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| Of Worlds Without End, or Ages of Ages.
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Chapter 19.—Of Worlds Without
End, or Ages of Ages.561
| 561 De sæculis
sæculorum. |
I do not presume to determine
whether God does so, and whether these times which are called
“ages of ages” are joined together in a continuous series, and
succeed one another with a regulated diversity, and leave exempt
from their vicissitudes only those who are freed from their misery,
and abide without end in a blessed immortality; or whether these
are called “ages of ages,” that we may understand that the ages
remain unchangeable in God’s unwavering wisdom, and are the
efficient causes, as it were, of those ages which are being spent
in time. Possibly “ages” is used for “age,” so that
nothing else is meant by “ages of ages” than by “age of
age,” as nothing else is meant by “heavens of heavens” than
by “heaven of
heaven.” For God called the
firmament, above which are the waters, “Heaven,” and yet the
psalm says, “Let the waters that are above the heavens
praise the name of the Lord.”562
Which of these two meanings we
are to attach to “ages of ages,” or whether there is not some
other and better meaning still, is a very profound question; and
the subject we are at present handling presents no obstacle to our
meanwhile deferring the discussion of it, whether we may be able to
determine anything about it, or may only be made more cautious by
its further treatment, so as to be deterred from making any rash
affirmations in a matter of such obscurity. For at present we are
disputing the opinion that affirms the existence of those periodic
revolutions by which the same things are always recurring at
intervals of time. Now whichever of these suppositions regarding
the “ages of ages” be the true one, it avails nothing for the
substantiating of those cycles; for whether the ages of ages be not
a repetition of the same world, but different worlds succeeding one
another in a regulated connection, the ransomed souls abiding in
well-assured bliss without any recurrence of misery, or whether the
ages of ages be the eternal causes which rule what shall be and is
in time, it equally follows, that those cycles which bring round
the same things have no existence; and nothing more thoroughly
explodes them than the fact of the eternal life of the
saints.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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