O glorious hour! O blest abode! I shall be like and near my God! And flesh and sin no more control The sacred pleasures of the soul.
May the divine blessing abundantly attend the reading of these awful or joyful realities.
GEO. OFFOR.
PREFACE.
COURTEOUS READER,
Though this be a small treatise, yet it doth present thee with things of the greatest and most weighty concernment, even with a discourse of life and death to eternity: opening, and clearing, by the scriptures of God, that the time is at hand, when, there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust; even of the bodies of both, from the graves where they are, or shall be, at the approach of that day.
Thou hast also in these few lines, the order and manner of the rising of these two sorts of people, wherein is shewed thee with what body they shall then rise, as also their states and condition at this day, with great clearness.
For here thou shalt see the truth, and manner of the terrible judgment, the opening of the books, the examining of witnesses, with a final conclusion upon good and bad. Which, I hope will be profitable to thy soul that shall read it. For if thou art godly, then here is that which will, through God's blessing, encourage thee to go on in the faith of the truth of the gospel; but if thou art ungodly, then here thou mayst meet with conviction: yea, and that of what will be, without fail, thy end, at the end of the world: whether thou continue in thy sins, or repent. If thou continue in them, blackness, and darkness, and everlasting destruction; but if thou repent, and believe the gospel, then light, and life, and joy, and comfort, and glory, and happiness, and that to eternity.
Wherefore let me here beg these things at thy hand,
First, That thou take heed of that spirit of mockery that saith,
"Where is the promise of his coming?" (2 Peter 3:4,5).