But some may be ready to say, "Although it has not this reference in its outward meaning, yet you have already confessed that it relates to Christianity and the church; and is not the doctrine contained in this internal application?" I answer, no! The doctrine only stands upon the supposition that the heavens and the earth referred to in the passage, are the literal and visible portions of nature. We have seen that in its relation to the Jews, no such things are intended; still less, therefore, can it point to these in its _internal_ meaning. As the sun and moon in the literal application are, (to use the words of Dr. Clarke,) "the sun and moon of the _Jewish_ heaven" or state, so in spiritual reference, they are the sun and moon of the _Christian_ heaven, or state of the church; and, as pointing to spiritual principles and spiritual states, have nothing to do with the outward machinery of nature. As no destruction of the world, then, can be found in the _internal_ sense of the prophecy, it is confessed, even by the advocates of the doctrine, that there is nothing respecting it in the _outward_ sense. And if nothing is found relating to it either in the _spiritual_ or _literal_ meaning of the words, then it is not there _at all_; and the passage as a proof of the dissolution of all things, must be abandoned for ever.[8] The next passage which claims attention, is that in the sixth chapter of the Revelation; for the words in the first chapter being those of the apostle previous to his prophetic visions, may be classed among the apostolic passages of which we shall speak hereafter. The text before us reads: "And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood, and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig-tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind: and the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places." In this part of the subject I say nothing of the evidently figurative nature of the passage, nor of the absurdities before alluded to, as existing in the sense of the letter; but I shall make one remark obvious to the minds of all, and borne out by the connexion of the words themselves. The vision of the _seals_ (as well as that of the vials,) is one continued prophecy, which is not concluded until the breaking of the seventh seal in the eighth chapter. Now the events above described, whether representative or literal, happen under the _sixth_ seal; yet the descriptions of the _seventh_ as well as those of the others, refer to events which were to occur in the church and on this visible earth. The sealing of the hundred and forty-four thousand,--the prohibition of the wind to blow on the earth,--the seven trumpets and their consequences, evidently relate to states of the church in this world;