ESSAY ?OVARY) THE SECT-. fr' dead, of which the apostle speaks in the sixth verse: This, I say, is the most natural and obvious sense; other. paraphrases of the words seem strained and unna- tural. I 'Thess: v. 10. " Jesus Christ, who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with bin]." Sleep is the death of good men, in the language ©f the apostle, in chapter iv. verses 13--15. and sleep, in this verse, can neither signify natural sleep, as verse 7. nor spiritual sloth, as verse 6. therefore, it must signify: death here. Now they, whoare 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. 1 Pet. iii. '_8 -20. " Christ was-put to death in the flesh, but quickenedby 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 destroyedby the flood; whether he didit by his Spirit working in Noah; the preacher of righteousness, in these days; 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 dese.ent into hell But, Iet this be determined as it will, the most clear and easy.senseof the apostle, when- he -speaks of_the spirits in prison, is, that the souls of those rebels, after their- bodies were destroyedby the flood, were reserved in pri- son for some special and futíire'design : And this is very parallel to the present circumstances of fallen angels in Jude, verse G. " The angels, that kept not their first ea- Ole, he bath reserved in everlasting chains, under dark- ness; unto thejudgment of the great day :" And why may not the spirits of men be as well kept, in such a prison, as aígelic spirits ? Jude, verse 7. " Sodom and ,Gomorrah are set forth #'or an example, suffering the vengeanceof . eternal, fire." It is evident, that the material fire, which destroyed So- dom and Gomorrah, was not eternal; for a great lake
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