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.
AS touching the Nature of the Witnesses death; we are not to conceive thereof as though the same were to be a corporal killing, which no way agrees with this Prophecy, for,
1 Such as is their resurrection and ascension, such their death; but their resurrection and ascension is not corporal, therefore not their death.
2 This Killing must be such a Killing as that they may in the time of their being Killed, lye dead as witnesses; for
otherwise we cannot distinguish their killing, from their Prophecying, if we suppose them in both to give testi∣mony, and bear witness for Christ against the Beast; But a corporal killing of witnesses doth not make them cease to bear witness, but rather to bear witness in a more eminent manner, as hath been before obser∣ved. It is not a corporal killing therefore which is here meant.
Quest. What manner of Death then is it?
Answ. A Death (as I conceive) partly Civil, and partly Spiritual.
1 Partly Civil, which shall be a deprival of the witnesses, in a very great measure, if not totally, of their Civil Liberties, and the free exercise of their Religion. The godly Magistracy shall be put out of office, and so be in no capacity as Magistrates to bear witness; the godly Ministry, by penal Laws have their mouths stopped, and not suffered as Ministers of Christ to bear witness. This shall be their death, as to the Civil part of it.
2 This death shall be partly spiritual, and herein (as I conceive) the blackness of the day shall principally lye, and not in Bloodshedding; for observe, though the Beast hath a will to this latter, viz. to kill the witnesses out∣right, yet is he not permitted to do it, vers. 9. Now this spiritual death shall consist chiefly in this, viz. That the witnesses shall all this three yeers and a half be so left of God, as that they shall not have that courage that was in the people of God, al the time of the witnesses Prophecie; who then did not love their lives to the death, but mantained the truth, and opposed the Beast with their blood: But I say, now they shall want this courage, choosing rather coward∣ly to lye down (though stript of Liberty and Religion both) as men quite bereaved of spirit and life, then bold∣ly, as did their famous Predecessors, stand up for Christ, and protest against the Beast. And such a day as this, is by
far a worse day, then to see Saints killed with the sword, for whilst it is thus with them, they are honouring their Lord and Master, by bearing testimony, though with their bloods, but now they are shaming of him, yea Religion it self, by deserting their Colours.
And the Reasons why I conceive of the thing after this manner, are,
1 Because they cannot in any other way be said to lye dead as witnesses, which must be, because otherwise (as I have said) there is no distinction at all betwixt their Pro∣phecying and their Killing.
2 Because their resurrection at the end of the three dayes and a half, is by a spirit of life from God entring into them, vers. 11. i.e. a spirit of courage and boldness now to stand up for Christ, and Protest against the Beast, put into them by God, which before was wanting. There∣fore, I say, the death here spoken of is not a corporal, but another manner of death, and the wee of the day shall lye more in being forsaken of God within this time, then in being tormented or martyred by man.