without being exposed, as they were, to be crushed and swept off the stage, merely because Jesus and his truth were dearer to them than life itself!

LASTLY. The literal view can offer no consistent explanation of the "judgment that was given unto" the slain martyrs. What judgment was this? Clearly the same that the first company of them sought, and were assured they would get as soon as the second company were ready to receive it along with them-" How long, O Lord, dost thou not JUDGE and AVENGE OUR BLOOD ON THEM THAT DWELL ON the earth?" If the two words "judge" and "avenge" here do not mean precisely the same thing, the latter being explanatory of the former, they at least mean things inseparable from each other, and to be received at one and the same time. When "it was said unto them, that they should rest yet a little longer until" the other company "should be killed as they were"the meaning is, "Judgment shall be given unto you, and your blood shall be avenged on them that dwell on the earth," when that period arrives. Accordingly, when our millennial vision says, "I saw JUDGMENT given unto them”—the martyr companies it is impossible, I think, to doubt that the meaning is, "I saw the Lord fulfilling his pledge to the souls under the altar,—I saw him judging and avenging their blood --and the blood of the other company along with them—on them that dwell on the earth." If this be correct, of course the slain, and those who slew them, must be taken in the same sense. If the judgment is to be given unto the martyrs personally at the millennium, their blood must also be personally avenged on them that dwell on the earth. If the martyrs are to rise bodily from their graves, in order that judgment may be personally given to them, then their persecutors, every one of them, must be raised from their graves to have vengeance rendered to them for the blood of those dear saints which they shed. If Paul, for example, was seen in this millennial vision having "judgment given to him" in his individual

person, why is not Nero here also, to have apostolic "blood avenged upon him?" If Ignatius, why not also Trajan? If Justin, and Polycarp, and the blessed martyrs of Lyons and Vienne, why is not the mild and lauded Marcus Antoninus confronted with them in this "judicial," "bloodavenging" resurrection? Why, in a word, is not the long line of bloody emperors, and their more guilty minions, arrayed in person before the hundreds of thousands of the martyrs of Jesus, of whom the world was not worthy, whose blood they poured out like water, with little intermission, for three hundred years? On all just principles of interpretation, if the cry for "judgment" and "vengeance ON their enemies" is to bring up the martyrs in their persons at the millennium, the same cry ought to bring up their enemies in person along with them, for their part of the judgment. So with respect to the second class—after whose slaughter the whole army of martyrs is to be judged-if the Lord's

66 Slaughtered saints, whose bones

Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold," are personally to appear in this millennial resurrection, why not also

"The bloody Piedmontese, that rolled

Mother with infant down the rocks?"

And shall the seventy thousand dear French Christians that perished in three days-to the eternal infamy of the Church of Rome-rise from their graves for "judgment" at the millennium, and, while looking for the avenging of their blood on them that shed it, shall they miss the bloody Guises, and that Man of Sin who, from his throne on the seven hills, caused a medal to be struck in honour of this fearful slaughter of the Huguenots?

Certain it is, that the judgment which John saw the martyrs get, brings up not one of the persecutors in their individual persons. Have the martyrs been deceived, then?

Having asked bread, have they gotten a stone? No, but you misinterpret their petition. The thing granted shows what we are to understand by the thing asked. They get "judgment" on the cause that slew them. That, therefore, is the judgment sought. It is just the testimony of Jesus, once slain in the martyrs, at length living in their millennial successors-trodden once, but now triumphant. Listen to the following words of the 18th chapter:-" Rejoice over her (over Babylon), thou heaven, and ye saints and apostles and prophets;* for God hath avenged you on her” (v. 20). "Reward her even as she rewarded you" (v. 6). And again, in the 19th chapter,—" He hath judged the great whore, which did corrupt the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hands" (v.2). Here you have both parties together-the party avenged, namely, "the saints and apostles and prophets," from the beginning; and the party on whom God hath avenged them," namely, Babylon, the harlot-Church, in its destruction. It is simply the fall of this antichristian, cursed, bloody system, that is meant. Over her ruin the whole Church of God, of every age, and especially those who fell under her murderous policy, are called to rejoice, as if personally avenged in the destruction of that which destroyed them.

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I am far from denying that this righting of the cause of Christ and his enemies involves an ultimate resurrection of the persons of all on either side-to everlasting life in the one case, and to shame and everlasting contempt in the other. In this sense, the millennial state, as being the next stage and the nearest resemblance to the eternal state, is described in the Old Testament prophets in language which in the Apocalypse is appropriated, with slight elevation of strain, to the everlasting state. But if you raise the platform of the vision on the one side into the celestial and eternal region, by bringing up the martyrs into glory at the millennium, you must not

*Ka di before zóc. in all the critical editions.

sink the platform on the other side, by leaving the persecutors to rot quietly in their graves for a thousand years more. This is a clumsy expedient, which creates more difficulties than it removes, and in the case of our vision fails, as we have seen, to meet the requirements of the text.*

To put this argument, then, in a single sentence, the "judging" and "avenging," if not precisely the same thing, plainly go together-as in the petition, so in the bestowment: the thing meant is one and the same interposition in favour of the one party and against the other; with reference to the cause at the millennium, and at the great day with reference to the persons, when all who have had any thing to do in the conflict shall "go to their own place."

Thus have I examined this celebrated passage both presumptively and directly, both generally and in detail. Though I have adduced some considerations which, even before examining the passage, seemed to bear very hard against the literal sense, it will not be said that I took advantage of these to prejudge the question. I have rejected some arguments in favour of the figurative sense which did not appear to be tenable, as proceeding upon a mistaken apprehension of what the vision really was; and while I have freely availed myself of the observations of others on both sides, I have presented the whole in the light in which it rose before my own mind. Some of the arguments which I have advanced

* Mr Elliott says, it would be poor comfort to persecuted Christians merely to be told that one day their cause would triumph; and, in a note, he states, that though he urged this in the Free Church Magazine in reply to me, I made no answer to it.-(Horæ, ut supra, iv. 145.) He is mistaken. I answered it there, and I have answered it in the above paragraph, which was before him when he was writing this complaint, though he overlooked it. It is a vast comfort to persecuted Christians to be assured that the cause for which they suffer will one day triumph; but their own personal reward is, of course, over and above this, as it is written, "If so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together."

ន

appear to me decisive of themselves; but taking the whole nine arguments together, I believe the conclusion to which they lead-that the millennial is a figurative, not a literal resurrection cannot be overthrown.

And this is the "seat" of the doctrine of a resurrection of the righteous a thousand years before the wicked. If this, now, be dislodged-and the confirmations of it elsewhere were found to be none-the whole doctrine falls, and with it, of course, the premillennial theory itself, which absolutely depends upon it.*

* "Yet on this verse alone," says the Rev. Capel Molyneux, "out of the whole Bible,‚—on this verse, despite its own internal evidence, and that of the context, to the contrary-on this verse alone has it been, and still is it maintained, that an interval of a thousand years shall elapse between the resurrection of saints and sinners!... Nay, and further still, not only is the assertion made despite the opposing evidence of this passage, but despite the testimony of all Scripture which bears on the subject; for unexceptionable is the testimony of Scripture, that however the righteous may rise, in order, before the wicked, yet that the resurrection of the wicked, with all its attendant judgment and condemnation, shall quickly, yea almost immediately, follow the coming of the Son of Man," &c.-World to Come (pp. 201, 202).