230 ESSAY TOWARD THE ESECT. f. wards that attend it, as they are for their entrance into the separate state at death, if therewere any suchstate to receive them. I grant, men should be so in reason and justice : But such is the weakness and folly of our'natures, that men will not be so much influenced, nor alarmed by distant prospects, nor so solicitous to prepare for an event, which they suppose to be so very far off, as they would for the same event, if it commences as soon as ever this mortal life expires. The vicious manwill indulge his sea- sualities, and lie down to sleep in death with this com- fort, " I shall take my rest here for a hundred, or a thousand years, and, perhaps, in all that space my of- fences may be forgotten, or something may happen that I may escape ; or, let the worst come that can come, I shall have a long sweet nap before my sorrows begin :" Thus the force of divine terrors are greatly enervated by this delay ofpunishment. I will not undertake to determine, when the soul is dismissed from the body, whether there be any explicit divine sentence passed, concerning its eternal state of happiness or misery, according to its works in this life ; or whether the pain or pleasure, that belongs to the se- parate state, be not chiefly such as arises, by natural con- sequence, from a life of sin, or a life of holiness, and as being under the power of an approving, or a condemn- ing conscience: But it seems to me more probable, that, since " the spirit returns to God that gave it," Eccles. xii. 7. to " God the judge of all, with whom the spirits of the just made perfect dwell," Heb. xii. 23. and since the spirit of a christian, when "absent from the body, is present with the Lord, that is, Christ," 2 Cor. v. 8. I ammore inclined to think, that there is some sort of judicial determination of this important point, either by God himself, or by Jesus Christ, into whose hands "he has committed all judgment,` John v. 22. " It is ap- pointed unto men once to die, but after this the judg- ment," Heb. ix. 27. whether immediate, or more dis- tant, is not here expressly declared, though the imme- diate connection of the words, hardly gives room for seventeen hundred years to intervene. But if the so- lemn formalities of a judgment be delayed, yet the con- science of a separate spirit, reflecting on a, holy, or a
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