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lennium may sustain the character of rest, peace and holiness, for God to remove all the wicked from the face of the earth, at the same time when Satan shall be bound and shut up. For if the father of sinners is taken away, why shall not his children share similar fate? And that this shall be the doom of Satan is certain, because the evangelist John has said, And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit, and a great chain in his hand. This chain should be considered only as descripuve of the power of God to bind or curtail, effectually and totally, the evil influence and power of Satan, ho will be uudoubtedly confined and located to the pace which was prepared, (and therefore created) for the devil and his angels, when first they fell from heaven, or from their first estate, and is situate somewhere in the great field of space, where he, with all his demoniac companions, who fell from heaven with him, shall be confined. See Rev. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the devil and satan, and bound him a thousand years

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SIXTE DIVISION.

Considers the way and manner in which it is probable God will remove the wicked from among the living, for they shall not enter into that land of promise.

Twelve million men, or more, in the deep flood
Were drown'd, because they sinn'd against their God
And when the Egyptian king, and tawny host,
The Jews pursu'd, were in the Red Sea lost:
So in the last great war, through all the world,
From life to death the wicked shall be hurl'd.

THE dealings of God with notorious sinners in former ages, is a criterion by which we can be guided to a tolerable degree of certainty, relating to the above supposed total destruction of all the wicked just previous to the Millennium.

Our first instance shall be the case of the antedeluvians, of whom it is stated in the Scriptures, that they had wholly corrupted their way before God-their crimes and abominations cried to the very heavens, and howled through all the habitations of men. Violence, bloodshed, rapine and plunder, was doubtless their universal character: Therefore, God said concerning them, The end of all flesh is come before me. Consequently, he brought the flood upon the whole earth, in the year of the world 1656, in which perished all the race of men, Noah excepted, and his family.

A second public testimony, which God has exhibited against sinners, though not so fatally accompanied as to produce death among the offenders, was the case of the builders of the tower and city of Babel.

The particular sin of which this great compact were guilty, was, their intention of placing, at the very pinnacle of their tower when finished, an idol, with a sword, which idol was to be to them a talisman, to whom they intended to look for protection and success in war. See Clark on Genesis.

This great tower stood on the river Euphrates, in the country where was built the city of Babylon in after times on the plains of Shinar, and is spoken of by several historians. It is stated that Nebuchadnezzar beautified and adorned it for idolatrous purposes, an account of which, and of the confusion of tongues, is given by several ancient authors. Herodotus saw and described it. A Sybil, whose oracle is yet extant, spoke both of it and the confusion of tongues. A, history of this tower, and of many remains of ancient facts respecting it, is found in the Chaldean writings and records.

But for building this tower God was displeased, and manifested his displeasure by confounding their language, and scattering them abroad in the earth. I shall here insert an extract from the Chaldean history, (copied from Clark) concerning this tower, by BoCHART, who observes, that these things are taken from the Chaldeans, who preserved many remains of ancient

facts, and though they often add circumstances, yet they are, in general, in some sort dependent on the text. 1. They say, Babel was builded by the giants, because Nimrod, one of the builders, is called in the Hebrew text gibbor, a mighty man, or, as the Septuagint has it, a giant. 2. These giants, they say, sprang from the earth, because in Genesis 10, 11, it is said, he went minhaarets hahie, i. e. out of that earth; but in the English translation it is, Out of that land went forth Ashur'; but this is rather spoken of Ashur, who was another of the Babel builders. 3. These giants are said to have waged war with the Gods, because it is said of Nimrod, Genesis 10, 9, he was a mighty hunter before the Lord; or, as others have rendered it, a warrior and a rebel against the Lord. These giants are said to have raised a tower up to heaven, as if they had intended to have ascended thither. This appears to have been founded on, and its top shall reach to heaven. 4. It is said that the Gods sent strong winds against them, which dispersed both them and their work. This appears to have been taken from the Chaldean history, in which it is said their dispersion was made to the four winds of heaven, be arba ruchey schemyia, i. e. to the four winds of the world. 5. And because the verb phuts or naphats, used by Moses in the original, signifies not only to scatter, but also to break to pieces, whence thunder. Isa. 30, 30, is called nephets in the original, a breaking to pieces; hence, they supposed the whole work was broken to pieces, and overturned. It is probable, from this disguised representation of the Hebrew text, that the Greek and Roman

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poets took their fable of the giants waging war with the Gods, and piling mountain upon mountain in order to scale heaven.

Concerning their language, which was spoken at the building of Babel, it is likely it was one, and was composed of monosyllables--that each had a distinct ideal meaning, and only one meaning; as different acceptations of the same word would undoubtedly arise, either from compounding terms, or when there were but few words in a language, using them by a different mode of pronunciation to express a variety of things. Where this simple monosyllabic language prevailed, and it must have prevailed in the first ages of the world, men would necessarily have simple ideas, and a corresponding simplicity of manners. The Chinese language is exactly such as this; and the Hebrew, if stripped of its vowel points, and its prefixes, suffixes, and postfixes, separated from their combinations so that they might stand by themselves, it would answer nearly to this character, even in its present state. In order, therefore, to remove this unity of sentiment and design, which I suppose to be the necessary consequence of such a language, caused them to articulate the same word differently, to affix different ideas to the same term, and, perhaps, by transposing of syllables and interchanging of letters from new terms and compounds, so that the mind of the speaker was apprehended by the hearer in a contrary sense to what was intended.

A third and more terrible overthrow of sinners is demonstrated by the destruction of the four cities, which were in the vale of Sodom and Gomorrah. The

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