N01184:84
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.
Yet further, it is said concerning the Saints of the First Resurrection, that they are blessed and holy, and that the Second Death shall have no Power over them. How does this agree to them that are the Subjects of only a Political Resurrection? Will there be a Time when in the Church on Earth there shall be no Reprobate, nor any unregenerate Person for a Thousand Years together? So indeed it will be at the Day of Judgment: But before that Blessed Day it will not be, Mat. 13.30. Nor does this Political Sense well agree with that Expression of the rest of the dead not living again until the Thousand Years were finished. Shall all the dead have a Political Resurrection at the End of the Thousand Years? They must have a Resurrection of the same Kind with that which some had at the Beginning of the Thousand Years. I have yet one Thing more to object here. This Political Resurrection does imply that the Lord's People shall enjoy great Prosperity, yea, and Dominion in this present World, and that for many Ages, when as the Scripture tells them of Persecutions and of an evil World, and that the Sufferings of the Church shall last throughout this present Time; yea, until the Day comes when the Creature shall be delivered from the Bondage of Corruption, and we shall have the Redemption of our Body, Rom. 8.18,—24. There is a Kingdom promised, but the Enjoyment of it not to be expected in this present, but in the World to come. In the Resurrection World we shall reign on Earth, but it must be made a New Earth, which it will not be before the Conflagration: The Fire of the Judgment Day will purify and renovate the World. The Scripture is express, that the last Days of this present World will be perilous Times, 2 Tim. 3.1. It is not said some of the last Days will be so: Nor may we distinguish where the Scripture does not. But how then can we believe that the last Thousand Years of this World will be Times without any Peril? The New Heaven and the New Earth which God has promised, i. e. the New World which shall begin with the Resurrection, will be another kind of World than what this which we see is, and has been ever since the Fall of Adam. In that World they shall have Rest and Refreshing, Luk. 20.35. Acts 3.19, 21