Imatges de pàgina
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surrection, which the Christians profess; for the philosophers told them, this resurrection which they called their highest reward, was really a punish

ment.

Answer. The force of this objection has been quite taken away before, when it has been shewn that man, being a creature compounded of body and spirit, was designed for its highest happiness and the perfection of its nature in this state of union, and not in a state of separation. And let it be observed that when the body shall be raised from the grave it shall not be such flesh and blood as we now wear, nor made of such materials as shall clog or obstruct the soul in any of its most vigorous and divine exercises, but it shall be a "spiritual body*,' a body fitted to serve a holy and a glorified spirit in its actions and its enjoyments, and to render the spirit capable of some further excellences, both of action and enjoyment, than it is naturally capable of without a body. What sort of qualities this newraised body shall be endued with in order to increase the excellency or the happiness of pious souls, will be in a great measure a mystery or a secret till that blessed morning appears.

Objection XV. Is not our immortality in Scripture described as built upon the incorruptible state

1 Cor. xv. 44.

of our new-raised bodies?" This corruptible mustput on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality *:" but the doctrine of the immortality of the soul is not particularly found or taught in Scripture.

Answer. It is granted that the immortality of the new-raised body is built on that incorruptible sort of materials of which it is to be formed, or which shall be mingled with it, or the incorruptible qualities which shall be given to it by God himself: but the soul is immortal in itself, whether with or without a body: and he that can read all those texts of Scripture which have been before made use of in this Essay, wherein the existence of the spirit after the death of the body is so plainly expressed, and cannot find the immortality of the soul in them, or the spirit's capacity of existence in a separate state from the body, must be left to his own sentiments to explain and verify the expressions of Christ and his apostles some other way: or he must acknowledge that these expressions are somewhat incautious and dangerous, since it is evident they lead thousands and ten thousands of wise and sober readers into this sentiment of the soul's immortality.

Whether the soul in its own nature be necessa

* 1 Cor. xv. 53.

rily immortal is a point of philosophy, and not to be sought for directly in Scripture: but whether the great God, the Governor of the world, has not appointed souls to exist in a separate state of happiness or misery after the bodies are dead, seems to me to be so plainly determined in many of the Scriptures which have been cited, as leaves no sufficient reason to doubt of the truth of it.

CONCLUSION.

It is not unreasonable to expect, that whoever has with attention read through the foregoing pages, will rise from the perusal of them, convinced of the truth of the position, that the soul of man does subsist in a state of perfect self-consciousness, in the interval between death and the resurrection.

It may also be presumed, that no person will consider any discussion unprofitable on which men so eminent for learning and piety have thought proper to bestow so much labour; nor that any person will doubt but that the doctrine of our intermediate state is, in fact, revealed to us in Holy Writ, when he observes how much light has been thrown on the subject by a fair and proper exposition of numerous texts of Scripture, manifestly establishing the certain truth of that doctrine.

We may, therefore, now be allowed to assume as proved, that the notion of such an intermediate state of the soul has been communicated to man by Divine Revelation.

Neither let it still be said, that such discussion is unnecessary. Any one of those excellent men

whose works have been quoted, is a full match, in any point of intellectual power, for ANY ONE living author. Who, then, shall presume to call that unnecessary, which not ONE only, but so many persons of the highest order of intellect, have thought important enough to be examined with such minuteness of investigation?

That materialism is a most soul-destroying heresy no Christian surely will deny. That a belief in the possibility of the soul's suffering death, or at least such a protracted suspension of life as would be almost tantamount to death, may lead to materialism, may be most confidently asserted. It is, therefore, plainly both profitable and necessary that this point be cleared up: that as Christian belief traces man in every other stage of his progress either to heaven or hell, so it should also embrace that stage which will intervene between death and the resurrection.

By the testimonies above adduced (to which many more might have been added) the manner in which that interval has been ordered by our Almighty Creator, has been explained in terms sufficiently clear for the satisfaction of any honest, unprejudiced mind. With any mind warped by prejudice, or lifted up by self-conceit, it would be but lost time to argue any point in language that might not exactly fall in with preconceived notions.

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