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After this mention of the closing persecution, he summarily indicates
all that the devil, and the city of which he is the prince, shall
suffer in the last judgment. For he says, "And the devil who
seduced them is cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, in which are
the beast and the false prophet, and they shall be tormented day and
night for ever and ever." We have already said that by the beast is
well understood the wicked city. His false prophet is either
Antichrist or that image or figment of which we have spoken in the same
place. After this he gives a brief narrative of the last judgment
itself, which shall take place at the second or bodily resurrection of
the dead, as it had been revealed to him: "I saw a throne great and
white, and One sitting on it from whose face the heaven and the earth
fled away, and their place was not found." He does not say, "I
saw a throne great and white, and One sitting on it, and from His
face the heaven and the earth fled away," for it had not happened
then, i.e., before the living and the dead were judged; but he says
that he saw Him sitting on the throne from whose face heaven and earth
fled away, but afterwards. For when the judgment is finished, this
heaven and earth shall cease to be, and there will be a new heaven and
a new earth. For this world shall pass away by transmutation, not by
absolute destruction. And therefore the apostle says, "For the
figure of this world passeth away. I would have you be without
anxiety." The figure, therefore, passes away, not the nature.
After John had said that he had seen One sitting on the throne from
whose face heaven and earth fled, though not till afterwards, he
said, "And I saw the dead, great and small: and the books were
opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of the life of
each man: and the dead were judged out of those things which were
written in the books, according to their deeds." He said that the
books were opened, and a book; but he left us at a loss as to the
nature of this book, "which is," he says, "the book of the life of
each man." By those books, then, which he first mentioned, we are
to understand the sacred books old and new, that out of them it might
be shown what commandments God had enjoined; and that book of the life
of each man is to show what commandments each man has done or omitted to
do. If this book be materially considered, who can reckon its size or
length, or the time it would take to read a book in which the whole
life of every man is recorded? Shall there be present as many angels
as men, and shall each man hear his life recited by the angel assigned
to him? In that case there will be not one book containing all the
lives, but a separate book for every life. But our passage requires
us to think of one only. "And another book was opened," it says.
We must therefore understand it of a certain divine power, by which it
shall be brought about that every one shall recall to memory all his own
works, whether good or evil, and shall mentally survey them with a
marvellous rapidity, so that this knowledge will either accuse or
excuse conscience, and thus all and each shall be simultaneously
judged. And this divine power is called a book, because in it we
shall as it were read all that it causes us to remember. That he may
show who the dead, small and great, are who are to be judged, he
recurs to this which he had omitted or rather deferred, and says,
"And the sea presented the dead which were in it; and death and hell
gave up the dead which were in them." This of course took place
before the dead were judged, yet it is mentioned after. And so, I
say, he returns again to what he had omitted. But now he preserves
the order of events, and for the sake of exhibiting it repeats in its
own proper place what he had already said regarding the dead who were
judged. For after he had said, "And the sea presented the dead
which were in it, and death and hell gave up the dead which were in
them," he immediately subjoined what he had already said, "and they
were judged every man according to their works." For this is just
what he had said before, "And the dead were judged according to their
works."
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