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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
reward
wi
thout interrup-
tion
of
their
life.
And
if
this be
the meaning
of
paradise
among the Jews;
doubtless our Saviour spake the words
in
such
a
known
and
common
sense,
in
which the
peni-
tent thief
would
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 critics
in
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
something
of
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
be
clothed
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
being
present
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