the skies. By which we may easily imagine what an amazing spectacle his coming down from heaven will be to the inhabitants of the earth, when they shall see him descend from his imperial seat, far above the starry skies, with all the train-bands of heaven about him, the captain of the angelical host in the front of innumerable angels marching before him, and with his mighty trump ringing a peal of thunder through the universe, and with ten thousand thousands of the spirits of just men made perfect, following after him with crowns of glory on their heads, and songs and hallelujahs in their mouths; O blessed Jesu! how will this glorious and dreadful sight confound thy enemies, and ravish thy friends, make those that hate thee tremble and gnash their teeth, and those that love thee lift up their heads and shout for joy!

5. And lastly, we will consider the place to which he is to come; concerning which, all that is certain from scripture is this, that when he comes down from heaven, he will fix his throne, or judgment seat, in the air, at such a convenient distance from the earth as shall render him visible to all its inhabitants. For so, 1 Thess. iv. 17. it is said of the righteous, that after their being raised or changed, they shall be caught up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; which is a plain argument that the Lord will sit in judgment on them in the air, since thither they will be caught up to him after they are raised and judged. Thus in that very air, which is now the seat of the Devil's empire, shall Christ fix his throne, to manifest to all the world the consummation of his victory over the powers of darkness. There shall he sit in majesty and glory,

where now the Devil and his angels reign, and in the public view of the world shall even in their own dominion spoil those hellish principalities and powers, and having chained them at his chariotwheels, make a show of them openly, triumphing over them there, where they now domineer and tyrannize over this wretched world, shall he set his foot upon their necks, and from thence shall he tread them down into everlasting darkness and despair. Thus, that he may expose himself to the more public view, and the Devil to the more public shame and confusion, he will choose to keep his general assizes in the air. Being therefore arrived into the airy regions, after a long and glorious progress from the highest heaven, there he shall sit down upon the throne of his glory, (as some think) over against mount Olivet, the place from whence he ascended, whither all people, nations, and languages shall be gathered before him to receive their everlasting doom. And now let us imagine with ourselves in what a glorious and tremendous majesty he will appear to the world from his judgment seat, whence every eye shall see him shine in his own, his Father's, and his angels' glory, who in a bright corona shall sit round about him like so many stars about a sun; and where, as the prophet Daniel describes him, chap. vii. verse 9, 10. he shall exhibit himself to public view, clothed in garments as white as snow, with the hair of his head like the pure wool, sitting on a throne like the fiery flame, and its wheels as burning fire, with a fiery stream issuing out from before him, and thousand thousands ministering unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand standing before him, whilst the

judgment is set, and the books are opened. And thus I have given a brief account from scripture of the manner and circumstances of his coming: from whence I proceed to the

IV. And last general I proposed to treat of, viz. to explain the whole process of this judgment. And that we may proceed herein the more distinctly, we will consider it with respect to those twofold objects; viz. the righteous and the wicked, about which it is to be exercised. For it is plain from scripture, that they are not to be judged promiscuously one among another as they come, but the sheep are to be separated from the goats, the good from the bad, and to be tried and sentenced apart from one another. Matt. xxv. 32, 33. And he, i. e. the Son of man, shall separate them from one another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats; and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, and the goats on the left. In which separation the precedency will be given to the sheep, or righteous, who are to be judged first for so the scripture assures us, that the dead in Christ are to rise first, and that after they have undergone their judgment, they are immediately to be wafted up into the air, there to meet the Lord, and to sit as assessors with him in that judgment which he shall afterwards pass upon the wicked, (vide 1 Thess. iv. 15, 16, 17. compared with 1 Cor. vi. 2.) In explaining therefore the process of this judgment, we will treat of it in the same order wherein it will be transacted, beginning first with the judgment of the righteous; in which, according to the scripture account of it, there are these five things implied: 1. Their citation or summons. 2. Their personal appearance before the

judgment seat. 3. Their trial. 4. Their sentence. 5. Their assumption into the clouds of heaven.

1. This judgment of the righteous includes their citation or summons, which, as was observed before, is to be performed by the voice or trump of the archangel; i. e. by an audible shout or noise made by the prince of angels, and sounding throughout the universe, like the mighty blast of a trumpet. For as it was anciently the manner of nations to gather their assemblies by the sound of a trumpet; so by the same sound, the scripture tells us, God will assemble the world of men to judgment. And that this shall be a real audible sound like that of a trumpet, though proceeding from no other instrument than that of the archangel's mouth, I see no reason to doubt; because with such a noise we read God did descend upon mount Sinai, Exod. xix. 16. And why may we not as well understand the one in a literal sense as the other, it being no more improper in the nature of the thing for God to proclaim by such a sound his coming to judge the world, than it was, his coming to give laws to Israel. But then, together with this mighty voice or trump of the archangel, there shall proceed from Christ a divine power, even his holy Spirit, by which he raised himself from the dead, by whose omnipotent agency all those holy relics of the bodies of his saints, which are now scattered about the world, shall be gathered up, reunited, and reorganized into glorious bodies: for so the apostle attributes the resurrection of our bodies to the Holy Ghost, Rom. viii. 11. For if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in us, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken our mortal bodies

by his Spirit that dwelleth in us: and the old materials of their bodies being thus reunited and reformed by the powerful energy of the Holy Ghost accompanying the sound of the archangel's trump, those saintly spirits, which anciently inhabited them, and which are now come down from heaven with their Saviour, shall every one re-enter its own proper body, and animate it with immortal vigour and activity; and whilst the dead saints are thus arising, those who shall then be living, and have not tasted death, shall by the same almighty power be changed, transformed, and glorified in the twinkling of an eye, 1 Cor. xv. 51, 52. which being transacted, they shall all be gathered together, by the ministry of the holy angels, from all parts of the earth, before the judgment seat of Christ, Matt. xiii. 27. For,

2. This judgment of the righteous doth also include their personal appearance before the judgment seat. What this judgment seat will be, hath been briefly hinted before, viz. a vast body of luminous ether, condensed into the form of a bright and radiant cloud, and placed in the region of the air, at a convenient distance from the earth, streaming with light from every part, and casting forth an unspeakable glory; for which cause it is called the throne of his glory, and is described by St. John to be a great white, or refulgent, throne, Rev. xx. 11. out of which lightnings and thunders are said to proceed, Rev. iv. 5. which implies, that it will be a cloud, it being from clouds that thunders and lightnings do proceed. And before this glorious tribunal, or bright judgment seat, shall all the assembly of the righteous appear, to undergo a merciful trial, and receive a happy doom. Here shall the glorious