280 
partakers of the first resurrection in the apocalyptic vision, it is evident that 
both must correspond with each other, as in the nature and degree of felicity 
appropriated to each respectively, so also is the very circumstance of duration. 
It is moreover observable, from St. John’s account of things, in the chapter 
above considered, that the judgment of the righteous and wicked will be so 
far from being cotemporary, that there will be a very considerable distance 
of time, the one from the other. 
For a thousand years will elapse before Satan shall be loosed out of 
prison; at which time, and not before, it seems evident, that the rest of the 
dead, viz. the wicked, shall arise and * repossess the earth; where being put 
upon a fresh trial of their conduct, many will walk after the advice and 
counsel of their old deceiver the Devil; will go upon the breadth of the 
earth, and compass the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city, and 
fire shall come down from heaven and destroy them ; the good, and first 
possessors of the New Jerusalem , they of the first resurrection, retiring 
from it—up into that Heaven of Heavens where they will see God. 
And then, but not till then, the day of judgment for the wicked will take 
place; for immediately after the above account of things, St. John tells us 
as follows: and I saw the dead, both small and great (by which dead he 
undoubtedly means that dead which lived not again until the thousand years 
were finished), stand before God, and the books were opened, a?id another 
book was opened, which is the book of life ; and the dead were judged out of 
those things which were written in the books, according to their works . From 
whence it is evident that the judgment of the righteous and wicked, 
described by St. Matthew, will be by no means cotemporary; but, on the 
contrary, that a resurrection of the wicked to another trial of behaviour upon 
earth, will take place before their day of judgment begins, and their sentence 
el* vox*™ cucoviov ensue. This, I think, I shall be able to make appear more 
unquestionably true, by inquiring further into the particulars, mentioned by 
St. Matthew, respecting our Saviour’s second coming to judge the world; 
observable as well in his xxivth chapter, as in other parts of his gospel. 
When the Son of Man, says he, shall come in his glory, and all his 
holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory, and before 
* I have supposed that they, who rebelled, were the children of the saints; the learned Dr. Bor¬ 
row, in his Theological Dissertations, entertains, with many others, the doctrine expressed above of 
the wicked having a second trial upon earth. The essence of Christianity, I am happy to say, does 
not consist in these difficult interpretations. 
