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Coming to the end of the seventeenth century we have Pierre Poiret, a French
philosopher (1646-1719), whose major work L'Economie Divine was first published in
Amsterdam and then translated into English and published in London in 1713 in six
volumes. His viewpoint is pre-millennial and dispensational. His scheme is as follows:
(1) Infancy--to the Deluge. (2) Childhood--to Moses. (3) Adolescence--to the
prophets (about Solomon's time). (4) Youth--to the coming of Christ. (5) Manhood--
some time after that. (6) Old age--to the time of man's decay. (The latter two seem to
be the beginning and end of the Christian dispensation.) (7) Renovation of all things--
the Millennium.
Elhert's comments are as follows:
"There is no question that we have here a genuine dispensational scheme. He uses the
phrase `period or dispensation' and his Seventh dispensation is a literal 1000 year
millennium with Christ returned and reigning in bodily form upon the earth with His
saints, and Israel regathered and converted. He sees the overthrow of corrupt
Protestantism, the rise of Antichrist, the two resurrections, and man of the end-time
events."
John Edwards (1639-1716) published in 1699 two volumes entitled A Complete
History or Survey of All the Dispensations, in which he attempted to show God's dealings
from Genesis one to the end of the Revelation. He set out the following:
(1)
Innocency--Adam created upright.
(2)
Sin and Misery--Adam fallen.
(3)
Reconciliation--or Adam recovered; from his redemption to the end of the world.
A.
Patriarchal economy (Antideluvian, Noahic and Abrahamic).
B.
Mosaical.
100:
Gentile (concurrent with A and B).
D.
Christian (infancy, primitive period, past, childhood present period. Manhood,
future [Millennium]. Old age, from the loosing of Satan to the conflagration).
Isaac Watts (1674-1748) was a famous hymn writer and there is scarcely a hymnal
that does not contain some of his hymns. It is not generally known that he was also a
theologian. He wrote a forty-page essay entitled; The Harmony of all the Religions
Which God ever prescribed to men, and His Dispensation towards Them. He writes:
"The public dispensations of God towards man, are those wise and holy constitutions
of His will and government, revealed or some way manifested to them in the successive
periods or ages of the world . . . . . the dispensations of God may be described more
briefly, as the appointed moral miles of God's dealings with mankind, considered as
reasonable creatures, and as accountable to Him for their behaviour . . . . . each of these
dispensations of God may be represented as . . . . . different forms of religion, appointed
for man in the several successive ages of the world." (Isaac Watts Works 11:543,625).
He sets out the following scheme: (1) The dispensation of Innocence (before the
fall). (2) The Adamic dispensation of the covenant of grace (after the fall). (3) The
Noahic Dispensation. (4) The Abrahamic Dispensation. (5) The Mosaic Dispensation.
(6) The Christian Dispensation. He did not regard the Millennium as a separate
dispensation.