294 ESSAY TOWARD THE [SECT. M. his doctrines to the people in such parables, as had scarce any sort of foundation in the reality, or nature of things. But you will say, the Jews had such an opinion cur- rent among them, though it was a very false one, and that this was enough to support a parable : I answer, What could Christ, who is truth itself; have said more, or plainer, to confirm the Jews in this gross error of a separate state of souls, than to form a parable, which supposes this doctrine, in the very design and moral of it, as well as in the foundation and matter of it ? III. Luke xx. 37, 38. " Now that the dead are raised, even Moses shewed at the bush, when he calleth the Lord, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, for he is not a God of the dead, but ofthe living; for all live unto him." Some learned men suppose, that the controversy between Christ and the Sadducees, in this place, Was about the "anastasis," which implies the whole state of existence after death, including both the separate state and the resurrection, because the Sadducees denied both these at once, and believed, that death finished the whole existence of the man. They denied angels and spirits, Acts xxiii. 8. that is, separate souls of men, and thought the rewards and punishments, mentioned- in scripture, related only to this life. Upon this account they suppose our Saviour's de- sign is to prove the existence of persons or spirits in the separate state, as much as the resurrection of the body. And when he says, that the Lord, or Jehovah, is de- scribed as the God of Abraham, &c. it supposes Abra- ham, at the same time, to have actually some life and existence, in some state or other, for "God is not a God of the dead, but of the living," for all that are dead, and gone out of this world, still live unto God ; that is, they have a present life, in the invisible world of spirits, as God is an invisible spirit, as well as they expect a resur- rection of their body in due time. How could God, in the days of Moses, be called ac- tually the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who were long since dead, if therewas no sense in which they were now alive to God, since our Saviour declares, God is properly the God only of the living, and not of the dead ?
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=