"For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain *." The apostle, whilst he was here upon earth, spent his life in the service of Christ, and enjoyed many glorious communications from him. " For him to live was Christ." And on this account he was contented to continue here in life longer: yet he is • well satisfied that death would be an advantage or gain to him. Now we can hardly suppose what gain it would be for St. Paul to die, if his soul immediately went to sleep, and became unactive and unconscious, while his body lay in the grave, and neither soul nor body could do any service for Christ, or receive any communications from him till the great rising-day. This text seems to carry the argument above a mere probability.

"For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him †." The most natural and evident sense of these words is this, that when the man Jesus Christ (in whom dwells the fulness of the Godhead) shall descend from heaven, in order to raise the dead bodies of those that died or went to sleep in the faith of Christ, God dwelling in him will bring with him the souls of his saints who were in Paradise, down to earth, to be re-united to their bodies, when Jesus raises them from the dead,

of which the apostle speaks in the 6th verse. This, I say, is the most natural and obvious sense; other paraphrases of the words seem strained and unnatural.

"Jesus Christ, who died for us, that whether we wake or sleep we should live together with him *." Sleep is the death of good men, in the language of the apostle †, and sleep in this verse can neither signify natural sleep, as ver. 7, nor spiritual sloth, as ver. 6, therefore it must signify death here. Now they who are asleep in Christ, in this sense, do still "live together with him" in their souls, and shall live with him in their bodies also when raised from the dead. This exposition arises near to a certainty of evidence.

"Christ was put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit, by which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison, which sometime were disobedient, when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah ‡." I confess this is a text that has much puzzled interpreters, in what sense Christ may be said to go and preach to those ancient rebels who were destroyed by the flood; whether he did it by his Spirit working in Noah, the preacher of righteousness in those days,

* 1 Thess. v. 10.

† Ibid. iv. 13-15.

1 Pet. iii. 18-20.

Y

or whether in the three days in which the body of Christ lay dead, his soul visited the spirits of those rebels in their separate state of imprisonment, on which some ground the notion of his descent into hell: but let this be determined as it will, the most clear and easy sense of the apostle, when he speaks of the "spirits in prison," is, that the souls of those rebels, after their bodies were destroyed by the flood, were reserved in prison for some special and future design: and this is very parallel to the present circumstances of fallen angels. "The angels that kept not their first estate, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness, unto the judgment of the great day *; and why may not the spirits of men be as well kept in such a prison as angelic spirits?

"Sodom and Gomorrah are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire†." It is evident that the material fire which destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah was not eternal, for a great lake of water quickly overflowed, and now covers, all that plain where the fire was kindled, which burnt down those cities. It is manifest also, that the day of resurrection and future punishment being not yet come, they do not at this time suffer the vengeance of eternal fire in their bodies: nor can this verse, I think, be well explained, to make Sodom and Gomorrah an example, to deter present sinners from uncleanness, but by allowing that the spirits of those lewd persons are now suffering a degree of vengeance or punishment from the justice of God, which is compared to that fire whereby their cities and their bodies were burnt, and which vengeance, at the last great day, shall continue their punishment, and pronounce it eternal, or kindle material fire, which shall never be quenched.

The last text I shall mention is-" I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the Word of God, and for the testimony which they held *." I confess this is a book of visions, and this place amongst others might be explained as a mere vision of the apostle, if there were no other text which confirmed the doctrine of a separate state: but since I think there are some solid proofs of it in other parts of the New Testament, I know not why this may not be explained at least something nearer to the literal sense of it, than those will allow who suppose the soul to sleep from death to the resurrection. Why may not the spirits of the martyrs, which are now with God, pray him to hasten the accomplishment of his promises made to his Church, and the day of vengeance upon his irreconcileable enemies?

SECTION III.

Some firmer or more evident proofs of a separate

state.

I COME now to consider those texts which do more expressly and certainly discover the separate state, and which I think cannot, with any tolerable appearance of reason, be turned aside from their plain and obvious intention, to reveal and declare that there is a separate state of souls. And such in my opinion are these that follow.

I. "Fear not them which kill the body but are not able to kill the soul, but rather fear him who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell *." Every common reader, as well as every man of learning, who reads this text with a sincere mind and without prejudice, I think will acknowledge at least, that the most obvious and easy sense of the words implies, that there is a soul in man which men cannot kill, even though they kill the body.

It is to very little purpose for writers to say that