'444 THE HAPPINESS OP SEPARATE SPIRITS. {DISC. II. a- 'rived, we stretch our wings a little, and are ready to wish for the flight. But God our sovereign must appoint the hour ; he sees that we are not vet refined enough. Keep our souls, O hather, in this erect posture, looking, reaching and longing for the celestial world, till thou hast completely prepared us for the promised glory, and then give us the joyful word of dismission. Thus I have endeavoured to make it appear on what accounts a dismission from the body is both the season when, and the means whereby the spirits of the just ar- rive at this perfection. Their state of trial is ended at death, and therefore all inconveniences and imperfections must cease by divine appointment : By death the soul is released from all the troublesome and tempting influ- ences of flesh and blood; it is delivered from this sinful world, it is got beyond the reach of Satan the tempter and the tormentor; and it is surrounded with a thousand advantages for improvement in knowledge, holiness and joy. SECTION VI. _Remarks on theforegoing discourse. REMARK I. Are the spirits of the just made perfect at the death of the body ? Then we may be assured that they neither die nor sleep; for sleep and death are both inconsistant with this state of perfection which I have described. The dead saints are not lost nor extinct. They are not perished out of God's world, though they ate gone from ours. They are no more in the world that is en- lightened by the sun and moon, and the glimmering stars; but they themselves shine gloriously, like stars of different magnitudes, in the world where " there is no sun, nor is there any need of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God enlightens it, and the Lamb is the everlasting light thereof;" Rev. xxi. 23. They are lost from earth, but they are found in heaven. They are dead to us at present, but they are alive to God their Father, and to Jesus their Saviour ; they are alive to the holy angels, and all their fellow - saints in that upper world. If there had been any such thing as a soul sleeping or dying,. our Saviour would never have argued thus with the Sadducees, Luke xx. 37, 38. nor have proved the doctrine of the resurrection from the doctrine of the sepa-
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