MISCELLANEOUS THOUGHTS. 457 against my argument, namely, if there be sufficient provision in the very nature of man after death, to receive the due rewards of virtue or vice in his immortal part, or his soul, what necessity is there of a resurrectión of the body ? And yet we find that in the New Testament, where the invisible world and future state -of rewards and punishments is most particularly discovered, the holy writers generally represent those rewards and punishments as consequents of this resurrection. To this I think there is a full answer given in the last pages of a late " Essay towards the Proof of a separate State of Souls," to which I refer the reader. But in this place I think it sufficient to say, that the soul only is the moral agent, and the God of na- ture can effectually reward or punish the virtues or the vices of man in his immortal part, or his soul, which naturally survives the body ; but the God of grace hating introduced a gospel for the recovery of sinful mankind from ruin, whereby the resur- rection of the body is promised to those who comply with it, for an increase of happiness, lie thought it proper also and just, that the rejection of this gospel, or the utter impenitence of men, should be punished with a resurrection of the body, for an in- crease of misery. It is the gospel only which introduces the re- surrection of the body ; the original law of God knows nothing of it. " As by man, that is Adam, carne in death, so by man, that is Christ, came in the resurrectión of the dead ;" 1 Cor. xv.21. And thence may I not take occasion to infer, that the gospel, or the covenant of grace, which is founded in the undertaking of Christ, path been some way or other made known to all mankind, at least by some obscure and general notices Of it ; and that the great God doth actually deal with all men now upon terms of grace, from this very argument, because "all mankind are to be raised again from the dead, who have done good or evil!" John v. 28, 29. Whereas those who never sinned against a gos- pel, or against the grace or mercy of God, but only against God as the God of nature, would perhaps only lie exposed to such a sentence as the light of nature might find out, or as might be exe- cuted according to the course of nature, without the miracle of a resurrection, that is, by the death of thebody, and the punishment of the surviving spirit in a separate state. If this last inference should be found to run counter to the sense of any one text of scripture, I renounce it upon the spot : But if by venturing to step out of the common tract of the schools, we may find any little beam of light shed upon the couduct of God toward man, and be thereby enabled the better to vindicate the wisdom and righteousness of the God of nature and the God of grace; let not that little beam be quenched, merely because it lias not the support of vulgar opinion, nor been consecrated by creeds or councils. VOL. IX. G a
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