Works, Book 4 · Letter 14
EPISTLE XIV.
Mr. Mede's Answer to Dr. Twisse's First Letter, concerning the 1000. years Regnum Christi, as also of the Clades Testium, and of the Iews Conversion.
Worthy Sir,
THat any man so learned and judicious as I have heard your self to be should conceive any Meditations of mine worthy not only of approbation, but of so much affection, I must ascribe it (if they be but in any degree such as you make them) to God's goodness towards me, who hath in any sort enabled me to endeavour ought whereby I might not live in the world altogether unprofitably. I know and am conscious of mine own weakness and insufficiency in many points of knowledge which others have: yet if this one thing be my Talent, though but a single one, I have sufficient wherefore continually to thank the Almighty, and to beseech him that my husbanding thereof may be, by his gracious instinct, such as may be some occasion of further light to others, in some manner of recompence of what I have and still daily do receive from others.
But whatsoever my Speculations be, this I am sure of, that I am not a little obliged to your self, for your so kind and affectionate entertainment of them, as rests not in them only, but extends even to the person of the Author, otherwise utterly unknown unto you. Wherefore, for my part, if I should not reciprocally answer you, I should shew my self of too unworthy a disposition.
As for my Interpretation of the Seals and Trumpets, where I leave others and take a way of mine own, I do it to maintain an Uniformity of notion in the Prophetical Schemes and Allegories throughout the Scripture; which I am perswaded were once no less familiar and usual to the Nations of the Orient, than our poetical Schemes and Pictures are to us.
And the only way for us to learn the meaning of them is, by finding out that Uniformity I speak of, by comparing the several applications of them together, and such other helps as remain unto us. But whether some of the Interpretations usually given of the Seals and Trumpets will abide this Touch-stone, your self, I know, can judge. Such voluntary Interpretations may delight the Fancy, and commend the Wit of their Author; but they will not satisfie him that cannot think any mans Wit a footing firm enough to rest his Faith upon.
FOR the Thousand years Regnum Christi, it was time for it to be silent under Regnum Antichristi; and the Reign of the Martyrs in the first Resurrection to be cried down, when Antichrist was blasphemously to advance them before-hand to a Reign derogatory to the glory of Christ their Lord, to be as compeers with him in the office of his Mediation, and pattakers of the honour and worship which was due to him alone.
I speak not here altogether at random: For after the opinion of the Chiliasts was cried down, (when the sentence of Damasus had once given it the deadly blow) they fell to expound this Reign of the Martyrs, in the twentieth of the Apocalyps, of the Idolatrous reign of them, which themselves had then devised, by occasion of those signs and wonders said then to be wrought by the power of the Martyrs upon such as touched their Reliques and approached their Sepulchres.
Two of the ancientest Commentators extant after the Chiliasts opinion became silent, are Andreas Caesariensis and Aretas, in whom you shall find what I say, even totidem verbis. The words of Andreas are these; foreign,Vixit …ndre… circa annum Christi 500. &c. Quin reliquis quoque sanctis Martyribus, qui pro Christo mortem perpessi sunt, neque mysticae Bestiae, qui Diabolus est, characterem, hoc est, imaginem Apostasiae ipsius, susceperunt, judicandipotestas data est, per qu…m Daemones, ut ob oculos videmus, judicare non desinunt, [foreign] usque ad praesent is seculi consummationem cum Christo glorificati, à piis rursum Regibus fidelibusque Principibus adora…i [foreign] & divinâ denique virtute contra omnem corporum morbum frandemque & vim Daemonum conspicuè donati… Aretas almost in the same words: Ex quo igitur (inquit) neque capti sunt hi (scil. decollati isti) neque per impudentiam, neque per opera mala insigniti, meritò cum Christo & vixerunt & regnârunt, idque usque ad consummati…nem. Quemadmodum videmus cliam sub fidelibus Regibus atque Principibus, dum adorantur, contra omnem etiam corporis infirmitatem ac Daemonum energiam ostendunt datam sibi à Deo gratiam. Nam quia (inquit) non adorârunt Bestiam, neque imaginem ejus; idcirco etiam vixerunt, id est, vivorum opera praestiterunt, miraculorum videlicet patrationem.
Yet even S. Augustine and Primasius applied this Prophecy of the Martyrs, (though not to the adoration of them, yet) to that preeminence of honour then given them in the Assemblies of Christians, and their power of working miracles after death. Vid. de Civil. Dei lib. 20. cap. 9. cum cap. 9. lib. 22.
And if with Mr. Brightman and others we begin the Thousand years from Constantine, there is no place of Scripture for a Papist to urge for Saint-worship like unto this, because the time will fit so just; For it began much about that time, though the Papist had rather have it thought to be ab initio, which Andreas notwithstanding expresly denies: Etenim (saith he) quae nunc per experientiam rcrúmque eventum videntur Sanctorum miracula, meritorúmque praemia, quando Evangelistae Ioanni haec patefiebant adhuc fatura erant.
I shall be glad to see your Quaere's and Answers to them: But before I received yours, I had written to Doctor Meddus, that my thoughts would be diver…ed, and my time taken up about some other business between this and Christmas: whereupon he transcribed them not. My brains are so narrow, that I can tend and minde but one thing at once, whatsoever it be; and therefore I must desire my friends to bear with that imperfection, as also with my slowness, even when I go about any thing, especially to write and digest.
CONCERNING your Quaere of the Clades Testium, I cannot see how it can be referred to any other time than to about the end of their 1260 days mourning-prophecy; because that which immediately follows their reviving, after 3 days and a halflying dead, is not appliable to any other time save that only: as namely, so great an Exaltation as is implied by*Revel. 11. verse 12. ascending up to heaven in a cloud; such a great‖Verse 13. Earthquake or commotion as should be at the same hour, whereby the Throne of the Beast should be so much shaken; and lastly, the expiring at the same time of the*Verse 14. second Woe, or sixth Trumpet. These are not appliable to any time save the times of the Beast…s declining and period, and consequently to the end of the 1260 days of the Witnesses wearing sackcloth; and should fall out when they were now putting off their sackcloth, and when some of them had done it already: For so the word is to be turned, *Verse 7. foreign.When they were now about to finish their prophecy or days of sackcloth, &c. Besides, it suits with the method of Divine Providence; God Almighty having ever used to usher in any great Exaltation of his Saints with some desperate Extremity and Calamity immediately foregoing it: Whence is that Theological proverb, Cùm duplicantur lateres, tunc venit Moses. When was David in a more desperate distress, than when he was instantly to be exalted to the Throne of Iudah, namely, at the burning of Ziklag? what a streight were Moses and the children of Israel brought into a little before Pharaoh and his host were to be drowned in the Red sea? The most grievous, extreme and dangerous persecution that ever the Church felt, was then when Christianity was ready to be exalted unto the Throne of the Empire; I mean that of Diocletian.
Moreover, there is a Sin whereof the whole body of the Reformation is notoriously guilty; which nevertheless is accountend no Sin, and yet such an one, as I know not whether God ever passed by without some visible and remarkable judgment. This seems to call for a scourge before Antichrist shall go down: And that may be, as far as I know, this feared Clades Testium. I will not name it, because it is invidious, and I am not willing to be drawn to say so much for the probability thereof in this case as perhaps I could.
But to speak somewhat more particularly of this Clades; I know not whether it should immediately precede the pouring out of the fifth Vial, or the fourth. If we were secure of the present dangers and fears, I should incline most to think it should precede the fifth Vial, in respect of that fall of*Verse 13. foreign, which instantly ensues the Witnesses reviving. Secondly, The time of three days and a half is the time during which the Witnesses should lie for dead, without appearance of life or motion; not the time wherein they should be dying or killing; for that may be much longer, and grow also by degrees, (as also the natural Body of man sometimes dies so, the feet first, and so upward.) The three days and a half are not to be reckoned therefore (as seems to me) until all should be dead, and no motion of life any more appear. Thirdly, I conceive not this Clades to be such as should extinguish the persons or whole materials (as I may so speak) of the Reformed Churches, but the publick Fabrick of the Reformation, for joy whereof the Witnesses were about to finish their time of mourning. For that the party of men remaining of that dissolved building of Reformation should be great, (though they lay as dead) may be gathered by the strength they should in so short a time, as after three years and a half, recover, to the no small terror of the Beast which slew them, &c. It would make somewhat perhaps for understanding the degree of this Clades, if we could certainly tell what were that *Verse 8.foreign, wherein the Witnesses should lie for dead; and whether those of the *Verse 9.nations, tongues and people, which should hinder the putting of them into graves, were friends or foes. They may seem to be friends: for if they had been once buried, there would have been but small hope of so soon a reviving again and standing upon their feet. You know what the Pharisees said, when they would have our Saviour made sure for rising again the third day.
By the way, because you use in your Letter the word foreign, I suppose your copy of my Specimina is misdistinguished: For I referred not that word to the Calamity of the Witnesses, but to*Verse 2. Gentium, idest, Idololatrarum in Ecclesiae atrio stabulantium: So there should be a comma at foreign.
FOR your second Quaere, of the Provocation of the Iews by the Gentiles: Methinks that which was to be unto the Iew as a Provocation to Iealousie, is expressed by S. Paul to be that*Rom. 11. 11. Salvation which was then come unto the Gentiles, and not any other thing yet to come; as also the same Apostle saith, he used to magnifie and inculcate so much his Title of Apostle of the Gentiles to the same end. And if the Prosperity of the Christian Religion would have done it, by comparing it with their misery; there hath been already sufficient in that respect to have moved them to jealousie ere this.
For my part, I incline to think that no such thing will provoke them; but that they shall be called bySee this more fully re…ed of in Ep. XVII. See als… in Book V. a… Tr…ct styled The Myst…ry of S. Paul's Conversion. Vision and Voice from Heaven, as S. Paul was; and that that place of Zach. chap. 12. verse 10. They shall see him whom they have pierced, and that of Matth. 23. verse 39. Ye shall not see me henceforth, till you say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord, seems to imply some such matter. They will never believe that Christ reigns at the right hand of God, until they see him. It must be an invincible evidence which must convert them after so many hundred years settled obstinacy. But this I speak of the body of the Nation; there may be some Praeludia of some particulars converted upon other motives, as a forerunner of the great and man Conversion.
I pray consider seriously that pattern of S. Paul's Conversion, so differing from all other mens that ever were, and how fitly his condition before it resembles that of the Iews in their bitter obstinacy against Christ and Christians. Why did Christ vouchsafe so strange a call to that man above other men? was it not a pledge or pattern of something that should be vouchsafed his Nation? I know not whether S. Paul's meaning, but I am sure his words, 1 Tim. 1. verse 16. may be applied to what I mean. But all this I write tumultuously and in some other distractions, and therefore I would not have you heed it further than to consider of it at your more quiet meditations. Nihil affirmo, sed propono.
I had thought, when I began, to propound something to your further meditations out of the seventh of Daniel: But you see I am grown past a Letter, and can scarce any longer make my Characters legible; and therefore here, with my best respect to your self, I end, desiring God to enlighten us daily more and more in the knowledge of his Truth: and so I remain
Yours to be commanded in all the duties of Friendship, Ioseph Mede. Christ's Colledge, Nov. 11. 1629.