of a prayer of a widow for the soul of her deceased husband, saith, that
"she requesteth refreshing for him, and a portion in the first resurrection."
Which seemeth to have some twang of the error of the Millenaries (whereunto not Tertullian only with his prophet Montanus, but Nepos also, and Lactantius, and divers other doctors of the Church did fall), who, misunderstanding the prophecy in the 20th of the Revelation, imagined that there should be a first resurrection of the just, that should reign here a thousand years upon earth; and after that a second resurrection of the wicked at the day of the general judgment.
"They that come not to the first resurrection, but are reserved to the second, shall be burned until they fulfil the times betwixt the first and the second resurrection: or if they have not fulfilled them, they shall remain longer in punishment. And therefore let us pray that we may obtain to have our part in the first resurrection,"
saith St. Ambrose. Hence, in a certain Gothic Missal, I meet with two several exhortations made unto the people to pray after this form: the one that God would
"vouchsafe to place in the bosom of Abraham the souls of those that be at rest, and admit them imto the part of the first resurrection;"
the other, which 1 find elsewhere also repeated in particular, that he would
"place in rest the spirits of their friends which were gone before them in the Lord's peace, and raise them up in the part of the first resurrection."
And, to come nearer home, Asserius Menevensis, writing of the death and burial of Ethelred, King of the West Saxons, and Burghred, King of the Mercians, saith that they
"expect the coming of the Lord and the first resurrection with the just."
The like doth Abbo Floriacensis also write of our Cuthbert. Which, how it may be excused otherwise, than by saying that at the general resurrection the dead in Christ shall rise first, and then the wicked shall be raised after them, and by referring the first resurrection unto the resurrection of the just, which shall be at that day, I cannot well resolve.
For certain it is, that the first resurrection, spoken of in the
