threefold nature and spirit proper to each of them In one of which all the nations of the world live and walk as they are distinguished from the earthly Jerusalem the children of Mount Sinai or the first convenant In the second the fleshly seed of Israel or the worldly Church lives and walks distinguished both from the nations of the world and from the heavenly Jerusalem or the true Mount-Sion And in the third the spiritual seed or children of the Jerusalem that is above do live and walk distinguished from both the former each of them therefore are placed by God under a several Rule and law according to which their lives and actions are to be fashioned and conformed and by which they are to be tried and judged at the last day when the secrets of men of all sorts shall be judged by Christ Jesus according to the Gospel which is of that large comprehension as to take in all the three dispensations First for the nations of the world they have judgements given them by God Ezek. 5. 6 7. with which Israel is reproched as having walked short of them so that the uncircumcision did out-doe the circumcision in the righteousness the effect whereof was contained in the law as in a much superiour and more excellent administration These the Apostle cals Rom. 2. 12. such as sin without law and perish without law but yet are acknowledged as such that though they have not the law as it was given to the Jews yet have a law given them from God the work and effect of which sheweth it self in their consciences accusing or excusing them as they walk up to it or short of it even the law of nature in which they are a law unto themselves having that within them that shall witness for them or against them before the Throne and judgement seat of Christ that is to say the law of natural right and just exhibited to them through the ministry of Angels that are invisible Thrones Dominions Principalities and powers set up by God for this very end as his ministers for terrour unto evil works and as encouragers and Protectors of them that do well as will presently more fully be evinced The second Rule or law containing the judgements and ordinances of God given unto the fleshly seed or children of the first covenant is the WORD of God coming forth in his first appearance or the law proceeding from Mount Sinai witnessed unto by the Scriptures of truth and Oracles of God that were committed to the Jews first and afterwards to the Gentiles which in all the degrees and steps of its administration answers the true measure and proportion of Christs natural righteousness and perfection as he is and so hath been here described the head and root thereof to Angels and men being that holy commandment that either may be turned aside from leaving them that have been under it to a far worse state then it found them in and rendring their latter end worse then their beginning as 2 Pet. 2. 20. c. or else be kept without spot and blameless through the power of faith by the true Saint or spiritual seed The third law and Rule is the law of the spirit of life in Christ Iesus the WORD of God in his second appearance which comes forth from Mount Sion the heavenly Jerusalem consisting not in meats and drinks and worldly rudiments but in the power of an endless life and an everlasting righteousness written out in fair characters in the death and resurrection of Christ when he ceased from his own works and became the beginning and author of life from the dead as the first-born among the many brethren whose names are written in heaven and upon whom God hath written his new name and the name of the new Ierusalem The perfection and righteousness of which second appearance is brought to light fully by the brightness of Christs comming the second time the first-fruits whereof are already given and set up in the hearts and spirits of the children of promise and of the free-woman being the hidden Manna which they feed on the new name which they can read and the holy anointing whereby they judge all things whilst themselves are judged of no man CHAP. XII Shewing wherein the three Rules and forms of administration in Christs mediatorial Kingdom do differ one from another and maintain an entire jurisdiction within themselves but in due subordination and subserviency still of the lower to the higher over the respective subjects that live under them THE first of these is the law and Rule which is given by God to all nations even to the whole world in their corrupt degenerate and fallen state occasioned by the entrance which sin made by Adam overrunning his whole posterity like a spreading leprosie whereby man that by his creation was made a temple of God became a habitation for Dragons a court for owls or birds of the night a hold for every foul spirit and a cage for every unclean and hateful bird so that although there was a natural being life and motion left unto man it was in the next degree to no being at all if not in some respects far worse Yet how great soever this desolation was and how thick soever the darkness be in this howling and barren wilderness-condition of mankind the blood of Christ is of vertue to make the heart of man again rejoyce and blessom as the Rose and the voice of the Mediator can make it self to be heard in the remotest and darkest corners of the world to the opening of the eyes of the blind and unstopping the ears of the deaf to the making the lame to leap and the dumb to sing to the causing the waters of his manifestation to break forth and stream in this desert in one word to the letting in the sound of the Gospel it-self in the shadowy dark appearances thereof upon the very ends of the world in pursuance of the extent of the reconciliation made through the blood of his Cross by whom all things are reconciled unto God whether they be things in earth or things in heaven so as the very creation it self is made capable to serve unto the ministry of the Gospel the heavens to declare the glory of God the firmament to shew his handy work day unto day to utter speech and night unto night to shew knowledge by means whereof there is no speech nor language where Christs voice is not heard their sound going into all the earth and their words unto the end of the world as Psal 19. 1 2 3 4. compared with Rom. 10. 18. doth evidence Thus the invisible things of God even his eternal power and Godhead shining forth in the face of the Mediator may be seen by the things that are made Rom. 1. and that either inwardly by the influence and operations of the holy Angels maintaining and keeping up the witness of Christ in the manifestation of natural justice
first covenant but becomes the engraffed WORD wherein both the names and ministries of the second and third persons are joyned and knit together in everlasting agreement love and peace through the blood of the Lamb slain so as the Sons ministry by the cessation thereof as singly considered leaves not the Creature for ever orphan or fatherless but in this return of glory visits it again with more abundant joy and consolation never to be taken away more This end Paul makes mention of 1 Cor. 15. 24. whereby the Son delivers up all his kingdom and rule unto the Father as willingly subjecting the exercise of his Ministry in a subserviency and usefulness to the very Image it self that God may be all in all in the communion which is maintained between him and the creature through the operation of the holy Ghost This kind of communion between God and the creature is the last and that which is to continue without change unto which all things under the Ministry of the first covenant must work as to their end and will hasten fast the neerer this end approaches which hath been witnessed unto from the beginning and in its first fruits and dawnings partaken of This is the communion of the holy Ghost 2 Cor. 13. 14. which Paul wishes unto them after the grace they had shared in from Jesus Christ our Lord as the common salvation Jude v. 3. and as the fruit of the love of God the Father which in the new creatures being begins with that of the Sons work and like Jacob treads upon the heels of it and supplants it serving it self of it throughout to bring all things to this end and to that purpose makes the elder brother or the ministry of Gods first appearance serve to the bringing forth of this younger or Ministry of Gods second appearance in the hand of the holy Ghost as the glory which is to follow and be abideding whilst the first as single is to be done away that it may receive its finishing as it stands in agreement and consistency with this latter Which work of the holy Ghost in the person of Christ from the foundation of the world was that which finished all Gods works in the Mediator Heb. 4. 3. or in the Lamb slain who offered up himself as the first-born of every creature and Davids root Rev. 5. becoming thereby Col. 1. the beginning and first-born from the dead head unto the general assembly and Church of the first born whose names are written in heaven and is the same living creature as before which was seen under the God of Israel changed and translated out of the first sort of communion with God upon the terms of the first covenant into this of the holy Ghost losing thereby nothing of the good of that communion he had before but having it fulfilled and far more abundance and exellency added unto it being made to sit down now on the throne with God at his right hand and to possess all power in heaven and earth as brought forth in a glory that is above the firmament over the head of the Sons dispensation Ezek. 1. 25 26. Through this witness of the holy Ghost is given the vision of God in both the former Images and similitudes embracing and reteining each other in mutual harmony and agreement and so enfolding themselves as in one intelligible form and suitable appearance to the new creatures understanding raised up and begotten from the moment of time wherein the holy Ghost in this his Ministry began to work and offer up the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world becoming thereby the author and Rule of this third sort of communion and converse between God and the creature under the new and everlasting Covenant In these openings of light and glory and issuings forth thereof upon the mind and understanding of Christ the Mediator and living WORD or Sanctuary of the living God by the operation of the Trinity is he anointed with the name of God and prepared though a mysterie lying hid in God to perform the office of a Mediator between him and his creatures in both worlds For by the first he is one with God the Mediator and God are one the brightness of Gods glory and power unto which no creature can have the first and immediate access where God seats himself too high in name and similitude to be conversed with by any creature being the glory shadowed out under the law as speaking from above the mercy seat incommunicable to any but the Mediator himself and that as he is God By the second Christ is one also with the natural being of the creature in a changeable and dissoluble band of union the spring and root of all creation time the Author of all natural life being motion and perfection in whose face God beholds all the works of the first world before he proceeds to the creation of them and as they answer the end and finishing by him appointed to them liking and approving of them notwithstanding all the changes from beginning to ending they are subjected unto in that dispensation This is that we mean by Christs being the first-born of every creature in whom the nature of the creature as in its root and head is united unto the Son of God and second person in the Trinity in order to the finishing of that which is to be accomplished upon it by the Holy Ghost Thirdly and lastly Christ is one with God and one with the creature in an indissoluble and unchangeable Band of union mediating such a unity and reconciliation between the two natures of God and the creature as that the height of glory in the name of the Father and the descent of glory in the name of the Son may so peece up as we may say together and become one as to be one new name wherein both meet as in a third and so seat themselves as to be mutually serviceable to the design of this third sort of communion even the communion of the Holy Ghost which some are everlastingly taken into and others everlastingly excluded from in which God is at rest with all the works of his hands having brought upon them that finishing work he before purposed and ordained in righteousness and judgement wherein he dwels converses with the creature after a far better and more excellent manner then in the first building even to his own hearts desire and content as well as to the content and desire of all hearts whether of men or angels that love him find favour in his eyes In this riches and fulness of perfection the WORD is both Lord and Christ from the beginning set down at the right hand of God expecting till his foes be made his foot-stool Psal 110. 1. And hath a government that shall never end being King of righteousness and King of peace Thus in the face of the Mediator doth God behold his works as they are finished to his full liking
sanctification 1 Cor. 1. 30. consisting in a real and actual change of the heart which lieth in our conformity to Christs legal righteousness and is communicable unto men by this covenant in degree and measure so as through this knowledge of Jesus Christ men come to escape the pollutions of the world and to live in a conformity of mind to the holy commandment delivered and exhibited to them in the glory and perfection of Christs flesh or natural man unto which righteous and holy operations man is called by the law and rule of the first covenant wherein when Christ was set up as he was made under the law he was like unto us in all things sin only excepted This sort of holy and righteous operations in men and of holy and righteous principles according to this covenant is at large described Ezek. 18. wherewithal Christ declares that in the day they turn from this their righteousness and commit iniquity they shall die and their righteousness be no more remembred These may be heightned to such measures and degrees of life and light in this first covenant as to know all mysteryes to have faith so as to remove mountaines and to speak with the tongue of men and Angels taste of the heavenly gift and powers of the world to come and yet be as sounding brass and a tinckling Cymbal yea may become the more deeply fixed thereby in irrecoverable enmity against Christ and God which comes to pass by their having received Christ thus in part only and looking no farther then to the perfection through him attainable on this side his grave and resurrection whereas the true spiritual seed and chosen ones of God receive Christ not in part only whereby they have in common with the other all the forementioned benefits but in whole whereby they have over and above that which excels possessing and enjoying the riches of both covenants and all this not conditionally and upon the slippery tenure of the first covenant but absolutely and unchangeably in the second Isa 59. 21. As for me this is my covenant with them saith the Lord My spirit that is upon thee and my words which I have put in thy mouth shall not depart out of thy mouth nor out of the mouth of thy seed nor out of the mouth of thy seeds seed saith the Lord from henceforthand for ever In this new and everlasting covenant Christ is given and received in whole answerable to what himself received from the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost in the womb from whose fulness they receive grace for grace in both those sorts of principles and operations which we have already described in the foregoing chapter according to one of which he is alwaies one with the Father acting in unity of mind with him throughout and according to the other of which he is a righteous man in all his operations after the tenor of the law This then is that which we mean where whole Christ is given to any soul both these sorts of principles and operations through his indwelling spirit and presence are communicated unto it which two perfections are far better then that one that is given single and alone by the first covenant for here when one is ready to fall the other is neer to help him up but woe be to him that is alone Eccles 4. 9. 10. Now Christ by this entire gift of himself begets in and together with that which he communicates single by the first covenant a further capacity in the mind of man to be of one heart and one way with him throughout built up in this unity of the faith of the Son of God so as to make the Saint alwaies do that in a way of true Evangelical obedience which is pleasing unto him as he was alwaies in the daies of his flesh when he was offering up himself in the eternal spirit doing that which was pleasing to the Father When Christ thus bestows himself upon any forming his own reception in them they do obtain thereby the power and dignity to become the sons of God as those that are not born only of blood and of the will of the flesh and of the will of man but of God through which seed of God abiding in them they are made uncapable of sinning wilfully or of so provoking God as that he should swear in his wrath they shall never enter into his Rest being once taken thus into Gods everlasting covenant and made Gods first-born from the dead and co-heirs with Christ higher then the Kings of the earth A seed with whom his covenant shall stand fast and for whom he keeps his mercy for evermore who shall endure for ever and their throne as the daies of heaven who yet if they walk not in Gods law but for sake his judgements if they break his statutes and keep not his commandments as they may do then saith God I will visit their transgressions with the rod and their iniquity with stripes nevertheless my loving kindness will I not utterly take from them nor suffer my faithfullness to fail but will keep them from the great transgression that presumtuous sins get not dominion over them These are described Rev. 14. 3 4 5. as those that were enabled to sing a new song before the Throne which none could learn but those that were thus redeemed from the earth who are not defiled with women but in this unity and simplicity wherein they are espoused to Christ are kept as chaste Virgins to that their one husband and are followers of the Lamb whithersoever he goes as those that are redeemed from among men and made the first fruits unto God and unto the Lamb In whose mouth is found no guile as they are found in this unity with Christ and considered as that one seed Gal. 3. 16. that are without fault before the Throne of God From the consideration of which Scriptures the further benefits that do inseparably accompany Christ as entirely and absolutely given by the new and everlasting convenant are likewise plainly to be taken notice of as the peculiar priviledges of these besides those that they have in common with the others as First that calling which those few chosen ones are called with that shall be saved consisting in this spirit of adoption and son-ship which makes them one spiritual seed with Christ as brought forth into the same unity with him which he is in with his Father whereby they become heirs and are Lords of all perfectly distinguished from the servant or children born after the flesh under the first covenant And that we may the better understand what is meant by this unity of the faith of the Son of God into which all the spiritual seed are begotten we are to take notice of three spiritual unions witnessed unto by the Scriptures First between God and Christ in the WORD that was in the BEGINNING and was with God and was God in which union Christ the Mediator is God Secondly there is
threatens and is ready to introduce upon man in his mutable righteous and holy state And in this way of exercise it will be upheld by Christ during his Reigne on earth the thousand years when with the whole creature it shall be restored from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the sons of God and be made subservient to the interest of the right heirs of salvation whereby Kings shall become nursing Fathers and Rulers Nursing Mothers unto the Church bringing the glory and power of all Nations unto it so as all Nations shall walk in the light of the new Jerusalem before which all the Kings of the earth shall stoop and be made to yeeld homage and subjection as not able to resist the wisdome and power of God there shining forth but from the conviction and demonstration flowing thence shall conforme whether they will or no to the righteous Rule of this Government of Christ who thereby binds their Kings in chaines and their Nobles in fetters of yron causing them to fall downe and yeeld themselves up in submission thereunto or else to be burnt up like thornes in the fire as they shew themselves resisters thereof this being the honour which all the Saints shall have in this manner to prevaile over and subdue all their enemies and opposers Psal 149. From what hath beene said we have had some general insight into the true nature of Magistracy or Rule over men and how righteous an administration it is respecting the outward man as well in the Principles as the Rules of righteousnesse that are enabling thereunto on Gods part whose ordinance and institution it is so that considered such as God requires it to be it is mans Ruling over men in righteousnesse and in the true feare of the Lord. And this Christ in his own person as the Sonne of man is perfectly qualified to do whose right also it is having all power in heaven and in earth put into his hands And his Saints when fitted by him to sit upon the Throne of the same glory with him shall likewise be found prepared to bring forth even Magistracy it self in its right exercise exactly answering the end for which it was set up by God and so shall be acknowledged by all the Nations of the world during the thousand years Reigne of Christ on earth Which pure state of Magistracy in the practice of it answerable to the righteousnesse of its Primitive institution is part of Christs Kingdome which he exerciseth in the world Which therefore we are to eye and be farre from discountenancing or grieving the witnesses thereof who through humane frailty may be at first very raw in the particulars unto which they give witnesse herein when their hearts may be sincere to Christ in longing after his coming to set up even Magistracy it self in the purity of its use and exercise And if it be here demanded whether the Saints of God are to content themselves with having this in their eye only and with the contemplation of it by faith as the thing which Christ will bring about in his due time in despight of all opposition who as the stone cut out of the mountaine without hands Dan. 245. shall become a great mountaine that shall fill the whole earth It is answered Though the Saints should sit down in faith and patience waiting to see this promise accomplished by the immediate power and hand of Christ without entertaining any solicitude in reference to other meanes they should not be disappointed nor fall short of their expectations at the last But secondly there is a duty of the day a generation-work respecting the time and circumstances of action in which the lot of our life is cast which calls upon us to use all lawful and righteous meanes that are afforded by the good hand of God through the inward light and knowledge he vouchsafes and outward providences and helps which he casts in whereby to make way for and to be hasting unto the coming of that day of God wherein the old heavens and earth shall be rolled away as garments yea with the works that are therein be burnt up and the new heavens and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousnesse shall be brought forth in their roome Our part is the same therefore in this as in the practice of other righteous duties appertaining to us the perfection whereof we cannot expect untill the redemption of the body and yet we are to be using all lawful meanes and endeavours to come as near the Primitive patterne and Rule as we can in our whole practice throughout So that when once we have well considered what Rule Christ himself if he were on earth would exercise over men in protecting those that do well and being a terrour to evil works as also in distributing righteousnesse equally and impartially unto all upon the grounds of right and just which everyone in the measure of light they have attained are acquainted with and do acknowledge for the Rule which they are willing to be concluded under as to all their outward concernes we ought in the way of Christ and in the use of all lawful meanes to be as near this in our practice as possibly we may in the Rule over men which we shall be either as principals or accessories in setting up holding our selves obliged in heartinesse and freedome of mind to maintaine In this lesson the Lord Jesus hath given cause to many of these Nations in these late years to be great proficients by the experiences which he hath afforded them step by step for the learning of his will and mind therein who hath not emptied us from vessel to vessel without some teachings thereby what was bad and fit to be left behind nor without some dawnings and intimations of what is good and is yet before us to be prosecuted and followed after Which whoever shall impartially and sincerely weight the cause and interest which the good people of this Nation have all along engaged in as well in reference to their Civil liberties or interests of men as men as to their Christian liberties as Saints cannot but acknowledge nor therefore can yet remove the perswasion throughly out of their minds that God who hath brought on the work thus farre should leave it here when it is come as it were unto the birth and is upon the very anvil to be formed into what may answer the true ends of Magistracy and common good of men unto which if there were yet applications made in a way of righteousnesse and in the fear of the Lord good men and Gods own people might not despaire of being taught by God and enabled through his power to grow up to that wherein like faithful servants unto Christ they might receive encouragement from their Lord at his coming and finding of them so doing with their loynes girt and lamps burning ready to receive him at his second appearance For if once the Lord be pleased so
farre to enlighten the minds of men in these Nations Governours and people as to shew them the good of Magistracy as it is in its Primitive institution and is held forth in promise for to be restored in the last dayes It will then be their desire and delight to enquire and consider in a way of free debate and common consent on behalfe of the good people of these Nations who in all these great trials have stood faithful and unshaken as to the knowne cause they have beene engaged in how the Rule over them may be brought nearest to its first institution and original patterne in the exercise and practice thereof amongst them founded as we have seene upon the principles of natural right and just and so exclusive to all private interest and personal concerne of any singulars that shall be found to stand in competition with or preference to the good of the whole and how that which is the Ordinance and Institution of God may become also the ordinance and statute of man established in a free and natural way of common consent to the reuniting of all good men as one man in a happy union of their spirits prayers and counsels to resist all common danger and opposition which by Devils or Men may be raised against them And in this posture being taught how to escape the defilements and corruptions of the world together with the wrath and vengeance attending the same they may be accounted worthy to stand before the Sonne of man at his appearance and be acknowledged by him as those faithful servants of his Luke 12. 42 c. whom the Lord having made Rulers of all his houshold to give them their portion of meat in due season shall find at his coming to be so doing in distinction from those wicked servants who say in their hearts and by their actions whatever contrary profession may be in their mouths that their Lord delayeth his coming and thereupon apply themselves to beat their fellow-servants and to eate and drink and be drunken upon whom the Lord will come in a day when they look not for him and at an hour when they are not aware and will cut them in sunder and appoint them their portion with hypocrites and unbeleevers where will be weeping and gnashing of teeth CHAP. XXV Treating of the power which shall be given unto the two Witnesses to Prophecie and finish their testimony when the suffering Saints of Christ must expect the visible protection of Magistracy to faile them as exercised in a worldly way WHat these two Witnesses are considered as well in a general acceptation as in the more restrained sense relating to Revel 11. where the power of prophesying to be given to them is mentioned we have already spoken in the thirteenth Chapter unto whom the Scripture sayes power shall be given to prophesie a thousand two hundred and threescore dayes in sackcloth being the two Olive-trees and the two candlesticks standing before the God of the earth whom if any man will hurt fire proceedeth out of their mouths and devoureth their enemies and if any man will hurt them he must in this manner be killed These have power to shut heaven that it raine not in the dayes of their prophecie and have power over waters to turne them to blood and to smite the earth with all plagues as often as they will Rev. 11. 3 4 5 6. comprehending in this power of theirs all that was incident unto Moses and Elias in the dayes of their Ministery to fit them to the work that was by God allotted unto them In the exercise of this power the Saints of God shall be enabled to go forth before the great and notable day of the Lord come even then when to the eye of flesh and blood their state and condition shall be at the lowest and they shall seeme to be surrounded with the power of the world in the fiercest opposition and enmity against them At which time it is said Dan. 12. 1. that MICHAEL shall stand up the GREAT PRINCE which standeth for the children that are the true Israel of God in a troublesome season such as never was since there was a Nation to that time and the Saints shall be delivered even every one that shall be found written in the Book This standing up of Christ seemes to be by the power which he gives to his TWO WITNESSES that in this troublesome season are to prophesie in sackcloth shewing plainly thereby that they are but fore-runners to the coming of Christ himself before the brightnesse of whose appearance all opposition shall be consumed and vanish away Whence it is that during these two Witnesses prophesying in sackcloth their enemies bear up in as much confidence as ever consisting not only of the generation of Hypocrites and Apostates embodying themselves as a holy City and earthly Jerusalem but of all the rest of the Gentiles who notwithstanding the differences betweene themselves do make a shift to peece up together that they may both attaine their ends upon the true spiritual seed and right heirs of salvation essaying to mingle themselves and joyne counsels and forces in a combination against the approaching glory of Christs Kingdome as he shall come to be admired in all those that do beleeve When it shall thus come to passe that this yron and clay shall mixe together it shall be but for a season for at length the corrupt world finding its owne strength will besiege this Jerusalem spiritually called Sodome and burne this whore in the fire of their rage and hatred against her Then shall the visible worship and formes of Christian Religion that are in being and practice amongst any people in their fleshly reformation come to be destroyed taken away swallowed up into impurity and corruption and mens hearts will be greatly failing them for feare by reason of what God is bringing upon the earth And at this very season when all outward protection visible defence and power through the treachery of Hypocrites and Apostates shall be withdrawne from the suffering Saints of God and in a just recompence of Divine vengeance the siege of the earthly Jerusalem shall draw nigh upon those that have made themselves accessory to the betraying of the spiritual seed as it did on the literal Jerusalem upon the betraying and crucifying of Christ then shall the TWO WITNESSES receive their Commission and stand up in a destitute naked and poor condition as to worldly assistance but armed with the mighty power of God and the fiery indignation that shall accompany their witnesse against their adversaries whereof Elias in his dayes was the figure who for the same number of dayes prophesied and said there should be no raine and afterwards brought raine againe by his prayer and fire also from heaven yet a man of like passions and affections with us which also these two Witnesses shall be found to be in the dayes of their prophecie as a proof whereof their dead
preserving of them during the thousand years in this their spotlesse sinlesse nature not suffering the Devil to annoy them or deceive the Nations till the thousand years be fulfilled executing upon the rebellious and disobedient his fiery vengeance and indignation to the cutting them off from the Land of the living as Ananias and Sapphira were dealt with making good that Word of the Lord Act 3. 23. And it shall come to passe that every soul which will not hear that Prophet in these his dayes he shall be destroyed from among the people For all those that shall then discover that they love not the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity shall be Anathema Maranatha or accursed by this coming and from this presence of the Lord. And therefore we are to know that the natural generation of men which shall be in those dayes how pure and spotlesse soever their fleshly nature be yet being but mutable will have either a good or an evil change passe upon them The good we have already spoken to and of the evil we shall say but little here since we have so at large treated of it also as it is the serpentine seed growing up in and under that which is good to the fixing and hardning of men at last in an implacable rage and enmity against Christ in his heavenly and second appearance For this hardning when it is perfected proves an unchangable enmity and brings on the spiritual or SECOND DEATH wrought out in the natural mind which is not subject to the Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus nor ever can be no place being now left for repentance These vessels of wrath will then be raised to everlasting contempt and will have the perfect exercise of their natural sences in spirit soul and body fitted and prepared for the taking in of the full vials thereof that shall be poured out upon them for ever from the presence of the Lord Yea for this purpose they are also heightned to a partaking with the wicked Angels in the raisednesse of their Angelical beings so as to become of equal capacity with the evil Angels through the power of the resurrection from the dead that raises them up into everlasting contempt and gives them their portion with the Devil and his Angels unto whom they serve as a Temple and habitation in like manner as the Saints in their glorified body are the Tabernacle of God And in this Idols Temple the Devil shall be so able to transforme himself into an Angel of light by the experience he will have gained during the thousand years and so to transform his Ministers also as the Ministers of righteousnesse and Apostles of Christ that he shall have the confidence at the end of the thousand years when he shall again be let loose to embody his party of wicked Angels and men from all quarters and come up in this seeming glorious posture to vie it out at last with the New Jerusalem the City of the living God in this its earthly state gathering Gog and Magog to battel the number of whom is as the sand of the Sea who hoping to carry all before them shall come up on the breadth of the earth and compasse the camp of the Saints about the Beloved City desiring and endeavouring to swallow up that Assembly of true Saints on earth who have not had as yet their finall change brought upon them but are waiting for it universally to be accomplished at the end of the thousand years At which period of time the Devil being let loose and putting forth his last and utmost power doth play his game by transforming his party into the likenesse of the glorified body of Christ and his Saints gathering into one counterfeit spiritual body all his children and servants whose coming then shall be with such power and signes and lying wonders as were never put forth by him before Then Christ in a moment shall finally perfect his glorious change upon all the Elect and carry them all up with him to the mansions provided for them in his Fathers house from whence he sends down fire to devour all their adversaries and the whole visible frame of the creation casting the Devil into the Lake of fire where the BEAST and FALSE PROPHET are and shall be tormented for ever day and night by vertue of the just judgement of God which then shall be revealed against the wicked when the last JUDGEMENT shall be set and there shall appeare a great white Throne and one sitting upon it from whose face the heaven and the earth shall flee away so that there shall be no more place found for them even for that heaven and earth wherein there had beene made a full restitution of all things in those times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord during the reigne of the thousand years Then the great and last universal day of judgement shall be brought forth when the dead small and great shall be made to stand up before God and then the books will be opened and another book will be opened which is the book of life and the dead shall be judged out of those things that are written in the books And the sea shall give up the dead that are in it and death and hell shall deliver up the dead that are in them and they shall be judged every man according to their works To be more particular in describing the state of things as to the change which does respect the whole creature during this thousand years will be needlesse considering that the general expressions are so clear and full that it shall be a glorious pure incorrupt state unto the whole creation which shall then keep a holy Sabbath and Rest unto the Lord a seventh part of the time of the worlds continuance in which there shall be no sowing of the field nor pruning of the vineyard nor exacting any labour from the creature but what in voluntary service it shall performe by way of homage and worship unto Christ for the use of his Saints during the thousand years who are yet in their corruptible natural body expecting their great change Even so come Lord Jesus Come quickly FINIS
are the heavenly spiritual seed and from above measured out with a line of life as adopted children and friends of God the latter are the earthly or fleshly seed and from beneath measured out with a line of death as chusing the state of a servant or to remain single and alone in their natural principles enemies to the cross of Christ and resisters of the grace whereby the other are saved which saving grace we shall find 2 Tim. 1. 9. was conferred freely on the Elect without condition according to Gods purpose and given them in Christ Jesus before the world began So Ephes 1. 3 4. They were blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly in Christ according as they were chosen in him before the foundation of the world to be holy and without blame before him in love Thus we see in what sense the particular beings of men and Angels are the off-spring and seed of Christ children of the first or second covenant frequently so called in Scripture although none but those that are called according to his purpose to be heirs of God and joynt-heirs with Christ of the Fathers glory ministred to them in and by the new and everlasting Covenant do truly deserve the name of Sons or Children who have a name better then that of Sons and Daughters by the other Covenant From this general consideration therefore of Men and Angels as all are the seed and off-spring of Christ we must come to several distributions of them For First Here we have the general Assembly and Church of the first-born which are written in heaven the inhabitants of the true Mount Sion and City of the living God Secondly we have the innumerable company of Angels Heb. 12. 22 23. who are made ministring Spirits to these heirs of salvation Heb. 1. 14. Thirdly we have the Legions of wicked Angels that made themselves such by their fall and disobedience reserved in chains of darkness to the judgement of the great day Fourthly we have the whole race of mankind in one lump or mass as considered in their natural life and being bearing the image and similitude of God according to his first appearance wherein all are brought forth in the beginning as a state for them not to abide in but from whence to be passing into an endless and immortal state of honour or dishonour All these by name are created and have their invisible immortal substances brought forth by the WORD as his off-spring made to stand up together in and with the man Jesus Christ as their head and are committed to the charge of the Mediator to assign unto them all circumstances for their being brought forth into their visible bodily appearances in this world together with the means and method of bringing them upon the stage of this first creation and the lot there wherein they are to stand and serve in their several places uses and relations according as he hath received command from the Father So that from the time that the man Christ Jesus began to be in the WORD as in his head and root standing up in the sight and presence thereof as the promised seed to come we are to date the beginning of dayes unto the invisible substances of Angels and Men who then also began to be in their head and were ever beholding or rather beheld by their Father in heaven untill they were made actually to exist in continuance of time in their own proper persons and beings CHAP. IV. Concerning the Creation Nature and Ministry of Angels IT is said Gen. 1. 1. In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth In what sense Christ is the beginning hath been already opened and how as the Messiah he is the Minister of Gods first appearance in which he is head unto the Angels the Lord amongst them in Sinai by whose voice the Law or first covenant was given where he was compassed about with these his fiery Chariots who receive what is spoken by Christ of the mind and will of God to speak it forth again as the Word they are to publish unto men in the Ministry of the first covenant Heb. 2. 2. In this sense it is said Acts 7. 53. that the Law was given by the disposition of Angels They therefore do obtain the first order and rank of all natural beings in the first creation and are endued with an instrumentalness of being and motion to this use and service of their Head as also to be the subordinate means of all converse which by Christ is maintained between God and the first world unto whom it is put in subjection as Heb. 2. 5. compared with Psal 8. 5. do evidence These in their creation are described by the light which God made on the first day Gen. 1. 34. when he said let there be light and there was light and God saw the light that it was good approving this first work of his hands in the beginning of that day and God by his dividing the light from the darkness signified the heavenliness of their frame and constitution as they stand exalted and separate in their beings from all sensual life in the form of invisible spirits whereof the material heavens in their creation are the first shadow which are called Prov. 8. 26. the highest part of the dust of the world as David also giving account of both their creations together Psal 104. ver 2 3 4. saith who coverest thy self with light as with a garment who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters who maketh the clouds his chariots who walketh upon the wings of the wind who maketh his Angels spirits and his Ministers a flaming fire in which posture and preparation the Psalmist describes the WORD as he proceeds to the rest of the creation ver 5 6. c. intimating that as man in his bodily state was made dust of the ground so the Angels were made a flame of fire in their natural constitution In this their natural frame they excell in strength and power Psal 103. to execute the commands of their head and in their motion and actings are exceeding high and dreadful comparatively with all other parts of the Creation and therefore these Morning-Stars considered as they are together in one society and corporation amongst whom there is a chief and prince called Lucifer the first son of the morning are the image and glory of Christ as he is the first-born of every creature in like service use and relation as the woman is to the man whose image and glory she is A view of these angelical spirits in their nature ministry and use is lively set forth and represented in the vision Ezekiel had Chap. 1. compared with Chap. 10. as the body unto Christ who is there described by the living creature which the Prophet saw under the God of Israel which living creature is said to have the likeness of a man and is also called
four living creatures from its four faces signifying Christ himself thereby as his life is in the WORD and as in that life he comprehends the very form of the son of man and is the root to the whole first creation unto which through the Ministry of Gods first appearance he gives life being motion in the exercise of this his creating power he is the head of Angels and they are the body to him that he makes use of in his service Ezek. 10. 11. Whose voice they hearken unto as ready to execute all his commands and pleasure in this his first dominion The spirituality of motion in the head and body is such that they are said to run and return like a flash of lightning and to the place whither the head is to go they go and turn not and their likeness or appearance was like burning coals of fire and the workmanship of this body was like a wheel within a wheel four wheels Chap. 10. 9. that were but one wheel ver 13. Chap. 1. 15. answerable to the four living creatures that were but one living creature and the rings of the wheels were so high that they were dreadful and were full of eyes in which wheels was the spirit or WORD of life riding as in his Chariot Psal 68. These chariots of the Lord are twenty thousand even thousands of Angels the Lord is among them as in Sinai in the holy place In a like representation they were beheld by Elishaes servant 2 Kings 6. 17. when he saw the mountain full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha as the invisible guard and protection which were with them to defend them from the Syrians By what hath been said we have a little view into the nature and use of Angels in the hand of Christ from the beginning of these sons of the morning that shouted for joy at the beholding of Christ when he was revealed to them to be the corner-stone of stability and fixedness even to the very first creation In general then we may perceive that the office and use of Angels is to be ministring spirits principally sent forth to Minister unto them that shall be heirs of salvation in which ministry they are perfected by being made immutable and brought into the best and highest rank of servants transformed into a likeness in life and principles with that which is found in the glorified natural man of the Saint whose service and subjection is made perfect in love as the tongue that readily confesses and the knee that willingly bows to the glory of the Father in the Sons new name in which glory the Saints are co-heirs and so obtain by inheritance a more excellent name then the Angels Heb. 1. 4. who therefore confess that they are not the Son nor the true Bridegroom or Bride but servants and friends to the marriage union esteeming it a posture becoming them to hide their faces before the unveiled glory of the Son to stand still in silence and to let down their wings Ezek. 1. 24. that the glory of the Son sitting on the Throne may shine forth from the firmament that is above over their heads and the heavenly voice of his second appearance may be heard obeyed accounting it their blessedness to be neer the Bridegroom and to be servants and friends to the marriage of the Lamb as a guard of fire round about the Throne on which the Lamb and his Bride sits swift executioners of vengeance 2 Thess 1. 7 8. upon all those which shall endeavour to put those asunder whom God hath thus joyned together These are described Rev. 4. 8. to be they that rest not day and night saying Holy holy holy Lord God almighty which was and is and is to come giving glory and honour and thanks to him that sitteth on the Throne and lives for ever and ever As thus they are this heavenly building they are the first heavens the Tabernacle and clouds of heaven or the air for the day-break and glorious sun of Gods first appearance to run his race and finish his course in whereby to enlighten the ends of the earth and all things under heaven These sons of this morning are the first light-bearers to the Inhabitants of the first world therein are covering Cherubs unto the Son in his own proper glory that they may be enabled to bear light or the similitude of Christ in his first appearance unto others they are first the receivers of that light in themselves in a spirituality of being and form fitted and suited thereunto which accommodates them with the exercise of senses meerly spiritual and inward exceeding high intuitive and comprehensive a manner of life shadowing out the divine life in the name of the Father whose voice is net heard at any time nor shape seen but is like a consuming fire to burn up and slay whatever natural Organ is coversant about it or stands before the beams and raies of its most pure and invisible glory In a shadowy imitation of this the angelical spirits when they come forth in the nakedness of their own invisible substance and glory of their own being they are flames of fire consuming and dissolving all objects of outward sense to the very disinabling as to the exercise of all such life of sense any living creatures whose life consists therein whereof the whole fabrick of this visible world in all the parts of it which is reserved to be destroyed by the flames of this fire will be a most undeniable demonstration and death it self is a daily witness hereof in every man who no sooner is deprived of the exercise of his bodily life and departs this world but is brought into a state of life wherein he is an equal and associate to Angels good or bad for in the world to come they neither marry nor are given in marriage saith our Saviour but are equal with the Angels And as thus Christ by the angelieal ministry doth gather in mans breath and leave his body to the dust whilst they return with his spirit to God that gave it in which service they are employed by Christ at mans dissolution Luke 16. 22. so also they have service to perform in their place under Christ in bringing in and continuing the exercise of all bodily life throughout the whole fabrick of the first creation yea even in man himself the abridgement thereof in which operation of theirs they seem not unfitly to be compared to the influence and generating power of the Sun that is it self but a creature and yet effectually co-operates to the production and conservation of bodily life in pursuance of those orders and laws of second causes established by God himself respecting his creation and continuance of the first world The Angels then in their receivings of light and life from Christ have for object the brightness of Gods first appearance shining forth through him as the root of all natural perfection and so
are hearers and receivers of this voice of Gods WORD in the best and highest capacity of any particular natural beings whatsoever And as their natural capacities are high and vast in their receivings from Christ so their readiness and exactness in conforming themselves to the will of Christ is unimaginable and their power to execute is most strong and mighty nothing under Christ being able to resist them or stand out against them in their ministry that is according to the will of Christ And as thus considered they are those that in the hand of Christ are made use of to bear the light or image of Gods first appearance unto all the inhabitants of the first creation so as not only man himself is made lower then they but with the whole world is put into subjection to them and their ministry as we have before expressed Thus in the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth he first set up the heavenly fabrick of the angelical nature and in that as in a subordinate head under Christ comprehended the whole earth and visible world as a mass without form and void through the darkness which was as yet upon the face of this great deep as it stood in the waters untill by the brooding of the spirit of life in the Word upon them making his Angels chariots and flying upon those wings of the wind he caused the earth to stand out of the waters and become a glorious visible fabrick adorned and beautified by the remaning works and products of the six daies as is at large described in the first of Genesis CHAP. V. Concerning the Creation of Man on the sixth Day WEE have already treated of the excellency and raisedness of being given unto Angels who in their invisibility shadow forth the glory of the Father And we have considered them as represented under the light of the first day as it stood divided from the darkness like a glorious heaven which light God called day in comparison of that darkness which he called night This darkness or night seems by the coherence of the verses fitly to represent the Earth considered as that Chaos or confused lump without form and void from whence God produced the bodily and visible frame of the first world with all the hoasts and generations thereof precedent unto and ushering in the creation of man after he had set up the Angels in a separatedness of being from it which visible frame of things so produced was to serve as an outward book of the creatures to make intelligible unto man the invisible things of God even his eternal power and Godhead through such earthly characters as so many kinds of voices in the world none of which wanted their signification or proper use for the service of man in his dutiful serving of God shadowing out the witness of the second in the Trinity which is the image of God in a visible administration to the sense and discerning of the natural being of the creature Forasmuch then as by the progress made by God as yet in the creation whilst the intellectual life of Angels and sensual life of other parts of the creation were brought forth and continued in so vast a distance and separation as heaven and earth so that the harmony and consistency of both seemed yet to be wanting God in his infinite wisdom to shadow and type out the finishing and compleating work which the operation of the Holy Ghost gives to the witness of the Father and of the Son was pleased on the sixth day to create man and in his constitution and building to provide a joynt consistency of both these excellencies and perfections together for man in his rational soul was made an associate to Angels and in his bodily or animal life equal to beasts that perish and in the joynt harmonious exercise of both these in one was that in a total sum which the other two were in a separate and divided condition Hence it is that man by his creation is so made in the image of God as to answer and represent the operations of the Trinity who put forth as it were a holy and divine combination in their workmanship to draw the earthly shadow of their perfections upon man in his creation who is made by them to consist of spirit soul and body 1 Thess 5. 25. But man considered as thus bearing the image of God is made simply to be receiving those properties and operations that are essential to him as a man and therefore is in another sense created in Gods image when he is made naturally righteous and holy in all the operations of this his being This we are taught by the Scripture Gen. 1. 26. 27. compared with Gen. 2. 7. if carefully minded by us where we may find man created in Gods image in a twofold respect First in the essential properties and operations that are incident and appertaining to him as he is a man consisting in the life of spirit soul and body wherein he is made to bear the similitude and resemblance of God in the divine essential properties and operations so as in a creature-being to be the earthly figure and similitude of the Trinity who therefore said Let us make man in our image and let him have dominion and soveraignty over the creatures bearing our likeness in his very make and constitution retaining this shadow of us as that which he can never quite lose without ceasing to be a man And for this reason it is that God saies Gen. 9. 5. 6. he will require the blood of mans life at the hands of every beast and at the hand of every mans brother for in the image of God made he man which if it should only refer to that image of God which man bears as he continues holy and righteous it would expose men in their corrupt state to the same fear which Cain that whosoever found them might kill them and be unaccountable Secondly man by the same act of Gods workman-ship is the image of God as he bears the similitude of Gods righteousness and holiness shining forth in Christs first appearance rendering him meet for communion with God in which consisted the puritie and perfection of the first Adam who was the figure and type of Christ himself according to the flesh the promised seed that was to come and to be made like unto us in all things sin only excepted and as such he was the shadowy Temple and first Sanctuary wherein divine worship and service was to be performed according to the tenor of the first covenant This was effected when God breathed into him the breath of life and made him to become a living soul as appears Gen. 2. 7. compared with 1 Cor. 15. 45 48 49. The image of God in this latter sense set up in man may as experience shews suffer change in a twofold respect either as that which as it ought will wax old vanish away prove as the morning dew
having put all its Inhabitants in this sense in subjection unto the government of the Elect Angels to be a terrour unto evil works and a protection and refuge to them that do well who therefore Eccles 5. 8. are described to be those that are higher then the highest ministers of justice in this world or then the supreme powers here below and yet saith the text there be higher then they which are Christ the WORD of God and the blessed Trinty In reference to the Angels therefore in this their office and administration of justice under Christ it is said Deut 32. 7 8. The most high divided unto the nations their inheritance from the daies of old or the beginning of the world when he separated the sons of Adam according to the number of the Angels as the Septuagint renders it or under their rule and government as he separated the day from the night in this visible world by two great lights that he set up in the material heavens the greater to rule the day and the lesser to rule the night Gen. 1. 14. 16. typifying this office and ministry of Angels as to the government of the sons of Adam all the nations whereof in their earthly state God made of one blood to dwell on all the face of the earth but thought fit upon the fall and sin of the first Adam to set the bounds of their habitation according to the number of the Angels or measure of their natural perfection as subjected made subservient to Christ their head being in this respect the shadowy image of Christs first appearance in which they are able to proportion suitable manifestations of Christ to the natural discerning of men in what state or condition soever they are found whether such as are without law or such as are under the law The first of these know no higher rule at present then this shadowy image of Christs natural perfection reflected and beamed forth upon them from the face of angelical glory where the sound of the Scriptures hath not yet been heard who therefore as heathens are said comparatively to abide in darkness as under the rule of the lesser light typifyed by the moon the ruler of the night these are the uncircumcision in the flesh living remote from and as it were without Christ and God in the world as aliens from the Commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the Covenants of promise yet in a capacity to seek the Lord if haply they may feel after him and finde him though he be not far from every one of them being that light that enlightens every one that comes into the world The second sort of men are those sons of Adam that are higher enlightened by being brought beyond this first shadowy image of Christ unto the Ministry of the Law and placed under the dominion thereof becoming actually thereby of the seed of Abraham according to the flesh being made partakers of the first Covenant renewed in the blood of Christ and so called the circumcision in the flesh and in that sense Israelites children of the first Covenant to whom pertains the Adoption and the glory and the Covenants who are called Jews children of God or visible Saints resting in the Law or taking up their station in Christs first appearance or natural perfection making their boast of God as knowing his will and approving the things that are more excellent being instructed out of the Law whether considered as ministred by Moses or by the flesh of Christ who therein is the head-perfection of it who are confident that they themselves are guides unto the blind lights unto them that sit in darkness instructers of the foolish teachers of babes which have the form of the knowledge and truth of the Law or first ministry of Christ whose praise is of men Rom. 2. 29. who in one word are made the children and off-spring of Christ according to what he is as head and root unto the perfection of the natural Creation single yea even unto himself according to the flesh considered as a meer man or in the fashion and likeness of the first Adam in his sinless and incorrupt nature Both these sorts of men being still but the sons of the first Adam or of an earthly descent and birth fall properly under the Ministry of Angels in the hand of Christ whom he hath appointed in a twofold dispensation serving in the one to veil and in the other to unveil him in his first appearance as he is KING OF RIGHTEOUSNESSE being in the witness they give herein as two great lights in the firmament of the spirits of men the greater to rule the day and the lesser to rule the night In this latter they are as the Moon to rule the Kingdom of darkness whereinto all mankinde in their fallen corrupt state are plunged renewing and setting up something of that light in the natural spirit of man with which every man is enlightned that comes into the world however degenerate his condition be in all other respects in the other they discover the Sun that is to rule the day of mans further enlightned judgement when he is separated from amidst all the corrupt world and is clothed with a visibility of Saintship profession wherein he hath the praise of men that measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves amongst themselves without having the true Spiritual light of Christs second appearance to help their discerning therein 2 Cor. 10. 12. and so are not wise but are such children Deut. 32. 20. in whom is no faith who notwithstanding all the commendation they assume unto themselves are not they whom God commends This generation of men are Israel according to the flesh whether under the Law or under the Gospel which are not to pass away till the sufferings of the whole spiritual seed be fulfilled but shall be found in that great city Jerusalem mentioned Rev. 11. 8. which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt where also our Lord was crucified and amongst whom the dead bodies of his witnesses must lie unburied three days and an half ver 9. Thus the most High divided to the Nations their inheritance when he separated the sons of Adam not only into their several countries and local habitations but into the day and night of his administrations of Rule over them and communications of light life and power to them after their Fall when he set the bounds of the people according to the number of angels made by him ministers of his Kingdom of natural righteousness as hath been declared The third sort of people in that distribution of the Sons of Adam are the true Jacob or Spiritual Seed that are of the Faith of Abraham whether Jews or Gentiles and right Heirs of God according to the promise that are not only Sons of Righteousness as the former in the perfection of the natural man but SONS OF PEACE where of twain springs up one new man through the blood of the
and righteousness by way of counter-ballance to the works of the devil and his kingdom of darkness in the world or outwardly by the books of the creature and daily discoveries of Gods providences that are teaching and instructing to the lowest and meanest natural discernings of men And to enable them to the receiving hereof they have a further taste of the bounty of Christ the Redeemer who doth freely renew and continue their life breath and all things unto them upon a new tenure even by the ransom procured for them in his blood by vertue of which none of them do fail of partaking in a common enlightning from him when they receive their beings in this world and have the lamp or caâ—â—le of the Lord set up in them to be as a witness for or against every man according to his works being a light which searcheth the inward parts of the belly Prov. 20. 27. Over the nations then and people of the world thus considered we say Christ doth dispense his Rule and government and gives unto them judgements and ordinances according to which they are to walk Ezek. 5. and in the doing or not doing of them their consciences are accusing or excusing of them and Christ in this his government shews himself by his ministers to whom he hath committed the mannaging thereof either in wrath and terrour against all evil works or an Encourager and Protectour of all them that do well The prime Minister of God on this behalf is Christ The hands in which this government is betrusted by Christ are the invisible Thrones Dominions Principalities and powers of the holy Angels as we have already declared and shall yet further enlarge made by Christ and for Christ the chief Lords and Rulers of the first world and all the inhabitants thereof Regard seems to be had to this administration of government Iob 2. 1 2. where the sons of God or these holy Angels in their administration of this kind of government presented themselves before this Lord Christ and Sathan came also among them having been his circuits walking to and fro in the earth and up and down in it unto whom the Lord propounds the case of Iob as of a perfect and upright man so as there was none like him in all the earth and who accordingly had found Christ owning encouraging and protecting of him as the devil himself alledged Chap. 1. at the same kind of meeting between God and the Angels then held also for saith Sathan to God hast thou not made a hedge about him and about his house and about all that he hath on every side thou hast blessed the works of his hands and his substance is encreased in the land intimating hereby the reward that is administred as to the kind of it by the holy Angels under Christ to the very heathens themselves and the punishment of wrath to consist in the contrary dispensations of God hereunto when he declares himself outwardly a terrour to wicked works and puts forth his hand therein for which purpose these excellent spirits are invested with power might and dominion over all the works of Gods hands in the first world to execute Christs commands as the Hosts and Ministers that do his pleasure in all places of his dominion and are alwaies attending and hearkning unto the voice of this WORD speaking to them as he is the root and head of all natural good and perfection Under these invisible Thrones and higher powers there are visible ones also set up and are Christs ordinance and institution in an inferiour and subordinate ministration of this government of Christ over men which are called the higher powers of the world whether contracted in one universal Monarch as in the time of Nebuchadnezar Dan. 2. or dispersed into many several and distinct forms of Magistracy in the world according as the most high is pleased to set them up pull them down or change them in reference to the present work which he hath to do in the world and to the state and condition of his own people in it either for their bringing into bondage and captivity under the worldly powers or for the leading them out of the same into the glorious liberty by him designed unto them in the last of daies whereof Nebuchadnezars image was a notification once for all and was so interpreted by Daniel himself when he said to Nebuchadnezar the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom power and strength and glory and wheresoever the children of men dwell the beasts of the field and fowls of the heaven he hath given it into thy hand and made thee ruler over them who therefore art this head of Gold Which government in the succession of it shall be dispersed decline and corrupt until it quite break asunder and split in pieces before the everlasting kingdom which is intended by God to be set up in the room thereof Which compared with Cap. 4. 17. makes it yet more evident that this visible government in the hands of the higher powers of the world is superintended over-ruled and influenced throughout by the decree of the watchers and the demand by the word of the holy ones or Angels to the intent that the living may know that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men and giveth it to whomsoever he will and setteth up over it the basest of men evidently declaring that promotion cometh not from the East or West or South but Christ who bears up the pillars of the earth when else through sin and the fall the earth and the inhabitants thereof had been dissolved he is the judge he puts down one and sets up another Pal. 75. 6 7. And if then in the inferiour visible administration of this government over men in the hands of men the Rule is given and declared whereunto the governed are to be subject not only for wrath but conscience sake Rom. 13. how much straightlier is every soul obliged to the same Rule as it is administred in the hands of the invisible Thrones at the judgement seat of Angels who next under Christ the supream Minister of God are exercising their Ministry in a way of wrath and terrour against all evil workers and in a way of encouragement and protection unto all those that do well and walk uprightly in the earth Thus according to the orders and decrees of these watchers and holy ones whether declared by their inward ministry in the spirits and consciences of the men of the world or outwardly by the wholsome laws and ordinances of man as the product and fruit of the light by them dispensed or by the visible providences of God is the first administration of Christs kingdom managed and upheld throughout the whole earth and over all the world even the nations that are yet aliens from the Commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise And because it is very cleer from Scripture that the holy ones or Elect Angels are intrusted
applied unto Christ himself to signifie that they are planted with him into the same likeness in Gods twofold name figured out thereby and so have that twofold name and witness wrought out in them which distinguishes them as well from the children of the first Covenant who bear conformity but with one of the Olive branches as singly communicable without the other as also from all that are called Gentiles whose very light is but as darkness to the shining forth of the single witness only in the children of the first Covenant Thus we are to understand by the two OLIVE TREES and the two CANDLESTICKS mentioned Rev. 11. 14. the whole Spiritual Seed considered in their exact conformity to their Head as well in his second as in his first appearance who are the two witnesses that from the very beginning of the world successively in their several generations have been the slain ones of the Lord the slaughtered sheep of Christ for the word of God and testimony of Jesus Yet we are not to rest and content our selves only with this general sense of the place which is true and doth give the proper character of the true Saint possessing and inheriting whole Christ and bearing upon him his whole name or his new name wherein of twain they are made one inseparably communicated as the twofold witness wherein the true heirs of salvation must be found to the glory of God the Father But we may farther take notice of a more restrained and particular consideration of these two witnesses which will be but a small digression from the matter in hand as they are spoken of in that place Rev. 11. where they are also to be looked upon as a particular number of the true Seed living and standing up in the world in that age and season foretold by John and qualified with an extraordinary Spirit of prophesie in reference to the justifying before the eyes of the world the truth of this twofold witness being clothed with power suitable in a way of working wonderful things during the time of such their prophesie whereof Elijah was the type in his days who by praying to God shut up the heavens for three years and an half that it did not rain the like is prophesied to be done by these witnesses ver 6. and brought down fire from heaven to prove that he was a MAN OF GOD and that his God was the true God yet after all this was forced to flie for his life to get from under the cruelty and oppression of his enemies and was at last taken up visibly into heaven in a chariot of fire Elisha beholding and looking upon him In which Spirit of Elijah some of the true Spiritual Seed are reserved by God to be brought forth in the last days and to give a most spiritual and remarkable witness unto the truth of Christs first and second appearance in his Saints before the great and terrible day of the Lord come In which dispensation they shall serve as the immediate forerunners to the brightness of Christs second appearance for the restoring of all things preparatively by this their Ministry of fire as John Baptist served unto the coming of Christ in the flesh by his Ministry of water and in that sense was owned by Christ to be as Elijah already come to wit in the shadow or figure of this Elijah that is to precede his second coming By what then hath been said we may perceive who are meant by the Spiritual Seed and how they are described in the Scripture as the two witnesses of God first in a more general acceptation as in all Ages they are to have their heel bruised and to be slain for the word of God and then in a more particular and restrained sense as some of them are to come forth in the latter days in the Spirit and power of Elijah to prepare for Christs second coming and then to have their dead bodies for three days and an half remain unburied in the great City spiritually called Sodom and Egypt which city as the mother of Harlots hath been extant in its spirit and principles from the beginning as well as the prophane heathenish world with the powers thereof embodied together upon differing grounds and interests by the Spirit of the old Dragon and influenced by him as suitable instruments of War and Engines of battery for the bruising of the heel of the true Spiritual Seed and keeping them under in all generations as spectacles to men and angels who are weak despised thirst hunger are naked and buffeted have no certain dwelling place but labour working with their hands who being reviled bless and being persecuted suffer and being defamed entreat are made as the filth of the world and off-scouring of all things to this very day To this War between the Seed of the woman and the seed of the Serpent all things tended and wrought from the very moment that Christ did accomplish and finish the seventh days work discovering thereby Gods true REST as it was set up in his own Person as the Mediator and Lamb slain from the foundation of the world when he offered up that in sacrifice according to the will of the Father wherein he rejected and cast under his feet the purest choicest excellency and perfection of all natural beings as they stood single in themselves unperfected by the union and subjection they were to be taken into by his second appearance necessarily conducing to the breaking of the serpents head and top glory in his Angelical nature and to the trampling it under the feeet of the Saints In like manner the Devil that old Dragon perceiving that to be done in Christ the Mediator which he could by no means rellish or bear that which was totally cross and destructive to him as fixed in that selfish spirit or single state of natural perfection wherein he lusted to Rule and Reign as god in the world and propounding the greatness of a Kingdom and glory to himself in which to enjoy his own will think his own thoughts do his own works and speak his own words which were not lawfull for him in the Sabbath of the true Rest to the Lord he wilfully and maliciously quitted his head Christ left his own habitation choosing rather to become the Father of lyes then to remain the son and servant of truth and so finished and compleated that root of enmity against Christ and the Spiritual Seed in himself whose off-spring they are that have this root of gall and bitterness springing up in them notwithstanding the life and perfection of their natural beings wherein either they were at first created or unto which in the principles thereof they are again renewed in the blood of Christ by which they strike in with the devils interest in downright opposition to Christ taking part with that King Apollyon Rev. 9. 11. to destroy him what in them lies as himself plainly tels this sort of men Joh. 8. 37. acknowledging
therefore not to infer from what hath been said as some ignorantly or maliciously do that in asserting those under the two former dispensations to be capable of miscarrying as not therein arrived at that which is their true safety and blessedness we destroy the faith of many dear Saints and professors of Christ who have dyed or yet may die without ever acknowledging or experiencing a higher or other state of acceptation with God For upon this ground Christ should never have come in the flesh or have promised to come the second time without sin unto salvation because many a true Saint may have died and never seen nor acknowledged him in either of these his comings But indeed this assertion is so far from straitning or lessening the number of those that are the true heirs of salvation that it rather discovers how they may lie hid as they did in Elijahs time out of the observation of visible professors amongst those that they exclude as heathens and may be comprehended by Christ their spiritual head when as yet they may not have their spiritual senses brought forth into exercise so as to apprehend him but may be babes in Christ walking as men 1 Cor. 3. 1 3. undistinguished from the rest of the world And although they may in that respect seem to be men in the flesh yet they may live according to God in the spirit and find acceptance in the beloved one whilst they themselves may either be without law exercising a chaste natural conscience or may be under the law believers so Zealous of the law as to flie in the face of Paul himself for witnessing a higher light then they have yet experience of or can bear Which being premised we shall now proceed to shew what is the third and last sort of Rule and operation of Christ that is set up in the hearts and consciences of men by vertue of the new creation and everlasting covenant described Ephes 2. 10. to be that workmanship whereby we are created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them distinguished as well from the good works of the law as the good works of nature before spoken to consisting in the operation and exercise of that faith through which we are preserved from falling away taken off from those operations wherein self is kept alive and weighs down the ballance and carried on to the saving of the soul For the nature of this faith is to give subsistence and reception in the heart unto Christ in his second appearance considered as in the seed thereof springing up more and more unto a perfect day which consisting in the very image it self and substantial brightness of Gods glory as it subjects and subdues the first earthly and shadowy image wherein man was created unto a perfect subserviency to and harmony with it self makes of twain one new man or Temple of God in heaven where also is seen the Ark of his Test ament and forms the heart into a subjection unto Christ not only as he is the KING OF RIGHTEOUSNES but as he is KING OF PEACE also qualifying the soul not only to minister in the charge of the Levits in the holy place but to draw neer unto God and enter with the high Priest into the holiest of all as having the exercise of all the natural powers and faculties of the mind in their own proper righteousness and holiness but retained in a broken bruised crucified state perfectly subjected to the spiritual sences and operations brought into exercise through faith to the perfecting and fulfilling of the other and so making the same Saint capable to sing the song of Moses and of the Lamb too Thus by living the life of faith the true Saint comes to have the evidence of things unseen and to hope above hope whilst the first Tabernacle is taking down to be laid in the grave and Christ is bringing a perfect weakness and insufficiency upon him to speak think will or do from any other spring or fountain of action and motion then from himself who is risen from the dead or from his exalted heavenly manhood who by degrees as their house from heaven cloaths them upon and keeps them from being found naked though despoyled of their first self-sufficiency ability as it stood single alone This is the faith whereby power is given to us to be the sons of God in a birth and participation of the divine nature wherein God communicates himself in his first and second appearance as knit together and made up of twain into one new name in Christ which none know but they that have it forming up the answer of a good conscience through the resurrection from the dead 1 Pet. 3. 19. to the receiving of whole Christ as he is the finisher as well as the beginner of our faith as he is the High Priest as well as the sacrifice in our nature or as through the unity of Spirit wherein he lives with his Father he does offer up and crucify the will of his flesh bringing it into perfect subjection to his Fathers will This is the patern of being and obedience according to which we are formed when we are made NEW CREATURES being that image of the Son unto which all the adopted children of the new Covenant given by the father to Christ are predestinated to be conformed in copartnership with Christ as he is the first born among many brethren for which he prayed as the peculiar mercy reserved for them in distinction from all the world beside whom therefore in this sense he did not pray for when he desired of his father that they all might be one as he and the father are one Joh. 17. 9 11. And says he the glory which thou gavest me I have given them that they may be one even as we are one I in them and thou in me that they may be made perfect in one and be with me where I am that they may behold the glory that thou hast given me in the love which thou shewedst me and wherewith thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world that so also the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them and I in them ver 22. 23 24 26. The effect of which prayer is accomplished in the heart and conscience of every true believer that is made a NEW CREATURE and is that which constitutes and sets up the new man in his right and perfect distinction from the first Adams highest purity and utmost perfection consisting in that building of God made without hands mans house from heaven with which he is gradually clothed upon as he is gradually unclothed of the first building and so formed up in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto that perfection of manhood which is attainable even unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ unto which we shall arrive when
bodies shall be found in the streets of the holy City spiritually called Sodome and Egypt kept for three dayes and an half unburied signifying that they must in all things submit to the bruising of their outward man in conformity unto Christ and be slaine as their brethren have beene from the beginning of the world which is to be their lot in the latter end This prophetical and powerful spirit of Eliah shall be poured forth in those dayes upon the witnesses of Christ that keep the WORD OF HIS PATIENCE and endure the fiery triall of those times not thinking it a strange thing that thereby happens unto them and shall fill them with exceeding joy under all the reproaches which they beare for the Name of Christ as the Spirit of glory and of God that is resting upon them and fitting them for such a season that as John Baptist by his Ministery ushered in Christs coming in the flesh or in his first appearance so this same prophetical spirit of Eliah shall be the fore-running dispensation given forth by the witnesses of Christ in those dayes unto Christs second appearance or coming from heaven as hath beene foretold by all the Prophets since the world began for the restitution of all things as the fruit of his personal presence in the world exercising Rule and Dominion there for a thousand years with his Saints and then carrying them up with him to his Father and their Father into the same Kingdome as continued in glory in heaven for evermore What this prophetical spirit of Eliah is that shall be thus poured out upon the Witnesses of Christ in those dayes is to be understood by what it was in Eliah's person who was but the type and therefore certainly had this spirit in a much inferiour degree to what it shall be in them The spirit of glory and power therefore which he had they shall have and much more as indeed is expressed when it is said if any man will hurt them he must in this manner be killed fire proceedeth out of their mouth and devours their enemies These have power by the same way Eliah had which was by the prayer of faith to shut heaven that it raine not in the dayes of their prophecie yea they have power also over waters to turne them into blood and to smite the earth with all plagues as often as they will Yet under all this power and glory they shall remaine exposed in their persons upon the finishing of their TESTIMONY to the rage and power of their enemies who shall then make warre against them overcome them and kill them But notwithstanding on the third day they have power given them to rise from the dead and to ascend up into heaven Rev. 11. 11 12. after a more glorious manner then Eliah did and this in the sight of their very enemies to their terrifying and amazement Thus we see the spirit and power of Eliah what it is that then shall be poured forth and that in a more mystical and spiritual consideration Something we shall also speak to the opening of the state and qualification of the persons that are called the TWO WITNESSES and why they are so called For their state and qualification this is to be known by their names and their apparel They are called the two Olive-trees and the two Candlesticks standing before the God of the whole earth By what hath beene already opened on this subject we are not far to seek what these signifie For the two Olive-trees and two Candlesticks that stand by the Lord of the whole earth must either be Christ in his owne person as he is head to his body the Church and Mediatour betweene God and man shining forth in his first and second appearance as both these perfections of the natural and spiritual man are built up and wrought into a perfect consistency and harmony in him or else these two Olive-trees do signifie the conformity which from him as the head is wrought out in and derived upon his spiritual and heavenly members by his first and second appearance in both those perfections of the first and second Adam as the elder is made to serve the younger and the first is built up into a consistency and harmony with the second by the power of the Crosse making them conformable to him in his death Which conformity is signified by their prophesying in sackcloth testifying the marks which they bear about with them in their mortal bodies of the dying of the Lord Jesus And in this crucified mortal flesh of theirs they are owned by Christ as having the Spirit of God and of glory thus made to rest upon them in a like dispensation unto that of Eliah's prophecy So that when once it shall please God to raise up a seed and generation of Saints in whom these marks of the dying of the Lord Jesus shall be eminent to the slaying and bringing to rest all operating powers and faculties of their natural man as standing in opposition to the Lord of life and glory and subjecting every high imagination in them by the Crosse to the laying of it and all the glory of flesh in a very great measure under the feet of Christ whereby that which lets his glory from appearing unveiled and hath all this time let is taken away then will it be knowne what the TWO WITNESSES are and that they have not hitherto so much as begun their prophecy in the power of Eliah before mentioned so farre are they from being slaine CHAP. XXVI Treating of the time of the manifestation of the sonnes of God their sitting with Christ on his Throne ruling and influencing all things on earth during the space of a thousand years HAving finished what relates to the Saints being made one dead or crucified body with Christ and shewed the opposition which is exercised by the Devil thereunto that which remains to be considered is the gathering also of the Saints together into one glorified body with Christ at his second coming when it shall appear what those shall be that now though they are sons are undistinguished from those that are not who have beene planted into a conformity with Christ in his death and who considered as his dead body having beene exposed to the bruising of their heele by Satan before his being bound up shall be declared the proper subjects and inheritours of this first resurrection in the exercise of the power and glory thereof as KINGS and PRIESTS reigning with Christ a thousand years This time of the manifestation of the sonnes of God is said to be that which is the earnest expectation of the very creature it self Rom. 8. 19. as the season also wherein the whole creation is to be restored to its Primitive purity and to be delivered out of the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the sonnes of God as the benefit which it shall then receive by vertue of the price of Christs blood paid for all for
threatned with destruction the Mystical earthly Jerusalem or worldly Church under the Gentiles is therein comprehended and also meant as that which shall at the end of the world and in the last times be found in a most corrupted declined estate of Apostasie 2 Thes 2. 3. 1 Tim. 4. 12. 2 Tim. 3. 1 c. unto which therefore several characters and signes are appropriated that cannot be understood to be accomplished at the destroying of the material Temple and outward Jerusalem but are necessarily to be meant of this Mystical one as the Heavens that are remaining to be shaken yet once more Heb. 12. signifying the removing of those things that may be shaken as of things that are made that those things that cannot be shaken may remaine This Mystical earthly Ierusalem is that which shall not have one stone left upon another as well as the other Typical Ierusalem not so much as any visibility or forme of worship shall be left to her but she shall be given to the Gentiles or prophane world who shall tread this holy City under foot fourty and two moneths And to make this hour and power of darknesse the more terrible there shall be warres and rumours of warres Nation shall rise up against Nation and Kingdome against Kingdome and there shall be Famines and Pestilences and Earthquakes in divers places yea all these things shall be but the beginning of sorrows For as thus warres and troubles and sorrowes shall be in reference to the outward man so also deceit and errour by false Prophets and false Christs shall arise causing much defilement in reference to the inner man whence will flow great declinings and apostasies from holy and righteous principles for saking of the truth or a waxing cold in the love of it amongst the inhabitants of this Mystical earthly Ierusalem and not only so but there will spring up a root of bitternesse and an implacable persecuting spirit against the faithful WITNESSES of Christ that shall in those dayes be found in her to the afflicting killing or flaying of them and letting their dead bodies lie unburied in the street of this great City which the Nations shall come and destroy for all her whoredomes and apostasies as they did the literal Ierusalem God putting it into their hearts to agree together and burne this Whore with fire And then they themselves that are thus made the rod of Gods anger and executioners of his vengeance on this great City shall not escape but Zach. 14. 3. The Lord shall go forth and fight against those Nations as when he fought in the day of battel For a great tumult from the Lord shall be among them and they shall lay hold every one on the hand of his neighbour and his hand shall rise up against the hand of his neighbour ver 13. So Mat. 24. 29 30. Immediately after the tribulation of those dayes shall the Sunne be darkned and the Moone shall not give her light and the Starres shall fall from Heaven and the powers of the Heavens shall be shaken And then shall appeare the signe of the Sonne of Man in Heaven and then shall all the Tribes of the earth mourne and they shall see the Sonne of man coming in the clouds of Heaven with power and great glory actually entering upon the exercise of his Kingdome and this First by sending forth his Angels and gathering together his Elect from the four winds from one end of Heaven to the other as into one glorified body with himself to the constituting of this GENERAL ASSEMBLY of the FIRST-BORNE which shall be made up partly of those the Lord brings with him and partly of those which shall be found alive and remaing unto the coming of the Lord or shall be in the natural body during the thousand years all which shal be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye by way of translation as it was with Enoch and not see death Whereby their mortal shall put on immortality and their corruptible shall put on incorruption and death and the grave shall be swallowed up in victory The first in order then which Christ quickens at his coming shall be his own Mystical dead body for the dead in Christ shall rise first 1 Thes 4. 16. that is those that have beene slaine and have born the marks of the dyings of Jesus upon them who are called Rev. 20. the souls of them that were beheaded for the witnesse of Jesus and for the WORD of God who all of them at this time through the quickning power of their Head shall live and reigne with him the first-fruits who hath already for a long time beene living and reigning at Gods right hand as it is written 1 Cor. 15. Every man in his owne order Christ the first-fruits afterwards they that are Christs at his coming whom he builds or raises up with himself into one spiritual and glorified body v. 44. causing them thereby to bear the image of the heavenly and last Adam as they have borne the image of the earthy or first Adam and this in the utmost perfection thereof as arrived to the measure of the stature of that fulnesse and perfection which declares and manifests it self in Christs heavenly manhood enabled to exercise in copartnership with him the power and glory of a threefold humane life and perfection in which he went before them First when upon the laying down of his natural body he came into the exercise of a life proper to the spirit of a just man made perfect in likenesse and equality with that of the holy Angels who stand in a superiority of life unto the earthly man even of Christ himself Heb. 2. 9. Secondly when he also came forth in the exercise of a humane bodily life raised up in a glorified and incorruptible forme never to die more Rev. 1. 18. in which he conversed with men the fourty dayes betweene his resurrection and ascension Thirdly when yet farther he came forth in the exercise of a divine humane life in which ascending to his God and their God to his Father and their Father he was exalted into a unity and copartnership in life and operation with the ROOT OF DAVID the WORD OF LIFE the first-born of every creature and first-begotten from the dead This is spoken of as the fruit also of his resurrection from the dead Ephes 1. ver 20 21. When through the mightinesse of Gods power that wrought in him he was raised from the dead and set at Gods owne right hand in the Heavenly or in the first and Heavenly Tabernacle that is set up in the WORD treated on by us in the first Chapter farre above all prin ipality and power and might and Dominion and every name or particular nature and being not only in this world but also in that which is to come In which life ver 22. 't is said that to the humane nature of Christ it is given to be the Head over all things or
in a superiority in all things unto the Church or true spiritual seed which is his body the fulnesse of him that filleth all in all built up into a Heavenly conformity in all things as a Wife and Spouse unto this her Head and Husband This excellency of Christs exalted manhood was surely intimated unto Iaceb by that ladder Gen. 28. 12 which in his dream he beheld set upon the earth the top whereof reached to Heaven as also the Angels of God ascending and descending upon it For thus we find it interpreted by himself Iohn 1. 50 51. as that greater sight of his humane perfection then what could be seene in the dayes of his flesh Verily verily sayes he I say unto you hereafter you shall see Heaven open and the Angels of God ascending and descending upon the Sonne of man as if he should have said You shall see the Heavenly Temple of God opened Rev. 11. 19. that is to be found in the WORD OF LIFE and the heavenly discoveries flowing thence or sent forth from the same in their ascents and descents in and upon the manhood of Christ as the means chosen for the making manifest the riches of his glory to men and Angels in their particular beings and persons In these three respects shall the true SONNES AND HEIRS OF SALVATION fitted and adorned as a Bride and Heavenly body to this Husband and Head appeare bearing on them the image of the last Adam made like unto him to the seeing of him as he is and shining forth in this likenesse they will have accomplished upon them that manifestation of the sonnes of God which shall vastly difference them from the naturall or fleshly seed considered in their highest mutable perfection or in the incorruptible forme wherein they shall be raised up to everlasting contempt By vertue then of this conformity in image which the Saints shall be brought into with Christs heavenly manhood they shall come forth in the exercise of this threefold life in kind wherein the manhood of Christ hath beene conversant ever since the laying down of his earthly and natural body First of that life which all the true sonnes and heirs of salvation that have died in the faith have beene exercising ever since their change or falling asleep in the Lord that is to say the life of the spirits of just men made perfect a life like that of the Angels or perfect spirits that can live and act without dependance upon bodily life and motion described by Christ himself where he sayes that they who shall be accounted worthy to obteine that world and the resurrection from the dead as were Abraham Isaac and Jacob who then were and yet are in the possession of it neither marry nor are given in marriage for they are equal unto the Angels and are children of God and of the resurrection Luke 20. 35 36 that is to say are the children of God in their spirits made perfect and thereby are become equals and fit associates for the holy Angels themselves as the souls of wicked men departed this life become equals and fit associates for the evil Angels concerning which state also in the best sense Christ spake unto the thief upon the Crosse when he said This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise The second exercise of life which the Saints as gathered unto Christ their Head at his second coming shall be brought forth in is that of a glorified incorruptible body in fashion made like unto his glorious body Phil. 3. Into the exercise of which life they are not yet entered but reserved for it by the MAN CHRIST IESUS the FIRST-FRUITS who will have the souls of those slaine under the Altar to rest yet for a little season in the single exercise of their Angelical life as spirits of just men made perfect untill the gathering of the GENERAL ASSEMBLY of the first-borne together and setting them who have beene the slaine Witnesses of Christ upon their feet in the exercise of this immortal incorruptible bodily life here in this world wherein they are to continue and abide for a THOUSAND YEARS keeping the true Sabbath of Rest unto the Lord in that seventh part of the time of the worlds duration All worldly strength wisdome and power shall then as the walls of Iericho fall flat before Iesus the true Ioshua and these true Israelites as having beene by them compassed about six dayes and now on the seventh a thousand years being with the Lord as one day 2 Pet. 3. 8. making way for the end mentioned 1 Cor. 15. 24. to come and shew it self at which time the fleshly Rule and Kingdome of Christ in his first appearance till then kept up in the world as the first general Dominion is delivered up unto the Father the Sonnewillingly becoming subject herein with reference to the bringing himself forth in his second appearance to rule and reign in the place of the first that God may be all in all and that all other rule authority and power may hereby be put downe yea death it self as the last enemy may be destroyed and made unable to deteine any under its power that the quickning vertue shining forth in this presence and appearance of Christ shall call forth and give freedome unto The Saints in the exercise of this life with Christ upon earth during this THOUSAND YEARS shall be those in whom Christ will be admired and the Father glorified This state of theirs is the reward spoken of in Scripture where it is said The meek shall inherit the earth and Godlinesse hath not only the promise of the life to come but of this also 1 Tim. 4. 8. So Rom. 4. 13. The Promise to Abraham that he should be heir of the world is declared not to be by the Law or to have its accomplishment under the first Covenant-dispensation but through the righteousnesse of faith that it might be by grace to the end the Promise might be sure to all the seed not to that only which is of the Law but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham who with other beleevers died and received not the making good thereof It therefore remains to be performed in its due time at this manifestation of the Sonnes of God which faith sees and acknowledges Heb. 11. 39. These all having obtained a good report through faith received not the promise to wit this promise of being heirs of the world and of all Nations being blessed in and by the meanes of the spiritual seed which will certainly be fulfilled to them in the times of the NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH Isa 65. 17. c. God having foreseene and reserved some better thing for us saith the Author to the Hebrews that they without us should not be made perfect but that all of us may enjoy that better thing together at once in the keeping of a holy Sabbath unto the Lord at the coming of this day of God in which the Heavens that
now are shall passe away with a great noise and the Elements shall melt with fervent heat the Earth also and the Works that are therein shall be burnt up to make way for and give place unto the NEW HEAVENS and NEW EARTH wherein dwelleth righteousnesse which we look for according to his promise 2 Pet. 3. 10 13. Nor are we to think that the Saints departed who are now exercising the life that is equal to Angels are at all debased or lessened in their heavenly or Angelical enjoyment as brought forth gathered together into one spiritual and glorified body with Christ at his coming For hereby they are enabled to exercise over and besides the first that life which Christ led here upon earth after his resurrection which excludes them not from being with the Lord in the aire 1 Thes 4. 17. or in the exercise of their Angelical life in which they are for ever with him for as much as they do assume the exercise of this bodily life againe in its incorruptible forme upon such termes that it is no hinderance to or in the least inconsistent with the free and absolute exercise of the former Angelical life but serves rather as the meanes for them to be in the body as well as out of the body at their owne pleasure and as they shall find it most suitable to Gods designes for the maintaining and keeping up the Rule and Dominion of Christ in the world during the thousand years in the hands of this GENERAL ASSEMBLY of the first-borne who as the Jerusalem coming downe from God out of Heaven are to be the Tabernacle of God with men to administer the accomplishment of Gods promise as to the making good the reward which godlinesse is to receive even in this life and the promise unto Abraham and his seed of making them heir of the world through faith Rom. 4. 13. by vertue of the quickning power of Christ which he shall put forth at this time of the Restitution of all things The forementioned exercise of this bodily life to be assumed by Saints departed at the Resurrection is intimated to us by what is recorded Matth. 27. 52 53. And the graves were opened and many bodies of the Saints that slept arose and came out of the graves after his resurrection and went into the holy City and appeared unto many Signifying by way of figure and prediction the common practice hereof at Christs coming to quicken his Mystical dead body and bring them out of their graves as it is written Esay 26. 19. Thy dead men shall live together with my dead body shall they arise awake and sing ye that dwell in dust for thy dew is as the dew of herbs and the earth shall cast out the dead The third and last sort of humane life which the body or Church of Christ shall by their Head be brought into the exercise of is that of his exalted state as He ascended to his God and their God to his Father and their Father going before to prepare a place for them as being unwilling that his Saints should rest so much as in the second degree of life shining forth in his person by the Resurrection without expecting a higher which he gave notice of to Mary when he said Touch me not for I am not yet ascended to my Father John 20. 17. in whose house there are many Mansions John 14. 2. which at the end of the thousand years he hath in store to lead them into as their final and utmost degree of glory and perfection in heaven in the immediate and beatifical vision of God when the world shall be no more mentioned Rev. 20. 11 and as the last retreat to the full Rest God hath prepared for his Saints when upon the expiration of the thousand years Satan being let loose out of his prison shall have mustered up his last reserve of force against them from all the four quarters of the earth even Gog and Magog who for number are as the sand of the Sea who come up on the breadth of the earth and compasse the camp of the Saints about and the beloved City the NEW IERUSALEM which thereupon ascends up into heaven their enemies beholding them into this utmost degree of the Resurrection and their exaltation as made with Christs manhood to ascend to their God and his God to their Father and his Father in the exercise of the life of the first-borne of every creature and first-begotten from the dead to the obteining a name above every name which sets them with Christ far above all principality and power might and dominion the name or nature of any other particular being whatsoever And all this they attaine unto by their being made one with Christ Davids OFF-SPRING as this OFF-SPRING or BRANCH is made one with his owne ROOT who is the beginning and first-begotten from the dead having in all things the preheminence as being from above and over all made higher then the Heavens better then the Angels as having by inheritance obtained a more excellent name then they so that Angels and authorities are made subject to him and therefore in a state exalted above all natural men for they are lower then the Angels In this capacity Christ in his own person received the pouring out of the Spirit without measure and in this capacity his body the Church shall as at the second hand in this day of their ascension and final exaltation receive the effusion of this same Spirit without measure upon them unto which they have spiritual sences in some degree fitted and suited whilst they are here in the body through the newnesse of life and motion set up in them by faith or the new Creation which are yet farther heightned and enlarged after the laying down of the body by the two first degrees of glory and power into which they are brought by the resurrection from the dead but shall then be ripened to their most absolute capacity compleat exercise and perfect use upon this their ascension and highest advance at the expiration of the THOUSAND YEARS Into this state of glory Christ as we have said did arrive in his own person upon his ascension having received of the Father the promise of the holy Ghost or the actual possession of this inheritance of God at Gods right hand where his man-hood doth so become the INGRAFFED WORD of God that as man he is taken into the enjoyment of Gods naked glory and very similitude and forme beholding him face to face and conversing with him as friend speaks with friend mouth to mouth sharing and partaking throughout with the WORD of life the ROOT of David in all those first creature-operations that are set up by the immediate Workman-ship of the Trinity when they personally appeare in the WORD in respect whereof this creature-state in Christ is said to be without Father without Mother without descent Heb. 7. having neither beginning of dayes nor end of life
the want of which it now groaneth and travelleth as in paine as deteined under the bondage it is fallen into by sin and is stretching out its neck as it were with a holy impatiency after these times of refreshing that are to come from the presence of the Lord by the sending of Jesus a second time and revealing him with power from heaven to restore all things and accomplish the full redemption of the body which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy Prophets since the world began Acts 3. 19 20 21. But considering the distinct and large handling of this weighty subject from testimony of Scriptures and otherwise in Volumes lately made extant together with the reserve which Christ thinks fit to keep in his owne hands as well of the time as the exact patterne and material circumstances of this his Reign it shall suffice me to be joyning in testimony unto this great truth according to the general prospect thereof which hath beene given in to my faith in some small glimpses as well from the inward as outward Word of God in a patient and humble expectation of the clearer and more certaine description thereof as the things themselves are drawing on which Christ in his times will fully shew by the brightnesse of his owne coming unto which the children of light and of this day are exhorted to be hastning as that which is hastning upon them that so it may not overtake them as a thief in the night at unawares but the mindfulnesse thereof may keep them in a meet posture with their loines girt and lamps burning as men waiting for the coming of their Lord. Paul in 1 Tim. 6. 15 16. does call these dayes the times of Christ in which he will shew that his judgment and power shall bear sway in distinction from and opposition to the power and judgement of mans day now in exercise and credit throughout the world himself being the blessed and only POTENTATE the KING OF KINGS and LORD OF LORDS that must take place with his everlasting Dominion This Scripture compared with Rom. 8. v. 19 to v. 24. Acts 3. 19 20 21. 1 John 3. 2. Hab. 2. 3 14 20. 2 Thes 2. 8. Phil. 3. 20 21. Dan. 2. 44 45. and Dan. 4. 3. and Chap. 7. 26 27. does evidently declare thus much that the hidden life and immortality wherein the man Christ Jesus does remaine with God as him that is invisible seene only to the eye of faith by the true sons and heirs of salvation shall have a season and time to be manifested and brought to light openly before the eyes of all and this two manner of wayes First in a way which shall be peculiar to the spiritual seed and extend only to them who having died with Christ shall now live with him and having suffered with him shall now reigne with hiw as gathered into one spiritual and heavenly body with himself through his changing their vile body into the likenesse of his most glorious body according to the working of his mighty power whereby he is able to subdue all things unto himself Secondly in a way which shall be common to all natural men yea to the whole creation of God so as every eye shall see him and every tongue shall confesse him and every knee shall how to him either voluntarily or by compulsion as unto the only POTENTATE unto whom they owe their subjection and that in the right of the redemption by him procured for them who became a ransome for all to be testified in due time through which they shall be actually and entirely delivered from the bondage of corruption and restored into their Primitive purity natural life and glory upon the same tearmes of mutability as wherein Adam was at first created yea with this advantage over and above what he had not only a being taught by his experience but assisted with those means which he experienced not in the manner they shall do together with a freedome from any exercise of that old Serpents power or subtilty upon them who during the time of the whole thousand years shall be bound and sealed up in the bottomlesse pit by the power of Christ Rev. 20. 2 3. and so totally disabled to deceive or beguile the Nations any more all that while as he beguiled Eve that Christ may rule in righteousnesse amongst them without disturbance nothing being left to hurt or destroy them in all his holy mountaine or Dominion if they destroy not themselves for they shall be left unto the full and entire scope of their own free will self-managing and disposal that they may be as good as they themselves shall desire to be and have the means at hand to keep them so if themselves be not in the fault That which Christ will do at his second coming is intimated by those greater works he speaks of John 5. v. 20 to v. 30. at the sight whereof every one should marvel In which Scripture we find a twofold power that shall then be exercised by Christ First a quickning power for Christ shall then quicken whom he will calling whom he pleases out of their very graves whether spiritual or literal and they shall hear his voice and come forth the grave at his call shall yeeld up her dead not being able to resist the power of this quickning spirit of his who then as by the voice of the Arch-Angel the trump of God 1 Thes 4. 16 shall visibly declare the exceeding greatnesse of his power over death and the grave it self in the sight of the whole world to the admiration of all and to the stopping the mouths of the greatest enemies and gain-sayers that would be apt to contradict and oppose the glory of his Kingdome Secondly a Judicial power For Christ shall then receive authority from the Father to execute judgement also and that as the Sonne of man according as it is also expressed Acts 17. 31. He hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousnesse by that man whom he hath ordained whereof he hath given assurance unto all men in that he hath raised him from the dead Thus then as the Father hath life in himself that is to say the proper life of God absolute supreme irresistible and Almighty the SONNE OF MAN shall then also come forth in the exercise of the same life in unity with the Father it being given to him in like manner to have life in himself and to effect and execute all that which he desires and thinks fit in both these respects in the exercise of the same absolute and Almighty power of God himself By reason whereof it shall come to passe that all men shall honour the Sonne even as they honour the Father and whosoever honoureth not the Son shall be proceeded against in judgement and in the execution of Gods wrath as if he had not honoured the Father For unto the Sonne of man in this day of his
power and glory shining forth in the beauty of his new name that is above every name either in this world or in that which is to come every knee is appointed to bow of things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth and the duty of every tongue shall be to confesse that Iesus is the Lord to the glory of God the Father Hence then it is evident that as God or the WORD in Christs first appearance was pleased to be manifested in flesh wherein to condescend and make himself of no reputation by taking upon him the forme of a servant and being made in the likenesse or habit of a man and in this fashion as a man subjecting himself to the doing and suffering all that which was required to be done and suffered on the behalf of sinful mankind and for the bringing many sonnes unto glory so also is he that thus did and suffered all things as a man in the dayes of his flesh for our redemption at this time to see his seed and reap the fruit of the travel of his soul which then he made a sacrifice for sin being now a second time to appeare without any reference to sinne as then he did but instead thereof to declare himself the Sonne of God with power by the resurrection from the dead So as in and by this second appearance the man Christ Iesus in the fashion and forme of his exalted and glorified manhood consisting of spirit soul and body in substantial or personal union with the WORD is to shew and manifest himself in the glory of the Father in the joynt and united exercise of the same divine life and power with him and therein to give a plaine demonstration that he is the Sonne of God as by his being made flesh and becoming obedient to the death of the Crosse he did undeniably demonstrate that he was really and properly the Sonne of Man made of the seed of David according to the flesh living the life and dying the death of a perfect natural man Thus the Sonne of man shall come with power and great glory sitting with the Father upon the same Throne therein shewing himself the only POTENTATE the KING OF KINGS and LORD OF LORDS dwelling in immortality and that light which no man can approach hath seene or can see Christ then considered as thus dwelling in immortality and that light which is invisible and inaccessible in reference to all those that are meer natural men shall at this time declare himself to be the life and quickning of his own dead body and the object of their converse who having been made one dead body with him as planted in the similitude of his death shall now be called and gathered together unto him in one incorruptible immortal glorified state of spirit soul and body be planted into the likenesse of his Resurrection to the attaining of their compleat adoption and the redemption of the body at this manifestation of the sonnes of God and heirs of salvation which is spoken of Colos 3. 4. where 't is said that when Christ who is our life shall appear we shall also appear with him in glory and 1 Iohn 3. 2. we are now sonnes but it doth not yet appear what we shall be but we know when he shall appear we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is or as he dwells in immortality and in that light from whence he excludes every natural eye reserving it as the peculiar enjoyment and inheritance of his friends whom he loves that are Heirs of God and Co-heirs with Christ in the things prepared only for them which neither eye hath seene nor eare heard nor have entred into the heart of the natural man to consider This likenesse which the true Saints shall be brought forth into with Christ the beginning and first-begotten from the dead is described in general by the promise Christ makes to them on that behalf And Iesus said unto them Verily I say unto you that ye which have followed me in regeneration when the Sonne of man shall sit in the Throne of his glory ye also shall sit upon twelve Thrones judging the twelve Tribes of Israel Matth. 19. 28. So Rev. 3. 21. To him that overcometh sayes he I will grant to sit with me on my Throne even as I also overcame and am set down with my Father on his throne which imports First that as by the Fathers quickning of Christ raising him up and fitting him in spiririt soul and body to exercise in unity with him the same divine life and power to the making his manhood Second with him on the Throne so Christ in like manner will quicken and raise up all the members of his dead body or slaine faithful Witnesses that have beene made conformable unto him in his death and fit them in their spirit soul and body to exercise in unity and association with his heavenly manhood the life and power which he is enabled to exercise as he is the exalted Sonne of man to the rendring them a fit Bride Queene and Second with him in his Throne where they shall neverthelesse sit as upon Thrones of their owne as his Equals and co-heirs yet in subordination unto him judging the twelve Tribes of Israel in a light and glory superiour to the earthly Jerusalem or worldly Church yea to the good Angels themselves who shall be found but standing about the Throne whilst the Saints shall be sitting downe with Christ upon it Secondly as the Father gives authority to Christ in the capacity of the Sonne of man to execute judgement as the only l'OTENTATE KING OF KINGS and LORD OF LORDS under him so Christ also shall give and derive to his body the general assembly of the first-borne whose names are written in heaven authority to be the only Potentates Lords of Lords and Kings of Kings under him whose Decrees and Ordinances shall be binding unto all in heaven or in earth or under the earth next and immediately under Christ their head and this as well in reference to the regulating and well-ordering the service and worship of God in the societies of Saints and all his true worshippers as in reference to the governing and well-ordering the natural and outward converse of men in their humane societies during the reigne of Christ upon earth the thousand years Both these powers and jurisdictions shall be residing in the general assembly of the first-borne whose names are written in heaven who shall then be declared the Bride the Lambs wife the New Ierusalem coming downe from God out of heaven described Rev. 21. 2. as she that is prepared as a Bride adorned for her husband being that Tabernacle of God with men wherein he will dwell with them and they shall be his people and he himself will be with them and be their God wiping away all teares from their eyes so as there shall be amongst them no more death nor sorrow nor crying