331` 4NUIN AND RECOVER'S', &C. generally explained byour writers, and has been often said to be included in the penalty due to the first sin. Let us here enquire into it : First, Let us consider it as it relates to the soul of man. The soul is an immaterial and thinking being, it has in itself no natural principles of dissolution ; and therefore so far as we can judge, it must be immortal in its ownnature : But who can say, whether the word death might not be fairly construed to extend to the utter destruction of the life of the soul as well as the body, if God the righteous Governor should please to seize the forfeiture ? For man by sin had forfeited all that God had given him, that is, the life and existence of his soul, as well as his body: All is forfeited by sin into the hands of God ; and why might not the threatening declare the right that even a God of goodness had to resume all back again, and utterly destroy and annihilate his creatures for ever*. There is not one place of scripture that occurs to me, where the word death, as it was first threatened in the law of innocency, ne- cessarily signifies a certain miserable immortality of the soul, either to Adam the actual sinner, or to his posterity. I say, I do not remember any such text, but will not positively assert there is none. But suppose this death means the utter destruction of soul as well as of the body, to be a penalty due to every sin, for the wages of sin is death ; Rom. vi. 23. even the least sin or offence against God; yet where the sin of man hath any degrees of aggravation, perhaps the divine justice would not destroy the soul, but would continue the soul in its natural immortality and consciousness after the death of the body, to sustain farther punishments answerable to these aggravations : God may re- sume more or less of what man has forfeited by sin. And it is a point determined by our Saviour, that continuance in life and misery is a greater punishment than annihilation ; for he says, It is better never to have been born, than to be punished as Judas the traitor shall be punished; Mat. xxvi. 24. And since there is scarce any actual sin but what has some aggravations, either greater or less, perhaps there is no actual sinner, but has deserved some continuance of his soul in its existence, consciousness and misery. And on this account the death threatened by the covenant of works, especially to the actual and personal transgressor, may perhaps, include in it that indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, which is due to every immortal soul that actually doth . amiss, aawar .l.uxry ovlgwwu aaTegya;otorvs zo Itaxov, every soul that worketh evil; Roln. ii. 8, 9, For-as I spewed before, the apostle seems to sit is granted that God, considered merely as a sovereign and as just, giight rosom a at from his to earme, though he be without sin ; but we can hardly think a God of goodues would do iy till sin had made a forfeiture,
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=