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after the knowledge of the Lord: for his coming forth is sure as the return of the morning; and he shall abundantly water with his Spirit that Church, which has long been a waste and desolate wilderness *.

Horrible

Bp. Horsley interprets this passage somewhat differently from what, upon an attentive consideration of it, I have ventured to do: we both however make the period of this figurative resurrection to be the same. "Jehovah, who had depart→

ed, will return: and again exhibit the signs of his presence 66 among his chosen people. So the converted and restored "Jews will live in his presence. The two days and the third "day seem to denote three distinct periods of the Jewish people. "The first day is the captivity of the ten tribes by the Assyrians, "and of the two under the Babylonians, considered as one judg"ment upon the nation; beginning with the captivity of the 66 ten, and completed in that of the two. The second day is "the whole period of the present condition of the Jews, beginning "with the dispersion of the nation with the Romans. The "third day is the period yet to come, beginning with their resto"ration at the second advent. R. Tanchum, as he is quoted "by Dr. Pococke, was not far, I think, from the true meaning "of the place. The prophet, he says, points out two times,~ " and those are the first captivity, and a second. After which "shall follow a third time; Redemption: after which shall be no "depression or servitude. And this I take to be the sense of "the prophecy in immediate application to the Jews. Never"theless, whoever is well acquainted with the allegorical style "of prophecy, when he recollects, that our Lord's sufferings "were instead of the sufferings and death of sinners; that we 66 are baptized into his death; and by baptism into his death 66 are buried with him; and that he, rising on the third day, "raised us to the hope of life and immortality; will easily "perceive

Horrible indeed have been the spiritual fornications both of Judah and Israel; yet, when the Lord shall bring back the captivity of his people, great will be the harvest-work appointed for Judah*. While

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perceive no very obscure, though but an oblique, allusion to our Lord's resurrection on the third day; fince every be"liever may speak of our Lord's death and resurrection, as a common death and resurrection of all believers." Bp. Horsley in loc.

My objection to his Lordship's interpretation is this: the Jews indeed have gone into two captivities, which might in some sort be termed two days; but the ten tribes have gone only into one, from which they have never yet returned. Now since the prophet directs us jointly to consider the captivity both of Judah and Israel, are we warranted in dividing the unbroken captivity of Israel into two days, merely because Judah has twice been led away captive?

"Harvest-work is cut out for Judah at the season of "bringing back the captivity. The tribe of Juduh is in some "extraordinary way to be an instrument of the general resto"ration of the Jewish people" (Bp. Horsley in loc.). The Bishop adds, what I cannot refrain from esteeming rather too sweeping a clause, " Observe, that the vintage is always an "image of the season of judgment; but the harvest, of the in66 gathering of the objects of God's final mercy. I am not aware "that a single unexceptionable instance is to be found, in "which the harvest is a type of judgment. In Rev. xiv. 15, "16, the sickle is thrust into the ripe harvest, and the earth "is reaped; that is, the elect are gathered from the four "winds of heaven, the wheat of God is gathered into his "barn (Matt. xiii. 30.). After this reaping of the earth, the "sickle is applied to the clusters of the vine; and they are "cast into the great wine-press of the wrath of God (Rev. "xiv. 18, 19, 20.): this is judgment. In Joel iii. 13. the ripe

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While he shall be made, on the one hand, a sharp threshing instrument having teeth to thresh the

mountains

"harvest is the harvest of the vine, that is the grupes fit for "gathering, as appears by the context. In Jerem. li. 33. the "act of threshing the corn upon the floor, not the harvest, is the " image of judgment. It is true, the burning of the tures in "our Saviour's parable (Matt. xiii.) is a work of judgment, and of the time of harvest, previous to the binding up of "the sheaves. But it is an incidental adjunct of the business, not the harvest itself. I believe the harvest is never primarily, and in itself, an image of vengeance."

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Notwithstanding the deservedly high authority of Bp. Horsley, I still rest in my former opinion, that the apocalyptic harvest is a harvest of judgment, not of mercy (see my Dissert. on the 1260 years. Chap. x. Sect. 5.); in which I am supported by Bp. Newton, Lowman, Bengelius, Doddridge, and particularly Mede, who has elaborately and minutely discussed the point. He observes that the idea of a harvest includes three things; the reaping of the com, the gathering of it in, and the threshing of it: whence it is made a type in Scripture of two direct opposites; of destruction, when the reaping and the threshing are considered; of restitution and salvation, when the in-gathering is considered (Mede's Works. B. III. p. 520). Bp. Horsley separates the threshing from the harvest in Jerem. li. 33; allowing that the threshing denotes judgment, but denying that the harvest has ever such a signification. I cannot think, that the text in question warrants this separation. "The

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daughter of Babylon is like a threshing-floor, it is time to "thresh her yet a little while, and the time of her harvest "shall come." Here the time of her harvest seems manifestly to be used as synonymous with the threshing of her: and, if this be the case, her harvest must be a harvest of wrath. Or, if we deny that they are synonymous, and separate them from each other, shall we be authorized by the plain import of the

mountains like chaff; while he shall arise and thresh

text to say, that the threshing of Babylon denotes indeed a signal judgment about to befall her; but that her harvest, which in a little while is coming, means some signal mercy about to be vouchsafed to her? Does not the text, on the contrary, force us to think with Mede, that the threshing is considered as a part of the harvest; and that they both alike typify God's vengeance upon Babylon? But, however this may be, there is another passage, in which both the reaping and the in-gathering of the harvest are decidedly used to symbolize an act, not of mercy, but of jadgment. Speaking of the dispersion of the whole house of Israel, and of the very small remnant that should be left in the land, Isaiah uses the allegory both of the harvest, and of the conclusion of the vintage and olive-season. "that day it shall come to pass, that the glory of Jacob shall "be made thin, and the fatness of his flesh shall wax lean : "and it shall be, as when the harvest man gathereth the 66 corn, and his arm reapeth the ears; and it shall be, "as he that gathereth ears in the valley of Rephaim. Yet "gleaning grapes shall be left in it, as the shaking of an "olive-tree, two or three berries in the top of the up

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permost bough, four or five in the outmost branches of "its fruitfulness" (Isaiah xvii. 4, 5, 6). In what his Lordship says respecting the harvest mentioned by Joel, I believe him to be perfectly right: that harvsst is plainly a harvest of grapes, not of corn; and the vintage of Joel undoubtedly relates to the same period as the vintage of the Apocalypse: they both equally typify the overthrow of the Antichristian confederacy.

Thus, I think, it appears, that a harvest symbolizes the two opposites of judgment and mercy. How we are to understand it in any particular passage, must be determined by the context. Now the context of the apocalyptic harvest seems to me most definitely to teach us, that a harvest of judgment is intended. Throughout the whole book of Revelation, with the exception of a few places which sufficiently explain themselves

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thresh the enemies of the Lord with a horn of iron, and

(such as Rev. xx. 8, 9, 11-and xxi. 1, 24.), the earth is used as a symbol of the Roman empire pagan and papal. Upon this earth all the vials of God's wrath are poured out, whatever subsequent distinction may be made in their effusion (Rev. xvi. 1.). It is the vine of this earth that is to be gathered, when her grapes are fully ripe: and it is the ripe harvest of this self-same earth that is to be reaped, when the time for reaping is come (Read attentively Rev. xiv. 14-20). Here we may note, that it is not, as in our Lord's parable (Matt. xiii. 24, 38), said to be the harvest of a field, which is afterwards formally explained to mean the world: but, as the sickle is thrust into the earth to gather the vine of the earth, so is the sickle likewise thrust into the carth to reap the harvest of the earth. If then the earth mean the Roman empire in the case of the vintage, which cannot reasonably be doubted, since those that are cast into the wine-press are the Roman beast, the false prophet, and the kings of that same earth, and since (according to the acknowledged principles of symbolical imagery) the vine of the earth must denote the corrupt church of the mystic Babylon, whose abominations,-whose ripe clusters of iniquity,will eventually occasion the ruin of its supporter the secular beast (Dan. vii. 11.): if, I say, the earth mean the Roman empire in the case of the vintage, must we not conclude, from the almost studied similarity of phraseology used by the prophet, that the earth means likewise the Roman empire in the case of the harvest? And, if this be allowed, what idea can we annex to a reaping of the harvest of the Roman empire, which, like the grapes of that same empire, is declared to be ripe, except an idea of some tremendous judgment that should precede the vintage and more or less affect the whole empire? In such an opinion also we shall be the more confirmed by finding, that a judgment about to befall Babylon, the constant apocalyptic type of the Roman church and empire, is by Jeremiah expressly

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