and religion is established in the throne of righteousness, and upon the altar of truth: and the speedy and total destruction of popery ensues, by the sword which proceedeth out of the mouth of Christ. (Rev. xix. 21.)

SECTION VIII.

The faith and fortitude of the Martyrs-not the effect of enthusiastic ecstasy-but of a rational conviction of the truth of the gospel, -and the actual fulfilment of Christ's promises of spiritual support.

THE decision of this great controversy of Zion,* in the manner stated in the last section, by Christ and his everlasting gospel obtaining a compleat and final triumph over the long prevailing imposture and tyranny of antichrist, is another of those remarkable epochas of the last times, which are spoken of in the scriptures of the prophets, as THE DAY OF THE LORD; and as being still previous to his final or personal appearance at the last day. There seems to have arisen amongst the early christians, a very general and alarming misapprę

Isaiah xxxiv. 8,

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hension of what the apostle Paul had delivered in personal conference, and was still farther reported to have confirmed in certain epistles upon this subject. And the consequences of suffering such a groundless imagination of the day of the Lord-the coming of the Lord, and many other like expressions in the apostolical writings, to go abroad without contradiction, might have been very prejudicial to the chris tian faith.

all

The prevailing idea that the end of things, and the coming of Christ to the general judgment, were almost immediately at hand, must have soon been disproved by matter of fact; and would have involved the most solemn and fundamental truths of the gospel, in a degree of doubt and suspicion along with it. Besides the other obvious ill consequences of creating an unreasonable terror in the minds of many, and a supine neglect of the necessary business of the world in many more, upon the idea that in a very short space of time the "elements should melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein

should be burnt up." (2 Pet. iii. 10.) There was a necessity therefore that the apostle should publicly discountenance a notion of this pernicious tendency, and likely to be productive of great discredit to religion, which ought, if it be true religion, to be widely distinguished from the holy sloth of fanaticism, by a diligent attention to the necessary business of the world, and the commendable care for posterity.*

The prophecies of our Lord, of his coming to the destruction of Jerusalem, were perhaps an additional confirmation of this very general opinion; as those prophecies would naturally be a frequent subject of conversation amongst the christians, and liable, as well as the other scriptures, to be ignorantly or wilfully wrested to a perverse meaning. The fall of Jerusalem, and the total abolition of the Mosaic covenant and oeconomy, (as that great and important event was covertly and mystically intended in these prophecies,) were with great frequency alluded to in the apostolical Epistles,

* Rom. xii. 11. "Not slothful in business,-fervent in spirit, serving the Lord."

under the same emblem of the day of Christ, and his coming in his judgments.* In some of those places it is spoken of as being then very near at hand, and in the stile of our Saviour himself, as a topic of hope and comfort to the believers, under the harassing persecutions and cruelties they endured from the embittered hatred of the jews." Then, said he, shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud, with power and great glory. And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh. (Luke xxi. 27.)

How injurious an use might have been made of this alledged doctrine of St Paul, to the prejudice of the gospel, by the heretic and pagan opponents of the faith, at that early period, we may form some idea, from the ingenious application of it to the same purpose, by a very celebrated writer in our own time.

He builds a plausible theory, to

The coming of the Lord. 1 Cor. i. 7: xv. 23. 1 Thess. iv. 15: 2 Thess. ii. 1, 8. James v. 7, 8. It draweth nigh.

1 Thess. v. 23. 2 Pet. i, 16: iii. 4, 12.

+ Mr Gibbon.