N01184:112
A dissertation concerning the future conversion of the Jewish Nation. Answering the objections of…
A dissertation concerning the future conversion of the Jewish Nation. Answering the objections of the Reverend and learned Mr. Baxter, Dr. Lightfoot, and others. : With an enquiry into the first resurrection. / By Increase Mather, president of Harvard-College, at Cambridge, in New-England. ; [Three lines from Jeremiah]A dissertation concerning the future conversion of the Jewish Nation. Answering the objections of the Reverend and learned Mr. Baxter, Dr. Lightfoot, and others. : With an enquiry into the first resurrection. / By Increase Mather, president of Harvard-Colledge, at Cambridge, in New-England. ; [Three lines from Jeremiah]
London: printed by R. Tookey for Nath. Hillier, 1709
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.
3. Another Objection is that at the Day of Judgment the Conflagration will destroy all the wicked on the Earth, and then how shall there be Enemies, viz. Gog and Magog to make an Attempt on the Camp of the Saints after the Thousand Years are expired? To this some have answered, that we may suppose that the Living Saints who shall be all changed at the Lord's Coming, will not be put into a State in respect of Immortality, equal with the Angels, as the Saints of the First Resurrection shall be; but the Change they shall undergo will make them like Adam in Paradise; that they shall eat and drink and the like, as Adam should if he had not sinned; that these shall be instructed and ruled by the Saints of the New Jerusalem, who shall then be Priests and Kings. Thus Irenaeus Lib. 5. Cap. 35. and Lactantius Lib. 7. C. 24. The Hebrew Doctors are of Opinion, that in the Days of the Messiah Men shall live as long as the Patriarchs did before the Flood. They suppose the Meaning of that Text Isa. 65.20. The Child shall die an Hundred Years old, to be, that one who is but an Hundred Years old will be counted a Child, because of the great Longevity of Men in those Days. But the Scripture seems to intimate that the Saints found alive at the Lord's Coming shall in a Moment be made incorruptible, like those raised from the dead, 1 Cor. 15.50, 51, 52. Wherefore there is another Answer which seems to some (tho' for my own Part I am not so fully satisfied in that Notion of the Saints being made incorruptible at the Beginning of the Thousand Years) a clearer Solution of what has been objected. It is this; the Scripture gives us to understand that there will be Two Conflagrations, as well as Two Resurrections, the first at the Beginning, and the last at the End of the Thousand Years. As for the first Conflagration, not only the Living Saints, but whole Nations besides shall escape that Destruction, out of which Nations will Gog and Magog arise. Lactantius says, that when the Thousand Years begin, tho' Antichrist shall be destroyed, yet that the Nations shall not be wholly extinguished, but Quadam relinquentur ut triumphantur à justis, &c. Some will remain for the Righteous to reign over. And the Scripture speaks expressly of the Nations of them which are saved, Rev. 21.24. that is to say, who are saved from that Fire, which the Beast and False Prophet are cast alive into;