And first there are the words of Solomon,"Then shall the dust return to dust,as it was,and the spirit shall return to God that gave it."Which may bear well enough (if there be no other text directly against it)this interpretation,that God only knows,but man not,what becomes of a man's spirit when he expireth;and the same Solomon,in the same book,delivereth the same sentence in the sense Ihave given it.His words are,"All go to the same place;all are of the dust,and all turn to dust again;who knoweth that the spirit of man goeth upward,and that the spirit of the beast goeth downward to the earth?"That is,none knows but God;nor is it an unusual phrase to say of things we understand not,"God knows what,"and "God knows where."That of Genesis,5.24,"Enoch walked with God,and he was not;for God took him";which is expounded,Hebrews,11.5,"He was translated,that he should not die;and was not found,because God had translated him.For before his translation,he had this testimony,that he pleased God,"making as much for the immortality of the body as of the soul,proveth that this his translation was peculiar to them that please God;not common to them with the wicked;and depending on grace,not on nature.But on the contrary,what interpretation shall we give,besides the literal sense of the words of Solomon,"That which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts,even one thing befalleth them;as the one dieth,so doth the other;yea,they have all one breath;so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast,for all is vanity."By the literal sense,here is no natural immortality of the soul;nor yet any repugnancy with the life eternal,which the elect shall enjoy by grace.And,"Better is he that hath not yet been than both they";that is,than they that live or have lived;which,if the soul of all them that have lived were immortal,were a hard saying;for then to have an immortal soul were worse than to have no soul at all.And again,"The living know they shall die,but the dead know not anything";that is,naturally,and before the resurrection of the body.
Another place which seems to make for a natural immortality of the soul is that where our Saviour saith that Abraham,Isaac,and Jacob are living:but this is spoken of the promise of God,and of their certitude to rise again,not of a life then actual;and in the same sense that God said to Adam that on the day he should eat of the forbidden fruit,he should certainly die;from that time forward he was a dead man by sentence;but not by execution,till almost a thousand years after.So Abraham,Isaac,and Jacob were alive by promise,then,when Christ spoke;but are not actually till the resurrection.And the history of Dives and Lazarus make nothing against this,if we take it,as it is,for a parable.
But there be other places of the New Testament where an immortality seemeth to be directly attributed to the to the wicked.
For it is evident that they shall all rise to judgement.And it is said besides,in many places,that they shall go into "everlasting fire,everlasting torments,everlasting punishments;and that the worm of conscience never dieth";and all this is comprehended in the word everlasting death,which is ordinarily interpreted "everlasting life in torments":and yet I can find nowhere that any man shall live in torments everlastingly.Also,it seemeth hard to say that God,who is the Father of mercies,that doth in heaven and earth all that He will;that hath the hearts of all men in His disposing;that worketh in men both to do and to will;and without whose free gift a man hath neither inclination to good nor repentance of evil,should punish men's transgressions without any end of time,and with all the extremity of torture that men can imagine,and more.We are therefore to consider what the meaning is of everlasting fire,and other the like phrases of Scripture.
I have shown already that the kingdom of God by Christ beginneth at the day of judgement:that in that day,the faithful shall rise again,with glorious and spiritual bodies and be his subjects in that his kingdom,which shall be eternal:that they shall neither marry,nor be given in marriage,nor eat and drink,as they did in their natural bodies;but live for ever in their individual persons,without the specifical eternity of generation:and that the reprobates also shall rise again,to receive punishments for their sins:as also that those of the elect,which shall be alive in their earthly bodies at that day,shall have their bodies suddenly changed,and made spiritual and immortal.But that the bodies of the reprobate,who make the kingdom of Satan,shall also be glorious or spiritual bodies,or that they shall be as the angels of God,neither eating,nor drinking,nor engendering;or that their life shall be eternal in their individual persons,as the life of every faithful man is,or as the life of Adam had been if he had not sinned,there is no place of Scripture to prove it;save only these places concerning eternal torments,which may otherwise be interpreted.
From whence may be inferred that,as the elect after the resurrection shall be restored to the estate wherein Adam was before he had sinned;so the reprobate shall be in the estate that Adam and his posterity were in after the sin committed;saving that God promised a redeemer to Adam,and such of his seed as should trust in him and repent,but not to them that should die in their sins,as do the reprobate.