Page:Mahometanism in its relation to prophecy - or, an inquiry into the prophecies concerning antichrist, with some reference to their bearing on the events of the present day (IA mahometanisminit00philrich).pdf/235

 able are the treatises that have been written upon this great question: there is one in particular, from the pen of my learned and excellent friend, the very Reverend Dr. Pagani, provincial of the Order of Charity in this kingdom, which, by his kindness, I have been permitted to see in manuscript, and I cannot but here express my earnest desire to see it in print with as little delay as possible. There are, however, other commentators, who hold that our Lord's second advent will follow, not precede, the binding of Satan, and that it will not take place till after the final apostasy of mankind, foretold by St. John as ensuing upon the future loosing of Satan at the end of the glorious period.

Be this as it may, it seems clear, from the twentieth chapter of the Apocalypse, no less than from the twelfth chapter of Daniel, that there will be a resurrection of many of the servants of God, just before the commencement of the glorious period: and St. John calls this "the first resurrection," This event does not appear at all improbable, when we reflect that already many saints of the old law have arisen with their bodies, as we read in the twenty-seventh chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel, and the fifty-second verse, "And the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints that had