Part 38

We might also consider the body after death, as a prey for worms, the seat of corruption; and lodged in the grave, the house appointed for all living; and then an end is put to all the actions, as well as enjoyments of this life; and, as the Psalmist speaks, _In that very day_ all _their thoughts perish_, Psal. cxlvi. 4. Whatever they have been projecting, whatever schemes they have laid, either for themselves or others, are all broken: as the historian observes concerning the Roman emperor, that when he had formed great designs for the advantage of the empire,[121] death broke all his measures, and prevented the execution thereof.

We might also consider it as putting an end to our present enjoyments, removing us from the society of our dearest friends, to a dismal and frightful solitude. This was one of the consequences thereof, that was very afflictive to Hezekiah, when he says, _I shall behold man no more with the inhabitants of the world_, Isa. xxxviii. 11. It also strips us of all our possessions, and the honours we have been advanced to in this world, as the Psalmist speaks, _When he dieth he shall carry nothing away, his glory shall not descend after him_, Psal. xlix. 27.

We might also consider the time of life and death as being in God’s hand. As we were brought into the world by the sovereignty of his providence, so we are called out of it at his pleasure; concerning whom it is said, _Our times are in his hand_, Psal. xxxi. 15. So that as nothing is more certain than death, nothing is more uncertain to us than the time when. This God has concealed from us for wise ends. Did we know that we should soon die, it would discourage us from attempting any thing great in life; and did we know that the lease of life was long, and we should certainly arrive to old age; this might occasion the delaying all concerns about our soul’s welfare, as presuming that it was time enough to think of the affairs of religion and another world, when we apprehend ourselves to be near the confines thereof; and therefore, God has by this, made it our wisdom, as well as our duty, to be waiting all the days of our appointed time, till our change come.

From what has been said under this head, we may learn,

1. The vanity of man as mortal. Indeed, if we look on believers as enjoying that happiness which lies beyond the grave, there is a very different view of things; but as to what respects the world we have reason to say as the Psalmist does, _Verily, every man at his best estate is altogether vanity_, Psal. xxxix. 5. We may see the vanity of all those honours and carnal pleasures which many pursue with so much eagerness, as though they had nothing else to mind, nothing to make provision for but the flesh, which they do at the expence of that which is in itself most excellent and desirable: We may also infer,

2. That this affords an undeniable and universal motive to humility; since death knows no distinction of persons, regards the rich no more than the poor; puts no mark of distinction between the remains of a prince and a peasant; and not only takes away every thing that men value themselves upon, but levels the highest part of mankind with common dust: They who boast of their extract, descent, and kindred, are obliged, with Job, to say, _to corruption, Thou art my father; to the worm, Thou art my mother and my sister_, Job xvii. 14. Shall we be proud of our habitations, _who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust?_ chap. iv. 19. Are any proud of their youth and beauty? this is, at best, but like a flower that does not abide long in its bloom, and when cut down, it withers. The finest features are not only spoiled by death, but rendered unpleasant and ghastly to behold; and accordingly are removed out of sight, and laid in the grave.

3. From the consideration of man’s liableness to death, and those diseases that lead to it, as the wages of sin, we may infer; that sin is a bitter and formidable evil. The cause is to be judged of by its effects. As death, accompanied with all those diseases which are the forerunners of it, is the greatest natural evil that we are liable to; sin, from whence it took its rise, must be the greatest moral evil; we should never reflect on the one without lying low before God in a sense of the other. The Psalmist, when meditating on his own mortality, traces it to the spring thereof; and ascribes it to those rebukes with which _God corrects men for their iniquities_, that they die, and their _beauty consumes away like a moth_, Psal. xxxix. 11. And elsewhere, when he compares the life of man to the _grass_, which _in the morning fourisheth, and groweth up; and in the evening is cut down and withereth, he immediately adds; thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance_, Psal. xc. 6, 8. And when Hezekiah had an intimation of his recovery, after he had the sentence of death within himself, he speaks of his deliverance from the _pit of corruption_, Isa. xxxviii. 17. as that which was accompanied with God’s _casting all his sins behind his back_. And since we cannot be delivered from these sad effects of sin, till the frame of nature is dissolved, and afterwards rebuilt; it should put us upon using those proper methods whereby we may be freed from the guilt and dominion thereof; and accordingly it should have a tendency to promote a life of holiness in us.

4. From the uncertainty of life, let us be induced to improve our present time, and endeavour so to live, as that, when God calls us hence, we may be ready. And therefore, we ought to pray with the Psalmist, _So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom_, Psal. xc. 12. that by this means, that which deprives us of all earthly enjoyments, may give us an admission into a better world, and be the gate to eternal life. This leads us to consider,

II. That death has a sting and curse annexed to it, with respect to some. Thus the apostle expressly says, _The sting of death is sin_, 1 Cor. xv. 56. As sin at first brought death into the world; so it is the guilt thereof, lying on the consciences of men, which is the principal thing that makes them afraid to leave the world; not but that death is, in itself, an evil that nature cannot think of without some reluctancy. And therefore the apostle Paul, although he expresses that assurance which he had of happiness in another world, which he _groaned_ after, and _earnestly_ longed to be possessed of; yet had it been put to his choice, he would have wished that he could have been _clothed upon with the house which is from heaven_, 2 Cor. v. 2. that is, had it been the will of God, that he might have been brought to heaven without going the way of all the earth, this would have been more agreeable to nature. But when the two evils of death meet together, namely, that which is abhorrent to nature, and the sting which makes it much more formidable, this is, beyond measure, distressing. In this answer, the sting and curse of death are both put together, as implying the same thing. Accordingly, it is that whereby a person apprehends himself liable to the condemning sentence of the law, separated from God, and excluded from his favour, so that death appears to him to be the beginning of sorrows; this is that which tends to embitter it, and fills him with dread and horror at the thoughts of it. Which leads us,

III. To shew that it is the peculiar privilege of the righteous, that though they shall not be delivered from death, yet this shall redound to their advantage. That they shall not be exempted from death is evident; because the decree of God relating hereunto, extends to all men. We read, indeed, of two that escaped the grave, viz. Enoch, who was translated that he should not see death, and Elijah, who was carried to heaven in a fiery chariot; but these are extraordinary instances, not designed as precedents, by which we may judge of the common lot of believers. And the saints that shall be found alive at Christ’s second coming, shall undergo a change[122], as the apostle speaks; which though it be equivalent to death, it cannot properly be styled a dying; inasmuch as he opposes it thereunto, when he says, _We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed_, 1 Cor. xv. 51. and he speaks of it as a future dispensation of providence, which does not immediately concern us in this present age. Therefore we must not conclude that believers are delivered from the stroke of death; nevertheless, this is ordered for their good, as the apostle says, with a particular application to himself, _For me to die is gain_, Phil. i. 21. And when he speaks of the many blessings that believers have in possession or in reversion, he says, _Death is yours_; as though he should say, it shall redound to your advantage; and this it does if we consider,

1. That the sting of death is taken away from them. This is the result of their being in a justified state; for since a person’s being liable to the condemning sentence of the law is the principal thing that has a tendency to make him uneasy, and may be truly called the sting that wounds the conscience; so a sense of his interest in forgiveness through the blood of Christ, tends to give peace to it; such an one can say, who shall lay any thing to my charge? It is God that justifieth; or though I have contracted guilt, which renders me unworthy of his favour; yet I am persuaded that this guilt is removed; and therefore iniquity shall not be my ruin; and even death itself shall bring me to the possession of those blessings that were purchased for me by the blood of Christ, which I have been enabled to apply to myself by faith; and with this confidence he can say with the apostle, _O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?_ 1 Cor. xv. 55.

2. Their dying is an instance of God’s love to them. As those whom Christ is said to have _loved in the world, he loved unto the end_ of his life; so he loves them to the end of theirs, John xiii. 1. And as nothing has hitherto separated them from this love, nothing shall be able to do it. There are _three_ instances wherein the love of God to dying believers discovers itself.

(1.) In that they are hereby freed from sin and misery; this they never were, nor can be till then. As for sin, there are the remainders thereof in the best of men, which give them great disturbance, and occasion for that daily conflict which there is between flesh and spirit, as has been before observed. But at death the conflict will be at an end, and the victory which they shall obtain over it, compleat. There shall be no law in the members warring against the law of the mind; no propensity or inclination to what is evil; nor any guilt or defilement contracted; which would be inconsistent with a state of perfect holiness. And as it is a state of perfect happiness, there is an entire freedom from all those miseries which sin brought into this lower world. These are either internal or external, personal or relative; none of which shall occur to allay, or give any disturbance to the saints’ blessedness after death. But more of this will be considered under a following answer; in which we shall be led to speak of the happiness of the righteous at the day of judgment, both in soul and body[123]; and therefore we proceed to consider,

(2.) That the death of a believer appears to be an instance of divine love, in that hereby he is made capable of farther communion with Christ in glory. Persons must be made meet for heaven before they are admitted to it. Though our present season and day of grace is a time in which God is training his people up for glory; and there is an habitual preparation for it, when the work of grace is begun; which is what the apostle intends when he speaks of some who are _made meet to be made partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light_, Col. ii. 12. when they were first translated into Christ’s kingdom: nevertheless this falls very short of that actual meetness which the saints must have when they are brought to the possession of the heavenly blessedness. Then they shall be made perfect in holiness, as will be observed in the next answer; otherwise there can be no perfect happiness.

And besides this, the soul must be more enlarged, that hereby it may be enabled to receive the immediate discoveries of the divine glory, or to converse with the heavenly inhabitants, than it can be here. The frame of nature must be changed; which is what the apostle intends, when he says, _Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, neither doth corruption inherit incorruption_, 1 Cor. xv. 50. accordingly he adds, ver. 53. _This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality_; whereby he intimates, that frail, mortal, and corruptible man, is not able to bear that glory which is reserved for a state of immortality. Therefore the soul must be so changed as to be rendered receptive thereof; and in order thereto, all its powers and faculties must be greatly enlarged; otherwise it can no more receive the immediate rays of the divine glory, than the weak and distempered eye can look steady on the sun shining in its meridian brightness. In this world our ideas of divine things are very imperfect, by reason of the narrowness of our capacities, and God condescends to reveal himself to us in proportion thereto; but when the saints shall see him as he is, or have a perfect and immediate vision and fruition of his glory, they shall be made receptive of it; this is done at death; whereby they are rendered capable of farther communion with Christ in glory.[124]

(3.) At death believers immediately enter upon, and are admitted into the possession of this glory. At the same time that the soul is enlarged and fitted for the work and enjoyment of heaven, it is received into it; where it shall have an uninterrupted communion with Christ in glory; which is the subject insisted on in the following answer.

Footnote 118:

_Sequela naturæ._

Footnote 119:

_Before this there was what some call_ temperamentum ad pondus, _which was lost by sin; and a broken constitution, leading to mortality ensued thereupon_.

Footnote 120:

_See Dr. Bates on Death, chap._ ii.

Footnote 121:

_Vid. Sueton. in Vit. Jul. Cæs. Talia agentem atq; meditantem mors prævenit._

Footnote 122:

_See more of this in Quest._ lxxxvii.

Footnote 123:

_See Quest._ xc.

Footnote 124:

The belief of a separate state is very ancient. Cicero and Seneca have asserted, that all nations believed the immortality of the soul. Yet we know there were not only individuals, but sects who were exceptions. Saul the first king of Israel believed that the soul survived the death of the body, or he would neither have made laws against necromancers, nor have applied to one in his distresses. If Samuel was raised, it is a fact, directly in point, but the words though express, are probably an accommodation to the sentiments of men. The son of Sirach who lived two hundred years before Christ, says that Samuel prophesied after he was dead. (Ecclus. c. 46. v. 20.) And Josephus in his account of the life of Saul, shows his belief to be that Samuel actually arose. The same feats of apparitions which the disciples had, still exist with the common people, and are proofs that they entertain the same sentiment.

Some of the Pharisees, who are represented as believing a separate state, thought souls might return to other bodies. This was the opinion of Josephus with respect to the virtuous; and also of those Jews, who supposed that Jesus was Elijah or Jeremiah; but the question of the disciples, whether a man had been born blind for his own sins, implies a possibility of a return also of the wicked into other bodies. Nevertheless the prevailing opinion of the Pharisees was of a separate state; otherwise Paul’s professing their sentiments, which must have been known to him, was disingenuous; nor, if they had known the difference, would they have protected him. The approbation of the multitude when he proved the doctrine from the words of Jehovah to Moses at the bush, (Matt. xxii. 32.) and the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, evince that the common opinion was such.

This subject, has been enlightened, not first brought to light, through the Gospel, but plainly asserted: _this day shalt thou be with me in paradise. At home in the body, and absent from the Lord, absent from the body, and present with the Lord_, is descriptive but of two states. The desire _to depart to be with Christ_, shows an immediate expectation. And otherwise it cannot be said that the spirits of just men are _made perfect_.

The Jews, Greeks, and Romans assigned the Heaven to the gods, earth to men, and under the earth (שאול, αδης, inferi) to the dead. The passages “the spirit shall return to God,” and “the spirit of a man goeth upwards” are not exceptions, for then they would prove that the evil, as well as the good, went to heaven. That the spirit is disposed of by God, and that the spirit of a man survives the death of the body, seem to be all that is respectively implied. Samuel was believed to come out of, and return to his place under the earth; and Saul was to be with him, below the earth; but, possibly, in a different apartment. Thus Abraham and Lazarus were in sight of, and only divided from the man in torments by a gulph.

Under the gospel the place of separate saints is represented to be in Heaven. Heaven had been always assigned to God among the Jews, and even the heathens thought it the most honourable place: Virgil assigned it to Cæsar. Jesus declared he came from thence, and would return thither; and for the comfort of his disciples, told them, he would prepare a place for them, and take them to himself. They saw him actually ascend. He is to come from thence, and to bring them with him to judgment.

This change of representation implies no contradiction, for pure spirits are not confined to place. Our souls are connected with our bodies, and therefore go and come with, or rather in them. But when the connexion is broken, the soul cannot be said to be in one place more than another, except as it is occupied with material objects. It can attend to one thing only at once, and therefore when in, it cannot be out of the body, and must be wherever occupied, but not in any _place_, except concerned with material objects. The infinite Spirit had no connexion with space in all the eternity which preceded creation; since time began as every thing is known and supported by him, he is said to be in all places. But the idea of place is not necessary to our conceptions of Spirit.

To speak of the planets as the residence of spirits, and to talk of souls flying through the _visible_ Heavens in quest of paradise is idle. If all souls must ascend to Heaven, from India they go in a direction opposite to our course thither.

There is no sun nor moon enjoyed by saints in glory; the Lord is their light. And spiritual bodies are not flesh and blood, nor belly, nor meats; nor corruptible nor mortal; but fit for the society of spirits. The soul at death is discharged from the prison of these bodies, and not confined to place. It receives new faculties, which entertain it with more than substitutes for the sensations it had in the body; it obtains a perception of light more vivid than in dreams, and permanent. It enjoys the discernment, society, and communion of other Spirits; the presence of God and the Redeemer; and progresses in the knowledge and love of God, and so in holiness and happiness forever.

Quest. LXXXVI.

QUEST. LXXXVI. _What is the communion in glory with Christ, which the members of the invisible church enjoy immediately after death?_

ANSW. The communion in glory with Christ, which the members of the invisible church enjoy immediately after death, is, in that their souls are then made perfect in holiness, and received into the highest heavens, where they behold the face of God in light and glory, waiting for the full redemption of their bodies, which, even in death, continue united to Christ, and rest in their graves as in their beds, till at the last day they be again united to their souls: Whereas the souls of the wicked are at death cast into hell, where they remain in torments and utter darkness, and their bodies kept in their graves, as in their prisons, till the resurrection and judgment of the great day.

Having considered the soul as separated from the body by death; the next thing that will be enquired into, is what becomes of it, and how it is disposed of in its separate state? and here we find that there is a vast difference between the righteous and the wicked in this respect: the former have communion with Christ in glory, the latter are in a state of banishment and separation from him; being cast into hell, and there remaining in torments and utter darkness. Both these are particularly insisted on in this answer. In speaking to which, we must consider,

I. That there is something supposed; namely, that the soul of man is immortal; otherwise it could not be capable of happiness or misery.

II. We shall consider the happiness which the members of the invisible church enjoy; which is called communion with Christ in glory.

III. The misery which the souls of the wicked endure at death; which is contained in the latter part of the answer.

I. To speak concerning the thing supposed in this answer; namely, that the soul of man is immortal. This is a subject of that importance, that we must be first convinced of the truth of it before we can conclude that there is a state of happiness or misery in another world. But before we proceed to the proof of it, it is necessary for us to explain what we are to understand thereby; accordingly let it be premised,

1. That we read, in scripture, of the death of the soul, in a spiritual sense, as separated by sin, from God, the fountain of life and blessedness, and as being destitute of a principle of grace; whereby it is utterly indisposed to perform any actions that are spiritually good, as much as a dead man is unable to perform the functions of life. In this sense we are to understand the apostle’s words, _She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth_, 1 Tim. v. 6. And in this respect unregenerate persons are said to be _dead in trespasses and sins_, Eph. ii. 1. and a condemned state, which is the consequence hereof, is a state of death. Now that which is opposed hereunto, is called, in scripture, a spiritual life, or immortality; but this is not the sense in which we are to consider it in our present argument.

2. Immortality may be considered as an attribute peculiar to God, as the apostle says, _he only hath immortality_, 1 Tim. vi. 16. the meaning of which is, that his life, which includes his Being, and all his perfections, is necessary and independent; but in this respect no creature is immortal; but their life is maintained by the will and providence of God, which gave being to it at first.

3. When we speak of creatures being immortal, we must consider them either as not having any thing in the constitution of their nature, that tends to a dissolution, which cannot be effected by any second cause; or their eternal existence, pursuant to the will of God, who could, had he pleased, have annihilated them. It is in both these senses that we are to consider the immortality of the soul.