The Future
An insight into Ray’s views on cosmology and eschatology as it relates to the material creation can be found in his essays Three Physico-Theological Treatises (1693). Extracts are presented below.
Chapter 11. “Whether shall the whole world be consumed and annihilated, or only refined and purified?”
“the renovation or restitution seems to me most probable, as being most consonant to Scripture, Reason and Antiquity. The Scripture speaks of an apokalasis or Restitution Acts 3:21... and palingenesia or Regeneration of the world, the very word the Stoicks and Pythagoreans use in this case Mat 19:28... Ps 102:26 As a vesture shalt thou change them and they shalt be changed, Which words are again taken up and repeated, Heb 1:12. Now it is one thing to be changed, another to be annihilated and destroyed. 1 Cor 7:31 The fashion of this world passeth away. As if he had said, It shall be transfigured, or its outward form changed, not its matter or substance destroyed.” p.353
[Ray quotes] “Isa 65:17 66:22 To which places the apostle seems to me to refer in those words, 2 Peter 3:13. I omit that place Romans 8, tho’ it be accounted the strongest prooof of our opinion, because of the obscurity and ambiguity therof.” p.355
“[Mr] Hake ... hath but two testimonies to alledge for its Abolition; the one out of Hilary upon the Psalms, and the other out of Clemens his ‘Recognitions’. To this Restitution of the world after the conflagration many also of the Heathen philosophers bear witness; whose testimonies Mr Burnet hath exhibited in his ‘Theory of the Earth’ ” p.355
“The Restitution of the World seems more consonant to Reason than its Abolition. For if the world were to be annihilated, what needed a conflagration? Fire doth not destroy or bring things to nothing, but only separate their parts. The world cannot be abolished by it, and therefore had better been annihilated without it. Wherefore the Scripture mentioning no other dissolution than is to be effected by the instrumentality of fire, it is clear we are not to understand any utter Abolition or Annihilation of the World, but only a Mutation or Renovation, by those phrases of ‘perishing’, ‘passing away’’. ‘dissolving’, ‘being no more’ etc. They are to be no more in that state or condition they are now in.” p.358
“There must be a material Heaven, and a material Hell left. A place for the glorified bodies of the Blessed to inhabit and converse in; and a place for the bodies of the Damned... now if the place of the Blessed be an Empyreal Heaven far above the visible Heavens, as Divines generally hold; and the place of the Damned be beneath the middle of the Earth... Then when all the intermediate bodies shall [supposedly] be annihilated what a strange universe shall we have? Consisting of an immense Ring of Matter, having in the middle a vast vacuity... save one small point [at the centre] for an infernal Dungeon. Those that are of this opinion seem to me to have too narrow and mean thoughts of the Greatness, I almost say the Immensity, of the Universe... and are too partial to themselves, to think the whole world was created for no other end but to be serviceable to Mankind.” p.359
“It seems to me to be too great presumption, and over-valuing ourselves, to think that all this world was so made for us, as to have no other end of its Creation; or that God could not be glorified but by us.” p.361
And from an earlier chapter...
[Ray quotes] “St Jerome upon the Psalm 102 ‘the dissolution of the Heavens doth not signify their utter destruction or annihilation but only their change into a better state.” p.263
"As concerning the future condition of the world after the conflagration, I find it the general and received opinion of the ancient Christians, that the world shall not be annihilated or destroyed, but only renewed and purified. So Eusebius, "The world shall not be wholly destroyed but renewed." Divers other passages I might produce out of him to the same purpose. So Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech.15, "He folds up the Heavens, not that he might destroy them, but that he might rear them up again more beautiful." p.262