THE DIFFICULTIES OF THE PRE-MILLENNIAL ADVENT. BY JOSEPH BROWNE. Try the spirits, whether they be of God." Dublin: GEORGE HERBERT, 117, GRAFTON-STREET. LONDON: HAMILTON, ADAMS AND CO.; J. NISBET AND CO. 1853. 16 PREFACE. CONTROVERSY with brethren is peculiarly painful, and seldom or ever profitable. The following pages being chiefly of a controversial character, never would have been written, had not the subjects been forced upon me, in the form of questions, which I found myself bound in conscience either to answer, in support of my present views, or embrace the theories which the questions were formed to support. Anxious to strengthen, rather than weaken the power of Christian love, all modes of expression tending to injure that divine, tender, and sensitive feeling, have been studiously avoided; knowing that many of my brethren in the Lord, whom I value as my own life, hold sentiments the very opposite of those which I have, in these pages, endeavoured to sustain. Truth, only truth, is my object. Whatever they may think of my arguments, it is my ardent desire that they who differ from me may have no just cause of complaint, as to the manner in which subjects so important have been treated, and that they will cheerfully accord the same liberty to me, which they justly claim for themselves. The Pre-millennial doctrines have often been represented as an essential part of the Gospel, and almost necessary to sal vation, and certainly requisite to comfortable communion and adaptation for the exercise of ministry among the brethren who maintain those views-no matter how gifted or unobjectionable in all other respects, the absence of these views induces coldness and even disapprobation. While utterly rejecting any other bond of union among the Lord's people than a vital and well ascertained identity, with Him, formed in the judgment of charity, I, too, maintain that the subjects in question are momentous, and that on which side soever errors lie, the evils will be commensurate to the nature and extent of the errors themselves. Now if it can be proved from plain Scripture testimony, that what I have advanced against the theories of Pre-millennialists, is contrary to the teaching of the New Testament, I promise not only to renounce my present views, but to receive those views which at present appear to me erroneous. But the evidence adduced must be plain Scripture truth, not applied to answer and end, but bearing the same meaning in its contextual connection, and teaching the same doctrine as that for which it is quoted to establish, so that the sense given to it could be introduced into the sacred page, and stand as an integral part of the same. When the doctrine which I hold is overthrown in this way, I will abandon it, and not till then. No Christian can justly object to this rule. On this principle, one class of Scripture texts can never be brought to contradict another class—since there must be an absolute harmony in whatever God has revealed; and we may assume it as a sacred axiom, that Christ and his witnesses have given the true account of the manner of his coming the objects and results of his coming; and that we ought not to form any opinion, or receive any theories on these, or any other doctrines purporting to be from God, unless they are coincident and identical with the self-evident |