Psychopannychia (part 2 of 4)
"Because I live, ye shall live also?" (John 14:19.)
If we live because he lives, then if we die he does not live. Is there any obscurity in his promise, that he will remain in all who are united to him by faith, and they in him? (John 6:56.) Therefore, if we would deprive the members of life, let us dissever them from Christ. Our confession, which is sufficiently established, is this,
"In Adam all die, but in Christ are made alive." (1
Corinthians 15:22.)
These things are splendidly and magnificently handled by Paul. (Romans 8:10.) "If the Spirit of Christ dwell in us, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness." He no doubt calls the body the mass of sin, which resides in man from the native property of the flesh; and the spirit the part of man spiritually regenerated. Wherefore, when a little before he deplored his wretchedness because of the remains of sin adhering to him, (Romans 7:24) he did not desire to be taken away altogether, or to be nothing, in order that he might escape from that misery, but to be freed from the body of death, i.e., that the mass of sin in him might die, that the spirit, being purged, and, as it were, freed from dregs, he might have peace with God through this very circumstance; declaring, that his better part was held captive by bodily chains and would be freed by death.
I wish we could with true faith perceive of what nature the kingdom of God is which exists in believers, even while they are in this life. For it would at the same time be easy to understand that eternal life is begun. He who cannot deceive promised thus: -
" Whoso hears my words has eternal life, and does not come into condemnation, but hath passed
from death unto life." (John 5:24.)
If an entrance has been given into eternal life, why do they interrupt it by death? Elsewhere he says,
"This is the work of the Father, that every one who
believes in the Son may not perish, but have
eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day."
(John 6:40.)
Again,
"He who eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, hath
eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.
Not as your fathers did eat manna in the
wilderness and are dead. He who eateth of this
bread shall live for ever." (John 6:54.)
Do not attempt here to introduce your fictitious comments concerning The Last Day. He promises us two things - Eternal life, and the Resurrection. Though you are told of two you admit only one! Another expression of Christ is still more decisive. He says,
"I am the resurrection and the life. He who believeth on me shall live though he were dead. And whoso liveth and believeth in me shall not die for ever." (John 11:25, 26.)
It will not do to say, that those who are raised do not die for ever. Our Lord meant not only this, but that it is impossible they can ever die. This meaning is better expressed by the Greek words eivj to.n aivw/na equivalent in Latin to in seculum: for when we say that a thing will not be in seculum, we affirm that it will never be at all. Thus in another passage, "Whoso will keep my word shall not see death for ever." (John 8:51.) This invincibly proves, that he who will keep the word of the Lord shall not see death; and it should be sufficient to arm the faith of Christians against the perverseness of these men. This is our belief, this our expectation. Meanwhile, what remains for them but to continue sleeping on till they are awakened by the clang of the trumpet which shall break their slumbers like a thief in the night?
And if God is the life of the soul, just as the soul is the life of the body, how can it be that the soul keeps acting upon the body so long as it is in the body, and never is for an instant idle, and yet that God should cease from acting as if He, were fatigued! If such is the vigor of the soul in sustaining, moving, and impelling a lump of clay, how great must be the energy of God in moving and actuating the soul to which agility is natural! Some go the length of saying, that the soul becomes evanescent; others, that its vigor is not exercised after the fetters of the body are dissolved. What answer then will they give to David's hymn, (Psalm 73,) wherein he describes the beginning, middle, and end of the life of the blessed? He says, "They will go from strength to strength; the Lord of hosts will be seen in Zion;" or, as the Hebrew has it, from abundance to abundance,. If they always increase till they see God, and pass from that increase to the vision of God, on what ground do these men bury them in drunken slumber and deep sloth?
The same thing is testified still more clearly by the Apostle when he says, that if they are dissolved they are no longer able to resist the Spirit of God. His words are,
"We know that if the earthly house of this
tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of
God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the
heavens. For in this we groan, desiring to be
clothed upon with our house which is from
heaven; if so be that being clothed we shall not be
found naked. For we who are in this tabernacle do
groan being burdened, not because we wish to be
unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality may be
swallowed up of life." (2 Corinthians 5:1-3.)
A little afterwards he says,
"Therefore we are always of good courage, and
know that while we are at home in the body we are
absent from the Lord; (for we walk by faith, not by
sight;) we are confident, and would rather be
absent from the body and present with the Lord."
Here the evasion they have recourse to is, that the Apostle's words refer to The Day of Judgment, when both we shall be clothed upon, and mortality shall be swallowed up of life. Accordingly, they say, the Apostle includes both in one paragraph,
"We must all appear before the judgment-seat of
Christ." (2 Corinthians 5:10.)
But why do they refer this clothing upon to the body, rather than to spiritual blessings with which we are richly supplied at death? What forces them to interpret the life there spoken of as meaning resurrection? The simple and obvious meaning of the Apostle is, We desire indeed to depart from this prison of the body, but not to wander uncertain without a home: There is a better home which the Lord hath prepared for us; clothed with it, we shall not be found naked. Christ is our clothing, and our armor is that which the Apostle puts upon us. (Ephesians 6:11.) And it is written, (Psalm 45:13,) "The king will admire the beauty of his spouse, who will be richly provided with gifts, and all glorious within." In fine, the Lord has put a seal upon his own people, whom he will acknowledge both at death and at the resurrection. (Revelation 7) Why do they not rather look back to what he had just said in the previous context., with which he connects this very sentence?
"Though our outward man decays, our inward man is renewed day by day." (2 Corinthians 4:16.)
They find it more difficult to evade what the Apostle subjoins as to our appearance before the judgment-seat of Christ, after having said, that whether at home or living abroad we labor to please him. Since by home he means the body, what are we to understand by this living abroad?
Therefore, though we were not to add one word, the meaning is obvious without an interpreter. It is, that both in the body and out of the body we labor to please the Lord; and that we shall perceive the presence of God when we shall be separated from this body - that we will no longer walk by faith but by sight, since the load of clay by which we are pressed down, acts as a kind of wall of partition, keeping us far away from God. Those triflers, on the contrary, absurdly pretend that at death we are to be more widely separated from God than we are during life! In regard even to the present life, it is said of the righteous, "They shall walk, O Lord, in the light of thy countenance," (Psalm 88;) and again,
"The Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God," (Romans 8:16 ;)
besides many other passages to the same effect. But these men deprive the righteous at death both of the light of God's countenance and the witness of his Spirit; and, therefore, if they are correct, we are happier now than we are to be at death! For, as Paul says, (Philippians 3,) even while we live under the elements of this world, we have a habitation and citizenship in the heavens. But if, as they maintain, our souls are at death overwhelmed with lethargy, and buried in oblivion, they must lose every kind of spiritual enjoyment which they previously possessed.
We are better taught by the Sacred Writings. The body, which decays, weighs down the soul, and confining it within an earthly habitation, greatly limits its perceptions. If the body is the prison of the soul, if the earthly habitation is a kind of fetters, what is the state of the soul when set free from this prison, when loosed from these fetters? Is it not restored to itself, and as it were made complete, so that we may truly say, that all which it gains is so much lost to the body? Whether they will or not, they must be forced to confess, that when we put off the load of the body, the war between the spirit and the flesh ceases. In short, the mortification of the flesh is the quickening of the spirit. Then the soul, set free from impurities, is truly spiritual, so as to be in accordance with the will of God, and not subject to the tyranny of the flesh, rebelling against it. In short, the mortification of the flesh will be the quickening of the spirit: For then the soul, having shaken off all kinds of pollution, is truly spiritual, so that it consents to the will of God, and is no longer subjected to the tyranny of the flesh; thus dwelling in tranquillity, with all its thoughts fixed on God. Are we to say that it sleeps, when it can rise aloft unencumbered with any load? - that it slumbers, when it can perceive many things by sense and thought, no obstacle preventing? These things not only manifest the errors of these men, but also their malignant hostility to the works and operations which the Scriptures proclaim that God performs in his saints.
We acknowledge God as growing in his elect, and increasing from day to day. This the wise man teaches us, when he says, (Proverbs 4:18,) "The path of the just is as the light, increasing into the perfect day." And the Apostle affirms, that
"He who has begun a good work in you will perfect it against the day of the Lord Jesus." (Philippians
1:6.)
These men not only intermit the work of God for a time, but even extinguish it. Those who formerly went from faith to faith, from virtue to virtue, and enjoyed a foretaste of blessedness when they exercised themselves in thinking of God, they deprive both of faith and virtue, and all thought of God, and merely place on beds, in a sluggish and lethargic state! For how do they interpret that progress? Do they think that souls are perfected when they are made heavy with sleep as a preparation for their being brought sleek and fat into the presence of God when he shall sit in judgment? Had they a particle of sense they would not prattle thus absurdly about the soul, but would make all the difference between a celestial soul and an earthly body, that there is between heaven and earth. When the Apostle longs to depart and to be with Christ, (Philippians 1:23,) do they think he wishes to fall asleep so as no longer to feel any desire of Christ? Was this all he was longing for when he said he knew he had a building of God, an house not made with hands, as soon as the earthly house of his tabernacle should be dissolved? (2 Corinthians 5:1.) Where were the benefit of being with Christ were he to cease to live the life of Christ?
What! are they not overawed by the words of the Lord when, calling himself the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he says, he is
"God not of the dead but of the living?" (Matthew
22:32.)
Is He, then, neither to be to them a God, nor are they to be to him a people? (Mark 12:27.) But they say that these things will be realized when the dead shall be raised to life. Although the question expressly asked is, Have you not read what was said concerning the Resurrection of the dead? this evasion will not serve their purpose. Christ having to do with the Sadducees, who denied not only the Resurrection of the dead but the immortality of the soul, convicts them of two errors by this single expression. For if God is God not of the dead but of the living, and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had departed this life when God spoke to Moses calling himself their God, the inference is, that they were living another life. Those must surely be in being of whom God says that he is their God. Hence Luke adds, "For all things live to him, (Luke 30:28,) not meaning that all things live by the presence of God, but by his energy. It follows, therefore, that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are alive. To this passage we add that of the Apostle, (Romans 14:8, 9,) "Whether we live, we live unto the Lord, whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live or die, we are the Lord's. For, for this Christ both died and rose again, that he might be Lord of the living and the dead." What more solid foundation could there be on which to rear our faith, than to say that Christ rules over the dead? There can only be rule over persons who exist, the exercise of government necessarily implying the existence of subjects.
Testimony is also borne against them in heaven before God and his angels, by the souls of the martyrs under the altar, who with loud voice cry,
"How long, O Lord, dost thou not avenge our blood
on those who dwell on the earth? And there were
given unto them white robes, and it was told them
still to rest for a season, until the number of their
fellow-servants and their brethren who were to be
slain like them should be completed." (Revelation
6:10, 11.)
The souls of the dead cry aloud, and white robes are given unto them! O sleeping spirits! what are white robes to you? Are they pillows on which you are to lie down and sleep? You see that white robes are not at all adapted for sleep, and therefore, when thus clothed, they must be awake. If this is true, these white robes undoubtedly designate the commencement of glory, which the Divine liberality bestows upon martyrs while waiting for the day of judgment.
It is no new thing for Scripture to designate glory, festivity, and joy, under the figure of a white robe. It was in a white robe the Lord appeared in vision to Daniel. In this garb the Lord was seen on Mount Tabor. The angel of the Lord appeared to the women at the sepulcher in white raiment; and under the same form did the angels appear to the disciples as they continued gazing up to heaven after their Lord's ascension. In the same, too, did the angel appear to Cornelius, and when the son who had wasted his substance had returned to his father, he was clothed in the best robe, as a symbol of joy and festivity. (Daniel 7:9; Matthew 17:2; 28:3; Mark 16:5; Acts 1:10; 10:30; Luke 15:22.)
Again, If the souls of the dead cried aloud, they were not sleeping. When, then; did that drowsiness overtake them? Let no one here obtrude the expression that "the blood of Abel cried for vengeance!" I am perfectly ready to admit that when blood has been shed, it is an ordinary figure to represent it as calling aloud for vengeance. In this passage, however, it is certain that the feeling of the martyrs is represented to us by crying, because their desire is expressed and their petition described without any figure, "How long, O Lord, dost thou not avenge?" etc. Accordingly, in the same book John has described a twofold Resurrection as well as a twofold death; namely, one of the soul before judgment, and another when the body will be raised up, and when the soul also will be raised up to glory. "Blessed," says he, "are those who have part in the first Resurrection; on them the second death takes no effect." (Revelation 20:6.) Well, then, may you be afraid who refuse to acknowledge that first Resurrection, which, however, is the only entrance to beatific glory.
One of the most fatal blows to the dogma of these men is the answer which was given to the thief who implored mercy. He prayed, "Lord, remember me when thou comest to thy kingdom;" and he hears the reply, "Today shalt thou be with me in paradise." (Luke 22:42.) He who is everywhere, promises that he will be present with the thief. And he promises paradise, because he who thus enjoys God has fulness of delight. Nor does he put him off for a long series of days. He calls him to the joys of his kingdom on that very day! They endeavor to evade the force of our Savior's expression by a paltry quibble. They say, "One day is with him as a thousand years." (2 Peter 3:8.) But they remember not that God in speaking to man, accommodates himself to human sense. They are not told that in Scripture one day is used for a thousand years. Who would listen to the expounder, who, on being told that God would do something today, should immediately explain it as meaning thousands of years? When Jonah declared to the Ninevites,
"Forty days and Nineveh shall be destroyed,"
(Jonah 3:4,)
might they have waited securely for the future judgment, as not to be inflicted till forty thousand years should have elapsed? It was not in this sense Peter said, that in the sight of God a thousand years were as one day; but when some false prophets counted days and hours for the purpose of charging God with falsehood in not fulfilling His promises, the moment they wished for it, he reminds them that with God is eternity, compared with which a thousand years are scarcely a single moment.
Feeling themselves completely entangled, they maintain that in Scripture Today means the duration of the New, and Yesterday the duration of the Old Testament! To this meaning they wrest the passage, (Hebrews 13:8,) "Jesus Christ, yesterday, and today, the same for ever." Here they are totally in error. For, if he was only Yesterday, then not being before the commencement of the Old Testament, he might at one time have begun to be! Where then will be Jesus, the eternal God, in respect of humanity, even the first-born of every creature, and the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world? (Colossians 1:15; Revelation 13:8.) Again, if Today means the time which intervenes between the incarnation of Christ and the day of judgment, we hold that paradise will be enjoyed by the thief previous to the period at which they say that souls are awakened out of sleep! Thus, then, they will be forced to confess that the promise given to the thief was fulfilled before the judgment, though they at the same time insist that it was not to be fulfilled till after the judgment. But if they confine the expression to the time which follows the judgment, why does the author of the Epistle add "For ever?" And to make their darkness visible, if Christ referred in that promise to the period of judgment, he ought not to have said, Today, but at a future age; just as Isaiah, when he wished to express the mystery of the Resurrection, called Christ "the Father of the future age." (Isaiah 9:6.)
But since the Apostle used the expression, "Yesterday, today, and for ever," for what we are accustomed to express by "Was, is, and shall be" - the three tenses being with us equivalent to eternity - what more do they by their quibble than pervert the Apostle's meaning? That the term Yesterday is used to comprehend an eternal duration may be distinctly learned from the Prophet, who writes, (Isaiah 30:33) "Tophet has been ordained for the wicked from the time of yesterday," while we know from the words of Christ that fire has been prepared from eternity for the devil and his angels. (Matthew 25:41.) All of them who have any judgment or sound mind, here see that they have no means left by which they can elude the truth made thus manifest. Still, however, they continue to cavil and say, that paradise was promised to the thief on that day, just as death was denounced to our first parents on the day on which they should taste of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Were we to grant this, we can still force them to admit that the robber on that day was restored from the misery into which Adam fell on the day on which he transgressed the law that had been laid upon him. Moreover, when I shall by and bye discourse of death, I shall make it abundantly plain, if I mistake not, how our parents did die on the day on which they rebelled against God.
Let me now direct my discourse to those who with a pure conscience, remembering the promises of God, acquiesce in them. Brethren, let no man rob you of this faith, though all the gates of hell should resist, since you have the assurance of God, who cannot deny his truth! There is not the least obscurity in his language to the Church, while still a pilgrim on the earth:
"You shall no more have the sun to shine by day,
nor shall the moon illumine you by her brightness,
for the Lord shall be your everlasting light." (Isaiah
60:19.)
Here if they, after their usual custom, refer us to the last resurrection, it will be easy to refute the absurdity from individual expressions of the chapter, in which the Lord at one time promises his Messiah, and at another promises to admit the Gentiles to alliance, etc. Let us ever call to mind what the Spirit hath taught by the mouth of David, (Psalm 92:13) "The just shall flourish like the palm-tree, he shall be multiplied like the cedar on Lebanon. Those who have been planted in the house of the Lord will flourish in the courts of our God, they will still bud forth in their old age, they will be fat and flourishing."
Be not alarmed because all the powers of nature are thought to fail at the very time when you hear of a budding and flourishing old age. Reflecting with yourselves on these things, let your souls, in unison with David's, exclaim, (Psalm 103:5,) "O my soul, bless the Lord, who satisfieth thy mouth with good: thy youth shall be renewed like the eagle's." Leave the rest to the Lord, who guards our entrance and our exit from this time forth even for evermore. He it is who sendeth the early and the latter rain upon his elect. Of him we have been told, "Our God is the God of salvation," and "to the Lord our God belong the issues of death." Christ expounded this goodness of the Father to us when he said, "Father, with regard to those whom thou hast given me, I will that where I am they also may be with me, that they may behold my glory which thou hast given me." (Psalm 121:8; Joel 2:23; Psalm 68:20; John 17:24.)
The faith thus sustained by all prophecies, evangelical truth, and Christ himself, let us hold fast - the faith that our spirit is the image of God, like whom it lives, understands, and is eternal. As long as it is in the body it exerts its own powers; but when it quits this prisonhouse it returns to God, whose presence, it meanwhile enjoys while it rests in the hope of a blessed Resurrection. This rest is its paradise. On the other hand, the spirit of the reprobate, while it waits for the dreadful judgment, is tortured by that anticipation, which the Apostle for that reason calls fobera,n, (fearful.) To inquire beyond this is to plunge into the abyss of the Divine mysteries. It is enough to have learned what the Spirit, our best Teacher, deemed it sufficient to have taught. His words are,
"Hear me, and your soul shall live." (Isaiah 4:8.)
How wisely, in opposition to the vanity and arrogance of those men, was it said, "The souls of the righteous are in the hands of God, and the pangs of death will not touch them. To the eyes of the foolish they seemed to die, but they are in peace," etc. This is the end of our wisdom, which, while it is sober and subject to God, at the same time knows, that those who aspire higher only procure a fall.
Let us now examine the cradle in which they rock souls asleep, and let us dispose of the soporiferous draught which they give them to drink. They carry about with them some passages of Scripture which seem to favor that SLEEP, and then, as if the fact of sleeping were clearly proved, fulminate against those who do not instantly subscribe to their error. They insist, first, That God did not infuse into man any other soul than that which is common to him with the brutes; for Scripture ascribes the same "living soul" to all alike; as where it is said,
"God created the great whales and every living
soul." (Genesis 2:21.)
Again,
"To each of all flesh in which was the breath of
life," (Genesis 7:15)
and other things to the same effect. And it is said, that even had the Sacred Writings elsewhere made no mention of the matter, we are distinctly reminded by the Apostle, (1 Corinthians 15:42,) that that living soul differs in no respect from the present life with which the body vegetates, when he says, "It is sown in corruption, it will rise in incorruption; it is sown in weakness, it will rise in power; it is sown an animal, it will rise a spiritual body; as it is written, The first Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam a quickening spirit."
I admit that a living soul is repeatedly attributed to the brutes, because they, too, have their own life; but they live after one way, man after another. Man has a living soul by which he knows and understands; they have a living soul which gives their body sense and motion. Seeing, then, that the soul of man possesses reason, intellect, and will - qualities which are not annexed to the body - it is not wonderful that it subsists without the body, and does not perish like the brutes, which have nothing more than their bodily senses. Hence Paul was not ashamed to adopt the expression of a heathen poet, and call us the offspring of God. (Acts 17:28.) Let them, then, if they will, make a living soul common to man and to the brutes, since in so far as the body is concerned they have all the same life, but let them not employ this as an argument for confounding the soul of man with the brutes.
Nor let them obtrude upon me the Apostle's expression, which is more with me than against me. He says,
"The first Adam was a living soul, the last Adam a
quickening spirit." (1 Corinthians 15:45.)
His answer here corresponds to the question of those who could not be persuaded of the Resurrection. They objected, How will the dead rise again? With what body will they come? The Apostle, to meet this objection, thus addresses them: If we learn by experience that the seed, which lives, grows, and yields fruit, has previously died, why may not the body after it has died rise again like a seed? And if dry and bare grain, after it has died, produces more abundant increase, by a wondrous virtue which God has implanted in it, why may not the body, by the same divine power, be raised better than it died? And that you may not wonder at this: How is it that man lives, but just because he was formed a living soul? This soul, however, though for a time it actuates and sustains the bodily mass, does not impart to it immortality or incorruption, and as long even as it exerts its own energy; it is not sufficient by itself, without the auxiliaries of food, drink, sleep, which are the signs of corruption; nor does it maintain it in a constant and uniform state without being subject to various kinds of inclinations. But when Christ shall have received us into his own glory, not only will the animal body be quickened by the soul, but made spiritual in a manner which our mind can neither comprehend nor our tongue express. (See Tertullian and August., Ep. 3, ad Fortunat.) You see, then, that in the Resurrection we shall be not a different thing, but a different person, (pardon the expression.) These things have been said of the body, to which the soul ministers life under the elements of this world; but when the fashion of this world shall have passed away, participation in the glory of God will exalt it above nature.
We now have the genuine meaning of the Apostle's expression. Augustine, having once erred in expounding it, as those men now do, afterwards acknowledged his error, and inserted it among his Retractations. In another place he treats the whole subject with the greatest distinctness. (Retract., c. 10, Ep. 146, Consentio.) I will make a few extracts: - "The soul indeed lives in an animal body, but does not quicken it so as to take away corruption; but when, in a spiritual body, adhering perfectly to the Lord, one spirit is formed, it so quickens it as to make it a spiritual body, consuming all corruption, fearing no separation." In short, were I to grant them all they ask in regard to a living soul, (on which expression, as I have already said, I do not found much,) yet that seat of the image of God always remains safe, whether they call it "soul" or "spirit," or give it any other name.
It is not more difficult to refute their Objection taken from Ezekiel 37:9, where the Prophet, making a kind of supposititious Resurrection, calls a spirit from the four winds to breathe upon the dry bones. From this they think themselves entitled to infer, that the soul of man is nothing else than the power and faculty of motion without substance - a power and faculty which may become evanescent at death, and be again gathered together at the Resurrection. As if I might not in the same way infer that the Spirit of God is either wind or evanescent motion, seeing that Ezekiel himself, in his first vision, uses the term "wind" for the eternal Spirit of God! But to any man not altogether stupid it is easy to give the solution, though these good folks, from dulness or ignorance, observe it not. In both passages we see examples of what is ever and anon occurring in the Prophets, who figure spiritual things too high for human sense by corporeal and visible symbols. Accordingly, when Ezekiel wished to give a distinct and, as it were, bodily representation of the Spirit of God and the spirit of man - a thing altogether impossible in regard to a spiritual nature - he borrowed a similitude from corporeal objects to serve as a kind of image.
Their second Objection is, That the Soul, though endowed with immortality, lapsed into sin, and thereby sunk and destroyed its immortality. This was the appointed punishment for sin as denounced to our first parents - "Dying ye shall die." (Genesis 2:17.) And Paul says, "The wages of sin is death." (Romans 6:23.) And the Prophet exclaims, that "The soul that sinneth shall die." (Ezekiel 18:4.) They quote other similar passages. But I ask, first, Whether the same wages of sin were not paid to the Devil? - and yet his death was not such as to prevent him from being always awake, going about seeking whom he may devour, and working in the children of disobedience. I ask, secondly, Whether or not there is to be any end to that death? If none, as we must certainly acknowledge, then, although dead, they shall still feel eternal fire and the worm which dieth not. These things make it manifest that the immortality of the soul, which we assert, and which we say consists in a perception of good and evil, exists even when it is dead, and that that death is something else than the annihilation to which they would reduce it.
Nor are the Scriptures silent on this point, could they bring their mind to submit their own views to Scripture, instead of arrogantly affirming whatever their dark and drowsy brains may dictate. When God pronounces this sentence against man as a sinner, "Dust thou art, and to dust shalt thou return," does he say more than that that which has been taken from the earth shall return to the earth? Whither then does the soul go? Does it descend into the tomb, to rottenness and corruption? These points will be considered more fully by and bye. But now, why do they quibble? We have heard that that which is of the earth is to be returned to the earth. Why do we plunge the spirit of man under the earth? He says not that man will return to the earth, but that he who is dust will return to dust. But dust is that which was formed out of clay. It returns to dust, but not the spirit, which God derived from another quarter, and gave to man. Accordingly, we read in the book of Job,
"Remember how thou hast made me of clay, and
will reduce me to dust." (Job 10:9.)
This is said of the body. A little after he adds,
"Life and mercy hast thou given me, and thy visitation has preserved my spirit." (Job 10:12.)
That life, then, was not to return to dust.
THE DEATH OF THE SOUL is very different. It is the judgment of God, the weight of which the wretched soul cannot bear without being wholly confounded, crushed, and desperate, as both the Scriptures teach us, and experience has taught those whom God has once smitten with his terrors. To begin with Adam, who first received the fatal wages, What do we think his feelings must have been when he heard the dreadful question, "Adam, where art thou?" It is easier to imagine than to express it, though imagination must fall far short of the reality. As the sublime majesty of God cannot be expressed in words, so neither can his dreadful anger on those on whom he inflicts it be expressed. They see the power of the Almighty actually present: to escape it, they would plunge themselves into a thousand abysses; but escape they cannot. Who does not confess that this is very death? Here I again say that they have no need of words who have at any time felt the stings of conscience; and let those who have not felt them only listen to the Scriptures, in which "our God" is described as "a consuming fire," and as slaying when he speaks in judgment. Such they knew him to be, who said, (Exodus 20:19; Deuteronomy 18:16,) "Let not the Lord speak to us, lest we die!"
Would you know what the death of the soul is? It is to be without God - to be abandoned by God, and left to itself: for if God is its life, it loses its life when it loses the presence of God. That which has been said in general may be shown in particular parts. If without God, there are no rays to illumine our night, surely the soul, buried in its own darkness, is blind. It is also dumb, not being able to confess unto salvation what it has believed unto righteousness. It is deaf, not hearing that living voice. It is lame, nay, unable to support itself, having none to whom it can say, "Thou hast held my right hand, and conducted me in thy will." In short, it performs no one function of life. For thus speaks the Prophet, when he would shew that the fountain of life is with God, (Baruch 3:14) - "Learn where there is prudence, where there is virtue, where there is understanding, where there is length of life and food, where there is light to the eyes and peace."
What more do you require for death? But, not to stop here, let us consider with ourselves what life Christ hath brought us, and then we shall understand what the death is from which he hath redeemed us. We are taught both by the Apostle, when he says,
"Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ will give thee light." (Ephesians
5:14.)
Here it is not asses he addresses, but those who, entangled in sin, carry death and hell along with them. Again,
"You, when you were dead in sins, hath he quickened together in Christ, forgiving you all
trespasses." (Ephesians 2:1.)
Accordingly, as the Apostle says, that "we die to sin," when concupiscence is extinguished in us, so we also die to God when we become subject to concupiscence living in us. (Colossians 2:13; Romans 6:2.) Nay, (to comprehend in one word what he says of the widow living in pleasure,) "while living we are dead;" in other words, we are undying in regard to death. (1 Timothy 5:6.) For although the mind retains its power of perception, yet evil concupiscence is, as it were, a kind of mental stupefaction.
Then, such death as the soul endures Christ underwent on our account; for all which the prophecies promised concerning his victory over death he performed by his death. The prophets declared, "He will overthrow death for ever." Again, "I will be thy death, O death! thy devourer, O hell!" (Isaiah 15:8; Hosea 13:14.) The Apostles proclaim the accomplishment of these things, "He hath indeed destroyed death, and illumined life by the gospel." (Colossians 2) And again,
"If, by the fault of one, death reigned by one, much
more shall those who have received exuberance of
grace reign through life in Christ." (Romans 5:17.)
Let them, if they can, resist these passages, which are not so much words as flashes of lightning!
When they say, what we indeed admit, that death is from Adam - death, however, not as they feign, but such as we have lately shewn to be applicable to the soul - we, on the other hand, say that life is from Christ, and this they cannot deny. The whole controversy turns on a comparison between Adam and Christ. They must necessarily concede to the Apostle not only that everything which had fallen in Adam is renewed in Christ, but inasmuch as the power of grace was stronger than that of sin, so much has Christ been more powerful in restoring than Adam in destroying: for he distinctly declares that the gift is not as the sin, but is much more exuberant, not indeed by including a greater number of individuals, but by bestowing richer blessings on those whom it includes. Let them say, if they will, that it was exuberant, not by giving more abundant life, but by effacing many sins, seeing that the one sin of Adam had plunged us into ruin. I ask no more.
Again, when he elsewhere says, that "the sting of death was sin," (1 Corinthians 15:56,) how can death longer sting us, when its sting has been blunted, nay, destroyed? The whole scope of several chapters in the Epistle to the Romans is to make it manifest that sin is completely abolished so as no longer to have dominion over believers. Then, if the strength of sin is the law, what else do they, when they slay those who live in Christ, than subject them to the curse of the law from which they had been delivered? Hence the Apostle confidently declares, (Romans 8:1,) that "there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." On those whom the Apostle thus frees from all condemnation, they pronounce the severest of all sentences, "Dying, ye shall die!" Where is grace, if death still reigns among the elect of God? Sin, as the Apostle says, indeed reigned unto death, but grace reigns unto eternal life, and, overcoming sin, leaves no place for death. Therefore, as death reigned on entering by Adam, so now life reigns by Jesus Christ. And we know that
"Christ, being raised from the dead, dies no more:
death shall no longer have dominion over him: For
in that he died, he died unto sin once; but in that
he lives, he lives unto God." (Romans 6:9.)
Here we may see how they themselves give their heresy its deathblow! When they say that "death is the punishment of sin," they at the same time imply that man, if he had not fallen, would have been immortal. What he began to be, he once was not; and what he is by punishment, he is not by nature. Then the Apostle exclaims that sin is absorbed by grace, so that it can no longer have any power over the elect of God; and hence we conclude that the elect now are such as Adam was before his sin; and as he was created inexterminable, so now have those become who have been renewed by Christ to a better nature. There is nothing at variance with this in the Apostle's declaration, (1 Corinthians 15:54,) "The word shall be accomplished, (fiet:) death has been swallowed up in victory," since no man can deny that the term fiet (shall be done) is synonymous with implebitur (shall be fulfilled.) That shall be fulfilled in the body which has now been begun in the soul; or rather, that which has only been begun in the soul will be fulfilled both in the soul and the body: for this common death which we all undergo, as it were by a common necessity of nature, is rather to the elect a kind of passage to the highest degree of immortality, than either an evil or a punishment, and, as Augustine says, (De Discrimine Vitae Human. et Brut., c. 43,) is nothing else than the falling off of the flesh, which does not consume the things connected with it, but divides them, seeing it restores each to its original.
Their third Argument is, That those who have died are in many places said to SLEEP, as in the case of Stephen, "He fell asleep in the Lord;" again, "Our Lazarus sleepeth;" again, "Be not anxious about them who are asleep." (Acts 7:60; John 11:11; 1 Thessalonians 4:13.) The same occurs so often in the books of Kings, that there is scarcely an expression which is more familiar. But the passage on which they most strenuously insist is taken from the book of Job:
"A tree has hope: if it is cut down it grows green
again, and its branches bud forth, etc.; but when
man has died and been laid bare and consumed,
where is he? As when the waters of the sea recede,
and the channel left empty becomes dry, so man
when he has fallen asleep will not rise nor be
awakened out of his sleep till the heavens be
crushed." (Job 14:7-12.)
But if you hold that souls sleep because death is called sleeping, then the soul of Christ must have been seized with the same sleep: for David thus speaks in his name, (Psalm 3:6,) "I laid me down and slept; I rose up, for the Lord sustained me." And he hears his enemies in insult exclaiming, (Psalm 41:9,) "Will he who sleeps rise again?" But if, as has been more fully discussed, nothing so mean and abject is to be imagined in regard to the soul of Christ, no man can doubt that the Scripture referred merely to the external composition of the body, and described it as sleep from so appearing to man. The two expressions are used indiscriminately, "he slept with his fathers," "he was laid with his fathers" - although no man's soul is laid with the soul of his fathers when his body is carried to their tomb. In the same sense, I think this sleep is attributed to impious kings, in the books of Kings and Chronicles.
When you hear that the wicked man sleeps, do you think of a sleep of his soul? It cannot have a worse executioner to torment it than an evil conscience. How can there be sleep amid such anguish? "The wicked are like the tempestuous sea which cannot rest, and whose waves cast up mire and dirt.
"There is no peace to the wicked, saith the Lord." (Isaiah 57:21.)
And yet, when David wished to describe the bitterest pang of conscience, he says, (Psalm 13:4) "Enlighten my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death." The jaws of hell yawn to engulf him, the power of sin tosses him about, and yet he sleeps, nay, sleeps just because he so suffers! Here, too, we must send those back to their rudiments who have not yet learned that by synecdoche the whole is sometimes taken for a part, and sometimes a part for the whole - a figure which is constantly occurring in Scripture. I do not wish the fact to be taken on my word, but. will produce passages to prove it. When Job said,
"Behold I now sleep in the dust, and if ye seek me in the morning I shall not subsist," (Job 7:21,)
did he think that his soul was to be overwhelmed with sleep? His soul was not to be thrown into the dust, and therefore was not to sleep in the dust. When he said in another passage,
"And yet they shall sleep in the dust, and the
worms shall cover them," (Job 21:26) and when David said,
"Like the wounded sleeping in their tombs,"
(Psalm 88:6,)
do you think that they put souls down before worms to be gnawed by them?
To the same effect the Prophet, when describing the future destruction of Nebuchadnezzar says,
"The whole land has rested and been silent, the fir-
trees also and the cedars of Lebanon have rejoiced
over thee; from the time at which thou didst fall
asleep, no one has come up to hew us down."
(Isaiah 14:8.)
A little after he says,
"All the kings of the nations have slept in glory, each man in his place, but thou hast been cast
forth from the tomb." (Isaiah 14:18, 19.)
All these things were said of a dead body, "sleeping," being used as equivalent to lying or being stretched out, as sleepers do when stretched on the ground. This mode of expression might be taught us by profane writers, one of whom says, "When once our short light has set, an everlasting night must be slept ;" and another, "Fool, what is sleep?" and again:, "Let the bones of Naso lie softly." These expressions are used by writers who have many monstrous fictions respecting the lower regions, and describe the many and various feelings by which the shades of the dead are affected, Hence the very name given by the ancients to places destined for sepulture was koimhthrion, ("cemetery," or "sleepingplace.") They did not imagine that dead souls were then laid to rest, but spoke only of the body. I presume that I have now sufficiently disposed of the smoke in which they involved their "Sleep of the Soul," by proving that nowhere in Scripture is the term sleep applied to the soul, when it is used to designate death. We have elsewhere discoursed fully of "The Rest of the Soul."
The fourth Argument which they urge against us, as their most powerful battering ram, is the passage in which Solomon thus writes in his Ecclesiastes, (Ecclesiastes 3:18-21,) "I said in my heart of the children of men that God would prove them to show that they were like the brutes. As man dies, so do they also die. In like manner all things breathe, and man has no more than a beast of burden. All things are subject to vanity, and hasten to one place. Of earth have they been made, and to earth do they equally return. Who knows whether the spirit of the sons of Adam ascends upwards, and the spirit of beasts descends downwards?"