Second and heavenly Adam to all of his Regeneration; by which only they can inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.

In a second Senfe this Prophecy was fulfilled upon Jerusalem, in judging that finful People, overturning their civil and facred Polity, and scattering them among all Nations to this Day.

Therefore the second great Advent of CHRIST, univerfally expected by the Church, is to judge the Beast and false Prophet, by destroying their civil and spiritual Dominion fo long exercised over many Nations and Peoples and Tongues: and fecondly, to call the Jews, by whofe Means the great Kingdoms of the Heathen World are to be brought into the Fold of CHRIST; by whose spiritual Lip and Interpretation also, the Beast and false Prophet, as they fignify the carnal Heart and the flattering Doctrines formed to indulge it, will be taken and destroyed out of the Gospel. This will be preached pure from fo much human Mixture, and received by the converted Followers of the Roman and Mahometan Anti1 John ii. 18. christ (for there be many Antichrifts), who shall behold both struck with Judgments as vifible and palpable, as Egypt and Babylon were in former Time.

Rev. xi. 15.

Mal. i. 11.

Then will be set up the happy Kingdom or Theocracy of GOD and his CHRIST over all the Kingdoms of this World: then that Prophecy of Malachi shall be gloriously fulfilled, “from the

Rifing of the Sun to the going down of the same, my Name "shall be great among the Gentiles, and in every Place Incense "fhall be offered unto my NAME, and a pure Offering; for my " NAME fhall be great among the Heathen, faith the Lord of "Hofts."

At this Time will the first Resurrection of the Martyrs translate them from the Sabbath or seven Powers of Paradife, to the eternal Sabbath, or feven Spirits, the more fpiritual Powers, burning Rev. iv. 5. before the Throne of GOD, which is the third Heavens, the Holy of Holies: While the great Congregation of all Nations made out of Acts xvii. 26. the one Blood of Adam, will go into the great Sabbatic Year of GOD.

The Prophecy says not that the Martyrs are to reign on Earth :
Hence all that the learned Whitby has wrote against it, falls to the
Ground.

Secondly,

cr

Secondly, They who object the Impoffibility of fuch a foretelling the Advent of CHRIST, do not well understand the Meaning of Our SAVIOUR, when he replied to the Question of his Difciples, "It "is not for you to know the Times and the Seafons, which the Father has A&s. i. vii. put in his own Power." The Sense of the Paffage appears to be this; that it is no Part of your Work or Office, as Apostles, at this Age of the World to know beforehand or diftinctly, the great Events and Designs of Providence, which are so distant from the Time of their Completion: These Things GOD will reveal by different Signs and Marks, as their Hour or Periods fhall approach, and this Procedure Heaven did obferve before the Manifestation of the MESSIAH, when Prophecies grew more express, and the very Time was pointed out, as it drew near.

Now though the Revelation of St. John be the only principal Prophecy of the great Revolutions to fall out, under the MESSIAH, and feems given by express Designs of Providence to collect them. into one View: Different Signs are therein given out to discern every Period in its Succeffion. These his own People shall see and understand, while the Wickedness of others, who are his only in Name, and a Shame and Reproach to his holy Religion, shall blind their Eyes, and cast them into the Spirit of Slumber, or that Hardness of Heart, which refifts moral Evidence, and which by the just Appointment of Heaven, is the dreadful Consequence of abufing the Light of Nature and Revelation by contracting vitious Habits under fuch Advantages. These Habits are the Scales before their Eyes, the Veil upon their Hearts, and the only Blindness and Hardening of God.

The Force of this Reasoning cannot be eluded, by saying that CHRIST will come at an Hour unlooked for, and like a Thief in the Night; fince this can only regard the wicked Part of the World. Noah and Lot were not furprised; nor were the Children of Ifrael overtaken by the fame Judgements, which ftruck the Ægyptians. The Disciples of CHRIST had Signs to difcern the approaching Defolation of Jerufalem: Thus no Doubt it will be, in his fecond great Advent, moving on: Signs of Times in a clearer Explanation of prophetic Numbers, and in Judgments poured out, like

a Breach of Waters, shall be known by his Church, which must be terribly afflicted between fuch great and falling Powers of civil and spiritual Tyranny, as the Romish Church and Mahometanifm: For what will not the holy Militia of the first, numerous and bold, perform to support their dying Empire over the Souls and Bodies of Men? what will not be done under the Conduct of most holy Jefuits, who will be the great Leaders and Captains in religious War and Carnage? and fhall the Zeal of Mahometan Mufties, like their Founder, born in and nurfed with human Blood, fall fhort of the other? This fiery Perfecution will resemble that of Saul against his Brethren for believing in the MESSIAH: and it seems intimated by our Lord in these Words," the Brother shall deliver up the Brother to Death, and the Father the Child: and the Children fhall rise up against "their Parents, and cause them to be put to Death." Nothing but false Religion can produce fuch horrible Things; and nothing, from well-known Experience, will be thought too barbarous and cruel for Revolters from their Delufions, by fuch Men, who are more thirsty for Blood than the Wolf of the Evening, and more enraged for Hof. xiii. 8. the Lofs of one Votary, than the Bear bereaved of her Whelps.

In this view it will be equally verified, as it was in the Days of Noah, Lot, Egypt, Babylon, and Jerufalem in old Time; that the wicked will not understand to their Conviction and Amendment. The nominal Chriftians, fo vilely corrupt and degenerate in all Kingdoms, whether Popish or Reformed, will harden themselves, till the Judgments like a Flood shall rush upon them, and overwhelm their exceffive Pride and refined Luxury; and fhall bury their stately Cities and great Emporiums in the Duf.

The Judgments represented by seven Thunders will strike down Babylon the great, which includes not only Rome and Mahomet, as spiritual Babels and Houfes of Bondage for Truth and the Religion of the daily Cross of Chrift; but implies alfo the whole World, and efpecially the worldly Chriftians of reformed Kingdoms grown to be the meerest Canaanites, or, as the Word fignifies, Traffickers and Zeph.xiv.21. Merchants of the Earth: Thefe Miseries will come in one Hour, that is with such a sudden and defolating Violence, as Earthquakes do; of which Thunders are a proper Representation.

At

At this Period, God will call his own by a Voice of spiritual Interpretation, which shall be understood, and make his People, his PECULIUM, come out of the great Babylon, which is, the carnal Heart wedded to the World. He will open a greater Insight into the prophetic Numbers, which will fhew the Hand and Wrath of GOD, pouring out his Vials against the outward and visible Babylon of Rome and Mahomet, wherein falfe Religion triumphs, protected and nourished by civil Power, with every poffible Honour and Emolument.

These Signs will carry Light and Darkness, as the Prophecies of old did;, a Light clear enough, as the Author of the Principles of the Christian Faith has fhewn, to all thofe, who have not corrupted their moral Sense and Judgment by a course of Sin and Impiety. They will be dark to those who have made themselves paft feeling of moral Evidence, by vitious Habits precontracted: Thus will Blindness fall only upon the Wicked, which in Scripture fignify

habitual Sinners, bold and impudent, by evil Practices; however great or wife or noble, according to the Flesh, and in the Estimation, Cor. i. 26. of the World. While Light to see the Hand and Work of God, shall shine in the Goshen of the true Ifrael, though the spiritual Ægyptians fit in thick Darkness, and give not Glory to God for the gracious Intention of his awakening Judgments, but continue stiff, necked and impertinent.

The Objection from the Danger of false Alarms, and from the Distance of these Events to the present Age, is weak and futile : Since the feven Thunders, and feven Vials, have scarce the Interval of twelve Years between each, fhould we fuppofe a nearly equal Proportion of Time for every one in Succeffion. We do not mean, that it will be fo; but, by this narrow Compass of Time, we may expect to fee one or more go forth, within the Space of a few Years from each other. The Divine Goodness did not bring the first great Destruction of the old World, till Noah had been fent as a Preacher of Righteousness and Repentance for 120 Years; 2 Pet. i5. who may be supposed to have brought many to Repentance unknown to us, though ineffectual to reclaim the greater Part, or fave them from the impending Wrath of God. The Distance to

the

Gen. vi. 3,9

9.

the greatest and most important Revolutions in the moral World, appears to extend very little beyond this Term, I conceive that thefe 120 Years of Noah have a mystic Senfe, which I shall endeavour to explain. One Hundred and twenty Jubilees (which are great Years, and the av or Age of the Jewish Church) fill up 6000 Years, and therefore end in the Beginning of the Millennium. Now this Number by the fæculum Century, or Age of the Jewish and Gentile Church taken together, make 7000 Years, or the End of the World, and the Beginning of the fecond Death, where the preaching of all Noabs must finish. One Hundred Jubilees fill up 5000 Years; the remaining 20 Years, by the great Year of a Century, the End and Beginning of Time fince our SAVIOUR, make 2000 Years. This Coincidence of the Jew and Gentile Church, without any Fraction of Time, may have its Weight with those who confider, how much Divine Wisdom seems to hide its Designs for a while under the Veil of Numbers.

Now the Events which appear approaching, will arrive in a gradual Succeffion; and we seem placed in all Probability near fourteen Years within the Opening of the last fix Months, out of the 42, appointed for the Beast to continue. The Beginning of the feven Thunders appears to have been that on Callao in 1746, which is juft fix prophetic Months to 1926.

Thefe Thunders and feven Vials will be, in the fpiritual Senfe, the Preachers and Witnesses of Goa in the Spirit of Elias and Luke iv. 24. John the Baptift. Elias will be fent to call down Fire upon the 1 Kings xvii. apoftate Church of Rome for the half Year, or fix laft Months of his fhutting up the Heavens, that there shall be no Rain. John the Baptift, will, in my prefent Conception, fill up the five myftic or prophetic Months of his Birth before CHRIST, in calling Ishmael, or the Mahometans into his Father's House, and fpiritual Circumcifion, before the great Birth of CHRIST into the other Gentiles, and their being begotten unto his fpiritual, mediatorial Nature will take place. Both these Characters will call with a loud and terrible Voice of Earthquakes and Peftilences, Famine and bloody Wars, civil and religious (for what other Voice will Rome or Mahomet hear); and what can rouse the great Babylon of the World,

3

and