Add lastly hereunto, that the promises of the restoration of God's people into a glorious condition after all their sufferings, is perpetu- ally, in the Scripture, held out under the same terms, and you have a plentiful demonstration of this point. Isa. Ixv. 17, 18, " Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth : and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind. But be ye glad and rejoice for ever in that which I create," &c.* 2 Pet. iii. 13, " Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." Rev, xxi. 1, " I saw a new heaven and a new earth : for the first heaven and the first earth were passed
1 Isa. xiii. 13; Ps. Ixviii. 8; Joel ii. 10; Rev. viii. 12; Matt. xxiv. 29; Luke xxi. 25; Isa. Ix. 20; Obad. 4 ; Rev. viii. 13, xi. 12, xx. 11.
■ Euseb. Eccles. Hist., lib. ix., cap. 8, 10, lib. viii. cap. 17; De Vita Constant., lib. i., cap. 50-52. ^ Isa. Ixvi. 22-24.
256 THE SHAKING AND TRANSLATING
away; and there was no more sea." The heaven and earth are re- stored, but the sea, — that shall be no more. Those gatherings to^'e- ther of many waters, rivers from all places,^ or pretended clergymen from all nations into general councils, which were the sea or many waters on which the whore sat,^ shall have no place at all in the church's restored condition.
I hope it is now fully cleared what is meant by the things that are shaken, — even the political heights, the splendour and strength of the nations of the earth : the foundation of the whole is laid, and our heap (or building, if your favour will so accept it) will go on apace ; for to the analogy hereof shall the residue of the words be interpreted.
2. The second tiling considerable is. What is the shaking of these things ?
To this the answer is now made brief and facile. Such as are the things shaken, such must then- shaking be: spiritual, if spiritual; natural, if natural; civil, if civil. Now, they being declared and proved to be civil things, such also is their shaking.* Now, what is a civU shaking of civil constitutions ? how are such things done in the world ? what are these earthquakes ? Truly, the accomplishment hereof is in all nations so under our eyes as that I need not speak one word thereunto.
Neither shall I insist upon the inquiry, when this shaking shall be? The text is plain, that it must be previous to the bringing in of those things that cannot be moved; that is, the prosperous estate of the kingdom of Christ.'* Only we may observe, that besides other shakings in particular nations, of less general concernment and im- portance,® this prophecy hath and shall receive a twofold eminent accomplishment, with reference unto a twofold eminent opposition which the kingdom of Christ hath met withal in the world.
(1.) From the Pagan-Roman state, which, at the gospel's first en- trance, held in subjection most of the chief provinces of the then known world." What were the bloody endeavours of the heaven and earth of that state for the sujDpression thereof is known to our children. The issue of the whole in the accomplishment of this pro- mise, shaking those heavens and earth to pieces, I before pointed at from Rev. vi. 12-17, beginning in the plagues of the persecuting emperors, and ending in the i-uin of the empire itself But, —
(2.) The immovable things were not yet in their glory to be brought in. More seed of blood must be sown, that the end of the gospel's year may yield a plentiful harvest. That shaking was only for ven-
' Gen. i. 10. 'llev. xvii. 1.
* Matt. xxiv. 6, 7; Jer. iv. 19; Isa. ix. .'5.
Xeovovs ri xai^ov;, ovi 0 Twrrip 'ihro iv t^ I'S/a il^ovr'iee, Acts i. 7. ' * 'S.liirfj.o) Kara, totou;. Matt. Xxiv. 7.
J25>!A.« ooyfia <xa^a Ka'ira^ef AiiyouffTau, a.'roy^ai(pia6ai -rarav rhv oiKtiifiivtiv, Luke ii. 1.
OF HEAVEN AND EARTH. 257
geance upon an old, cursed, and not for the bringing in of a new, blessed state. The vials of God's wi-ath having cnmibled the heavens and earth of pagan Rome into several pieces,^ and that empire being re- moved as to its old form, by the craft of Satan it became moulded up again into a papal sovereignty, to exercise all the power of the first beast in persecution of the saints, Eev. xiii. 12. This second pressure, though long and sore, must have an end ; — the new-moulded heaven and earth of papal, antichristian Rome, running by a myste- rious thread through all the nations of the west, must be shaken also ; which when it is accomplished, there shall be no more sea. There is not another beast to arise, nor another state to be formed ; — let en- deavours be what they will, the Lord Jesus shall reign."^
3. What is the removal of heaven and earth, being shaken ? The word here translated "removal" is ij,ird^i6tg: whence that is come to pass I dare not jDOsitively say. This, doubtless, is a common fault amongst translators, that they will accommodate the words of a text to their own apprehension of the sense and matter thereof. ^Understanding, as I suppose, that the things here said to be shaken were the Jewish ordinances, they translated their disposition a '' re- moval ; " as the truth is they were removed. But the word signifies no such thing. As its natural import, from its rise and composi- tion, is othenvise, so neither in the Scripture nor any profane author doth it ever signify properly a " removal." Translation, or changino-, is the only native, genuine import of it : ■* and Avhy it should in this place be haled out of its own sphere, and tortured into a new signi- fication, I know not. Removal is of the matter, translation of the form only. It is not, then, a destruction and total amotion of the gxeat things of the nations; but a change, translation, and a new- moulding of them, that is here intimated. They shall be shuffled together, almost into their primitive confusion, and come out new- moulded, for the interest of the Lord Jesus. All the present states of the world are cemented together by antichristian lime, as I shall show afterward: — unless they be so shaken as to have every cranny searched and brushed, they will be no quiet habitation for the Lord Christ and his people. This, then, is the ij^irdkaic of the " heaven and earth " of the nations.