after who are miserable in the absence of present enjoyment, and more so with the prospect of future suffering. This condition is very regularly expressed by that of those who are thrust into the darkness without, in opposition, no doubt, to such as are in the enjoyment of light within: and its two most characteristic attributes are these, "of weeping, and "the gnashing of the teeth :" (ó kλavtμòs kai ó ßpvYμòs Tŵv ödóvtwy :) acts expressive of sorrow and despair; of sorrow, under the sense of immediate loss; of despair, under the conviction that this loss is irretrievable.

If such be the case, we may perceive with what good reason the first resurrection should be called Kaτ' ¿x, the resurrection of the just because, however many, both bad and good, both just and unjust, may be raised by it alike, into the positive fruition of its peculiar blessings none will or can be admitted, but the good and just; while the retributive punishment, which awaits the rest, is the present bad effect of the loss of so inestimable a privilege; and the consciousness, that whatever that effect may be, it is irremediable.

Such persons, then, though suffering at this very time in a way, and to a degree, peculiarly evil to themselves, and as far as they are concerned, in the inverse ratio of the good which is actually enjoyed by the rest, may still be in the condition of those, who are reserved for worse evil to come, and for more suffering than has yet been inflicted on them. There seems no reason, why the evil of those, who shall be excluded from the enjoyment of the millennary kingdom-peculiar as it is, while it lasts-should not admit of being aggravated, at the

end of that time, as much as that the peculiar good of such as have been allowed to partake of it, at the end of the same time should admit of being increased. The joys of heaven will no doubt greatly exceed to these latter all the joys of the millennium; yet the blessings of the millennium may have been to them an apt foretaste, and an infallible earnest, of the joys of heaven: and on the same principle, the evils of eternal punishment may much exceed to the reprobate the misery of their condition during the millennary dispensation; and yet this last have been to them also an equally expressive forerunner and equally certain voucher of the punishment, that awaits them through all eternity.

And hence we may explain why the infliction of their peculiar punishment upon them, even before the expiration of the millennium, may be described by their being cast into the furnace of fire. It will render it probable, also, that the final judgment and condemnation of such as these, not being complete until their eternal punishment itself begins; some further judgment may await them at the end of the world, though no further approval can await the good and faithful, who are already the acknowledged heirs of salvation. In this case, Matt. xii. 41, 42: and Luke xi. 31, 32: as well as Matt. xi. 22-24, or Luke x. 14: may assert that which will hereafter be strictly verified by the event. We have but to suppose that the final condemnation of all the reprobate will take place together, just as the final acceptance of all the good; and such declarations will be rendered consistent with our previous assumption, that part of

c Matt. xiii. 42. 49.

the wicked may have been already condemned even before the millennium, and part have been suffering more or less of their proper punishment, even during it.

CHAPTER XII. PART II.

On the Millennium. Historical Testimonies to the
Antiquity of the Doctrine.

It is well known that the most ancient Christian writer, who left on record an authentic testimony to his belief in the expectation of a millennium, or of a personal reign of Christ upon earth, and in the other articles of faith connected with that expectation, was Papias, bishop of Hierapolis in Phrygia. His testimony was contained in a work of his, in five books, called Λόγων Κυριακῶν ἐξήγησις, An exposition of words or sayings of the Lord, or in relation to the Lord; of which, though the work itself has not come down to us, Eusebius and others have preserved some account a.

The passage which Eusebius cites from the proœm, or introduction to this work, seems to imply that Papias himself had not conversed personally with any of the apostles, though he was only one link removed from them, and what he reported as the words and sayings of the apostles, was the report of what he had heard from those, who had both lived and conversed with them.

The testimony, however, of Irenæus, which is produced at the outset of the same chapter of the ecclesiastical history, represents him as an hearer of St. John, (the apostle,) and as a friend and acquaintance of Polycarp, the venerable Christian bishop of Smyrna, who suffered martyrdom early in the reign of Marcus Aurelius. And indeed, if Papias was

VOL. I.

a Eus. E. H. iii. 39. p. 110-112.

T

truly the latter, he might also be the former; that is, as Polycarp, in early youth, had heard and conversed with St. John, and is said to have been ordained bishop of Smyrna by him, there is no reason why Papias also, his friend and acquaintance, his equal in years, and like him, living in the neighbourhood of Ephesus, where St. John passed the last years of his life, might not both have seen and conversed with that apostle.

Nor is this fact inconsistent with the implicit testimony of the preamble to his work, on the Exposition of the sayings of the Lord. He tells us there, that he should not hesitate to embody in this collection of records, whatsoever he well remembered to have carefully learned from the peoßrepo or elders; pledging himself to the truth and fidelity of his reports. He had never, like the world at large, delighted in listening to such as could speak most eloquently, but to such as taught the truth; nor to those who recorded the commands of others, (merely human teachers,) but what had been delivered from the Lord, (to the keeping of faith,) and was derived from the truth itself. Did he fall in with any one, who had conversed with the elders, he inquired of him about the words of the elders; what Andrew, or Peter, or Philip, or Thomas, or James, or John, or Matthew, or any other of the disciples of the Lord, were wont to say; what Aristio, or the presbyter John, the disciples of the Lord, say: for he was ever of opinion that no information to be obtained from books, was as beneficial as that which was to be had from the oral testimony of contemporaries.

Such is the account which this simple minded