Bishop Newton understands "this 'first resurrection' of a particular resurrection preceding the general one at least a thousand years." "It is to this first resurrection," says he, "that St. Paul alludes, (1 Thess. iv. 16,) when he affirms that the 'dead in Christ shall rise first,' and (1 Cor. xv. 23;) that every man shall be made alive in his own order, Christ the first fruits, afterwards they that are Christ's at his coming." It is surprising that a person of the Bishop's learning should so readily mistake the _sound_ for the _sense_ of the words which he quotes. While the apostle is, for the "comfort" of the saints, treating of _their_ resurrection, he is evidently speaking of the general resurrection at the _end of time_. In the morning of the resurrection Christ's members will be raised after the manner and in virtue of his resurrection,--"the first fruits" securing the following harvest, in obvious allusion to the ceremonial law. In the other case, when Paul says, "the dead in Christ shall rise first," does he mean,--before "the rest of the dead?" No, but before those of their _redeemed brethren_ who shall then be "alive and remain;" for these "shall not prevent (_anticipate_) them which are asleep," (_in the grave_.) That is, the bodies of the saints who have died shall be raised in glory, _before_ those then alive shall undergo a change equivalent to that of the resurrection. Such is manifestly the meaning of the apostle's plain language which has no reference whatever to the millennium, not even the remotest allusion. Nothing but a groundless preconception of the nature of the millennium will account for the sound of words taking the place of their sense in the reader's mind, and no degree of mere scholarship can obviate this propensity of the human mind in "the things of the Spirit of God." Not only does the learned prelate misapprehend and misapply the texts above quoted to support his theory, but he makes a gratuitous concession, which is at once fatal to his scheme and inconsistent with himself. He says,--"Indeed, the _death_ and _resurrection_ of the witnesses before mentioned, (Rev. xi. 7, 11,) appears from the concurrent circumstances of the vision to be _figurative_." The Bishop evidently viewed the witnesses of the eleventh chapter as a company altogether different from those of whom John speaks in the twentieth chapter, (vs. 4, 5.) This is another of his surprising mistakes; for that the _identical party_ as a moral person appears in both parts of the symbolic and allegorical representation will readily appear to any unbiassed mind by an induction of the following particulars.