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2. The first death hath its course upon all flesh created of God, the second death shall not have its course upon all flesh, as it shall be raised by Christ, these vanquishers being specially exempted therefrom. Whether any others shall be exempted we inquire not, but they surely shall. Now, because that second death is indeed the condition of utter destruction from the presence of God, wherein lie sweltering in the lake of fire, all evil persons, and all evil angels, and all evil things, the dross and the corruption, death and hades, and whatever besides hath arisen in arms against God's goodly and blessed creation of life; we are given to understand, that to these vanquishers of pain and sorrow and peril and sword and death and hell, there remaineth neither sorrow, nor pain, nor death, nor tears nor crying, nor any other evil accident whatsoever, but only joy, blessedness, and glory. And because this evil which is warded off from them is entitled the second death, and not the second mortal life; because that state shall not have any power or liberty or bounds of action, but shall remain for ever close prisoned up in vain impotency, and fruitless strugglings for an existence, and incessant toil after something that cannot be realized, we argue; from this interdict of all such evils from the estate of the vanquishers, that they shall never know weariness, nor exhaustion of their strength, nor be capable of hurt or injury in their members, nor be pressed beyond the limits of their stength, nor in any other way whatever expe rience any discord between the bounds of their will and the bounds of their habitation. Death, or the fruit of death, or the precursor of death, shall in them have no representation whatever, but, contrariwise, a continual stream of unwearied and inexhaustible life. And, moreover, it is signified that this blessed estate shall know no change to the worse; be liable to no temptation, be overcome of no evil, be hindered or hampered in no good. There shall be such sweet harmony from the will within, where God ever worketh, throughout all the spheres of reasonable speech, bodily activity, outward work, and external impressions, as shall make all nature like one many-stringed harp, obedient to the touch of the master mind of man. No cogitations of evil, nor fearful recollections of evil past, nor anticipations of evil to come, nor injury, nor injustice,

nor possibility of change; positive good, and the absence of all positive evil. What an estate worthy of God to design from the first, of Christ to bring out from the ocean of sin, of the Holy Spirit to constitute, of man to strive after, to fight for, spurning death, remembering that he who loseth his life shall gain it. Blessed hope of my soul ! For which I will bear man's rebuke, disease and sorrow and pain, and man's oppression, and death, and all things contradictory and evil. Because I have a state in reserve for me which cannot be hurt of the second death. Security, safety, and freedom from contingency are before me. What need I fear this loathsome world, or care about man's terror, who can only kill the body? but God can destroy both soul and body in hell-fire for ever.

3. Such is the manifest and open blessedness of life, the perfect and entire security from death, which the vanquishers are promised in those first two words of the Spirit, but his third admonition ascendeth into a loftier and more mysterious region of being, "To the vanquisher I will give to him to eat from (not from off, as in the first, but simply from, aro not ) that manna which hath been hidden, and I will give to him a white pebble, and upon the pebble a new name having been written, which no man knoweth save the receiver." This is the nature of their hidden life and unknown name or being, for the name always denotes the nature of the being. The first gave us the outward and ostensible form of their life, as the heads of creation. Eating off the tree of life in the midst of the paradise of God; dwelling with God in his own appropriate habitation, and feeding at his own table; they thence dispense according to their several needs and deservings, the blessings of goodness throughout the inferior creation. But they have another and a higher fountain of life, another and a higher region of being, which is expressed by the hidden manna that was laid up before the Lord in the golden pot, and eaten of no one, approached by no one save the high priest on the day of atonement. This aliment of an unearthly being shall then be ours, and ours alone, who dwell in the secret place of the Most High, under the wings of him who is the Almighty. There being arrived in that new Jerusalem, which is the holy of holies of creation, the dwelling place of God, the seat of his inaccessible light,

his holy temple,-which temple He is,-we have a new nourishment of life, hidden and unrevealed, a communion with God, a life of God, an inworking of God, pertaining only to the ransomed of the Lord, who have taken up his battle and conquered therein. This hidden life hath a hidden food, and that food is manna, which is the humanity of Christ; yet not the manna corruptible, but incorruptible, that is, the glorified body of Christ, whose capacity of spiritual communion is such, that it is able to drink up and to contain the whole fulness of the Godhead. And we, drinking from that full river of God, do enter into the same divine communion, and have a life like to that which Christ now possesseth, "our life which is hid with Christ in God." And when He who is our life shall appear, we shall be like him, and shall appear with him in glory. Very flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bone, one with him of his substance, his very wife, we shall surely be made partakers of that heavenly life which circulates through all the members of his body, but beyond the precincts of his body shall not flow out, save in words of command, influences of blessing, and acts of good government to all other beings whatever, who shall wait upon the queen, though they be daughters of kings, and live upon the smiles of her countenance, and do all her good pleasure. Oh, what a peerless dignity is this! the bride of Christ, who ever reserveth unto herself the very substance of her living and loving Lord, being made of a rib taken from his side, and builded up unto him for a wife most dear, for whom he will leave his Father, and with whom he will dwell for ever and ever. The same secret love, and life, and communion of being, with which no other creature intermeddleth, are revealed to my mind under the symbol of the white stone with the inscribed name, inscrutable by all others but the receivers thereof. This is his name, his bounds of habitation, his definition of being which he knoweth, and no one besides, which he knoweth in the act of receiving it, and which can in no other way than by impartation be conveyed. While it is as the pure and spotless God, clear as the light of God, wherein is no darkness at all. It comes by bequest, and not by right; it is an act of grace and acquittal, of conferred honour, a boon, a blessing, which the Spirit

It is an unrivalled the peculiar peopeculiar treasure," This same honour

gives, whereby we arise from the cell and the prison house of death into that most glorious life and fellowship with the Almighty God, through the glorious body of his mediatorial Son. This is life of God, this is name of God realized, is the substance conveyed in that word, "son of God;" the first promise is the substance of that word, 66 son of man.” Ah me, what a mystery of love is expressed in that word "sons of God!" dignity, to which only the repronous, ple, the people for a possession, the " the "jewels" of God are admitted. we are all by the baptism of Christ admitted to, and we do in the Spirit enjoy, "for as many as have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ." Why is it not found, why is it not preached, why do not our divines strain after this subject, instead of doling out the dregs of Dutch and Genevan theology? Ah me! surely we have forsaken a royal banquet to feed on garbage.

4. Next comes the outward manifestation of this inward right and property of being. For every dignity in God's creation is for use, and this the superlative prerogative of his creatures is for the greatest use. And the occupation is revealed to us in the next promise to consist in the beating down of all adverse rule and government upon the earth, and exalting over the whole bounds of it the blessed ascendancy of the Morning Star that cometh out of Jacob. "The vanquisher, and the observer of my works unto the end, I will give to him liberty upon the nations; and he shall rule them with an iron rod; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken in pieces, as I also received from my Father, and I will give to him that morning star." This containeth the excellent service which we shall do for God and for man, against those nations who have gathered themselves against him and his Christ, and so long corrupted the earth with their abominable deeds. God useth us for his judges of the wicked, for his men of might to crush the seven-headed monster, and put him and his crew under iron government. Not only to dash their structures of wickedness to pieces, but also to put down the powers of wickedness themselves, and keep them under iron rule during all the millenial period; which is indeed one of blessedness to the whole earth, but that a blessedness wrought out by violent outpourings upon

the wicked rulers, and continual suppression of them throughout the long age of time which precedeth their utter rejection into the lake of fire; after which they shall cease to need suppression of any rod, being held impotent in the lake of fire. As the same Spirit of Christ doth reduce this nature of mine into obedience and blessedness, by first putting down with an iron rod, and keeping down the potentates of sin who are encamped there, and over their prostrate heads, doth send forth the sweet authority of the Holy Ghost; as Christ in person now doth exercise this double rule of the iron rod and olive branch, in his saints; even so Christ by his saints shall at his coming, and throughout the Millennium, smite with the iron rod, until he have smitten down the evil principalities, and with the same iron rod, shall keep them down, extending the while over all nature, the holy and beneficent sway of that morning star which is the dawning of a day of light and sunshine never again to decline into the shades of night. There is in this both an act and the continuance of an act. The act is the host of heaven encountering the host of earth; the continuance of the act is their keeping Satan in prison, and death in subjection, and all evil in the dust; so proving that it is not any new nature of creation, but the new government of the sons of God, which so keepeth all things in their places, and blesseth all things with their proper purpose and enjoyment. This is the regeneration, not the alteration of the created materials, but the shoot, ing through them of that baptism of fire, which shall purge out of them the unclean spirits which now divert them from God, and the ends of their being. Those flaming ministers who heretofore shewed themselves on the top of Sinai, angels and ministers of every name, under the mastery of the heirs of salvation, whom they serve, shall take the place of the evil angels whom they have bound in fetters of iron, and being ever obedient to the men of power, shall bring nature back into the observance of all those good ends, and the possession of all those enjoyments for which things were created at first. All this will be seen by that vehement outbursting of evil which takes place at the end of the Millennium, and prepares the way for the final catastrophe, and eternal condition of the wicked. This power of bringing order out of

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