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just men made perfect will be so very unequal, as to be felt an insupportable burden to the weakness of the flesh; and the converse of the sons of earth would be equally disgusting, degrading, and even defiling to their celestial priests and kings; whose sentiments will breathe another spirit, and their manners be such as cannot possibly coalesce with earthly habitudes and ideas. They will partake of that undescribable sublimity of excellence in every kind, which St. Paul was witness of in the third heaven, but was unable to express in utterable sounds, comprehensible to mankind. But when the tight drawn cord is slackened at an instant, and corruption returns "like a giant refreshed with wine," what an inconceivable confusion must ensue! wholly irreconcileable with the principles of wisdom and order, which in all times regulate the conduct of the governor of the universe! What madness can be supposed equal to the vain attempt of besieging these children of light, even in their capital city ;-a city of such impregnable strength, Rev. xxi. 16,-which had come down from heaven,-whose citizens are equally incapable of suffering from

any violence from without, or anarchy from within, and are in firm possession of the power and strength of government under the whole beaven!

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The literal interpretation therefore, in every point of view, offers such rude violence to both reason and nature, that he must be both a bold and an able combatant who can conquer all the objections which rise in armed hosts against it, like the dragons teeth of Cadmus, the more the soil is stirred in which they are sown. But if the first resurrection be (like the dry bones) that of converted Israel, and the binding of Satan be only figurative, as his war in heaven, and his casting down to the earth were; then may every thing be accounted for without too much of supernatural interposition. There will need no suspension of the laws of the gospel, or abolition of those of nature, further than "the arm of the Lord" stretched out "as in the days of old," in the original Exodus, in behalf of his oppressed people. The chains imposed upon Satan will doubtless be fabricated of the same materials, as the two edged sword

in the hand of the saints; that is, a right apprehension of christian truths, and a prevailing sense of the love and fear of God, a natural effect of the strong impressions made by the awful circumstances of the times. We see even already, the most promising symptoms of a growing impression of this kind, rooting itself deeply in every virtuous breast, and bearing the delightful fruits of philanthropy and public spirit, worthy of the true principles of our most holy faith. It is no ways improbable that it may, within the time prescribed in prophecy, actually realize every thing that we ought in just reasoning to expect from the appearance of the kingdom of the saints.

The hostile invasion of the heavenly Jerusalem and of the camp of the saints, (Rev. xx. 9.) at the end of the millennium, may also on this ground of exposition be reasonably accounted for. We have already seen the happy tranquillity of the church, and the large accession to its numbers and its wealth under the first christian emperor, prophetically represented like a first millennium, and by figures very

similar to those of the real kingdom of saints. They express the joyous feelings of good men, and saints, who had come out of great tribulation, (319) in so forcible a manner, as might lead us to misapply them to the millenary kingdom itself, had not such an error been prevented by internal marks, the sure index to the true time of that vision. With reason may we expect then to find the millennium itself pourtrayed by figures of a still greater magnificence, and the most extraordinary that human imagination can reach to. Such in truth, as might easily mislead us into an apprehension that a state of absolute perfec tion, a heaven and earth in union, a kingdom of saints in raised and glorified bodies, could alone fully answer to the character of that happy and holy time; had not the consentient reasonings of philosophers and divines upon the known and revealed wisdom of God's settled oeconomy of nature and grace, forbid such a construction of the prophecy.

We must conclude then, that even in the millennium, human nature will continue near

(319) Rev. vii, 14, compared with xxi, 4-xxii. 3.

ly in its usual frailty, and the world of spirits will be kept still concealed, with the same impenetrable veil of darkness, which now covers every thing that relates to it. Satan will no otherwise be deprived of his power, than as the mortal saints of that age shall wrest it from him by the violence of prayer (Matt. xi. 12.) through the influence of a rational though quicker feeling of the sanctifying impressions of religion. These are the figurative chains by which the arch deceiver will be bound, and from thence the unloosing of his bunds is easily provided for, without a new miracle, or imme diate act of God, only by the opening again of the bottomless pit of error and sin, for the third time, as we have recently witnessed its second opening, and have still to bewail the dreadful consequences of that calamitous event.

The invaders of the beloved city, we are told, will come from the four quarters of the earth, or on the breadth of the earth, which expresses both their countless numbers and the distant countries from whence they will be drawn by the tyrants in confederacy against

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