of Mediatorial Glory and Fruition that is the Errour that corrupteth all your confident discourses The Office of our Redeemer is to Recover sinful man to God and restore him to purity from sin and all the curse or punishment for sin yea and to advance him to a more perfect and confirmed state And Christs Reward for this is the everlasting Joy that was set before him in the fruition of the Divine Complacency and in the perfect and glorious Headship to his perfected glorified Church for ever Let us consider 1. Which of these is Given up to the Father And 2. What Giving up to the Father is And 3. When it is done § 19. 1. The first all grant is to be Given up The Kingdom of Recovery but not the Kingdom of Fruition That of Grace not that of Glory As a Prince commissioned to be General for the reduction of Revolted Rebels brings them down by degrees and having slain some and reduced the rest he giveth up his Commission and is General no more for his work is done But he hath after the promised Reward and Honour and may under the King rule them as recovered Or as a Physician that hath an Hospital or infected City to cure giveth up that work when it is perfectly finished So Christ giveth up the Kingdom of Redemption when he hath done that work 2. But this Giving up is no deposing of Christ nor is he less but more gloriously King than before Nor is God the Father any more King than before It 's no diminution to Christs Royalty nor any addition to the Fathers I shall prove this before I go further § 20. 1. By comparing this Text with Joh. 5. 22. The Father judgeth no man but hath committed all Judgment to the Son And yet the Father Governeth no less than he did before and is not deposed by giving up all Government to the Son Only the quality of the Subject and the terms of his Government are altered Creation is in Scripture eminently ascribed to the Father and Redemption to the Son The Father as Creator Governed Man in his Integrity to preserve and perfect him Man being faln into sin and misery the Son as Redeemer Governeth Man as a Physician his Patients in order to his cure The Father now judgeth no Man as sinless according to the Law of Innocency but hath committed the Government of all to the Son as his Administrator and Physician in order to their cure This is but altering the way of Government And it is the Subjects of the Kingdom that are called The Kingdom who are now restored and delivered up to the Father without blemish spot or wrinkle that he may henceforth Govern them as a perfectly healed People according to the Law of Perfection The Father now judgeth no less by the Son than before in another way § 21. 2. I prove the continuance of the Kingdom of the Son in the way of Fruition and Glory by the Promise hereof made to him by the Father The Covenant of Mediation hath Obligations laid on the Son and Promises of a glorious Kingdom as merited by his performance of his part And doth his performance dispossess him of his promised Reward when it was the condition of his Title to it It 's tedious to cite all Texts that prove it § 22. 3. The Promises are made to Christ that his Kingdom shall be an everlasting Kingdom and have no end And therefore ceaseth not by the delivery mentioned And though the Hebrew word commonly translated for ever oft signifie but a long time or many Generations yet in the Texts intimated there is no reason for such a limitation If God say that of his Kingdom there shall be no end let the deniers prove their denial § 23. 4. Christ hath promised to make them that overcome Pillars in his Temple and they shall go out no more which he could not perform if he go out himself or lose his Kingly Power And he saith That the Children of God and the Resurrection are equal to the Angels and die no more And sure he can make their state no more durable than his own And it is called Life Eternal which we shall possess And shall Christ have less than we § 24. 5. Christs Humane Nature will be perpetuated and therefore so will his glorious Kingdom No Text speaketh of his ceasing to be Man but many contrary And who should then presume to assert it I know Smeckfeldius held that Christ ceased to be Man as soon as he entred Heaven But the Church called it a Heresie As on Earth he was to be Man like us in flesh so in Heaven where flesh and blood cannot enter yet he will make our vile bodies like to his glorious body § 25. 6. The state of Reward is an Advancement and not a Diminution as to us so to Christ Phil. 2. 9 10. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him and given him a name which is above every name that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow of things in Heaven and things on Earth and things under the Earth and that every Tongue should confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father § 26. 7. Christ hath promised us that we shall be with him where he is and prayed that we may there behold his glory which is plainly to say that when he hath been the Mediator of Redemption he will be the Mediator of Fruition that is that we shall see Gods Glory as shining to us in the glorified Humanity of Christ For as we shall have Bodies in Heaven as well as Souls so our Bodies will have a suitable Medium of Communion with God § 27. 8. If Christs Humane Nature should cease its Glory ours by the same reason would do so too But that is contrary to the hopes of Faith § 28. 9. Angels Glory and Being is perpetuated And therefore Christs Humane Kingdom and Glory who is above them will not cease § 29. 10. There is Executive Government by Christ to be exercised after the supposed Thousand years Therefore he shall Reign after to perform it The Redeemed Believers must be Rewarded to Eternity and he must save to the utmost all that come to God by him He must continue and perpetuate their Reward and Happiness For they must live as his Members because he liveth And I doubt not but if you are for ending Christs Kingdom after a Thousand years you will be for the ending of ours And he hath his Enemies to punish longer than a Thousand years Luk. 19. 27. And I believe that you are for ending their punishment then if you would end Christs Kingdom then Rev. 6. 16. It is the Wrath of the Lamb that is to be executed on the Enemies of the Lamb It was against him and his Grace that they sinned and it is he that cometh in flaming fire to execute Judgment on all that know not God and obey not the Gospel And doth punishment end with
Exposition of John as if he wrote to five of the Asian Churches as in one World and to Laodicea the seventh in another when this is burnt up and Christ come § 24. XXIII When you have almost equalled the New Earth with Heaven you debase it by making it a Laodicean Church which for Lukewarmness God threatneth to spew out and to take away their Candlestick Is this the Paradise World of Righteousness § 25. XXIV You make two New Jerusalem's when Scripture speaketh but of one after Christs Coming One you take to be in the Air and the other on Earth Though one Society may be in both one Vrbs or material City cannot such as is described Rev. 21. and 22. § 26. XXV You feign two Conflagrations One to Burn the World and another after to Burn Gog and Magog and their Followers over the Earth § 27. XXVI You groundlesly dishonour the Kingdom of Christ by confining it to a Thousand years which God hath promised shall have no End § 28. XXVII You dishonour Christ and his Kingdom by bringing him from his Fathers Right Hand in Heaven and placing him and his Saints a Thousand years in the Air where you say wicked Spirits now dwell and where Dr. H. More saith Good and Bad dwell in an Aerial Vehicle till they are advanced to an Etherial Yea where you say Devils and Damned Men now dwell with Christ And where Christ must exercise the greatest self-denial in leaving that lower Station § 29. XXVIII You make Christs Kingdom to be a humbling loss to the Saints above while you take them down into the Air for a Thousand years from the Heavenly state where you say they were in God where Christ is at his Right Hand as they shall be at last or else you will make that Everlasting Union their loss § 30. XXIX Either you also bring down the Angels from their Glory to dwell in the Air or else you separate them from Christ and the Saints in the Air with him § 31. XXX When God hath already continued the old sinful World under the Curse almost six Thousand years you by Fiction confine the New purified World wherein dwelleth Righteousness to a Thousand years and call this the Sabbatism As if our Rest must be so much shorter than Sin and Labour When yet there will be no Sin to provoke God to destroy the New World Principle VIII Answered § 1. How frivolous is your arguing from the name of a Monarchy God is ever the absolute Monarch But if you mean a Humane Visible Monarchy and suppose he must so visibly Rule the Earth you do but beg the question A Monarch of all the World none ever was and therefore four such never were But if by a Monarchy you meant the greatest Visible Empire on Earth so the Fifth Monarchy was set up by Constantinople which differs far more from the Pagan Roman Monarchy than that did from the Grecian or Assyrian And it was Christs Visible Monarchy Reigning by his Vice-Roys the Kingdoms being now said to be his Kingdoms This was the true Visible Fifth Monarchy And the Turks are the Sixth Monarchy the renewed Reign of the captivated Dragon let loose after a Thousand years § 2. But your fiction that the Scripture assigns a Thousand years to Christs Reign after the Resurrection is worse than frivolous a meer forgery I answered it before If Peter quiet mens over-hasty expectation of Christs coming by telling them that a Thousand years time is as nothing to the Eternal Infinite God shall a man pretend skill in Prophecy and tell us that he meaneth that Christs Reign after the Resurrection is measured and meant by this Thousand years and is as nothing to the Eternal God And I have proved to you that the Thousand years in the Revelation speaketh of no such thing but of what is done before the Resurrection For 1. Those Thousand years are most likely to signifie an undetermined time and mean no more than a Long time as Mr. Durham and Cluverus most incline to think and many others But 2. Granting the contrary it plainly speaketh of a time presently following the feasting of the Fowls of Heaven with the flesh of Kings and Captains and the Fall of the Pagan Babylon And not only Grotius but John Fox and many others tell us that it is the just time between the Fall of Pagan Rome and the beginning of the Ottoman Empire which was about 1300 years 3. And this Thousand years is before the suppression of wickedness in the World while Gog and Magog are in the four quarters of the Earth in number as the Sand of the Sea that shall go upon the breadth of the Earth and compass the Camp of the Saints the beloved City And before the fire that cometh down to devour them And most certainly all this is not in the New Earth wherein dwelleth Righteousness So that this Thousand years seemeth to signifie but 1. That Apostles and Martyrs go to Heaven 2. And leave their Names and Doctrine honourable on Earth 3. And that the surviving Confessors shall rise from their persecuted state to triumph with Christ in their deliverance and superiority on Earth 4. And that this sudden Exaltation is a fit representation of the Glory that they shall have perpetually in Heaven Let any sober man judge whether this one only mention of a Thousand years in a hard Prophecy Rev. 20. under the expository circumstances now named will warrant a man to Preach a new Gospel and Kingdom of Christ to the World without any proof from all the plain words of Christ himself and his Apostles and directly against them He that well considereth Prophetical Language will think that Articles of Faith should be founded on plainer words When we read in Ezekiel that Egypt shall have no Inhabitant for forty years that Tyrus shall be no more inhabited that Babylon and the Land of Babylon shall be no more inhabited and abundance the like we shall the better understand the Apocalypse whose very words are much taken out of the Prophets 5. The Devil and the false Prophet are cast into the Lake of fire after the destruction of Gog and Magog and after the Thousand years But sure they are cast into the Lake at the Resurrection For if they stay uncondemned a Thousand years after that I know not what Christs coming to Judgment signifieth Sure it is not the date of their Execution for they are to be tormented for ever and ever And must they be unsentenced a Thousand years 6. And the Resurrection is described as coming after all this The Earth and Sea giving up their dead and the dead judged out of the Books c. 7. And Ch. 21. The New Heaven and New Earth cometh after this Thousand years and the destruction of the Enemies and the New Jerusalem coming down from God And there are yet Kings of the Earth that are to bring their Glory into it And there are Nations to be healed
long Christ will be Judging us And some That it is only the Beginning and the End of the Thousand years that the Judgment will take up and the rest will be in other Government Some think that Execution on Men and Devils will be but that Thousand years which some decry Some think that the first Resurrection is from an Aereal Vehicle or Body into an Ethereal and others that it is from earthly dust to a heavenly body by transmutation of Elements And others that it is to be a Paradise body like Adams before he sinned Other differences seem almost reconciled to some by the bare name of a Thousand years Reign XXVI It is a far more glorious Christian Monarchy which Christ by Constantine set up than most of the Millenaries give any probability of 1. It was a Deliverance from the cruellest Persecution 2. And from the Dragons most potent Empire 3. A Deliverance of all Christians as well as of Jews 4. Without confinement to the narrow Land of Israel 5. A setting up of a National-Provincial Church in Judea 6. With the great Charges of promoting it by New Churches Monasteries Bibles Bishops What could he do more The knowledge of what hath been done long ago would have prevented many mens expectation of the same XXVII If it prove that their Millennial Doctrine and the Calling of the Jews prove a meer mistake it will not be so small as should suspend our detection of it Because it is an adding to Gods Word and fathering on him many untruths and so a taking of his name in vain and a corrupting of his Worship while we preach write and pray for that which we ought not further than we must pray for the Conversion of all sorts of men and a turning of mens Zeal to promote untruths and corrupt mens minds XXVIII We find it so easie to possess men with a fervent Zeal for the Millenary Opinion and so hard to make them zealous in holy Love to God and Man and in a heavenly conversation as may make us suspicious that both sorts of Zeal have not the same original I am not willing to name some tremendous Instances of men nearly known to me hereabout XXIX Our worthy Brother that hath more Learnedly opened that Cause than any else that ever I read by moderation hath brought the difference into so narrow a compass in his Diatriba de signo filii hominis that except 1. The Calling of the Jews 2. And the Extending of the Day of Judgment to a Thousand years and that the general Resurrection and Judgment of the wicked shall begin after the Thousand years are expired there remaineth to great and weighty disagreement of such with the Judgment of the Churches XXX Seeing we ascribe to Christs Kingdom so much more than they that we oppose why should they be thought to extol his Kingdom more than we 1. Is not Eternity longer than a Thousand years 2. And Heaven a more glorious state than the Air 3. And a New Earth inhabited only by the righteous better than one that is Laodicean or that hath such Enemies of Saints as Gog and Magog 4. And this New Earth either everlasting or of undetermined time better than one but of a Thousand years duration which is but with the Lord as One day and about a sixth part as durable as this corrupted World that is under sin and curse Is this Doctrine or the other more honourable to Christ and more comfortable to Believers and more evident in the Word of God Chap. II. An unwilling Answer to Mr. Tho. Beverleys Twelve Principles and his Catechism of the Millennium necessitated by his many provocations of many Ministers and me by name and his Challenge of all the Doctors and Pastors of the Church and his Censure of the Denyers of that Millenary Reign as SEMISADDUCES OF THE APOSTASIE § 1. Reverend and truly beloved Brother I Take it for no wonder that great and many disagreements in matters of Religion are among us while in Professions of less Mystery Law Policy Physicks Medicine c. there are so many that so many men so many minds hath so long been a Proverb And in such tolerable cases as much endanger not Church and Souls few men are more for mutual forbearance and charitable construction than I am Therefore the Millennial Opinion I have never been a censorious opposer of while men kept up Peace and Charity with it But the case lately is altered and is made a matter of necessary Zeal as part of the Creed and the Lords Prayer if not essential to the Gospel and Christianity And very many of the Antinomian and Separating Opinion that least understand it lay much of their Religion on it And the just honour of many Conformists of the most peaceable Principles otherwise promoteth it such as Mr. Jos Mede Dr. H. More Dr. Cressoner your self Mr. M. Author of the Midnight Cry Mr. R. M. the Publisher most pious men both and many others And we must not now be suffered to be silent but must answer your provocations or be grosly guilty of the evil that will follow your success § 2. The Millenary Opinion was indeed early received by some followers of Papias But the universal opposition of the Christian Church that hath exploded it ever since tells us that it was a singular Opinion And is he a humble man that now calleth the Christian Church for sixteen hundred years and all those Learned and Holy Divines of England and other Reformed Churches that differ from your conceit by the name of SEMI-SADDVCES OF THE APOSTASIE Bear with my freedom Is it humility that so loudly challengeth all the Pastors and Doctors of the Churches to answer you Have you answered all them or so much as one Cluverus alone or James Calvert whom you promised me to answer Was it humility that cast a Glove for an Answer to two or three trifling Fallacies about the Pagan Babylon when I had given you an Answer to them long before and you modestly sent it back without a Confutation I have had long by me as a Learner some humble Queries to you and no Bookseller will Print them because they say men look on you as diseased with prophesying Self conceit and will not read a Confutation Your Leader Dr. More saith That the Papists not answering my Books against them is because they despise them as unworthy of an answer May not your case be much the same Men have greater matters to mind than to trouble themselves with you and me or answering our Challenges § 3. But I come to your Chain of Principles And 1. It 's a half and fallacious description of Christs Kingdom to say it is his As the Son of Man There be millions of Sons of Men that have no such Kingdom It is his Kingdom as God-man the Redeemer and Recovering Mediator This Kingdom is to him as the Eternal Word and the Son of Man in one person of a Redeemer And because you
when he cometh with his Angels and the Trumpet soundeth But those found alive on Earth cannot be excluded from the number of the Elect that are at or under the four Winds Therefore they shall then be gathered to him § 11. X. The living shall be caught up when Death the last Enemy is subdued But that will be at Christs Triumphant Coming and the Resurrection For after that there will be no more death as an Enemy If you would deny this as aforesaid because in the New Earth the Blessed are Mortal in possibility of Nature I answer that Paradise possibility were it true is none of the Curse for Sin and therefore not the Enemy to be subdued § 12. XI The Saints shall be caught up when the day and work of Judgment Cometh But that will be at Christs Coming and the Resurrection As he himself and many a plain Text of Scripture tell us too much to cite And whereas you feign a Judgment day of a Thousand years taking Judgment for Government Christ otherwise expoundeth himself and tells how the Judgment will proceed by Exploration and Sentence Mat. 25. c. And Government in general containeth Legislation Judgment and Execution You tell us not a word what Legislation will be in the Air the Thousand years And for Judgment in special will Christ be a Thousand years in Exploration and Sentence Will the wicked so long be untryed and uncondemned or the Faithful so long unjustified or by Sentence judged to Salvation Doth not Christ Mat. 25. contradict this VViil their case be so long undecided If you mean that Execution will be that Thousand years can you prove that the Damned shall suffer no longer Nor the Blessed any longer reign with Christ O make not a New Gospel Heaven and Hell § 13. XII The Saints will be taken up when the Kingdom is delivered up to the Father and God is All In All But that will be at Christ Triumphant Coming and Judgment at the Resurrection For it signifieth no more but that Sin and Curse shall all be cast out and all that rebelled against God be Conquered and all Christs Recovering work performed and God again Rule Man as Innocent according to the Law of his perfect Nature This will be then finished You say that those on Earth shall be in a Paradise State and those in the Air will not be worse And then Christs Coming in Triumph delivereth up the Kingdom to the Father that his and Christs Kingdom of Glory and Fruition may succeed § 14. XIII When Paul was opening to them the Mystery of Christs Kingdom if he had talkt thus of being caught up in a moment of time at the last Trump to meet the Lord and never told them a word of a Thousand years between the Trumpet and being caught up it must be because he knew it not or was not willing that we should know it But neither of these could be true in a matter of so great moment when it was that Coming of Christ that he was satisfying them about And I will learn from you nothing that Paul knew not § 15. XIV I have proved before how copiously Christ openeth the nature of his own Kingdom in many Parables and how he maketh his Enemies his Footstool Conquering Satan Sin and Enemies and how the Revelation openeth his Conquest of the Roman Empire And he shall destroy the Man of Sin with the Breath of his Mouth and the Brightness of his Coming Therefore he hath not left this to be done the Thousand years after his Coming § 16. XV. Peter tells us that the day of the Lord will come as a Thief in the night in which the Heavens shall pass away with a great noise and the Elements melt with fervent heat But a Thousand years is not such a sudden surprize Nor will Heaven and Earth be a Thousand years burning § 17. XVI The Earth and the Works therein shall be burnt up and all these things be dissolved 2 Pet. 3. 10 11 12. Therefore the Bodies of those then alive would be burnt and dissolved were they not first taken up To say as you do that God would keep them in the Fire unburnt as he did the three Dan. 3. is to make and obtrude on us a Gospel of your own § 18. XVII You think Gog and Magog shall live after the Conflagration who shall cover the Earth And shall all their Bodies too be unburnt in the Fire that dissolveth all these things on Earth Is this any Word of God § 19. XVIII You that think Men live each one the whole Thousand years and generate so abundantly as to recompense with a much more for the few that were saved under the first Adam can by no reasonable imagination find room on Earth for the numberless Off-spring of a Thousand years to dwell all at once here And the numberless followers of Gog and Magog also to dwell with them They must not be so unrighteous as to dispossess the wicked of their dwellings And for one year after all is burnt up they may be in want § 20. XIX It is incredible that your description of Earth for the Thousand years can leave Gog and Magog in their Hostility unconvinced For to see Men live a Thousand years in the sight of Christ and all the Saints in the Air one would think should convince them Or if Men are changed before at the common Age of Men to see so many Millions caught up to Heaven without Death or Burial sure would make them afraid of fighting against such § 21. XX. There is not one word of God that confineth Christs Kingdom to a Thousand years and what are you that you should presume to do it It hath continued much above a Thousand years already If you alledge 2 Pet. 3. One day with the Lord is as a Thousand years and a Thousand as one day which speaketh only against doubting because of the delay of Christs Coming as if this told us how long he should reign when he is Come this would but confirm us that your Doctrine is meerly of your self The Thousand years in Rev. 20. is the same with that of the Womans being in the Wilderness and the Dragons being bound which is plainly on this side the Conflagration And indeed is presently after the fall of Pagan Rome For that Pagan Rome was not Babylon or that it is not faln I will not believe though you should swear it or cast the Glove in Challenge to dispute it § 22. XXI Gog and Magog and all their Hosts are to be in the end of the Thousand years But they are to be before the Conflagration and Coming of Christ Therefore the Conflagration and Coming of Christ is to be after the Thousand years In the New Earth will dwell Righteousness that is only Righteousness and in a Paradise state But that is inconsistent with a numberless power of malignant Enemies that shall compass the Holy City § 23. XXII You make a strange
that had been Tributary or Subject to the Pagan Empire so quickly followed the success of Constantine and the Christian Arms and turned against the Pagan Idolatry it is utterly incredible that multitudes of the Infidel Jews did not the same No one Nation turned all at once And no one National Church under Heaven were all that I say not the most sincerely holy Christians The visible Church still consisted mostly of temporizing Men that came in to Christianity for worldly Interest over-awed by Christian Power Till it came to this the Christians were a persecuted party and no National Church And the unbelieving Jews were not like to be so free from the Love of the Flesh and VVorld as not to do as others did Christ Riding victoriously on the VVhite Horse and Conquering his Enemies brought the Nations to Submission after he had by the Word and Martyrdom purified to himself a holy Generation As all the Revelation fully telleth us Therefore if Judea was not made a National Church no other Nation was made such Zonaras saith that many hired by Money turned Christians Two Hundred Thousand turned Christians for fear in their Troubles at Toledo in Spain whither they were long before sent And Forty Fryars were sent to instruct them After that Ferrerius converted many Read but the Chronological Tables of my worthy Friend Mr. Fr. Tallents and you shall find how they were hated hunted and destroyed in Spain France and almost all Christians Nations except Rome and how many turned seeming Christians for fear Chap VII Whether there be any Jerusalem Monarchy of Jews or any further Conversion of them more than of other Men promised by God § 1. I know of no such Promise in Gods Word but I find it in many Books of Men and I hear of it in the Prayers and Sermons of many Men so good and of so good repute that divers of my Friends disswade me from so much as giving my Reasons against it lest I lose my Reputation with such Men and lest I occasion a Division by contradicting them And is it come to that Must our Concord be held on such humane loose and unsound terms Is this savouring the things of God or of Men If it be proved an Errour taking Gods Name in vain polluting Sacred Worship and adding to the Word of God must we by silence promote a Concord in it I only humbly propose the Reasons of my dissent to the tryal of wiser Men. § 2. 1. It belongeth to the Affirmers to produce their proofs But I can find no Text cited by them that to a sober search hath any such proof 1. As to the many Texts of the Prophets of the uniting of Judah and Israel under David their King and the Jews repossessing their own Land and the Subjection of their Enemies and the Neighbour Nations to them and the great Slaughters of Gog and Magog in their Land c. 1. Let the Grandeur of Prophetical stile he allowed for and this compared with the Prophecies against Babylon Tyre Sion Moab Edom c. 2. Read the whole Text and you will find most express passages that cannot be applyed to any such time and use as this in question but plainly speak of their return from Captivity and their following state It would too much swell my Book to try and vindicate all the particular Texts Mr. James Calvert having already done it in his Naphthali yet unanswered 3. Confound not the Immediate Sense of the Prophesie with the remote and set not one against the other the several parts and degrees that make up the whole Many Prophesies in the Psalms are spoken immediately of David but as he was a Type of Christ in whom they were though remotely yet chiefly fulfilled The Prophesies of the honour of the Jews and their Restoration had divers degrees of fulfilling 1. They were primarily fulfilled in the return from Captivity and the Power that followed under Zorubbabel and the Maccabees 2. They were further fulfilled by the Coming of the Messiah of the Seed of Abraham and David in whom all the Nations of the Earth are blessed 3. They were further fulfilled at Christs Resurrection Ascension and Effusion of the Holy Ghost and the many Thousands of them Converted And their spreading the Gospel over the Gentile World 4. It was yet more fulfilled when Dominion was given to Christians and the fulness of the Gentiles brought in all Israel and settled a National Church in Judea and put all their Enemies in subjection to the Catholick Church of Jewish and Gentile Christians reconciled in one Body the partition Wall being broken down 5. It will be yet more fulfilled in the New Heaven and Earth under the Gospel there is neither Circumcision not Uncircumcision but Christ is All and in All How much more in the New World He that would promise to redeem Christians from Turkish Captivity and restore them to their own Land and prosper and honour them there if they will obey him must not be thought to confound the several benefits and degrees of this Promise He that will lead you into an upper Chamber includeth every step of the Stairs that you ascend and the promise of helping you up the first step includeth not the last but tendeth to it and if you obey will lead you further 4. Read the Book of the Maccabees and other History that you may not be ignorant of what is already done For instance How the great Ruine of Gog and Magog so Hyperbolically set out was fulfilled on the Syrian and Graecian Armies of which see the Assembly Mens Annotations § 3. II. Their next seeming proof is from Rom. 11. of which I have proved how much is fulfilled already besides which I find no more there promised than to all the Church in the New World 1. God cast not away the fore-known Elect v. 1 2 to 11. 2. Through their Fall and Infidelity persecuting the Christians from among them the Gospel came to the Gentiles v. 12. 3. It was but some of the Branches that were broken off v. 17. 4. As the casting away of them was the converting and reconciling of the Pagan World so their receiving was as a Resurrection of life from the dead v. 15. 5. The Converted Gentiles were but grafted in among them and partakers with them and not without them of the fatness of the Olive v. 17. 6. Not the Root but the some Branches that were broken off was that we might be grafted in v. 19. It was chiefly the Priests and Rulers and the self-cursed Rabble that followed them and yet some Priests and Pharisees were converted 7. If they continue not in Gods Goodness the Gentiles also shall be broken off v. 22. So much of conditionality is in the Promise And yet there is more Scripture to expect that the Gentiles shall not be broken off than that there shall be any more National Conversion of the Jews 8. The promise of restoring the broken Branches is If they continue