Robert Townley (First KNOWN Full Preterist, First KNOWN Ex-Full Preterist) Christianity in the Nineteenth Century A Sermon in the Universalist Church of Charlestown, Mass,. Sunday Morning, September 26 (1852)
"If this Apostle could have cast a glance forward eighteen centuries from his own day - if he could have known that the world would have lasted so long, and had been asked what he should suppose would the be the power of the Gospel in the world, how do we think he might have answered? What, may we reasonably imagine, Would have been his expectations? Would it not have been a thing incredible to him to have imagined the actual state of the world? Could he ever have supposed that at the end of so many centuries, the Jews, his brethren, according to the flesh, would be apparently as far off as ever from acknowledging the faith Of Christ? Could he ever have believed that Christianity would have proved so powerless to lead the barbarian, and to throw light upon the dark places of the earth, full of the habitations of cruelty? And above all, could he ever have thought that among Christians themselves Christianity would still remain for the most part only an impracticable idea?"
"We, on the contrary, fulfill every thing by that magic phrase, "the destruction of Jerusalem." But can we really and seriously refer these passages which I have quoted from Paul, to the destruction Jerusalem? Can we truly say that the rejection of the Jews and the calling of the Gentiles, let that mean what it may, exhausted all their meaning ---the meaning which was the thought in Paul’s mind when he wrote them? I must confess I cannot, and I do not see what it is to set aside the authority of Paul as a teacher, if this be not to affirm that Paul had nothing more in his mind than what we call the second coming of Christ, when he wrote these solemn word, "for if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we be ever with the Lord: wherefore comfort one another with these word." Comfort one another! It were cold comfort me thinks, to tell these Thessalonians believers sorrowing for their dead, that all that Paul meant was fulfilled a few years afterwards at the destruction of Jerusalem. I know it may be said that this passage refers to another coming, at the time of the restitution of all things"; but I never could understand or make out; that there were three comings of Christ spoken of in the New Testament. Paul's language cannot be thus evaded. It is plain enough, “We which are alive and remain.” There can be no question but that Paul described one return of Christ, whatever were its nature, and that it included in his mind a resurrection of the dead, an end of the world, and a day of judgment as being within the limits of his own natural life, and of those lives of those to whom he was writing.
On leaving Preterist Universalism: "I fear that we are in a poor sickly way just now, by all I can read and hear. I fear we shall remain a sect without hope of ever being anything better. It does not look likely that the grub will ever come to be a butterfly."
http://www.preteristarchive.com/Books/1853_townley_chritianity.html
