more delightful and pleafant, can be defired in this life than that full affurance of our faith, which entirely calms the conscience, and delights it with the ineffable fweetnefs of confolations. I X. Fifthly, Thefe fo many and fo great benefits joined together, beget " a joy unfpeakable and 'full of glory," whereby Peter teftifies, "though now not feeing, yet believing, they rejoice," 1 Pet. i. 8. For that God, with whom they have fellowfhip as their God, is their exceeding joy innou by, the God of the joy of their exultation, P. xliii. 4. Nothing exceeds this joy in efficacy, for it penetrates into the inmoft foul, and is alone fufficient to sweeten the most grievous of all afflictions, let them be ever fo bitter, and eafily difpel the greatest anguish of foul: so that the faithful martyrs of Chrift, who had tafted the sweetness of it, have gone, with joy and fongs of praife, to the most cruel torments, as to the most sumptuous feafts. Nothing is more pure. It does not discompofe the mind, ɑnlefs in a falutary, wife, and holy manner; that, having no command of itself, but being full of God, and on the very confines of heaven, it both favours and speaks above the capacity of a man, The more plentifully one has drank of this fpiritual nectar, though he may appear delirious to others, who are unacquainted with thofe delights, he is the more pure, and wife, and happy. Nothing, in fine, is more conftant; " everlasting joy upon their heads," Ifa. xxxv. 1o. " your heart fhall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you,” John xvi. 22. If it is not constant as to the fecond effects, or after-acts, as they are called, yet it is fo at leaft, as to the foundation and first act. For, though God, in this life, according to his infinite wifdom, mixes the communication of his sweetness with much bitternefs: yet believers have that in them, which proves the unexhaufted fountain of a joy fpringing forth at times, and of a delight, that is afterwards to continue flowing for ever. Nor does God at all times deal out this joy with a fparing hand: he fometimes bestows it in fuch plenty on his people, that they are almoft made to own themfelves unable to bear fuch heavenly delight on earth, and to fay with Ephrem Syrus; "Lord, withdraw a little, least the brittle vial of my heart fhould burft by the rays of thy favour darting too ftrongly." If God does fo great things for his people in the prifon, what will he not do in the palace? If the first fruits are fo plentiful, how abundant will the harvest be? XI. The glorification of the future life has again its feveral de grees and periods; and is either of the foul feparated from its body before the laft judgment; or of the whole man after the re furrection. furrection. We are here to take notice of the gangrene of the Socinian divinity; whofe meaning it is hard to come at, thefe worft of hypocrites are fo involved and dark. I fhall give their own words, from the compendiolum they themfelves drew up, and which the venerable Cloppenburg undertook to refute. XII. Their fentiments about the state of fouls after death are these; that man by death undergoes fuch a TOTAL DISSOLUTION, as to be altogether NOTHING: unless that his fpirit (even as the SPIRIT of the BEASTS like a kind of wind or breath, returns to God, who gave it, Eccl. xii- because that breath or fpirit is a kind of VIRTUE or efficacy of him, to whom it returns-moreover, they infer from this, that fouls after death, have NO SENSATION; nay, do not indeed, actually SUBSIST in themselves, as perfons do. The whole comes to this; ft, Since they contend, that the foul is not a fubftance, but a kind of virtue and efficacy, as strength, health, wit, fkill, and the like; they deny that it any ways fubfifts of itself. 2dly, As they fay, it returns to God, they afcribe nothing to it, but what it has in common with the fpirit of beafts; dreaming, namely, of a kind of divine air or breath, a particle of which every man, and every beaft enjoys; by which God infpires, vegetates and moves their bodies, and which, when it is breathed out at death, he receives, as a kind of virtue or efficacy of his own. 3dly, However that return to God hinders not man, after death, from becoming altogether nothing, as beafts are nothing after death; only with this difference, that the foul of man is rational, and has the hope of eternal life; fuch as the fouls of the righteous who will actually live for ever. But then they mean that eternal life, which begins at the refurrection, by which the foul as well as the body, will be again brought into being; while the fouls of the wicked will remain in the fame condition, with those of the beafts, which are not to be reproduced by any refurrection. 4thly, Since they deny the fouls furviving death to be fubftances, it is much more evident, that they deny them to be capable of rewards or punishments which is down-right epicurifm. XIII. We are therefore to prove these three things in their order: 1ft, That human fouls truly furvive after death. 2dly, That they live and think; for that life which is effential to the foul, confifts in thefe; and confequently they either enjoy the beatific communion of God, with the highest delight, or are tormented with the gnawing worm of confcience, and the horrible expectation of a future judgment, with the utmost pain. 3div, That the fouls of the righteous (for we now treat of their glory) glory) are immediately, upon their quitting the body, received not only into heavenly joys, but also into heavenly manfions. XIV. As to the first; that the foul, on being fet free from the body, fubfifts; and that' man, after death, is not reduced into nothing, the facred writings fo evidently declare, that scarce any thing can be clearer. The Lord Jefus invincibly proves, that Abraham, Ifaac and Jacob exifted, when, long after their death, God declared, that he was their God, Mat. xxii. 32. compared with Luke xx. 38. For, how could he be their God when themselves had no exiftence? And if the foul, when separated from the body, could not at all fubfift, Paul would have ridiculously doubted, whether he was caught up into the third heaven in the body or out of the body, 2 Cor. xii. 2, 3. His words alfo had been vain, Phil. i. 23. "I have a defire to be diffolved, or depart, and to be with Chrift. " Indeed, he fays, to be diffol ved, or depart, and not to be extinguished: nor can we refufe, that he has a being, who is faid to be with Chrift. And how, pray, are we come not only to myriads of angels, but alfo " to the fpirits of juft men made perfect," who " are in the heavenly Jerufalem," if none 'fuch existed? Heb. xii. 23. To what purpofe alfo is that well known parable of the rich man and Lazarus, but to acquaint us with the existence of separate fouls, and their different conditions? Luke xvi. To what end, thofe prayers of believers and of Chrift himself, by which they commended their departing spirit to God? Pf. xxxi. 5. Acts vii. 59. In a word, feeing Chrift was true man, and in all things like unto his brethren, whom these men reproach as a mere man, I ask, what they think was become of his foul, during the three days of his death? Did it also vanish into thin air, and was Chrift really annihilated after his death, till his foul was raised together with his body? One or other of these they must say! either that the foul of Chrift was of a quite different nature from' ours, which they affert, can no ways fubfift, viz. in a ftate of feparation; and fo they contradict Paul, who declares, that "he was in all things like unto his brethren, yet without fin," Heb. ii. 17. and iv. 15. or that Christ was annihilated during the three days of his death; and fo they contradict Chrift himself, who promifed the thief, that he fhould be with him in paradise, immediately upon the death of both, Luke xxiii. 43. XV. The Heretics, in like manner, pervert the meaning of the Preacher, who says, Eccl. xii. 7. " Then shall the duft return to the earth, as it was; and the fpirit fhall return unto God who gave it :" as if that return was nothng but a refo lution into God, of, I know not, what virtue, which they call a particle Chap. 13. particle of divine breath, proceeding from God; almoft in fuch a manner with God, as now received from the body, as it was with him before it removed into the body: which are monftrous opinions! It is contrary as well to the nature of God, as to ours, that either our foul fhould be any part of God, or God any part of our foul. The meaning of the preacher is no ways obfcure. After the death of the man he fays, that the condition of the body is quite different from that of the fpirit. The body, when deprived of the foul, he calls duft; because the union of foul with body is the band, and as it were, the cement whereby the parts of the body remain conjoined. After the departure of the foul, the lifeless body, which at first was formed out of the earth, is nothing but a heap of earthy particles, into which also it refolves in process of time. But the condition of the foul is quite different. It dies not, nor is diffolved, as the body; but goes to God, as to the judge, who is to affign it its place, either of reward or punishment. Nay, it returns to God, not as if it had actually been with God, before it was infused into the body; (for God formeth the fpirit of man within him, Zech. xii. 1.) but because, in order of nature and of efficiency, it was God's before it was man's: for God gave it to, and made it for man. What Euripides has elegantly faid, as quoted by Philo in his book, de Mundi immortalitate, wonderfully agrees with this faying of the preacher, Xwees δ ̓ ὀπίσω, τὰ μὲν ἐκ γαίας φύλ' εις γαῖαν; τὰ δ' απ' αιθερίε That is, as Grotius explains it. Retroque meant, que terra dedit, In English thus: What fprings from earth, goes back to earth again: but what from heaven derives its high pedigree, thither again returns. Similar to this is that of Epicharmus, apud Plutarch. ad Appollon. Συνεκρίθη καὶ διεκρίθη καὶ ἀπῆλθεν εθνν ηλθε πάλιν. γα μεν εις γᾶν πνευμα they are joined together and afterwards feparated, and return again from whence they came, earth to earth, the spirit to heaven.. άνω: VOL. II. M XVI: XVI. None should oppose to this teftimony, the 19th verse of the 3d chapter; " I faid in my heart-that which befalleth the fons of men, befalleth beafts, even one thing befalleth them as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have one breath, so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast; for all is vanity. "For, it is evident, that the comparison between man and beast is only made with refpect to what is external, and strikes the eye; in as much as man equally with the beasts is deprived of that life, whereby he can enjoy the pleasures of this world. He does not here confider the condition of the next world, which is apprehended by faith. And it is plain, that these words cannot be understood abfolutely, but only relatively, as to the privation of animal life, because otherwise man and beast would have the fame kind of fpirit; and that man has no pre-eminence above the beafts, none who is not out of his fenfes, will affirm, and who, by giving up all pretence to folid reason, has willingly turned himself to a beast. XVII. When the Scripture affirms, that the dead are no more, Pf. xxxix. 13. Jer. xxxi. 15. it does by no means fay, that nothing of them furvives more, including even the foul in the fame condition; which the adverfaries themselves will scarce venture to affirm: but that they are not to be what they were before; namely, living men consisting of foul and body united; nor, where they were before in the land of the living; and because all their converse with the living is cut off, fo that with respect to that intercourse it is much the fame, as if they had no existence: see Gen. v. 24. XVIII. Now let us proceed to what we undertook to prove in the fecond place. That the foul not only furvives after death, but alfo lives, understands and feels, either the favour or vengeance of God. Not only Scripture, but even reason should perfuade us of this: for, the faculty of thinking, in which the life of the foul confifts, is fo effential thereto, that the foul cannot exist without it. Though we really approve not their way of speaking, who affirm, that the foul is thought; yet it is evident, that thought is fo effential to a rational foul, that a foul which cannot think, is not, indeed, to be deemed a foul. And if the foul has lived in the body, without deriving its life from the body; why fhould it not live when it is freed from the prifon of the body? Will it, when it comes to God, the fountain of life, lofe its own life? Nay on the contrary, the nearer it comes to God, it is agreeable to think, that it will live in a more excellent manner. Some of the heathen philofophers have fpoken much more justly of the foul than those who are the |