DISCOURSE II. 427 -1Áìsown writings, better than hehimself once understood them; and Moses shall become an interpreter of his ownlaw, who knew so littleof the mysteryand beautyof it on earthhimself, There weshall acquaint ourselves with some of the ancient fathers of the christian church, and the martyrs, those dying champions of the faith and honoursof the christianname. These will recount the various providences of God to the church in their several ages, and shew the visions of St. John in the bookof the Revelation, not in the morning twilight ofprophecy, but as in the light of noon, as a public history, or as an evening rehearsal of the transactions of the day. The witnesses themselves shall tell us how they prophesied in sackcloth, and were slain by the man of sin ; how they rose from the dead in three days and a half, and how the churchwas at last reformed from the popish myste- ries of iniquity andsuperstition. Cranmer and Ridley, Calvin and Luther, and the rest ofthe pious reformers, shall make known to us the labours and sufferings of their age, and the wonders of pare Christianity rising as it were out of the grave, and throwing off the chains, the darkness and defilements of Antichrist : And those holy souls who laboured in the reformation of Great: Britain, while they relate the transactionsof their day, shall per- haps enquire and wonder why their successors put a stop to that blessed work; and have made no further progress in a hundred And fifty years. Did one of the elders near the throne give notice to the apostle John concerning the martyrs ; Rev. vii. 14. These are they which came .out ofgreat tribulations, and have washed their robes, andmade there white in the bloodof the Lamb; and shall we not suppose that the happy spirits above tell one another their victories oversin and temptation, and the powers of this world ? Shall not the martyrs who triumphed iu their own blood, and overcame Satan and Antichristby the blood of the Lamb, and the word of their testimony, shall they not make it known to the inhabitants of the upper world, and tell it to the honour of Christ, their Captain and their I{ing ; how they ,fought,, and died, and conquered ? Methinks I hear these noble historians rehearsing their sacred tragedy; how they entertain a bright circle of listen- ing angels and fellow-spirits with their own glorious and dreadful story, dreadful to suffer, and glorious to relate ! Shall it be objected here, that all the glorified saints cannot be supposed to maintain immediate discourse with those blessed ancients ? Can those ancients be imagined to repeat the sane stories perpetually afresh, to entertain every stranger that is newly arrived at heaven .? I answer, that since one siegle spirit dwelling in flesh can communicate his thoughts immediately to five or six thousand bearers at once by his voice, and to millions more successively by
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