monition; an injury is certainly done both to the disputant and the hearer, and we seem to give our own opinion as an argument. Let every one therefore argue with the utmost solidity: and if any manifestly abuses Scripture, let him be corrected in a brotherly manner, upon pointing out his fault. As for the rest, let the arguments of believers be thoroughly tried, and not hissed off the stage."

VI. Secondly, by death is here understood, all that lasting and hard labour, that great sorrow, all the tedious miseries of this life, by which life ceases to be life, and which are the sad harbingers of certain death. To these things man is condemned, Gen. iii. 16, 17, 18, 19. The whole of that sentence is founded on the antecedent threatening; such miseries Pharaoh himself called by the name, Death, Ex. v. 17. And David, Psal. cxvi. 3. calls his pain and anguish, חבלימת the band's (sorrows) of death; by these death binds and fastens men that he may thrust them into, and confine them in his dungeon. Thus also Paul, 2 Cor. xi. 23. "In deaths often," and 2 Cor. iv. II. " are always delivered unto death." ib. v. 12. " Death worketh in us." As life is not barely to live, but to be happy; so death is not to depart this life in a moment, but ther to languish in a long expectation, dread and foresight, of certain death, without knowing the time, which God has foreordained. Finely to this purpose, says Picus Mirandula, in his treatise de Eute and uno. "For, we begin, should you haply not know it, to die then, when we begin first to live: and death runs parallel with life; and we then first cease to die when 'set free from this mortal body by the death of the flesh."

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VII. Thirdly, Death signifies spiritual death, or the separation of the soul from God. Elegantly has Isidorus Pelusiota iii. 232. defined it, "The death of the immortal soul is the departure of the Holy Spirit from it." This is what the Apostle calls, Eph. iv. 18. "being alienated from the life of God," which illuminates, sanctifies, and exhilirates the soul. For, the life of the soul consists in wisdom, in pure love, and to have the rejoicing of a good conscience. The death of the soul consists in folly, and, through concupiscence, in a separation from God, and the tormenting rackings of an evil conscience. Hence the Apostle says, Eph. ii. 1. "We are dead in trespasses and sins."

VIII. But I would more fully explain the nature of this death, not indeed in my own, but in the words of another, because I despaired to find any more emphatical. Both living and dead bodies have motion. But a living body moves by vegetation

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vegetation, while it is nourished, has the use of its senses, is delighted and acts with pleasure. Whereas, the dead body moves by putrefaction to a state of dissolution, and to the production of loathsome animals. And so in the soul, spiritually alive, there is motion, while it is fed, repasted and fattened with divine delights, while it takes pleasure in God and true wisdom, while, by the strength of its love, it is carried to, and fixed on that which can sustain the soul, and give it a sweet repose. But a dead soul has no feeling; that is, it neither understands truth, nor loves righteousness, wallows, and is spent and tired out, in the sink of concupiscence, breeds and brings forth the worms of impure and abominable thoughts, reasonings, and affections. Men therefore alienated from that spiritual life, which consists in the light of wisdom, and the activity of love, who delight in their own present happiness, are no better than living carcases, 1 Tim. v. 6. Dead whilst living: and hence in Scripture, are said to be spiritually dead.

IX. The word, כבל ἄφρων, which the Scripture applies to such, is both emphatical and of a very fertile signification. For, it denotes, Ist. A fool, corrupt in all the faculties of the soul, void of that spiritual wisdom, the beginning of which is the fear of the Lord. " Nabal is his name, and folly is with him, is Abigal's character of her husband, 1 Sam. xxv. 25. This נבל is opposed to חכם wise, Deut. xxxii. 6. "O foolish people and unwise." 2dly, It also denotes a wicked person, Psal. lxxiv. 18. "the foolish people have blasphemed thy name." 3dly, and lastly, It signifies, one in a dead and withered state; the root נבל denoting " to wither and die away," Isa. xl. 7. "the flower fadeth :" נבלה is a dead body, Isa. xxvi. 19. "thy dead men shall live." All which conjointly denote a man devoid of the wisdom of God, overwhelmed with sin, and destitute of the life of God; in a word, faded and breedIng worms, like a dead body. In all which spiritual death con

sists.

X. This spiritual death, is both sin and the natural consequence of the first sin, being at the same time threatened as the punishment of sin. For, as it renders man vile, and entirely incapable to perform those works which alone are worthy of him, as it makes him like the brute creatures, nay, and even like the devil himself, and unlike God, the only blessed being, and consequently renders him highly miserable, so it must be an exceeding great punishment of sin.

XI. Fourthly and lastly, Eternal death is also here intended. The preludes of which, in this life, are the terrors and anguish anguish of an evil conscience, the abandoning of the soul, deprived of all divine consolation, and the sense of the divine wrath, under which it is miserably pressed down. There will ensue upon this the translation of the soul to a place of torments, Lukexvi. 23, -25. Where shall be the hiding of God's face, the want of his glorious presence, and a most intense feeling of the wrath of God, for ever and ever, together with horrible despair, Rev. xiv. 11. At last will succeed, after the end of the world, the resurrection of the body to eternal punishment, Acts xxiv. 15.

XII. And here again, the Socinian divinity, adopted by the remonstrants, thwarts the truth: maintaining, Ap. p. 57, "that by these words, thou shalt surely die, or by any others elsewhere, Adam was not threatened with eternal death, in the sense of the Evangelists (or Protestants ;) so as to comprize the eternal death of body and soul, together with the punishment of sense: but directly corporal death only, or a separation of soul and body; which, all the evils disposing to death do precede; and upon which, at length, the eternal punishment of loss, that is, the privation of the vision of God, or of grace and glory will ensue." Another of that class, who examined in French the doctrine of Amiraldus and Testard, violently contends, that in the law there is no mention of the sense of infernal pains, but that it is peculiar to the Gospel, and threatened at last, against the profane despisers thereof, p. 59. and 114. Though elsewhere he adds, those "who stifle the light of reason, or hold the truth in unrighteousness, the more freely to fulfil the lusts of the flesh. As to others, he thinks, a middle state is to be assigned them, into which they may be received, different from the kingdom of heaven, and the damnation of hell fire: such as perhaps, that they are for ever to remain in the dust, to which they are to be reduced, and from thence never to arise, Curcellœus dissert. de necess. Cognit. Christian. § 5.

XIII. But this is the rankest poison. For, either they would insinuate that the soul of a sinner is to be cut off, destroyed and annihilated, like some of the Jews, and Maimonides himself, as quoted by Abarbanel, on Mal. iv. who place eternal death in this, " that the soul shall be cut off, shall perish, and not survive; from which leaven of the Epicureans and Sadducees, the Socinians profess themselves not averse: or else they assert what is the most absurd, repugnant, and tends to weaken the authority and meaning of the whole Scripture. For it is impossible to conceive the soul of man in a state of existence, excluded from the beatific vision of God, deprived of of the sense of his grace and glory, and not be most grievously tortured with the loss of this chief good; especially as conscience shall incessantly upbraid the soul, who, through its own folly, was the cause of all this misery, and torment it with the most dire despair of ever obtaining any happiness. And seeing God does not exclude man from the vision of his face, where is fulness of joy, without the justest displeasure, a holy indignation, and an ardent zeal against sin and the sinner; the privation of this supreme happiness arising from the wrath of God, cannot but be joined with a sense of the divine displeasure and malediction. These things flow from the very nature of the soul, and deserve a fuller illustration.

XIV. The soul of man was formed for the contemplation of God, as the supreme truth, truth itself, and to seek after him, with all the affection of his soul as the supreme good, goodness itself; and it may be said truly to live, when it delights in the contemplation of that truth, and in the fruition of that goodness. But when, by the just sentence of a despised Deity, it is excluded that most pleasant contemplation of truth, and most delightful fruition of goodness; then it must certainly own itself to be dead. And as it is so delightful to enjoy a good, most desirable and desired; so it must be afflicting and painful, to be disappointed of it. But since the soul, which is a spiritual substance, endued with understanding and will, cannot be without the active exercise of these faculties, especially when let loose from the fetters of the body; it must necessarily perceive itself miserable, by being deprived of the thief good; and being conscious of its misery, most bitterly lament the want of that good, which it was formed to seek after. To suppose a soul that has neither understandingnr will, is to suppose it not to be a soul. Just as if one supposed a body without quantity and extension: again, to suppose a soul sensible of its misery, and not grieved because of it, is contrary to the nature, both of the soul, and of misery. It is certainly, therefore, an absurd and contradictory fiction, to suppose the human soul to be under the punishment of loss without the punishment of sense at the same time.

XV. Further, as the soul cannot be ignorant that God is infinitely good, and that it is the nature of goodness to be communicative; it thence certainly gathers, that something exceedingly contrary to God must be found in itself, which he has the most perfect detestation of, and on account of which he, who is infinitely good, can have no communion with his creature: and that therefore that non-communion is the most evident sign and sad effect of the divine displeasure, depriving VOL. I.

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the man of the fruition of that good by which alone he could be happy. And thus, in this punishment of loss there is an exquisite sense of the wrath of God: with which no torments of the body by material fire can be compared.

XVI. Besides, the soul being conscious to itself of having by its sins been the cause of this misery, becomes enraged against itself, accuses, abhors, tears itself, acts the tormentor against itself, and under this lash more severely smarts, than any criminal under the hands of the most unrelenting executioner. Add, that all hope of a happy restitution failing, being racked with horrid despair, it is appointed to eternal misery. All these things are so closely connected, as to make themselves manifest to every conscience, upon the least attention.

XVII. The same things the Scripture expressly teach, when they speak of eternal punishment, Mat. xxv. 46. and torments, Luke xvi. 23, 28. of "the worm that dieth not, and the fire that is not quenched," Mark ix. 44. and the like; expressions too strong to be understood of the punishment of loss only, without that of sense.

XVIII. And it is absurd to say, that this punishment is threatened only against the contemners of the Gospel, seeing Paul testifies, that Christ is to come "in flaming fire, taking vengeance, not only on them that obey not the Gospel, but on them that know not God." 2 Thes. 1. 8. compare 1 Thes. iv. 5. "the Gentiles which know not God." Such namely, who would not know God even from the works of creation, and " did not like to retain God in their knowledge," Rom.i 28. The very power of truth obliged Curcell æus to say, in the place above cited," these are altogether inexcusable before God, and therefore it is not to be wondered, if, hereafter, they be consigned to the punishment of eternal fire." And our adversaries will not say, that the Gospel was preached to those of Sodom and Gomorrha, and the neighbouring cities. And yet, concerning them Jude writes, ver. 7. that they are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire." Words not to be restricted to that fire wherewith those cities were burnt, but to be extended to the flames of hell, with which the lewd inhabitants of those cities are at this very day tormented. These things are to be distinguished, which the nature of the things teaches to be distinct. Thus, we are to understand, "giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh," of the inhabitants and not of the towns. But it is true of both, that they were burnt with fire: which, with respect to the towns, may in some measure be said to be