it TEE PROOF OF A SEPARATE STATE. by his doubting, whether his spirit was in the body, or out of the body, while it was rapt into the third heaven, and enjoyed this vision, his body being yet alive. Phil. i. 21. as For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." The apostle, whilst he was here upon earth, spent bis life in the service of Christ, and enjoyed many glorious commit. nications from him. " For him to live was Christ." And, on this account, he was contented to continue here in life longer: yet' he is well satisfied, that death would be an Advantage or gain to him. Now we can hardly suppose, what gain it would be for St. Paul to (lie, if his soul immediately went to sleep, and became unactive and unconscious, while his body lay in the grave, and neither soul nor body could do any service for Christ, or receive any communications from him till the great rising - day. This text seems to carry the argument above a mere pro- bability. I Thess. iv. 14. " For if we believe, that Jesus died, and rose again, l even so them also, which sleep in Jesus, wilt God bring with him." The most natural and evident sense of these words, is this, that when the man Jesus Christ, in whom dwells the fulness of the godhead, shall descend from heaven, in order to raise the dead bodies of those that died, or went to sleep in the faith of Christ, God dwelling in him will bring with bin, the souls of his saints, who were in paradise, down to earth, to be re- united to their bodies, when Jesus raises them from the dead, of which the apostle speaks in the 6th verse : This, I say, is the most natural and obvious sense; other paraphrases of the words seem strained and unnatural. 1 Thess. v. 10. " Jesus Christ, who died for us, that whe- ther we wake or sleep, we should live together with him." Sleep- -is the death of good men, in the language of the apostle, in chapter iv. verses 13 -15. and sleep, in this verse, can neither signify natural sleep, as verse 7. nor spiritual sloth, as verse 6. therefore it must signify death here. Now they, who are asleep in Christ, in this sense, do still live together with him in their member, that animals of every kind, in earth, air, and sea, and even the m'nu- test insects, which swarm in millions, and worlds of them, which are invisible to the oaked eye, have all an animal life, but no such conscious or thinking prinniptes as is io man : And why may not the body of man bave the samesort of animal life quite distinct from the conscious spirit ? Besides, if this conscious principle give life to the body, medicines and phy. wicians, whose power reaches only to rectify the disordered solids or fluids of the body, would not be so necessary to preserve life, as an orator to persuade the spirit to continue in the body, and preserve its life. And, accordingly, we read of foreign ignorant nations, where the kindred persuade the dying person to live, and tarry with them, and not to forsake them; and, when the person is dead, they mourn and reprove him, " Why were ye so unkind to leave and forsake us ?" And indeed this conduct of those poor savages is asery natural inference front their supposition of the intelligent spirit giving animal life to the body.
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