It may sound wise for Christians to keep close to their old tenets; it is of faith to cleave only to what is revealed. Apostolic antiquity is alone reliable. What came in since is but human and erroneous, however ancient.
First, we are exhorted to fix not our belief upon any kingdom of Christ our Savior, but spiritual and heavenly. But this is to slight our Lord's own intimation that the kingdom of God has earthly things as well as heavenly; that the Father's will is to be done on earth even as in heaven; that there is to be the Son of, man's kingdom no less than the Father's; and that in the regeneration the apostles at least are to sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. No Christian should question reigning in heaven; but to reign with Christ over the earth is without doubt scriptural truth, and so clearly that it is his shame who questions it or its importance. Nor is it true but deplorable ignorance and error, that “this reign is attributed to the souls, not to the bodies of the martyred saints “; for the vision itself declares, that after being put to death, “they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years “; and the comment is, “This is the first resurrection.” To compare it With the exhortation in Eph. 5:14 is a mere shift and wholly baseless. It is vain to imagine difficulties in face of our Lord's own words, to cite none of His apostles as could easily be done.
Secondly, we are not to think of any absolute freedom from sin &c., here below. Who contends for this? Isa. 65:17-25 is a glowing prophecy of the kingdom; yet the midst of it, ver. 20, is explicit that, even while Christ reigns over the earth and Satan is bound, sin may be, as it must entail death and curse. And in Psa. 18:43, 44, we read that when He is made Head of the nations, strangers may render no more than a feigned obedience; as in fact Rev. 20:7-9 shows hosts seduced and rebelling and destroyed when that reign is over. But during its continuance texts like John 16:33, Acts 14:22, do not apply; for He then reigns over the earth, Who heals all diseases as well as forgives all iniquities, no doubt establishing His throne in the heavens, but ruling over all in such sort as the world has never yet beheld.
Thirdly, to expect Christ's coming only for final judgment (i.e., the great white throne) is to ignore the blessed hope, and to sink into the fear (however real) of a guilty world. How unworthy of a Christian teacher! No believer questions our Lord's judging quick and dead; and every intelligent one sees His appearing and His kingdom bound together (2 Tim. 4:1), contrary to the bishop's scheme, at His presence with all His saints (1 Thess. 3:13), instead of an unseen glory in the heavens. When the final judgment takes place, heaven and earth are fled: so that it is no coming of His (for there is no earth anger to come to), but all the dead (not before raised) summoned before Him for judgment. The time of the restitution of all things at His coming from heaven has no real place in all this unbelieving and defective system.
Fourthly, not to put the judgment far from us, nor yet punctually to determine its time, is language that betrays the grossest confusion. The Thessalonians were alarmed by the false rumor that the day of the Lord was actually come—not impending, but present. This the apostle dispelled, but so as to recall to the constant waiting for Christ to take us on high; which is a quite different truth, not judgment on the earth, but our proper hope of heaven with Him. The good bishop is painfully dark, confusing both with the judgment of the dead when the world is passed away.
It is not denied that Alphonsus, Conradus, Cotterius, &c., on one side, and on the other that Alstedius, Archer, &c., have erred in their speculations and computations. But no one hardly has been more thoroughly wrong than the grave, learned, and pious bishop under review, who counted himself modestly resting in revealed truths, while ignoring and denying in any true sense the world-kingdom of the Lord Christ (Rev. 11:15), and holding out an unscriptural jumble of what he calls “that awful and glorious coming of our Lord and Savior.” For himself it is right to cherish love and respect; but it seems a duty to prove how utterly baseless was his opposition to the truth, not only of Christ's coming to receive us to Himself for the Father's house, but of the kingdom of power and glory that follows, with the solemn judgment of the dead at the end. The error of a good and able man is apt to be all the more deplorable in its effects. The worth of his true testimony in other respects draws a crowd of admirers, many of them pious, into his wake, even when he has drifted into a stream of error; and error is always mischievous, because it deprives so far of God's truth and of Christ's glory.