"And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season. And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years."

THIS is the only chapter in the whole Bible which discovers to us the doctrine of a Millennium, or the period of a Thousand Years, wherein the Church of Christ is to enjoy a regnant state on earth: It is therefore probable that the Apostles themselves knew not of this Millennial period, nor any other Saints, until it was made known to the seven Churches of Asia by the revelation given to John: but it is certain that the Holy Ghost hath from of old held forth the prospect of such a state of things on earth, as the Church hath never yet enjoyed; which state, as the twentieth chapter of Revelation informs us, is to continue uninterruptedly for the space of a thousand years. The Church of England, (for wise reasons, no doubt, and perhaps as judging it more profitable for her members "to exercise themselves unto godliness," and to watch the existing state of Christendom and of the world, than to indulge overweening speculations concerning events which are to terminate the history of the Church of Christ,) is altogether silent on the subject of the Millennium, both as to its nature and period: and of such still distant importance it appears to me, that I should apologize for now bringing it before the

notice of my Clerical friends, were it not that the much increased agitation of this question of late has given it a sort of forced interest. But when "the things which shall be hereafter," are suffered to have such a preponderating influence on the mind, as to make us comparatively overlook "the things that are," it is well for us to examine, whether "this persuasion cometh, or not, from him that calleth us,' even admitting our views of earthly futurity to be correct: Yet again, there is every apprehension of our entertaining erroneous notions of that doctrine, whatever it be, the true and wholesome design of which we in any way pervert or abuse. It was the work of God to make the Old Testament Prophets "search and inquire diligently what and what manner of time the Spirit of Christ that was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow:" but it was the work of Satan to fill Peter's head with such notions of that subsequent glory, as to rebuke his Lord for declaring to the Disciples those previous sufferings. Again, It was the work of God to make the oriental Magi do homage to the infant Emmanuel, as the new-born King of the Jews: but it was the work of Satan to make so many think that the kingdom of God was presently to appear, during the period of Christ's ministry on earth. Also, After the resurrection and before the ascension, our Lord's answer to the Apostles' question, "Wilt thou at this time restore the kingdom unto Israel?" was, "It is not for you to know the times and the seasons which the Father hath put in his own power:" and this answer was accompanied with a watch-word, and also a promise, more immediately interesting themselves, "But ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you; and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth :" q. d. "Mind your own times and matters; but if ye must needs be thinking on the destinies of the whole nation of the Jews; know ye that they are in God's hands." So when Peter asked Jesus concerning John, "And, Lord, what of this man ?" Jesus answered, "If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me:" And here again Satan was busy in infusing notions into the Church, that John was not to die. If therefore in the Apostolic age, so many erroneous ideas existed concerning certain doctrines and statements which had their own mind and meaning, we may justly apprehend still more rife misconceptions about things revealed, in the afterages of the Church; and particularly on the mysterious subject of Prophecy, and still more particularly on that part of Prophecy which is the winding up of the "mystery of God." "What is that to thee? follow thou me;" checks a too curious inquiry into the subject proposed for our present discussion, and is a wholesome restraint against indulging too luxurious speculations thereupon; even after ascertaining, or being fully persuaded in our own minds, First, What the Millennium Is, and Secondly, What IT IS NOT.

First, Viewing the Church of God as confined to the families of the ante-diluvian Patriarchs, what a consolation must the promise of "the Seed of the Woman" have ministered to their faith, amidst the world of ungodliness which surrounded them! to trace, too, the successions of the Messiah, from the posterity of Seth through Shem, to Abraham and his seed-this was the only hope, this the faith, this the religion of the Church, for about two thousand years before the Law. At the coming of

Moses, (who was Prophet, Priest, and King in Jeshurun ;) and at the establishment of the Levitical worship, the Church enjoyed still greater privileges, as the light began to dawn more clearly, and as Messiah's name began to be more fully declared as David's Son, the Son of David's seed, in the regal line of descent. But now since the days of the Gospel, we are witnessing another two thousand years, or a bi-millennium of the Church's yet more blessed state on earth; wherein the name of the God of Israel is called, not on one nation and kingdom only, but on all the kingdoms and nations of Christendom: nor only so, but the name of Jesus is working its way into the territories of Paganism, and into the heart of Heathens: Still the Church is "a poor and afflicted people," and must remain in a state of tribulation, oppression, and persecution, more or less, as long as Jew, Turk, Infidel, and Heretic, remain to harass and injure her. Looking abroad, therefore, over the whole surface of the earth, and beholding the state of the Protestant Churches therein, which are as the Tabernacle of Witness in this world's wilderness; O what strong consolation doth it present to the eye of faith, to see every "lofty city laid low, even to the dust of the ground, and trodden down by the feet of the poor, and by the steps of the needy!"-to see every mystic Babylon fallen for ever!-to see the "the proud waters" of every Euphrates, which had "gone over the souls of so many, "dried up!"-to see the idols of the Gentiles prostrate before the ark!-to see the vail taken away from the hearts of the Jewish Antichrist!-to see Satan thus turned out from every hole and corner of all the ends of the earth; and the Church, (which for six thousand years had inherited so small a portion of this terraqueous globe,) breaking forth to the right and to the left, eastward, and westward, and northward, and southward, and amongst all the islands of the sea!-to "the whole earth filled with the glory of the Lord," and "the knowledge of the Lord covering the earth as the waters cover the sea," when "all shall know the Lord, from the least to the greatest!" All these things, and all these their ages and generations, (without entering into detail of the ten thousand times ten thousand blessed, and holy, and happy effects resulting therefrom,) present to my mind such a universe of riches, of glory, of divine grace, that if my ideas of a Millennium carried me beyond the scope and compass of such a state of things on earth, a thousand years would be too short, and eternity not too long, for their duration: On the contrary, if I entertain views of the Millennium, (as those who think it past already,) so many degrees below some such level, I make the future millennial Sabbath less glorious in holiness on the surface of the world, than the present hebdomedal Sabbath on the face of Christendom. I mean not to fix a standard for the Millennial state; I mean only to say, that there are extreme boundaries beyond which it cannot pass; and there are extreme points to which it must reach: and I think if we set foot on our twentieth chapter of Revelation, as first revealing to us the millennial period, and if we work our way backward through the New Testament, in certain of the passages wherein the millennial state is pourtrayed, we shall be treading on safe, though holy ground, without "intruding into things not seen, vainly puffed up by our fleshly mind."

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Now what is the first great argument, in this awful chapter which leads us through the millennial age on earth to the eternal ages in heaven and in hell?

The first thing here before our eyes is, Satan's being put in

irons, and clapt into prison by the Angel-turnkey, for the space of a Millennium; so that the nations of the world should be delivered from that old serpent's deceit and violence, till he should be let loose upon them again for a short time. Here, by the way, we may observe, that as the Church of Rome, at the close of about five hundred years, or a semimillenium, became the Romish Antichrist; so at the close of the ten hundred years, the Gentile Churches will become the Gog-Magog Antichrist; the land of Israel probably becoming, during the thousand years, what the English Church is among all nations at present, "The pillar and ground of the truth"-the bulwark of Christendom. Now it is evident that, by the vision of an angel's coming down from heaven, (as in v. 1,) is not implied his dwelling upon earth; for neither hath he "the key of David with him, but "the key of the abyss: " hence, also, there is no throne for this angel, among the thrones whereon they sat to whom the judgment was given in v. 4; Christian thrones being established during the thousand years, all the world over, and all "the kingdoms of the world becoming the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ,' when all kings shall "fall down before Messiah, and all nations shall do homage to him;" the Church thus having regal foster-parents, ("kings her nursing fathers, and their queens her nursing mothers,") and exalted to such high dignity, pre-eminence, and dominion, with such an ascendancy over the minds of all :-Then, and thus, the Saints will reign indeed, and will indeed appear as on a throne; whereas the Church of Christ now sits lowly as on a footstool, and she will be more humbled still, before she sees her best days on earth: for the last great slaughter of the Witnesses is yet to take place, unless the sand of two or three centuries of the Millennium has already run out unawares to us! for we read in c. xi. that after three days and a half, the Spirit of life from God entered into the slain Protestants or Witnesses; and they stood upon their feet; and one bid them ascend up to heaven in a cloud, in the sight of their terrorstricken enemies. Now although in the struggle of the Apocalyptic Beast to silence the voice of Protestants raised against its abominations, we may conclude that there will be much martyr-blood shed; yet we cannot conclude that the Holy Ghost, by these prophetic and symbolical expressions, means to specify a bodily resurrection any more than a bodily ascension; and the language in v. 7-13, of the said c. xi. is evidently used in conformity to the circumstances attendant on the death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord Jesus: We conclude, therefore, that "the slaying of the witnesses" is, in the main, their civil, political, and ecclesiastical death, (their silencing in every way as Witnesses: the encompassing of which object may yet necessarily be combined with the natural death of thousands of martyred Protestants :) therefore on the Spirit of life entering into them again, they are not said to rise from the dead, but only to stand upon their feet, after having fallen down in dead silence before their enemies, see Ps. lxxxviii. 3—8. And again, As to the Witnesses ascending up to heaven, it is no more nor less than as when the Church brings forth an iron-rod ruler of all nations, this same is "caught up to God and to his throne," (chap. xii. 1-5 ;) evidently shewing that God would establish Christianity on the throne of the Roman empire, and on the ten thrones into which that throne should afterwards be subdivided: so the Witnesses are said figuratively to ascend in a cloud, (alluding to the cloud that received Jesus,) when the thrones

of this world are surrounded with "a cloud of witnesses," the gospel again riding triumphantly on " the high places of the earth." As soon as the ten kings of the Romish Christendom shall again become converts to the truth, they will "hate the whore, (Babylon, the Romish Church and Hierarchy, including Rome itself the seat of the Beast,) and make her desolate, and eat her flesh, and burn her with fire": from which period the Millennial song seems to commence, "Rejoice over her," &c. c. xvii. 16, xviii. 20.

I need not observe, in confirmation of the above interpretation, that the word "Heaven," throughout the Book of Revelation, means not "the heaven of heavens," (or "the third heaven,") or even the aerial or starry heavens, in the plural number; but the word is here singular, and means the high place in Church and State; wherein Protestantism thus reviving, and its revival destroying Popery, and thrusting it, as it were, down to hell, while itself is exalted up to heaven; and Christendom being now bounded only by the boundaries of earth and sea; behold all the kings of the ten kingdoms of the Beast now serving God and Christ, and ministering true judgment unto the people, as well as judging the Romish harlot: These may well be the thrones John saw, and this the judgment that was given unto them; though of every believer in Jesus it is also true that he who overcomes shall sit with Christ on his throne, even as Jesus overcame and sat down with his Father on his throne." And now appear "The souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the Beast, neither his Image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads or in their hands," (v. 4,) meaning, All true Protestants and martyrs, who revive with the revival of the faith, after the binding of Satan; and though dead, now begin to speak again, and having been forgotten "as dead men out of mind," they now live again in the hearts and minds and lives of their successors, who now appear in their spirit and power, as Elijah came again in John Baptist. But all these persons in v. 4, may be also no other than the very same Witnesses who lay unburied for three days and a half, until they found their legs again, and, by the Spirit of life entering into them, "stood upon their feet, an exceeding great army," as if the army of martyrs was risen again from the dust of the ground. Moreover, as the revival spoken of in c. xi. was without any bodily resurrection, so those persons here, their "living and reigning with Christ a thousand years," signifies, and can signify neither more nor less than, the revival, life, and reign of Protestantism, the grace and blessing and happiness of which state the whole Church of all past ages may truly be said to enjoy, together with the then generation of mankind, their representatives as well as successors: For, as in the sixth chapter, the souls under the altar were seen, and their voices heard aloud, crying, "How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?" and as their souls are bid wait till the final slaughter of the last Witnesses should complete the list of the names written in the Book of Martyrs; so in the blood of the souls here being avenged, God avengeth the blood of all souls, which are now together quieted as it were, and at rest together; and having "suffered together with Christ," do now "reign together" in the new regnant state of saints on earth. Now if "the spirits of just men made perfect" are said to "rejoice when they see the vengeance" of their own and their