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ESSAY
TOWARD THE
ESECT.
f.
wards
that attend
it,
as
they
are
for their
entrance
into
the separate state
at
death,
if
there
were any such
state
to
receive them.
I
grant,
men should
be so in
reason and
justice
:
But
such
is
the weakness and
folly
of
our'natures, that
men
will
not
be
so
much influenced,
nor alarmed
by
distant
prospects, nor
so
solicitous to
prepare
for an
event,
which they suppose to
be so
very
far
off,
as
they would
for
the same event,
if
it
commences
as soon
as
ever this
mortal
life
expires.
The
vicious man
will
indulge
his
sea
-
sualities, and
lie
down to sleep
in
death
with
this com-
fort,
"
I
shall
take
my
rest
here for a hundred, or a
thousand
years, and, perhaps, in all
that
space
my of-
fences
may be
forgotten, or something
may
happen
that
I
may escape
;
or,
let
the worst
come
that
can
come,
I
shall have a long sweet
nap before
my sorrows begin
:"
Thus
the force
of
divine
terrors are
greatly enervated
by
this
delay
of
punishment.
I
will
not undertake
to
determine,
when the soul
is
dismissed from
the body, whether
there
be any
explicit
divine sentence
passed,
concerning
its
eternal state
of
happiness or
misery,
according to
its works
in
this life
;
or
whether
the
pain or pleasure,
that
belongs to
the
se-
parate
state,
be
not
chiefly
such
as
arises,
by
natural
con-
sequence, from
a
life
of
sin,
or
a life
of
holiness,
and
as
being
under
the power
of
an approving, or
a
condemn-
ing conscience: But it
seems to me
more probable, that,
since
"
the
spirit returns
to
God that
gave
it,"
Eccles.
xii.
7.
to
"
God
the
judge
of
all,
with whom the
spirits
of
the
just
made perfect
dwell,"
Heb.
xii. 23.
and since
the spirit of a
christian, when
"absent
from
the
body,
is
present
with the Lord,
that
is,
Christ,"
2
Cor.
v. 8.
I
am
more inclined
to
think,
that
there
is
some
sort
of
judicial
determination
of
this
important
point,
either
by
God
himself, or by
Jesus
Christ, into
whose
hands
"he
has committed
all
judgment,`
John
v.
22.
" It
is
ap-
pointed unto
men once
to die,
but after
this
the
judg-
ment," Heb.
ix.
27.
whether
immediate,
or
more
dis-
tant,
is
not
here expressly declared, though the
imme-
diate connection
of
the
words,
hardly
gives
room for
seventeen
hundred
years to
intervene. But
if
the so-
lemn formalities
of
a
judgment
be delayed,
yet the con-
science
of
a separate
spirit, reflecting
on
a,
holy,
or
a