1 ADVERTISEMENT. The present edition of this work is a reprint of the last English edition (1839.) The work has received a new translation. In the Advertisement, it is said " As regards the translation, we have striven to be faithful to the original, and to give correctly-verbal, rather than doctrinal renderings, of the author's abstract terms (such as naturale, spirituale, &c. &c.); it being no part of a translator's function to lead other persons to look at the subject through the medium of his notions of it. We have simply endeavored to pour the author's ideas from Latin into English vessels, and we hope it will be found, that but little of meaning or of force has been wasted in the process of transfusion. It is proper to mention here, that the word "animus” (“innumerabiles affectiones constituunt animum,") has been carried into the translation, from the extreme difficulty of rendering it into English; since "mind," by which it has been usually translated, refers too exclusively to the intellect to convey the meaning at all, and "disposition," although much nearer to the mark, is a rendering which does not admit of uniform adoption. The reader will also detect a few new and unusual expressions, which we have not adopted without a deliberate conviction of their necessity, and which we just glance at, to prevent him from mistaking them, for the results of haste, or mere unwittingness." OF THE LAST JUDGMENT, AND THE BABYLON WHICH HAS BEEN DESTROYED. THAT THE DAY OF THE LAST JUDGMENT DOES NOT MEAN THE DESTRUCTION OF THE WORLD. 1. THEY who have been unacquainted with the spiritual sense of the Word, have always understood that all things in the visible world will be destroyed in the day of the last judgment; for it is said, that heaven and earth are then to perish, and that God will create a new heaven and a new earth: in which opinion they have also confirmed themselves because it is said, that all men are then to rise from their graves, and that the good are then to be separated from the evil, with more to the same purport: but it is thus expressed in the literal sense of the Word, because this sense of the Word is natural, and in the ultimate of divine order, of which the whole and every part contains a spiritual sense within it: for which reason, he who comprehends the Word only according to the sense of the letter, may be led into various opinions, as actually is the case in the Christian world, where so many heresies exist from this ground, and every one of them is confirmed from the Word. But since no one has hitherto known, that in the whole, and in every part of the Word there is a spiritual sense, nor even what a spiritual sense is, therefore they who have embraced this opinion concerning the last judgment, are pardonable. But still they may now know, that neither the visible heaven nor the habitable earth will perish, but that both will remain forever; and that by a new heaven and a new earth is to be understood a new church, both in the heavens and on the earth: it is said a new church in the heavens, for there is a church in the heavens, as well as on the earth; for there 1 |