Chapter 16.—Of the New Heaven and
the New Earth.
Having finished the prophecy of
judgment, so far as the wicked are concerned, it remains that he
speak also of the good. Having briefly explained the Lord’s
words, “These will go away into everlasting punishment,” it
remains that he explain the connected words, “but the righteous
into life eternal.” “And I saw,” he says, “a
new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first
earth have passed away; and there is no more sea.” This
will take place in the order which he has by anticipation declared
in the words, “I saw One sitting on the throne, from whose face
heaven and earth fled.” For as soon as those who are not
written in the book of life have been judged and cast into eternal
fire,—the nature of which fire, or its position in the world or
universe, I suppose is known to no man, unless perhaps the divine
Spirit reveal it to some one,—then shall the figure of this world
pass away in a conflagration of universal fire, as once before the
world was flooded with a deluge of universal water. And by this
universal conflagration the qualities of the corruptible elements
which suited our corruptible bodies shall utterly perish, and our
substance shall receive such qualities as shall, by a wonderful
transmutation, harmonize with our immortal bodies, so that, as the
world itself is renewed to some better thing, it is fitly
accommodated to men, themselves renewed in their flesh to some
better thing. As for the statement, “And there shall be no more
sea,” I would not lightly say whether it is dried up with that
excessive heat, or is itself also turned into
some better
thing. For we read that there shall be a new heaven and a new
earth, but I do not remember to have anywhere read anything of a
new sea, unless what I find in this same book, “As it were a sea
of glass like crystal.” But he was not then speaking of
this end of the world, neither does he seem to speak of a literal
sea, but “as it were a sea.” It is possible that, as
prophetic diction delights in mingling figurative and real
language, and thus in some sort veiling the sense, so the words
“And there is no more sea” may be taken in the same sense as
the previous phrase, “And the sea presented the dead which were
in it.” For then there shall be no more of this world, no more
of the surgings and restlessness of human life, and it is this
which is symbolized by the sea.