29f3 THE WORLD TO doarE. The counsels of God are far above our reach, and his domi- nions and governments are unknown to us. What if the great God will have creatures in some of his territories, who in them- selves are weak and ready to fall, and may be deterred from sin and apostacy by such standing manifestations of his hatred of it, and his righteous vengeance against it ? And since others have been monuments of warning to us, what if he please to make this world of ours, when he has taken the few righteous out of it to heaven ; I say, what if he please to make the rest an ever- lasting spectacle of his justice and holiness to a hundred or a thousand other worlds, which may be utterly unknown to its And he may, for this end, reveal his transactions with man- kind to those worlds, though be has not revealed much of their affairs to us. If I were to mention any other objection worthy of notice, I know of none but this, viz. " some learned men suppose it to have been the opinion of the primitive fathers'," that souls de- parting from this world were sent into Hades, ór the state of the dead, where the righteous rested in a state of peace and hope till the resurrection should bring them to heaven : And the most wicked amongst mankind went also to Hades, or this state of the dead, under a long and fearful expectation of the final punish- ments of hell : But that great multitudes who were of an indif- ferent character, and who were not so bad but that they might be reclaiìned, had another sort of trial in Hades, whither, they say, our Lord Jesus Christ at his death descended and preached the gospel to them, and many of them were recovered, and shall be hereafter raised to eternal life. The chief scripture whence they borrow this is, 1 Pet. iii. 10, 20. of which we have spo- ken before ; and that at the great day of judgment the incorrigi. hie sinners should be sent with the devils into the punishment of fire, which, though it may last for a shorter or longer time, yet should destroy both their bodies and their souls for ever. To this I answer, Answer I. If this had been the doctrine of many ancient christians, yet unless they could bring plainer proofs of it from the word of God than one difficult and obscure text of St. Peter, there is no great reason for us to receive from them such tradi- tions. The word of God is our only test of truth, and our in- structor in matters of the invisible world. II. 'Though there might be a few of the early writers who seemed to incline to sortie of these opinions; yet this sense is drawn ont from most of them by learned men with much diffi- culty, uncertainty and conjecture : And there are many others of them who make the punishments of hell as durable as the writers of later ages : Nor do they mention or allow of any such sort of purgatory for ,souls of an indifferent character as
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