VECT PROOF OF A SEPARATE STATE. Q57 body; and that the souls of good wen have no interrup- tion of life ; but that there was a "reward for blameless souls," as the book of Wisdom speaks, chapter ii. 22. " For God created man to be immortal, and to be an image of his own eternity," which seems to suppose._ blameless souls, en tering into this rewardwi thout interrup- tion of their life. And if this be the meaningof paradise among the Jews; doubtless our Saviour spake the words in such a known and common sense, in which the peni- tent thiefwould easily and presently understand him, it being a promise of grace in his dying hour, wherein he had no long time to study hard for the sense of it, or ,consult the criticsin order to find the meaning, We come now to consider the writings of St. Paul And it is certain, that the most natural and obvious sense of his words in many places of his epistles, refers to a separate state of the souls after death : For as he was a pharisee in the sentiments of religion, so he seems to be somethingof a platonist in philosophy, so far as chris- tian.ity admitted the same principles. Why then should it not be reasonably supposed, wheresoever he speaks of this subject, and speaks in their language too, that he means the same thing which the pharisees and the pla- tonists believed, that is, the immortality and life of the, soul in a separate state. But I proceed to the particular texts. V. 2 Cor. v. 6, 8. " Therefore we are always cone- dent, or of good courage, knowing that whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord ; We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord :" Thé apostle, verse 4. seems to wish that he might beclothed upon at once, with immortality in soul and body, -with- out dying or being unclothed : But since things are ,otherwise determined, then in the next place, he Would rather chuse absence from the "body, that he might be present with the Lord. These words seem to me so plain, so express, and so unanswerable a, proof of the Spirits of good men existing, in a separate state; and beingpresent with the Lord, when they are absent from the body, at death, that I could never meet but with two ways of evading it. The first is what a gentleman man-,,, years ago, who
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=