3. The Third Question is, Whether shall this Dissolution be gradual and successive, or momentaneous and sudden?
I answer, The Scripture resolves for the latter, The day of the Lord shall come as a thief in the night: a similitude we have often repeated in Scripture, as in the tenth Verse of this Chapter, in 1 Thess. 15. 2. Rev. 3. 3. and 16. 15. And the Resurrection and Change of Things, it is said shall be in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, 1 Cor. 15. 52. Consonant whereto both the Epicureans and Stoicks held their Dissolutions of the World should be sudden and brief, as Lucretius and Seneca in the place ‘fore-mentioned tell us. And it is suitable to the nature of Fire to make a quick dispatch of things, suddenly to consume and destroy.
And as it shall be sudden, so also shall it be unexpected, being compared to the coming of the Flood in the Days of Noah, Mat. 24. 37, 38, 39. But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entred into the ark: And knew not until the flood came and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. And the raining of Fire and Brimstone upon Sodom. Luke 17. Thessal. 5. 3. For when they shall say peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them as travail upon a woman with child. Now if it shall be thus sudden and unexpected, it is not likely there should be in Nature any manifest Tendency to it, or remarkable Signs and Forerunners of it: for such must needs startle and awaken the World into an expectation and dread of it. That there is at present no such Tendency to Corruption, but that the World continues still in as good state and condition as it was two thousand Years ago, without the least impairment or decay, hath been, as we before noted, without any possibility of contradiction clearly made out and demonstrated by Dr. Hakewill in his Apology: and therefore, arguing from the past to the future, it will in all likelihood so continue two thousand Years more, if it be so long to the Day of Doom; and consequently that day (as the Scripture predicts) will suddenly and unexpectedly come upon the World. But if all these Prophecies (as Dr. Hammond affirms) be to be restrained only to the Destruction of Jerusalem, and the Jewish Polity, without any further respect to the end of the World; then indeed from thence we can make no Inferences or Deductions in reference to that final Period.
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