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So, had sin been for ever unknown in the system, there would have been no opportunity for the mighty works which God has wrought since the day he drove the apostate angels out of heaven, and our first parents out of paradise, and will yet work to the end of time, and final consummation of all things. All which, put together, will give the most full and complete, the most clear and striking picture, of the divine nature, for the contemplation and instruction of the inhabitants of heaven, through eternal ages.

4. While God forbears to interpose and hinder the apostacy of finite intelligences, being absolutely unobliged to say or do any more than he had said and done; and while, being left to their own free choice, a number of the angels in heaven, and man upon earth, rebel; and, being left to themselves, all the fallen angels, and great numbers of fallen men, go on in their rebellion, acting out their hearts, and exhibiting their picture in their conduct, through a long succession of ages; they plainly show what all finite intelligences in heaven and on earth might have come to, if they had not been prevented by the mere free grace of the only immutable Being. Meanwhile, God, as has been said, in his conduct, sets his own character in the clearest and fullest light. And so all holy intelligences will, through eternal ages, have the advantages of these two complete pictures; the picture that God has ex hibited of himself, and the picture which fallen creatures have exhibited of themselves, to assist them to a clear view and realizing sense of what God is, and of what they might have been. Just as the pious Jews in the earthly Canaan, when they reviewed the conduct of God towards their forefathers, and their conduct towards him, had the picture of each before their eyes, for their instruction, from age to age. Which leads me to another thought:

5. At the end of these forty years, Moses assembles the whole congregation of Israel in the plains of Moab; and, that they might be under the better advantages to reap the benefit of all past transactions, now just as they are entering into the holy land, he rehearses all God's conduct towards them, and all their conduct towards him, and labours deeply to impress a sense of both on their hearts; so, at the final

consummation of all things, the whole intelligent system will be assembled, and all past things be opened; all God's conduct towards his creatures, and all their conduct towards him; and that in such a manner as will make the deepest impressions on all that great assembly.

But as this will be a most solemn day, and perhaps the most important day that ever did or ever will happen, and a day on which great light will be given to God's universal plan; so it may not be amiss to stop here awhile, and consider, who is to be the Judge; and who shall be present in that great assembly; and what will be brought into view; and what will be the final sentence pronounced on the wicked; and what will be the visible consequence; and what the state of the righteous when all is over; and what must be their reflections upon the whole.

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1. The MESSIAH, the Son of God, the seed of the woman, will be the judge. So great was his zeal for the honour of God, and concern for the salvation of lost sinners, that he offered to undertake to frustrate satan's scheme; and, on the cross, at the expense of his life, he entirely disconcerted the plan the devil had laid, and sapped the foundation of his kingdom; opening a way, in which glory might come to God, and salvation to fallen man: which so pleased the eternal Father, that he gave him for his reward, the very thing his heart was chiefly set upon; even full power and authority completely to accomplish his design. Messiah took the throne, and, at the head of the universe, conducted all things from that day and forward, with his end in constant view, till satan's kingdom was destroyed, and he had reigned on earth a thousand years. And having seen of the travail of his soul to his satisfaction, in the recovery of a great multitude of the human race, a multitude like the stars of heaven, and as the sands on the sea-shore, innumerable; now he comes to cause strict justice to take place on all the obstinate adherents to satan's interest. Behold, he cometh in the clouds of heaven, and every eye shall see him, and the fatal, the finishing stroke shall be laid full on the old serpent's head: which shall be done in the most public man ner; for,

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2. The whole intelligent system shall be present. The ho ly angels, once satan's companions in heaven, shall now descend in glory and joy, attending the righteous Judge. And with them the saints shall come from the upper world, and receive their bodies, glorious and immortal, raised by their almighty Saviour. Meanwhile, the saints on earth shall be changed, and caught up to meet the Lord in the air. Then earth and sea, death and hell, shall give up their dead; and all kindreds, nations, languages, and tongues, shall be gathered to the bar. And satan and his hosts, who of a long time have been in chains, reserved to the judgment of the great day, shall be forced, guilty and trembling, to stand forth in the sight of the whole creation.

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3. The history of the grand rebellion shall be opened to the view of the whole intelligent creation, from the day of satan's first revolt; his expulsion from heaven, and seduction of the human kind, with all his views and motives, ends and designs, and the methods by him taken from the foundation of his kingdom on earth, to its final destruction; and how apostate men have heartily joined in his interest; and both, as it were, combined together to defeat the designs of the Redeemer.

The blood of the martyrs will be brought into the account, from the blood of righteous Abel, to the blood of the last martyr that shall be slain, to evidence the obstinate malice of satan and his adherents; who rather than that the Redeemer's kingdom should be set up, have shed rivers of human blood. Yea, the Son of God himself has been put to death in this apostate world.

All the conduct of the human race before the flood, and how their wickedness brought on the general deluge; and all the conduct of mankind since, together with the methods of divine grace from the beginning of the world; particularly the calling of Abraham, and all the glorious methods of divine grace with his seed, from age to age, till the coming of the Messiah; together with their perverse conduct in Egypt, in the wilderness, and in the holy land; their killing the prophets, and stoning those who were sent unto them, and final

ly crucifying the Son of God, and obstinately rejecting his glorious gospel; and the calling of the Gentiles into the Christian Church; their loathness to leave their idols; the bloody work they made among the primitive professors of Christianity, together with a history of the rise, and progress, and dreadful deeds of the grand anti-christian apostacy, will all be laid open to public view, in the sight of the creation.

And not only these great affairs, but also all the conduct of particular sinners, in every age, with every secret thing, shall be brought to light on that great day.

And while Messiah appears in all his Father's glory, the reasonableness of God's law, and the infinite grace of the gospel, will, by his very presence, be brought into such a clear view, in the eyes of all that great assembly, as will not only strike the fallen angels, who have been inveterate enemies to the righteous government of God, and constant opposers of the gracious designs of the Redeemer, into the utmost guilt and confusion; but also overwhelm, with inexcusable guilt and self-condemning reproaches, all the lost sons of Adam, of every nation under heaven. The Gentile will now feel himself without excuse, for breaking the law of nature, (Rom. i. 20.) and the Jew and the Christian much more, who have sinned against greater light, and despised infinite grace; so that every mouth will be stopped, and all satan's adherents from among the human race, will stand guilty before God, (Rom. iii. 19.) For, when the Lord cometh with all his heavenly attendants, to execute judgment upon obstinate enemies, he will convince all, and silence all, who have justified themselves, and spoken many " hard speeches against him." (Jude 14, 15.) For that shall not only be a day of wrath, but of "the revelation of the righteous judgment of God." (Rom. ii. 5.) Meanwhile, all holy intelligences will be fully prepared cordially to approve, yea, heartily to rejoice in the final sentence of the Judge. The forethought of which dreadful sentence will fill satan and all his mighty potentates with terror unutterable. "And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men," who had met armies in the field of battle, and looked death in the face undaunted," and every bond-man, and every free-man," shall

wish to hide themselves in the dens, and in the rocks of the mountains;" yea, they will wish "the mountains and the rocks to fall on them, and hide them from the wrath of the Lamb." (Rev. vi. 15, 16.)

4. He shall pronounce the sentence, DEPART, ye cursed. To which all the holy angels and saints, with divine and sacred fervor, will say, AMEN, HALLELUJAH. And,

5. No sooner will the sentence be pronounced, but they shall visibly go away into everlasting punishment; for God, who foresaw their apostacy and final wickedness, before the creation of the world, did in the creation provide proper materials by which to show his wrath, and make his power known, and give an eternal image of his infinite hatred of sin, in the sight of the whole intelligent system; for all the starry heavens, and this earth, are reserved to that purpose, laid up in store as fuel, "reserved unto fire, against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. And the heavens shall' then "pass away with a great noise," rushing together into one general heap; "for the heavens being on fire shall be dis→ solved, and the elements," of which they are composed, "shall melt with fervent heat, and the earth also," involved in the general ruin," and the works that are therein, shall be burnt up." And so the whole material system shall form one immense lake of fire and brimstone, where the heat shall be almost infinitely intense, in which the damned shall weep and wail, and gnash their teeth, for ever. "For their worm shall never die, and the fire shall never be quenched." (2 Peter iii. 7. 12. Mark ix. 44.) And all this open to the view, eternally open to the view of all the inhabitants of heaven. "For they shall be tormented with fire and brimstone, in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb." (Rec. xiv. 10, 11.) And this great fire will eternally be a visible emblem of the fierceness and wrath of almighty God, to show his wrath and make his power known. As when Pharaoh and his hosts were overwhelmed in the Red sea, in sight of all the Israelites, the God of the Hebrews" showed his power," and caused" his name to be declared throughout all the earth"; (Exod. ix. 16.) So now, when satan and all his adherents from an apostate world are cast into this lake

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