A26934:236
The glorious kingdom of Christ, described and clearly vindicated against the bold asserters of…
The glorious kingdom of Christ, described and clearly vindicated against the bold asserters of a future calling and reign of the Jews, and 1000 years before the conflagration and the asserters of the 1000 years kingdom after the conflagration : opening the promise of the new heaven and earth and the everlastingness of Christ's kingdom against their debasing it, who confine it to 1000 years ... : answering Mr. Tho. Beverley ... in his twelve principles and catechisms, &c. / by Richard Baxter ...
London: printed by T. Snowden for Thomas Parkhurst, 1691
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
It greatly hindereth the Edification of your Readers, that you so much use terms General and Equivocal, that unexplained signify nothing: And so every Book needeth another to Expound it, and that may as much need another. Some think this is because you would not be understood, your Doctrine being not able to bear the Light. Others think it is because you understand not your self, and therefore cannot speak intelligibly, confused Notions having but confused Expressions. The instances are more than I will recite. As e. g. You place Christs Kingdom so often in his and his Saints Appearance, as no Reader can discern, but you mean such Appearance to Mans visive Faculty in these Fleshly Bodies, as if now in Heaven Christ and Angels, and the Spirits of the Just did not Appear to one another, because they appear not to us: As if the Intuition of Spirits and Spiritual Bodies, were not a more eminent discerning than our Eye-sight: Sure there is a more noble sight, than that of Mortals.
It greatly hindereth the Edification of your Readers, that you so much use terms General and Equivocal, that unexplained signifie nothing: And so every Book needeth another to Expound it, and that may as much need another. Some think this is because you would not be understood, your Doctrine being not able to bear the Light. Others think it is because you understand not your self, and therefore cannot speak intelligibly, confused Notions having but confused Expressions. The instances are more than I will recite. As e. g. You place Christs Kingdom so often in his and his Saints Appearance, as no Reader can discern, but you mean such Appearance to Mans visive Faculty in these Fleshly Bodies, as if now in Heaven Christ and Angels, and the Spirits of the Just did not Appear to one another, because they appear not to us: As if the Intuition of Spirits and Spiritual Bodies, were not a more eminent discerning than our Eye-sight: Sure there is a more noble sight, than that of Mortals.
So no Man can tell by your phrase of [swallowing up in God] and that Christ was from Eternity, and shall be to Eternity, the Word and Man embodied, whether you mean that he was an Individual Man distinct from any others, or the Universal Soul of the World embodied in Matter: And by your talk of our being One in God, as we were before the World began, none can tell whether you mean that we were Existent, or only in Potentia Creatoris? And if Existent whether we were God or parts of God, or individual Souls made from Eternity for future Bodies, and kept till those Bodies were made: And whether kept in Revolution from Body to Body? Or how? And whether we shall have a future Revolution.