led; that is, the literal or inchoative,
evangelical or spiritual, universal or perfect day.

The first day is a literal or inchoative day, here prophesied of, and
that is already past, past long since; viz., in that day wherein the
seventy years of the Babylonian captivity expired; then was this
prophecy or promise begun in part to be accomplished: at what time the
captivity of Judah, and divers of Israel with them, upon their return
out of Babylon, kept a solemn fast at the river "Ahava, to afflict their
souls before their God." There may you see them going and weeping, "to
seek of Him a right way for them, and their little ones." There you have
them seeking the Lord, and inquiring the way to Zion with their faces
thitherward. And when they came home, you may hear some of their nobles
and priests, calling upon them to enter into covenant; so Shechaniah
spake unto Ezra, the princes, and the people, "We have sinned against
the Lord, ... yet now there is hope in Israel concerning this thing. Now
therefore let us make a covenant with our God." And so you may find the
Levites calling the people to confess their sins with weeping and
supplications, in a day of humiliation, and at the end of it, to write,
and swear, and seal a covenant with "the Lord their God." This was the
first day wherein this prophecy began to be fulfilled, in the very
letter thereof.

The second day is the evangelical day, wherein this promise is fulfilled
in a gospel or spiritual sense; namely, when the elect of God, of what
nation or language soever, being all called the Israel of God, as is
prophesied, "One shall say, I am the Lord's; and another shall call
himself by the name of Jacob, ... and surname himself by the name of
Israel." I say, when these in their several generations and successions
shall turn to the Lord their God, either from their Gentilism and
paganism, as in their first conversion to Christianity; as Tertullian
observes after the resurrection of Christ, and the mission of the Holy
Ghost; _Aspice exinde universas nationes ex veragine erroris humani
emergentes ad Dominum Deum, et ad Dominum Christum ejus_. From that day
forward, you might behold poor creatures of all nations and languages,
creeping out of their dark holes and corners of blindness and idolatry,
and betaking them to God and His Son Jesus Christ, as to their Law-giver
and Saviour; or else turning from Antichristian superstition, and false
ways of worship, as in the aft