This keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership. Searching, reading, printing, or downloading EEBO-TCP texts is reserved for the authorized users of these project partner institutions. Permission must be granted for subsequent distribution, in print or electronically, of this text, in whole or in part. Please contact project staff at eebotcp-info@umich.edu for further information or permissions.
Vers. 14. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire: This is the second death.
Vers. 15. And whosoever was not found writ∣ten in the book of life, was cast into the lake of fire.
What the second death is, and consequently those words mean, which we read in the second clause of the
sixth verse foregoing, as also those Chap. 2.11. where it is said, He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death, is here by John explained: for he expresly telleth us, that the lake of fire and brimstone is the second death. So that to be cast into that lake, and to be under the power of the second death, or hurt of it, are expressions of the same import. Thus had we the testimony of Jesus ex∣pounded to us in the nineteenth Chapter. Nevertheless how Death and Hell being both of them places and re∣ceptacles of the dead, should be cast into the said lake, is hard to comprehend. Yea were it not for a certain passage in the sixth Chapter of this prophecy, I should be inclineable to think that this was a mystery, which God would not have us pry into, as we have above shewn that sundry such mysteries are to be met withal in the Book of the Revelation. But forasmuch as in the Chapter aforesaid, verse 8. Death is brought in riding upon a pale horse, and Hell following him, and consequently both of them are represented in the similitude of persons, we may from thence rationally collect, that in the passage here under debate, the Holy Ghost intending to intimate, that after the universal Judgement there shall be neither burial nor separation of the soul from the body, doth exhibit two persons representing Death and Hell, which are thrown into the lake of fire, as resigning up their Office to it, and being swallowed up therein, according to that of the Prophet Hosea, Chap. 15.14. O death, I will be thy plague; O Hell (so it is in the Hebrew, and not Grave) I will be thy destruction.
Besides the books of the Old and New Testament, which are the rule by which the actions of men; that have had some form of Religion delivered by God, shall at length be examined, there is yet another Book open∣ed in the day of judgement, to wit, the Book of life, wherein whosoever have not their names written, are said
to be cast into the Lake of fire. From whence it may be rightly concluded, that as the want of being enrolled in that Book was above in the thirteenth and also in the se∣venteenth Chapters alleged, as the Cause why so many er∣red most grosly in admiring and worshipping the Beast, so is it here why so many are thrown into the Lake of Fire, in that it is altogether impossible for such persons to at∣tain that piety, to which the Promise of eternal Life is annexed. As for the place of the Lake of Fire that is here so much spoken of, were it part of the World it would of necessity perish with the World, which (as we have before evinced) is to be abolished. Wherefore seeing it abideth for ever, we ought in reason to conceive that it is without the compass of the World, in the Descripti∣on of which the Scripture doth perpetually omit it. And hence it seemeth to be called by Christ, the outer Dark∣ness, Matth. 22.13. as being without the Verge of Hea∣ven and Earth.