferings above the rest of the dead, who as they suffered with Christ in the time of his patience, so should they be glori fied with Him in the reign of his victory before the universal resurrection of all. 'Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection, for on such the second death hath no power;' namely, because they are not in via but in patria, being a prerogative, as I understand it, of the first sort of reigners only, and not of the second. Thus I yet admit the *Me le's Works, B. iv. p. 776. † Ibid. B. iii p. 611. NO CREED IMPEACHED-FATHERS. 169 first resurrection to be corporeal, as well as the second, though I confess, I have much striven against it, and if the .ext would admit another sense less free of paradox, I had yet rather listen unto it, but I find it not. However, to grant a particular resurrection before the general is against no article of faith, for the gospel tells us, Math. 27: 52–53, that at our Saviour's resurrection, The graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept, arose and came out of their graves, and went into the holy city, and appeared anto many.' Neither was the number of them a small number, if we may credit the Fathers, or the most ancient records of Christian tradition. For of this was that famous saying, 'That Christ descended alone, but ascended with a multitude,' which is found in the heads of the sermons of Thaddeus, as they are reported by Eusebius, out of the Syriac records of the city of Edessa, in Ignatius' Epistle to the Trallians, and in the disputation of Macarius, Bishop of Jerusalem, in the first general Council of Nice, also in Cyril's Catechism. Nay, this Cyril of Jerusalem, Chrysostom, and others, suppose this resurrection to have been common to all the saints that died before our Saviour. However it may be, it holds no unfit-proportion with this supposed of the martyrs. And how it doth more impeach any article of our faith to think that may be of the martyrs, which we believe of the patriarchs, I yet see not."* He says again, “When at first I perceived that Millennium to be a state of the church consequent to the times of the beast, I was averse from the proper acceptation of that resurrection, taking it for a rising of the church from a dead estate; yet afterward, more seriously considering and weighing all things, I found no ground or footing for any sense but the literal (His biographer says: 'He tried all ways imaginable to place the Millennium elsewhere than after the * Works, B. iii. p. 604. literal first resurrection, and, if it were possible, to begin it at the reign of Constantine. But after all his striving, he was forced to yield,' &c.) For first, I cannot be persuaded to forsake the proper and usual importment of Scripture language, where neither the insinuation of the text itself. nor manifest tokens of allegory, nor the necessity and nature of the things spoken of (which will bear no other sense) do warrant it. For to do so, were to lose all footing of divine testimony, and instead of Scripture, to believe mine own imagination. Now the 20th of the Apocalypse, of all the narrations of that book, seems to be the most plain and simple, most free from allegory and the involution of prophetic figures; only here and there sprinkled with such metaphors as the use of speech makes equivalent to vulgar expressions, or the former narrations in that book had made to be as words personal or proper names are in the plainest histories; as old serpent, beast, &c. How can a man, then, in so plain and simple a narration, take a passage of so plain and ordinarily expressed words (as those about the first resurrection are) in any other sense than the usual and literal? Secondly.-Howsoever the word resurrection by itself might seem ambiguous, yet in a sentence composed in this manner,―viz., ' of the dead, those which were beheaded for the witness of Jesus,' &c., 'lived again when the thousand years began; but the rest of the dead lived not again till the thousand years were ended,'-it would be a most harsh and violent interpretation to say that dead, and consequently living again from the dead, should not in both cases be taken in the same meaning. For such a speech, in ordinary construction, implies, that some of the dead lived again in the beginning of the thousand years, in that sense the rest should live again at the end of the thousand years; contra, in what manner the rest of the dead should live again at the end of the thousand years, in that manner those who were beheaded for Jesus lived again in the beginning of the and e |