ceive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing. And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and erer. And the four beasts said, Amen. And the four and twenty elders feli down and worshipped Him that liveth for ever and ever.

ELECTION I am wont to contemplate, not so much in the purpose and the decree, as in the manifestation and the accomplishment of the decree; believing that when you have asserted that it is a part, and the chief part, of the purpose and decree, you have asserted all that can be asserted in this high aspect of the subject: but turning away from the secret origin of things in God, and looking down the stream to the manifestation and accomplishment of the same, every thing appears to me clear and beautiful. The elect, thus regarded, are those who at the coming of Christ shall be gathered unto himself from the four winds, from the one end of heaven to the other (Matt. xxiv. 31); the same also who since Christ's absence have cried day and night unto God for redress, and shall be avenged at the coming of the Son of Man (Luke xviii. 7); which word being compared with Rev. vi. 10, xix. 2, doth shew them to be the same with the bride the Lamb's wife, who now is a mournful widow. Christ is the great election Head, (Isaiah xlii. 1; Luke xxiii. 35), and the elect ones are his members. They are those (Eph. i. 4) who are made sons of God, and admitted to stand in his presence (κατενώπιον αυτs, before him, in his presence), which we attain unto at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints (1 Thess. iii. 13, and Jude 24). To stand before the Son of Man and be his royal priesthood for ever, this, which is held out to us (Luke xxi. 36), I regard as the end of election. God created a habitable world, and Adam to be its king and the father of its kings; which honour failing to preserve, the Second Adam purchased back for himself and for those whom he should beget by regeneration of the Holy Ghost,— that is, for as many as the Father should choose to give him. The Father electeth, the Son endoweth for the

kingdom: but the end, both of the election and of the endowment, is to fill that office of royal priesthood which Adam forfeited for himself and his natural posterity, and which Christ recovered for himself and his spiritual posterity. Therefore, while unto the Father the origin of the purpose of election is given, unto Christ the work of fitting and furnishing the elected ones, for the service to which they are chosen, is as constantly given; and when thus the elected ones have been with the proper gifts endowed, they are presented unto the Father, that the Father may make his own use of them: which use, I say again, is to fulfil the original intention and idea of God in the formation of man; namely, to have dominion over the works of his hands. Therefore John speaking for the church saith (Rev. i. 5), "Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto (for) God and his Father;" that is, to be used by his God and Father in the government and lordship of all things. And so also these four beasts and four-andtwenty elders do sing the same song (Rev. v. 9, 10), with this addition, "and we shall reign on the earth;" thus fixing the place of the kingdom, and fixing also the time thereof to be the period of the Millennium, when they live and reign with Christ upon the earth (Rev. xx. 4). My idea therefore of the election is, that it includes whom it hath pleased God to advance to the dignity of sitting with Christ and reigning upon his throne. The elect are the reigners and rulers. This purpose, of making a creature who should have dominion, being the great end of God in the creation of man, it necessarily follows that in the redemption it should have the same preeminence of place; for God doth not change, nor add to, his original purpose; and therefore it is that the church hath always stood for election as the most important doctrine in the Christian system. To represent this doctrine, of a chosen people who should have the dominion of all things, God constituted the Jewish nation—a nation of kings and priests; which constitution, for a while prostrate on the ground, shall yet be established over the earth.

Now many men, perceiving this doctrine of election to be the highest of all, have been betrayed into the error of conceiving it to be the only one; but it is not so. Kings

and priests must have people to rule over and to bless. If our idea of election be just, then there must be another idea of a broader and larger, though not so noble a character; an idea which will embrace those ruled over, as well as the rulers. This is the idea of redemption, which indeed precedes the other, though it includes it not. To an election there must be a redemption; but a redemption doth not either presuppose or involve in it an election. Redemption is, deliverance from the evil supremacy of Satan; and when Satan shall have been cast out of the earth into the bottomless pit, the whole will be redeemed. The world, therefore, during the Millennium will exhibit the common redemption; the New Jerusalem then will exhibit the complete election, and there will be no longer any disputes, like that now misleading so many of the doctors of our church, as if it were an error and a heresy to assert that Christ's death had to do with all, and not with the election merely. It had to do with all creation, men and things; and all creation, men and things, shall be exhibited in the Millennium in a redeemed state. But in an elected state shall the New Jerusalem alone be exhibited, and then shall the two principles of redemption and election be seen distinct. Now a redeemed world to be ruled over, and elect persons to rule over it, being the form of the Divine idea, must necessarily have been exhibited in all the ways of God's dealing with the world since its creation. Adam and Eve in paradise represent Christ and his election, his bride, in the paradise the New Jerusalem, and the good world around represents the redeemed world around. Abraham's family, with ordinances of kingdom and priesthood, the types of the New Jerusalem which is in heaven, represent the governance of Christ and his family over the earth in the world to come; and though neither Adam in paradise nor Abraham's family did bless all nations, but went astray from God, this is due to their own disobedience and not to any defect in the purpose of God, which, to the former, was expressed in these words: "God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth" (Gen. i. 28);

and to the latter in these words: "In blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and in thy Seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice." (Gen. xxii. 17, 18.) The purpose of God in Abraham, as in Adam, was redemption and blessedness to all nations, in virtue of the Seed of the woman; with the prerogative, after the Fall, to an elect family, which is in the letter the natural seed of Abraham, and in the spirit the spiritual seed of Christ. But, above other instances, was this good will of God to all men testified when his Son came in the flesh, and offered a propitiation, not only for the sins of the elect, but for the sins of the whole world; and after his resurrection, commanded his disciples to go and preach the glad tidings of it to every creature under heaven; yea, and sealed the universality of it, by taking his church out of the Gentiles as well as the Jews, out of all nations and kindreds and tongues. Thus far, I have no doubt, I see my way clearly; but when I come to be more minute, I have some doubts whether the church, or election, who shall hold the office of kings and priests with Christ, consist of those regenerate under the Gospel alone, or of those likewise who were faithful since the world began. That the faithful before Christ's coming shall be raised with him I make no doubt, no more to return unto corruption; but whether they shall dwell with him in the New Jerusalem, or sit upon the thrones of the world, I have my doubts. I dare not say yea or nay. Sometimes I think that when the Jewish nation comes to the supremacy of the world, Messiah shall be their King, as being a Jew; and his faithful forerunners in the Jewish church shall be the subordinate kings and princes of the world, in whose blessed government all nations shall be blessed and so the promise made to Abraham shall be fulfilled, and they shall literally inherit the earth. I think this was the extent of their promise, and as it was promised to them, so shall it be fulfilled; but we who are baptized into the spiritual shall inherit the spiritual and exercise spiritual dominion, to the fellowship of which those living under the millennial government shall be continually called, and

:

unto which the faithful amongst them shall attain. I see many difficulties, which I hope will clear away as we proceed; but of this I feel certain, that the end of election is, the thrones of judgment over a redeemed creation: and whether the election is to be exhibited in two official functions, the one the spiritual and the glorified, the other the spiritual not yet glorified,-as Christ above the resurrection was exhibited in two states, the not glorified and the glorified, this is what I stand in doubt of; and I pray devoutly that God would enable me, in his own time, rightly to apprehend it. With this preliminary remark I resume my labours, after a short recapitulation of what was contained in our former lecture.

In our former lecture, which contained the full opening of the celestial scene, we shewed that the enthroned One is Jesus Christ, presented to us, in his risen flesh with the glory of the Father; and the rainbow round his throne is the symbol of the redeemed earth, which of all the material universe is the region that he hath chosen for the seat of his government and abode. And next we shewed, that the four-and-twenty elders enthroned all around him, with crowns of gold upon their heads, do signify the full complement of the holy and royal priesthood of redeemed men, by means of whom the great King will govern the worlds. Of the throne itself, we shewed that it was all alive, instinct with power, armed with destruction, and endued with the majesty and authority of the Word of God, being truly the habitation of those four living creatures who are the church of the first born, the body of Christ, the completeness of the New-Testament saints, who have been begotten by the Holy Ghost. Of the seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, and of the crystalline sea which stretched out before it, as the firmament or floor on which the celestial assembly rested, we shewed that the former is the symbol of that purification by fire which every fallen creature must pass through to stand in the holy presence; and the latter, of that pure, clear, and glassy form which matter shall assume after it hath undergone the same baptism of fire, for which it is reserved in store. Of the four living creatures we discoursed much and cautiously, if by any means we might