"There will be a personal and glorious appearance of the Son of God, the Lord himself shall descend' (1 Thess. 4. 16.) not by his Spirit or the communication of his grace, or by his gracious presence as before; but in person he will descend from the third heaven, where he is in our nature, into the air where he will be visible; every eye shall see him when he cometh with clouds, or in the clouds of heaven, which will be his chariot; he will descend on earth at the proper time; and his feet shall stand upon the Mount of Olives; on that spot of ground from whence he ascended to heaven. Job seems to have this descent of his in view when he says, 'He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth;' which seems to respect not so much his first coming as his second, since it is connected with the resurrection of the dead. There will be (also) a resurrection of the bodies of the saints; the dead in Christ, who died in union with him, believers in him, and partakers of his grace shall rise first they will have the dominion over the wicked in the morning of the resurrection, who will not rise until the end of that day; there will be a thousand years distance between the resurrection of the one and that of the other; hence the resurrection of the just as that is named in distinction from that of the unjust, is called the first resurrection, Rev. 20. 5, 6."

After mentioning the change of living saints, their being caught up to meet the Lord in the air, and the conflagration of the material heavens and earth, he proceeds :-

"Then there will succeed new heavens and a new earth, which God has promised, and which the Apostle

Peter says, saints look for according to his promise; and of which the Apostle John had a vision. To this new earth Christ will descend, and he will dwell in it here; the tabernacle of God will be with men, and he shall dwell with them; this shall be the seat of Christ's personal reign; here he will reign before his ancients gloriously; here he will have his palace and keep his court, and display his glory and the greatness of his majesty; and here his people will dwell with him, who will now be all righteous, perfectly so, even righteousness itself; for in these new heavens and new earth will dwell righteousness; nothing shall enter into this glorious New Jerusalem-state that worketh abomination or maketh a He; it will be a perfectly holy city, consisting wholly of holy persons; wherefore blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: nor will there be any enemy to annoy the saints in this state; the wicked will be all burnt and destroyed at the general conflagration; the beast and the false prophet, before this, will be cast alive into the lake of fire burning with brimstone; Satan will be bound by Christ, and cast into the bottomless pit, where he will remain till the thousand years are fulfilled for so long will this state continue; so long will Satan be bound; so long the saints will live and reign with Christ; this will be the day of the Lord, which is a thousand years, and which thousand years will be as one day. At the close of these years Satan will be loosed again, and the wicked dead will be raised; which, with the whole posse of devils, will make the Gog and Magog army, who shall be in the four quarters of the world, and go up on the breadth of the earth;

and whose number shall be as the sand of the sea, being all the wicked that have been from the beginning of the world; a large army indeed, such a one as never was before, consisting of enraged devils, and of men raised with all that malice and wickedness they died in, with Satan at the head of them; by whom they will be animated to make this last feeble and foolish effort for their recovery and liberty; in order to which they will compass the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city; who will be in no manner of pain and uneasiness at the appearance of this seeming formidable army; being clothed with immortality, secured by the power of God, and Christ being in person with them; then fire shall come down from heaven and devour the wicked; the wrath of God shall seize, distress, and terrify them;. divert them from their purpose, and throw them into the utmost consternation and confusion; and then they shall be dragged to the tribunal of Christ and stand before him, small and great, and be judged according to their works, and cast into the lake of fire, where they will be in company with the devil, the beast, and false prophet, and be tormented with them for ever and ever."Gill's Sermon on the Glory of the Church of the Latter Day, preached London, Dec. 27, 1752.

"It will be gathered from the foregoing statements, that I expect the personal and visible kingdom of Christ to rise out of the desolation and ruin of the fourth monarchy in the last days of its divided state; that I believe no fifth dominant sovereignty similar to the four monarchies of Assyria, Persia, Greece, and Rome, will ever be established upon earth; but that the power of Christ,

when it smites to shivers the last of these monarchies in its divided state, will establish upon their subverted thrones the everlasting throne of his grace and mediatorial strength; that I believe this throne will admit the subordination of other human sovereignties, and corroborate and support the blessings of civil government and concord through the world: that the glorified saints of the first resurrection' will be associated with Christ in the direction and consolidation of this peaceful empire; and that the world will thus exhibit a gladdening spectacle of a vast population of men still indeed mortal and subject to occasional ill, but peaceful, generous, disinterested, living in concord, and heartfelt union; a union social, domestic, and political; attributing all their blessings to the grace and power of Christ, and recognising his will and love alike in the exercise of power, and in the submission of obedience; and that the higher man. agement and control of this world will be in the hands first of Christ himself, and under him in the hands of men-of men once like the mortal sojourners they govern, but now glorified like their Lord, and living amidst their mortal kindred as benefactors, princes, and kings. It is not needful to suppose their presence to be always apparent to their happy subjects; but still their visible manifestations to be sufficiently frequent to sustain the mutual allegiance and concord of mankind, to cheer the intercourse of life, and to perpetuate an abiding recognition of their intense benevolence and their sovereign authority."-Noel's Brief Enquiry, p. 154.

"The events of the history are these:-The two forms of Antichrist, the beast and the false prophet,

being taken alive and cast into the lake of fire, and the kings of the earth confederate under their banners, being slain; the devil, prime mover of the earth's wickedness and misery, is restrained in chains within the bottomless pit, and straightway the first resurrection ensueth, and Christ with his rising saints takes the reins of the government of the earth. The earth, thus delivered from the headship of Satan and wicked mer, rejoiceth in great blessedness, under the headship of Christ and righteous men raised from the dead. And thus things shall stand constituted for the period of the thousand years;-whether literal years we say not, nor doth it at all concern us, but certainly a limited time, however short or long, and certainly not shorter than a thousand literal years. At the end of which finite time, the wickedness of men haply increasing, and the grace of God being accomplished, Satan shall be loosed, and men in this bitter condition shall be tried; and it shall appear that except the Jewish people who are under a covenant of their own (Ezek. 16.), all the nations, envious haply of that distinction, and disobedient to their supremacy, shall give way, and come up in proud revolt to try their might against the people of God's covenant, and against his holy city, which hath its seat within these bounds. This last confederacy of evil is written in the language of Ezekiel's vision of Gog and Magog (chaps. 38, and 39.), and will find its best illustrations from that confederacy of the nations against Israel settled in their own land, before the millennium commenceth. Then it is that God shall interfere and show his mighty power in Christ, who shall consume