( 464. ) DISCOURSE VIII. A SOUL PREPAk£U FOR TOAVEN. 2 con. r. 5. Now he that hath wrought usfor the self-same thing, is God. WHEN this apostle designs to entertain our hope in the noblest manner, and raise our faith to its highest joys, he generally calls our thoughts far away from all present and visible things, and sends them forward to the great and glorious day of the resurrection ; He points our meditations to take a distant prospect of the final and complete happiness of the saints, in heaven, when their bodies shall be raised shining and immortal ; whereas it is but seldom, that he takes notice of the hea- ven of separate souls, or that part of our future happi- ness, which commences at the hour of death. But, in this chapter, the holy writer seems to keep both these heavens in his eye, and speaks ofthat blessedness, which the spirits of the just shall enjoy, in the presence of the Lord, as soon as they are absent from the body, and yet leads our souls onwards also to our last and most perfect state of happiness, which is delayed till our corruptible bodies shall be raised from the dust, and mortality shall be swallowed up in life. We know, saithhe in the first verse of this chapter, we know that as soon as our mor- tal tabernacle, in which we now dwell, is dissolved, we have a building ready for us in the heavens ; that is, an investiture in a glorious state of holiness and immor- tality, which waits to receive our spirits when we drop this dying flesh : Yet the felicities of this paradise, or first heaven, shall receive an unspeakable addition and advancement, when Christ shall come the second time, with all his saints, to complete our salvation." But which heaven soever we arrive at, whether it be this of the separate state, or that when our bodies shall be restored, still we must be wrought up to a proper fit- ness for it by God himself; and as the end of this verse tells us, he gives us his own Spirit as an earnest of these:
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