Generation-work, or, A brief and seasonable word offered to the view and consideration of the saints and people of God in this generation, relating to the work of the present age, or generation we live in wherein is shewed, I. What generation-work is, and how it differs from other works, II. That saints in the several generations they have lived in, have had the proper and peculiar works of their generations, III. That it is a thing of very great concernment for a saint to attend to and be industrious in, the work of his generation, IV. Wherein doth the work of the present generation lye, V. How each one in particular may find out that part or parcel of it, that is properly his work in his generation, VI. How generation-work may be so carried on, as that God may be served in the generation / by John Tillinghast ...

SECT. IV.

THe Witnesses, their testimony finished, are to be kil∣led, v. 7. And when they shall have finished their te∣stimony, the Beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless p••t shall make war against them, and shall overcome them and kill them. In this state they are to continue three days and a half, ver. 9, 11. Though our discourse of the three days and a half according to the strictness of order should come in afterwards, yet in regard the opening hereof will afford us light into some things that follow, I have chosen to place it before.

That these three days and a half cannot be (as is the opinion of many worthy men, who look upon the death of the Witnesses to be a corporal death) a time equiva∣lent to the 1260 is evident;

1 Bec. then there should be no distinction at all betwixt the time of their Prophecying and their being killed, if through all the 1 260 daies, which is the time of their Pro∣phecy, we should suppose them to be killed, Now the Text hath made a manifest distinction betwixt these two times.

2 Becanse its improper to say that Christs witnesses a∣gainst Antichrist should prophecy all the 1260 days and yet be killed too; For put case the Beast all this time did put some to death, yet so long as Christ at the same time, and in the same place had always others in their room, his witnes∣ses were not killed. A man is not without witness, though some witnesses are taken away, in case others stand up and appear in their room. Nay those witnesses which all the 1260 dayes were put to death by the Beast, did most o∣minently in dying bear witness for Christ, for to dis for

the truth, is a living standing testimony to it. That kil∣ling therefore could not be a killing as witnesses, he who for truths sake loves not his life to the death, is even in dying a most glorious witness of the truth.

3 Its said ver. 10. that when the two witnesses lie dead, the dwellers on the earth rejoyce, for this reason, because they are dead who tormented them. Now did the dwel∣lers on the earth thus rejoyce all the ••260 days? when were they then tormented? Will the Text bear it to say, they were tormented all this time, and yet rejoyced too? This the Authors or upholders of this opinion must neces∣sarily assert. Nay why do they rejoyce at their death? why, because being dead they fear no hurt from them, which whilst they prophecyed they did, for they felt of them, as ver. 5 6. therefore their prophecying and killing must be as two distinct things, and so at two distinct times.

4 Because, How could they be witnesses all this time if dead? Doth a man when he hath a cause to be tried go to dead men that they would stand witnesses for him, or to living? Or how did they Prophecy if dead? Can dead men prophecy, or are prophecying men dead?

5 Why are they said to be killed onely in the street (or one street) of the great City, ver. 8. and not in the whole City? seeing in this sense they have been within the 1260 days more or less killed all over the great City, i.e. through∣out the whole Papal Jurisdiction?

6 What difference will there be (according to this opi∣nion) betwixt their being killed and put into graves, if we take both for a bodily death, which this opinion doth?

7 And lastly, How (according to this opinion) are they all the three days and a half kept unbu∣ried? or how at the end of these three days and a half shall those Witnesses which were killed rise again? for shall we think thus, that the bodies of Saints martyred by divers means, and in sundry places, for the space of 1260

years together, shall all that time lie unburied, be kept out of graves? And then 2. This time expired, life enters into these bodies, and they rise again. The Text according to this interpretation doth strongly inforce both, for if we conceive their killing to be corporal, by the same reason must their burial and their resurrection also.

We are necessitated therefore from the clear Text, and reason it self, to reject this opinion, and seek another. That therefore which is more consonant to the words, and doth not wrap us up in such a labyrinth of Intricacies, is to in∣terpret the three dayes and a half (which is the time of their being killed) of ordinary Prophetical days, noting three years and a half, which three years and a half are not to be added to the 1260. as a lesser period, which takes beginning where the greater ends, because then (as one saith well) the Beast should Tyrannize above 42. months, the woman be in the Wilderness above 1260 days, namely 1263 and a half, whereas the utmost tyranny of the Beast is but 42 months, the utmost period of the womans being in the wilderness but 1260 days; but we are to look upon them as a smaller period comprehended within the greater; or to speak plainly, we are to understand them of the very last three days and a half of the 1260. and therefore M. Mede in his Cl and our German Author in his, both trans∣late those words, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, when they shall have finished their testimony, Chap. 11. thus, Cum finituri sint testimonium suum, When they are about to finish their testimony, the 1260 days now drawing to an end, then shall the Beast make war against them, overcome them, and kill them.

As for that urged by a late Author, who calls in reason to be Umpire or Judge in this business, how the Beast now ready to die (as our Author supposeth he will at the end of the 1260 days) should be so magnanimous and warlike as to kill the Witnesses? how (the Sea being at this time

tempestnous, the earth terribly shaken) can it be imagined that the Sont of the Sea and Earth, i. e. wordly men, should be so jocund, and to banquet it, sport it, make mer∣ry, send gifts one to another, &c. as they shall do in the day the witnesses lye dead. I say no more but this, that all time upon a mistake, viz. That the rise of the Witnesses shall not be till the Empire of the ten-horned Beast (i.e. Civil power of Antichrist) is in a manner destroyed: and this upon another, that the subject of the fifth Vial is the poli∣tical state of the present Roman Empire (or Antichrists Civil State.) But as I have in my discourse upon the Vials proved the Subject of that Vial to be another thing: so let me say here to the first, it cannot be, because the Whore but a little before Romes fall is so high and proud, as that she fears no danger, but saith, I sit as a Queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow, which were her political State (where lyes her outward strength, and as for inward she hath none) destroyed, she should have little cause thus to brag and brave. Nay what do the wit∣nesses after their rise, if the Beasts power were destroyed before? onely kill him, whose sword was taken away be∣fore they came at him? Or how falls the tenth part of the City, upon their rise, if it were fallen before?