Page:The Prophetic Spirit in its Relation to Wisdom and Madness.djvu/336

320 Greek interpreters without exception, explain this passage of that commotion of heaven and earth which shall take place at the end of the age, when the whole world will be made new. For Cyril also, as quoted by Œcumenius, gives this in plain terms as the meaning of the passage"—To these may be added Latin interpreters, such as Anselm, Thomas, Cajetan, and others.

Surely, when the prophets in the Roman Catholic Church have given such interpretations; can we regard them as any other than precursors to like prophets in the Church of England?—"And I saw, says St. John, a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away;" that is, says an Anglican divine, in his Paraphrase—"I saw methought that total revolution of things and men in the Christian world, with respect to religion, which the prophet Isaiah expressed in the high phrase of a New Heaven and a New Earth."