BAXTER'S DYING THOUGHTS. 109 much more perfect operations than we have, (whose effects we mortals find here below,) why should I, that find an intellective nature in ,myself, make any doubt of my More perfect operations when I am dismissed hence, being satisfied that a soul will not lose its simple essence? Either those superior spirits have ethereal bodies to act in (or are such themselves) or not. If they ,are or have such, why should I doubt ofthe like, and think that my sub- stance or vehicle will not be according to the region of my abode? If not, why should I think that my departed soul may not know or see without an igneous or ethereal body or vehicle, as well as all those worlds of spirits? And the certainty of apparitions, pos- sessions, and witches, do tell us, not only that there are such in- habitants of other regions, ordinarily invisible to us, but also that we are in the way to that happiness or misery which is in our in- visible state. These things reviewed, (being partly mentioned before,) assur- ing me that I shall have actual intellection in my separated state, the region, with the objects, but,,'above all, the Holy Scriptures, will tell me, as much as it is meet that I should here know, what it is that I shall intuitively understand. The apostle (1 Cor. xiii. 10-12.) doth distinguish our knowing in part, and knowing per- fectly, knowing as a child, and . as a man knowing darkly and enigmatically, as in a glass, and knowing face to face as we are known. The great question is, when this time of perfection is ; whether he mean at death, or at the resurrection.. If the observa- tion of Dr. Hammond and Mr. Beverly, in his ' Great Soul of Man,' hold, that á.v&Saeiç in Scripture, when ' the flesh or body' is not joined with it, signifies that life which the soul doth enter upon immediately after our deàth, and so that the soul hath that (after living) which is signified by the very word which we translate ws- urrectisn, then it will lead men to think that there is less differ- ence between man's state at his first departure, and at his last resurrection, than most think, even than Calvin himself thought. But the difference between our first and last state of after-life or resurrection cannot be now distinctly known. What difference there is now between Enoch, Elias, and those who rose at Christ's resurrection, and the rest of the saints, even the spirits of the perfected just, and whether the first have as much greater glory than the rest, as it is conceived that we shall have at the resurrection above that which immediately follóweth death, what mortal man can tell? I am past doubt that flesh and blood (for- mally socalled, and not only ab accidente, as sinful) shall not in- herit the kingdom of God, (vid. Hammond in loc.,) but that our natural bodies shall be made spiritual bodies : and how a spiritual body differeth from a spirit or soul, I pretend not well to under-
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=