Corollary III. What a Reasonable Thing then is it, that they whose Time is but short, should make as great Use of their Time, as ever they can! I pray, let us learn some good, even from the wicked One himself. It has been advised, Be wise as Serpents: why, there is a piece of Wisdom, whereto that old Serpent, the Devil himself, may be our Moniter. When the Devil perceives his Time is but short, it puts him upon Great Wrath. But how should it be with us, when we perceive that our Time is but short? why, it should put us upon Great Work. The motive which makes the Devil to be more full of wrath; should make us more full of warmth, more full of watch, and more full of All Diligence to make our Vocation, and Election sure. Our Pace in our Journey Heaven-ward, must be Quickened, if our space for that Journey be shortned, even as Israel went further the two last years of their Journey Canaan-ward, than they did in 38 years before. The Apostle brings this, as a spur to the Devotions of Christians, in 1 Cor. 7. 29. This I say, Brethren, the time is short. Even so, I say this; some things I lay before you, which I do only think, or guess, but here is a thing which I venture to say with all the [33] freedom imaginable. You have now a Time to Get good, even a Time to make sure of Grace and Glory, and every good thing, by true Repentance: But, This I say, the time is but short. You have now Time to Do good, even to serve out your generation, as by the Will, so for the Praise of God; but, This I say, the time is but short. And what I say thus to All People, I say to Old People, with a peculiar Vehemency: Sirs, It cannot be long before your Time is out; there are but a few sands left in the glass of your Time: And it is of all things the saddest, for a man to say, My time is done, but my work undone! O then, To work as fast as you can; and of Soul-work, and Church-work, dispatch as much as ever you can. Say to all Hindrances, as the gracious Jeremiah Burroughs[101] would sometimes to Visitants: You'll excuse me if I ask you to be short with me, for my work is great, and my time is but short. Methinks every time we hear a Clock, or see a Watch, we have an admonition given us, that our Time is upon the wing, and it will all be gone within a little while. I remember I have read of a famous man, who having a Clock-watch long lying by him, out of Kilture in his Trunk, it unaccountably struck Eleven just before he died. Why, there are many of you, for whom I am to do that office this day: I am to tell you You are come to your Eleventh hour; there is no more than a twelfth part at most, of your life yet behind. But if we neglect our business, till our short Time shall be reduced into none, then, woe to us, for the great wrath of God will send us down from whence there is no Redemption.
Corollary IV.
How welcome should a Death in the Lord be unto them that belong not unto the Devil, but unto the Lord! While we are sojourning in this World, we are in what may upon too many accounts be called The Devils Country: We are where the Devil may come upon us in great wrath continually. The day when God shall take us out of this World, will be, The day when the Lord will deliver us from the hand of all our Enemies, and from the hand of Satan. In such a day, why should not our song be that of the Psalmist, Blessed be my Rock, and let the God of my Salvation be exalted! While we are here, we are in the valley of the shadow of death; and what is it that makes it so? 'Tis because the wild Beasts of Hell are lurking on every side of us, and every minute ready to salley forth upon us. But our Death will fetch us out of that Valley, and carry us where we shall be for ever with the Lord. We are now under the daily Buffetings of the Devil, and he does molest us with such Fiery Darts, as cause us even to cry out, I am weary of my Life. Yea, but are we as willing to die, as, weary of Life? Our Death will then soon set us where we cannot be reach'd by the Fist of Wickedness; and where the Perfect cannot be shotten at. It is said in Rev. 14. 13. Blessed are the [34] Dead which die in the Lord, they rest from their labours. But we may say, Blessed are the Dead in the Lord, inasmuch as they rest from the Devils! Our dying will be but our taking wing: When attended with a Convoy of winged Angels, we shall be convey'd into that Heaven, from whence the Devil having been thrown he shall never more come thither after us. What if God should now say to us, as to Moses, Go up and die! As long as we go up, when we die, let us receive the Message with a joyful Soul; we shall soon be there, where the Devil can't come down upon us. If the God of our Life should now send that Order to us, which he gave to Hezekiah, Set thy house in order, for thou shalt die, and not live; we need not be cast into such deadly Agonies thereupon, as Hezekiah was: We are but going to that House, the Golden Doors whereof, cannot be entred by the Devil that here did use to persecute us. Methinks I see the Departed Spirit of a Believer, triumphantly carried thro' the Devils Territories, in such a stately and Fiery Chariot, as the Spiritualizing Body of Elias had; methink I see the Devil, with whole Flocks of Harpies, grinning at this Child of God, but unable to fasten any of their griping Talons upon him: And then, upon the utmost edge of our Atmosphœre, methinks I overhear the holy Soul, with a most heavenly Gallantry, deriding the defeated Fiend, and saying, Ah! Satan! Return to thy Dungeons again; I am going where thou canst not come for ever! O 'tis a brave thing so to die! and especially so to die, in our time. For, tho' when we call to mind, That the Devils time is now but short, it may almost make us wish to live unto the end of it; and to say with the Psalmist, Because the Lord will shortly appear in his Glory to build up Zion. O my God! Take me not away in the midst of my days. Yet when we bear in mind, that the Devils Wrath is now most great, it would make one willing to be out of the way. Inasmuch as now is the time for the doing of those things in the prospect whereof Balaam long ago cry'd out Who shall live when such things are done! We should not be inordinatly loth to die at such a time. In a word, the Times are so bad, that we may well count it, as good a time to die in, as ever we saw.
Corollary V.
Good News for the Israel of God, and particularly for his New-English Israel. If the Devils Time were above a thousand years ago, pronounced short, what may we suppose it now in our Time? Surely we are not a thousand years distant from those happy thousand years of rest and peace, and [which is better] Holiness reserved for the People of God in the latter days; and if we are not a thousand years yet short of that Golden Age, there is cause to think, that we are not an hundred. That the blessed Thousand years are not yet begun, is abundantly clear [35] from this, We do not see the Devil bound; No, the Devil was never more let loose than in our Days; and it is very much that any should imagine otherwise: But the same thing that proves the Thousand Years of prosperity for the Church of God, under the whole Heaven, to be not yet begun, does also prove, that it is not very far off; and that is the prodigious wrath with which the Devil does in our days Persecute, yea, desolate the World. Let us cast our Eyes almost where we will, and we shall see the Devils domineering at such a rate as may justly fill us with astonishment; it is questionable whether Iniquity ever were so rampant, or whether Calamity were ever so pungent, as in this Lamentable time; We may truly say, 'Tis the Hour and the Power of Darkness. But, tho' the wrath be so great, the time is but short: when we are perplexed with the wrath of the Devil, the Word of our God at the same time unto us, is that in Rom. 16. 20. The God of Peace shall bruise Satan under your feet Shortly. Shortly, didst thou say, dearest Lord! O gladsome word! Amen, Even so, come Lord! Lord Jesus, come quickly! We shall never be rid of this troublesome Devil, till thou do come to Chain him up!
But because the people of God, would willingly be told whereabouts we are, with reference to the wrath and the time of the Devil, you shall give me leave humbly to set before you a few Conjectures.
The first Conjecture.
The Devils Eldest Son seems to be towards the End of his last Half-time; and if it be so, the Devils Whole-time, cannot but be very near its End. It is a very scandalous thing that any Protestant, should be at a loss where to find the Anti-Christ. But, we have a sufficient assurance, that the Duration of Anti-Christ, is to be but for a Time, and for Times, and for Half a time; that is for Twelve Hundred and Sixty Years. And indeed, those Twelve Hundred and Sixty Years, were the very Spott of Time left for the Devil, and meant when 'tis here said, He has but a short time. Now, I should have an easie time of it, if I were never put upon an Harder Task, than to produce what might render it extreamly probable, that Anti-christ entred his last Half-time, or the last Hundred and Fourscore years of his Reign, at or soon after the celebrated Reformation which began at the year 1517 in the former Century.[102] Indeed, it is very agreeable to see how Antichrist then lost Half of his Empire; and how that half which then became Reformed, have been upon many accounts little more than Half-reformed. But by this computation, we must needs be within a very few years of such a Mortification to befal the See of Rome, as that Antichrist, who has lately been planting (what proves no more lasting than) a Tabernacle in the Glorious Holy Mountain between the Seas, must quickly, Come to his End and none shall help him. [36] So then, within a very little while, we shall see the Devil stript of the grand, yea, the last, Vehicle, wherein he will be capable to abuse our World. The Fires, with which, That Beast is to be consumed, will so singe the Wings of the Devil too, that he shall no more set the Affairs of this world on Fire. Yea, they shall both go into the same Fire, to be tormented for ever and ever.
The Second Conjecture.
That which is, perhaps, the greatest Effect of the Devils Wrath, seems to be in a manner at an end: and this would make one hope that the Devils time cannot be far from its end. It is in Persecution, that the wrath of the Devil uses to break forth, with its greatest fury. Now there want not probabilities, that the last Persecution intended for the Church of God, before the Advent of our Lord, has been upon it. When we see the second Woe passing away, we have a fair signal given unto us, That the last slaughter of our Lord's Witnesses is over; and then what Quickly follows? The next thing is, The Kingdoms of this World, are become the Kingdoms of Our Lord, and of His Christ: and then down goes the Kingdom of the Devil, so that he cannot any more come down upon us. Now, the Irrecoverable and Irretrievable Humiliations that have lately befallen the Turkish Power, are but so many Declarations of the second Woe passing away.[103] And the dealings of God with the European parts of the world, at this day do further strengthen this our expectation. We do see, at this hour a great Earth-quake all Europe over: and we shall see, that this great Earth-quake, and these great Commotions, will but contribute unto the advancement of our Lords hitherto depressed Interests. 'Tis also to be remark'd that, a disposition to recognize the Empire of God over the Conscience of man, does now prevail more in the world than formerly; and God from on High more touches the Hearts of Princes and Rulers with an averseness to Persecution. 'Tis particularly the unspeakable happiness of the English Nation, to be under the Influences of that excellent Queen, who could say, In as much as a man cannot make himself believe what he will, why should we Persecute men for not believing as we do! I wish I could see all good men of one mind; but in the mean time I pray, let them however love one another.[104] Words worthy to be written in Letters of Gold! and by us the more to be considered, because to one of Ours did that royal Person express Her self so excellently, so obligingly. When the late King James published his Declaration for Liberty of Conscience, a worthy Divine in the Church of England, then studying the Revelation, saw cause upon Revelational Grounds, to declare himself in such words as these, Whatsoever others may intend or design by this Liberty of Conscience, I cannot believe, that it will ever be recalled in England, as long as the World stands. And you know how miraculously [37] the Earth-quake[105] which then immediately came upon the Kingdom, has established that Liberty! But that which exceeds all the tendencies this way, is, the dispensation of God at this Day, towards the blessed Vaudois. Those renowned Waldenses, which were a sort of Root unto all Protestant Churches, were never dissipated, by all the Persecutions of many Ages, till within these few years, the French King and the Duke of Savoy leagued for their dissipation.[106] But just Three years and a half after the scattering of that holy people, to the surprise of all the World, Spirit of life from God is come into them; and having with a thousand Miracles repossessed themselves of their antient Seats, their hot Persecutor is become their great Protector. Whereupon the reflection of the worthy person, that writes the story is, The Churches of Piemont, being the Root of the Protestant Churches, they have been the first established; the Churches of other places, being but the Branches, shall be established in due time, God will deliver them speedily, He has already delivered the Mother, and He will not long leave the Daughter behind: He will finish what he has gloriously begun!