Church, or the whole mystical body of Christ, will not be complete at his second coming. I think I have proved that it will; and I appeal to the reader if any thing, I say not of equal weight, but even of weight at all, is adduced in opposition to it. Other arguments, however, abundantly confirming the position I have laid down, will occur in the sequel.

If Christ, then, when he comes the second time, is to reign on the earth for a thousand years, it will not be over believing men still left in their mortal bodies upon earth. Living Christianity will have disappeared from the earth: The number of the elect accomplished, the whole body of Christ transfigured, and thus prepared, as a Bride adorned for her Husband, "will with gladness and rejoicing have been brought-will have entered into the King's palace." This is 66 OUR GATHERING TOGETHER UNTO HIM," "this is THE UNIVERSAL CONCOURSE AND ASSEMBLY OF THE FIRST-BORN

66

REGISTERED IN HEAVEN,"† for which preparation is now making, and to which every believer is in spirit already joined.

What do the premillennialists say to this? It divides them into two classes: one class boldly avowing the completeness of the Church before the millennium, and doing their best, by various adjustments of their system, to avoid the harsh consequences which flow from it; while the other class, recoiling from the conclusions, take refuge in a denial of the premises from which they flow-affirming that the Church, so far from being complete at Christ's coming, will have an accession of myriads of believers after his coming, from among the Jews and Gentiles over whom he is to

23.

* Ημῶν ἐπισυνάγωγη ἐπ' αὐτόν. 2 Thess. ii. 1.

† Πανηγύρις καὶ ἐκκλησία προτοτόκων ἐν οὐρανοῖς ἀπογεγραμμένων. Heb. xii.

reign. Let us try it both ways, and see where we are on either supposition.

FIRST: Let us hear one or two of the former class-who place the Reign upon earth after the completion of all the elect.

Homes, a contemporary of Mede, two centuries ago, placed the conflagration, the creation of the new heavens and new earth, the resurrection of all the deceased, and the change of all the living saints-embracing the whole number of the elect-before the millennium.

"In that new creation," says he, "Christ restores all things to their perfection, and every believer to his; to the end that all believers may jointly and co-ordinately rule over the whole world, and all things therein, next under Christ their Head. I say all, and not a part only, as some unwarily publish. And I say jointly, and not one part of saints to usurp authority over the rest, as many dream. And co-ordinately, all upon equal terms, not some saints to rule by deputies made of the rest of saints, as men seem to interpret."

But will there be no other men on the new earth besides these risen and changed saints-to perpetrate the rebellion and suffer the perdition perdicted, at the end of the thousand years? Yes, myriads; but all unconverted and inconvertible. None but "open and obstinate ungodly men" being destroyed by the conflagration, the rest will be "reserved out of the fire to be an appendix of the new creation, as Lactantius, Sixtus, Senensis, and Dr Twisse understand." These, "by virtue of the Adamic covenant, shall be restored in soul and body to the natural perfection which Adam had in the state of innocency; but being mutable, they shall fall, when in like manner they are assaulted by Satan. Out of these shall spring the brood of Gog and Magog."

"The Church, being now as heaven on earth, the false-hearted spawn of future Gog and Magog shall be remote on earth, near their future hell. But if these hypocrites were nearer the

* Resurrection Revealed, ut supra, p. 279.

Church, they might perhaps be converted?

No:

We answer, for it is (if we may use that word) the fate of the millenary period, I mean, God's righteous peremptory sentence, that as all that time there shall be no DEgenerating of believers, so no more REgenerating of any unbelievers." ""*

Burnet, a little later, in his celebrated "Theory of the Earth," agrees with Homes as to the time of the conflagration, the new heavens and new earth, and the completion of the elect to reign, in a resurrection state, on the new earth.

"Neither," says he, "is there any distinction made, that I find by St John, of two sorts of saints in the millennium, the one in heaven (in resurrection bodies), the other upon earth (in a mortal state). This is such an idea of the millennium as to my eye hath neither beauty nor foundation in Scripture."+

But whereas, according to him, all the wicked are to perish in the conflagration, he has to reproduce them, one way or other, to " compass the camp of the saints and the beloved city" at the end of the millennium (Rev. xx. 7-9), and to be consumed in their mad assault upon immortal "This," says he, "is a common difficulty to all" (that is, all premillennialists, for it is their system alone which creates the difficulty); "and every one must contribute their best thoughts and conjectures towards the solution of it."

men.

* Page 282. Also Appendix, No. II.

The editor of this reprint of Homes-Mr Brooks—says, in a note to one part of the chapter from which we quote, that "in the Appendix it will be seen that Homes is aware of the distinction between the saints of the resurrection and those who remain in the flesh."-(P. 286.) If, by "those who remain in the flesh," Mr B. means "those saints' or Christians-which is the plain sense of his words—it is not correct.

†Theory of the Earth, book iv. ch. 7. Second edition, 1691. Though Burnet refers here to the view of Piscator and others, who took the millennial reign of the risen saints to be in heaven, the reader will observe that what he characterizes as void of beauty and Scripture foundation, is simply the distinction of two sorts of saints in the millennium.

Ꮐ

The reader will smile at Burnet's own solution of it, if new to him.

"It seems probable," says he, "that there will be a double race of mankind in the future earth, very different from one another. The one born from heaven, sons of God and of the resurrection, who are the true saints and heirs of the millennium: the others born of the earth, sons of the earth, generated from the slime of the ground and heat of the sun, as brute creatures were at the first. This second progeny, or generation of men, in the future earth, I understand to be signified by the prophet under these borrowed or feigned names of Gog and Magog."

Perry, early in the last century, thus emphatically expresses himself on the completion of the elect before the personal advent and reign on earth:

"It is certain that when Christ personally comes from heaven will be the time of the open solemnization of the marriage glory between Him and the Spouse; and, if so, then the Bride must be ready against that time, as it is expressed in this text, And his Wife hath made herself ready;' which cannot be if they are not all converted before Christ comes. For this I think is undeniable, that by the Wife,' 'Bride,' or 'Spouse' of Christ, the whole Elect must be understood. . How can it be thought that Christ, when he comes from heaven to celebrate the marriage-feast between himself and his people, that he should have a lame and imperfect Bride; as she must be, if some should be with Christ in a perfect glorified state, and some of his mystical body at the same time in an imperfect and unglorified condition?"+

....

Perry, however, went farther than this; not only denying the existence of saints in the flesh during the millennium, but even of men at all in the flesh during that period-the earth being, according to him, in exclusive possession of men in the resurrection-state during the millennium. A pleasant theory, truly; but how, according to it, did he get the last

* Ch. 10.

The Glory of Christ's Visible Kingdom in this World. By JOSEPH PERRY, pp. 225, 226. Northampton, 1721.

conflict after the millennium brought about (Rev. xx. 8, 9)? 66 This," says he, 66 seems to me to be the knottiest text throughout the whole Bible in relation to this glorious time." In his attempts to solve it, he first rejects the ordinary view -of the spiritual glory of the latter day terminating in an extensive outbreak of human corruption (that is not a glorious enough view of the millennium for those who hold the Personal Reign): Next, he rejects the now prevalent view among premillennialists, of two classes of saints-the one perfect, immortal, glorified, and reigning; the other unglorified, mortal, imperfect, and ruled over, having also mixed up with them a multitude of unconverted professors, who are at last to attack the rest and perish in the attempt. Homes' view he then rejects-of "some, not in the covenant of grace, preserved for the" premillennial "burning of the world, and restored unto an Adamitical state of innocence" -as a thing to him unintelligible. He admits, indeed, that a remnant of the wicked may be preserved from the conflagration, who may "be left to multiply in some of the outside parts or borders of the earth," far enough from seeing or beholding the glory of Christ and the saints during the time of "that glorious reign," and renewed to no Adamitical state. But he gives a number of reasons against even this view, and ventures finally on one of his own, "which he knows is out of the common road of almost all expositors; and that is, that the Gog and Magog who will arise at the end of the thousand years, to compass the camp of the saints, will consist of the number of all the wicked when raised out of their graves!”—(P. 409.) He is aware that " this, by reason of its being altogether new, may seem strange, sound harsh, and appear altogether incredible unto many." But he "earnestly entreats the reader" to weigh

*

#66 "By what means these will be cleansed, if not in the covenant of grace, from that original pollution which the whole posterity of Adam is polluted with, I am at a loss to know."—(P. 406.)