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Having finished the prophecy of judgment, so far as the wicked are
concerned, it remains that he speak also of the good. Having briefly
explained the Lord's words, "These will go away into everlasting
punishment," it remains that he explain the connected words, "but
the righteous into life eternal." "And I saw," he says, "a new
heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth have
passed away; and there is no more sea." This will take place in the
order which he has by anticipation declared in the words, "I saw One
sitting on the throne, from whose face heaven and earth fled." For
as soon as those who are not written in the book of life have been
judged and cast into eternal fire, the nature of which fire, or its
position in the world or universe, I suppose is known to no man,
unless perhaps the divine Spirit reveal it to some one, then shall the
figure of this world pass away in a conflagration of universal fire, as
once before the world was flooded with a deluge of universal water.
And by this universal conflagration the qualities of the corruptible
elements which suited our corruptible bodies shall utterly perish, and
our substance shall receive such qualities as shall, by a wonderful
transmutation, harmonize with our immortal bodies, so that, as the
world itself is renewed to some better thing, it is fitly accommodated
to men, themselves renewed in their flesh to some better thing. As
for the statement, "And there shall be no more sea," I would not
lightly say whether it is dried up with that excessive heat, or is
itself also turned into some better thing. For we read that there
shall be a new heaven and a new earth, but I do not remember to have
anywhere read anything of a new sea, unless what I find in this same
book, "As it were a sea of glass like crystal " But he was not then
speaking of this end of the world, neither does he seem to speak of a
literal sea, but "as it were a sea." It is possible that, as
prophetic diction delights in mingling figurative and real language,
and thus in some sort veiling the sense, so the words "And there is
no more sea" may be taken in the same sense as the previous phrase,
"And the sea presented the dead which were in it." For then there
shall be no more of this world, no more of the surgings and
restlessness of human life, and it is this which is symbolized by the
sea.
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