en after the day of Pentecost, ch. iii. verse 19, Peter tells the
Jews to repent, that their sins may be blotted out "when the times of
refreshing [i.e. of deliverance] shall come from the face of the Lord,
and he shall send Jesus Christ [i.e. the Messiah] before preached, (or
promised) unto you, whom the heavens must receive until the times of
the restoration of all things which God hath spoken by the mouth of all
his holy prophets since the world began." From this we see, that the
Apostles thought that Jesus was gone to heaven for a time, and was to
return again [there is no mention whatever in the Prophets of a double
coming of the Messiah] and fulfill the prophecies with regard to "the
restoration of all things" to a paradisiacal state, and the temporal
kingdom of the Messiah sitting upon the throne of David in Jerusalem,
all which is contained in the words of "the holy prophets" which have
been since the world began. And what sort of a kingdom it was to be
will appear from the not very spiritual description of the reign of
Jesus upon earth during the Millennium, described in the 20th chapter
of Revelations, and not only so, but the author of that book represents
the final, and permanent state of the blessed as fixed, not in heaven,
as modern Christians suppose, but on a new earth, or the earth renewed,
and in a superb city, called "the new Jerusalem."

In fact, the ideas of the twelve Apostles upon the subject of the
kingdom of the Messiah were precisely as carnal as those of their
unbelieving brethren of the Jewish nation. They believed, as has been
shown abundantly in the 15th chapter of "The Grounds of Christianity
Examined," that their Master Jesus would come again, as he had told
them he would, in that generation, and perform for Israel all the
glorious things promised; that he would come in a cloud with power and
great glory, and all the holy angels with him; that many from the east,
and from the west should sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in
that kingdom; and that the disciples were to eat and drink at Jesus'
table in his kingdom, and were to sit on twelve thrones judging the
twelve tribes of Israel. The author of the book of Revelations, after
describing the magnificence and felicity of Jesus' kingdom upon earth,
represents him as saying that he should come quickly: and in the first
chapters, that they who had pierced him should see him coming in the
clouds. The Apostles, as appears from the epistl