Another general error is from the misinterpretation of the words eternal life,everlasting death,and the second death.For though we read plainly in Holy Scripture that God created Adam in an estate of living for ever,which was conditional,that is to say,if he disobeyed not His commandment;which was not essential to human nature,but consequent to the virtue of the tree of life,whereof he had liberty to eat,as long as he had not sinned;and that he was thrust out of Paradise after he had sinned,lest he should eat thereof,and live for ever;and that Christ's Passion is a discharge of sin to all that believe on Him,and by consequence,a restitution of eternal life to all the faithful,and to them only:yet the doctrine is now and hath been a long time far otherwise;namely,that every man hath eternity of life by nature,inasmuch as his soul is immortal.So that the flaming sword at the entrance of Paradise,though it hinder a man from coming to the tree of life,hinders him not from the immortality which God took from him for his sin,nor makes him to need the sacrificing of Christ for the recovering of the same;and consequently,not only the faithful and righteous,but also the wicked and the heathen,shall enjoy eternal life,without any death at all,much less a second and everlasting death.To salve this,it is said that by second and everlasting death is meant a second and everlasting life,but in torments;a figure never used but in this very case.
All which doctrine is founded only on some of the obscurer places of the New Testament;which nevertheless,the whole scope of the Scripture considered,are clear enough in a different sense,and unnecessary to the Christian faith.For supposing that when a man dies,there remaineth nothing of him but his carcass;cannot God,that raised inanimated dust and clay into a living creature by His word,as easily raise a dead carcass to life again,and continue him alive for ever,or make him die again by another word?The soul,in Scripture,signifieth always either the life or the living creature;and the body and soul jointly,the body alive.In the fifth day of the Creation,God said,Let the waters produce reptile animae viventis,the creeping thing that hath in it a living soul;the English translate it,"that hath life."And again,God created whales,et omnem animam viventem;which in the English is,"every living creature."And likewise of man,God made him of the dust of the earth,and breathed in his face the breath of life,et factus est homo in animam viventem,that is,"and man was made a living creature."And after Noah came out of the ark,God saith,He will no more smite omnem animam viventem,that is,"every living creature."And,"Eat not the blood,for the blood is the soul";that is,the life.From which places,if by soul were meant a substance incorporeal,with an existence separated from the body,it might as well be inferred of any other living creature,as of man.But that the souls of the faithful are not of their own nature,but by God's special grace,to remain in their bodies from the resurrection to all eternity,I have already,I think,sufficiently proved out of the Scriptures,in the thirty-eighth Chapter.And for the places of the New Testament where it is said that any man shall be cast body and soul into hell fire,it is no more than body and life;that is to say,they shall be cast alive into the perpetual fire of Gehenna.
This window it is that gives entrance to the dark doctrine,first,of eternal torments,and afterwards of purgatory,and consequently of the walking abroad,especially in places consecrated,solitary,or dark,of the ghosts of men deceased;and thereby to the pretences of exorcism and conjuration of phantasms,as also of invocation of men dead;and to the doctrine of indulgences;that is to say,of exemption for a time,or for ever,from the fire of purgatory,wherein these incorporeal substances are pretended by burning to be cleansed and made fit for heaven.For men being generally possessed,before the time of our Saviour,by contagion of the demonology of the Greeks,of an opinion that the souls of men were substances distinct from their bodies;and therefore that when the body was dead,the soul of every man,whether godly or wicked,must subsist somewhere by virtue of its own nature,without acknowledging therein any supernatural gift of God's;the doctors of the Church doubted a long time what was the place which they were to abide in,till they should be reunited to their bodies in the resurrection,supposing for a while,they lay under the altars:but afterward the Church of Rome found it more profitable to build for them this place of purgatory,which by some other Churches,in this later age,has been demolished.
Let us now consider what texts of Scripture seem most to confirm these three general errors I have here touched.As for those which Cardinal Bellarmine hath alleged for the present kingdom of God administered by the Pope (than which there are none that make a better show of proof),I have already answered them;and made it evident that the kingdom of God,instituted by Moses,ended in the election of Saul:after which time the priest of his own authority never deposed any king.That which the high priest did to Athaliah was not done in his own right,but in the right of the young King Joash,her son:
But Solomon in his own right deposed the high priest Abiathar,and set up another in his place.The most difficult place to answer,of all those that can be brought to prove the kingdom of God by Christ is already in this world,is alleged,not by Bellarmine,nor any other of the Church of Rome,but by Beza,that will have it to begin from the resurrection of Christ.But whether he intend thereby to entitle the presbytery to the supreme power ecclesiastical in the Commonwealth of Geneva,and consequently to every presbytery in every other Commonwealth,or to princes and other civil sovereigns,I do not know.