Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub
[ocr errors]

gain. And till we are arrived at this, we must never think ourselves in a fafe condition. For, as on the one hand, if the wicked man turn from his wickedness, he shall live*; so on the other, if the righteous man turn from his righteousness he fhall diet. Bleffed are they, whofe tranfgreffion is forgiven, and whofe fin is covered. Bleffed are they, to whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whofe fpirit there is no guile ‡.

* Ezek. xviii. 21, 27.

+ Ezek. xxiv.

Į Pfal. xxxii. 1, 2.

LECTURE XVI.

CREE D.

Articles XI, XII. Part 1.-The refurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.

THE

HE Refurrection of the body and life everlasting being the confequences of the preceding article, the forgivenefs of fins, our belief of that comfortable truth leads us naturally to believe these also. And as they complete the whole of what we are concerned to know; fo here the profeffion of our faith happily concludes, having brought us to the end of our faith, the falvation of our fouls*,

But, tho' this part of our Creed expreffés only two things; yet it implies two more: and fo comprehends the four following particulars :

I. That the fouls of all men continue after death.

II. That their bodies fhall at the last day be raised up, reunited to them.

and

III. That both fouls and bodies of good perfons fhall enjoy everlasting happiness.

[blocks in formation]
[ocr errors]

IV. That those of the wicked fhall undergo everlasting pn

nishment.

I. That the fouls of all men continue after death. We are every one of us capable of perceiving and thinking, judging and refolving, loving and hating, hoping and feàring, rejoicing and grieving. That part of us, which doth these things, we call the mind or foul. Now plainly this is not the body. Neither our limbs, nor our trunk, nor even our head, is what understands, and reafons, and wills, and likes or dislikes: but something, that hath its abode within the head*, and is unfeen. A little confideration will make any of you fenfible of this. Then further: Our bodies increase, from an unconceivable smallness to a very large bulk, and waste away again; and are changing, each part of them, more or less, every day. Our fouls, we know, continue all the while the fame. Our limbs may be cut off one after another, and perifh: yet the foul not be impaired by it in the leaft. All feeling and motion may be loft almost throughout the body, as in the case of an univerfal palfy: yet the foul have lost nothing. And tho' fome diseases do indeed diforder the mind; there is no appearance, that any have a tendency to destroy it. On the contrary, the greatest disorders of the understanding are often accompanied with firm health and ftrength of body and the most fatal distempers of the body are attended, to the very moment of death, with all poffible vigour and liveliness of un derstanding. Since therefore these two are plainly different things; though we knew no further, there would be no reafon to conclude, that one of them dies, because the other doth. But fince we do know further, that it can survive so many changes of the other; this alone affords a fair probability, that it may furvive the great change of death. Indeed, whatever is once in being, we are to fuppofe continues in being, till the contrary appears. Now the body, we perceive, becomes at death infenfible, and corrupts. But to imagine the same thing of the foul, in which we perceive no change at that time, would be almost as groundless, as if having frequently heard the mufic of an organ, but never seen the person that played on it, we should suppose him dead, on finding the inftrument incapable

* In quo igitur loco eft (mens)? Credo equidem in capite : & cur credam, adferre poffum. Cic. Tufc. Difp. 1. i. c. 29.

incapable of playing any more. For the body is an inftrument adapted to the foul. The latter is our proper Self: the former is but fomething joined to us for a time. And though, during that time, the connection is very clofe; yet nothing hinders, but we may be as well after the feparation of our foul from our prefent body, as we were before, if not bet

ter.

Then confider further: When the body dies, only the prefent compofition and frame of it is diffolved, and falls in pieces: not the leaft fingle particle, of all that make it up, returns to nothing; or can do, unlefs God, who gave it being, thinks fit to take that being away. Now we have no reason to imagine the foul made up of parts, though the body is. On the contrary, fo far as the acutest reasoners are able to judge, what perceives and wills must be one uncompounded substance. And not being compounded, it cannot be diffolyed, and therefore probably cannot die *.

God indeed may put an end to it, when he pleafes. But fince he hath made it of a nature to last for ever, we cannot well conceive, that he will destroy it after fo fhort a space, as that of this life: especially confidering, that he hath planted in our breasts an earnest defire of immortality, and a horror at the thought of ceafing to be. It is true, we dread also the death of our bodies, and yet we own they muft die: but then we believe, that they were not at first intended to die: and that they shall live again wonderfully improved. God hath in no cafe given us natural difpofitions and hopes, which he purposed at the fame time to disappoint: much lefs, when they are fuch, that the wifest and best men feel the most of them, and are made ftill wiser and better by them.

Befides, there are plainly in our fouls capacities for vastly higher improvements, both in knowledge and goodness, than any one arrives at in this life. The beft inclined, and moft industrious, undeniably have not near time enough to become what they could be. And is it likely, that beings qualified for doing fo much should have fo little opportunity for it; and fink into nothing, without ever attaining their proper maturity and perfection? But further: Not to urge, that happiness here is very unequally divided between perfons equally intitled to it; which yet is hard to reconcile with God's impar

[blocks in formation]

tial bounty: it hath been already observed, in speaking of the judgment to come, that though, in general, the course of things in this world doth bear witnefs to God's love of virtue, and hatred of fin; yet, in multitudes of particular cafes, nothing of this kind appears. Not only good perfons often undergo, in common with others, the largest shares of evil in life; and bad perfons enjoy, in common with others, the highest degrees of profperity in it: but the former are frequently fufferers, and sometimes even to death, for the very fake of their duty; and the latter gain every fort of worldly advantages by the very means of their wickednefs. Yet evidently there is a difference between right behaviour and wrong: and God must fee this difference: and his will muft be, that mankind should observe it: and accordingly we feel ourselves inwardly bound fo to do. Now is it poffible, that a Being of perfect justice and holiness, of infinite wisdom and power, fhould have ordered things fo, that obeying him and our own confciences should ever make us miserable, and disobeying them prove beneficial to us, on the whole? We cannot furely imagine, that he will permit any one fuch cafe to happen. And therefore, fince in this world fuch cafes do happen; this world is not our final ftate but another will come after it, in which every one shall be recompensed according to his works. Without this belief, religion and virtue would often want fufficient motives with it they never can; and therefore this belief is

true.

Strongly as thefe arguments prove the doctrine of a life after death; yet it receives a confiderable addition of ftrength from the universal agreement of all mankind in it, with but few exceptions, from the very beginning. Of the earliest ages indeed we have only short accounts: yet enough to judge, what their notions of this point were. What could they be indeed, when they knew, that Abel, with whom God declared himself pleafed, was murdered by his brother for that very reafon? Surely his brother's hatred did not do him more harm, than God's love of him did him good. That would be thinking lowly indeed of the Almighty. And therefore, fince plainly he had not the benefit of his piety here, there must be another place, in which he received it. Again, when Enoch walked with God, and was not, for God took him *: could this

I

[blocks in formation]

this peculiar favour be only depriving him, before his natural time, of the enjoyments of the present ftate? Muft it not be admitting him to thofe of a future one? When God called himself, in a distinguished sense, the God of Abraham and the patriarchs, what had they enjoyed in this life, answerable to fo extraordinary a manner of speaking? Many, in all likelihood, both equalled and exceeded them in worldly fatisfaction: But therefore, as the epiftle to the Hebrews teaches, God was not ashamed to be called their God, because he had prepared for them a heavenly city. When Jacob confessed himself a pilgrim and franger on earth, he plainly declared, as the fame epistle obferves, that he defired a better country* for his home. Again, when mourning for the fuppofed death of his fon Jofeph, he faith, he will go down to him: we tranflate the next word wrongly, into the grave t, as if he meant to have his body laid by him that could not be; for he thought him devoured by wild beafts: it means, into the invifible ftate, the state of departed fouls. And in this fenfe it is faid of several of the patriarchs, that they were gathered unto their pe ple ‡, and of all that generation, which lived with Joshua, that they were gathered unto their fathers §.

In the time of Mofes we find, that even the heathens had a trong notion of another life. For they had built a fuperftitious practice upon it, of fecking to the dead ||, and enquiring of them concerning things to come. A foolish and wicked custom indeed but however, it shows the belief was deeply rooted in them. And though future recompences were not, directly and exprefsly, either promised to good perfous, or threatened to bad, in the law of Mofes: yet that might be, not because they were unknown, but because God thought them fufficiently known; and for reasons of unfearchable wifdom, did not think proper, that Mofes fhould make any copfiderable addition to that knowledge: of which there was the lefs occafion, as temporal rewards and puniinments were more equally administered by Providence among the Jews, than any other people. Befides, a life to come is not mentioned in the laws of our own nation neither: though we know, they were made by fuch, as proteiled firmly to believe it. And VOL. IV.

* Heb. xi. 13,-16.

X x

Gen. xxxvii. 35.

[blocks in formation]

the

‡ Gen. xxv. 8, XXXV. 29. Deut. xviii. 9,--12:

« VorigeDoorgaan »