Thus likewise hath it pleased his sacred Majesty to assure me, that " if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens;" so clearly hath the great God " brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel." The light of nature shews the soul can never perish or be dissolved, without the immediate interposition of God's Omnipotence; and we have his own Divine Word for it, that He will never use that power for it's dissolution. And therefore I may, with the greatest assurance, affirm and believe, that as really as I now live, so really I shall never die; but that my soul, at the very moment of it's departure from the flesh, shall immediately mount up to the tribunal of the most high God, there to be judged, first, privately by itself (or perhaps with some other souls, that shall be summoned to appear before God at the same moment); and then from these private sessions, I believe, that every soul that ever was, or shall be separated from the body, must either be received into the mansions of heaven, or else sent down to the dungeons of hell, there to remain till the Grand Assizes, the "Judgment of the Great Day, when the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised, incorruptible, and we shall be changed." And when our bodies, by the word of Almighty

God, shall be thus called together again, I believe that our souls shall be all prepared to meet them, and be united again to them; and so both " appear before the judgment-seat of Christ, to receive judgment according to what they have done in the flesh, whether it be good, or whether it be evil."

CHAPTER IX.

JORTIN.

POSSESSED as he was of an acute and inquisitive mind, the opinion of Jortin on any subject would have a just claim to attention. On the subject of the immortality and separate existence of the soul, we find him thus expressing his sentiments in his Doctrine of a Future State.

The Author of this Epistle to the Hebrews, that is, to the believing Jews of Judea, shews them the great danger of apostasy from the Gospel, exhorts them to endure sufferings for the sake of righteousness with patience and resolution and perseverance, as knowing that they should be gloriously rewarded in the world to come, and encourages them to sustain themselves with these hopes through faith, or a full persuasion that God would fulfil his promises to them. He proceeds to show the excellence of faith, of a trust in God, and the happy effects which it had upon their forefathers, and upon all good men from the beginning of the world. He instanceth in Abel, Enoch, Noah, and afterwards in Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who, like other holy men recorded in Scripture, through faith obtained a good report, and pleased God, and were supported under all difficulties, troubles, and trials which they experienced; who firmly relied upon the goodness and veracity of God, and having received promises from him of blessings relating both to themselves and to their posterity, lived and died in a firm belief that God would make good all those promises, though they did not see the accomplishment of them in this world.

"These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth."

Which words present two things to our consideration:

I. That the good men recorded in the Old Testament, who lived before and under the Law, expected a future state of happiness :

II. That all men ought, in imitation of those holy persons, to look upon themselves as upon strangers and sojourners on earth, and to entertain dispositions suitable to such a persuasion.

I. The good men who lived before and under the Law expected a future state of happiness.

It was an objection formerly made by the Manichæans, and since by others *, to the Jewish system, and to the Old Testament, that it taught nothing concerning another and a better life, and confined the views, expectations, hopes and fears of men to the present state of things t. The objection, from what quarter soever it came, was plausible, and if the fact could not be denied, lay heavy upon the Jewish religion. Let us see whether we can remove it.

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The doctrine of a future state seemeth not to be so clearly and expressly delivered in the Old Testament as one could expect. There are many places where the subject itself invited the Sacred Writers to speak of another world, as where they propose exhortations to obedience, and dissuasives from vice; where they treat of God's goodness, and mercy, and wisdom, and justice; of the unequal dispensations of Providence, of the prosperity of the ungodly, of the vanity of earthly things, and the shortness and troubles of human life; and yet in all these places either no mention is made of a future state, or something is said which is, or