CHAPTER VIII. BEVERIDGE. DR. WILLIAM BEVERIDGE, Bishop of St. Asaph in 1704, was so eminent for his learning and zeal for Christianity, that he was styled," the great reviver and restorer of primitive piety."—He died in 1707, at the advanced age of seventy-one. Besides many learned works published by himself, there were several published after his death.— Among these were his Private Thoughts on Religion. In this last work we find him speaking thus; after stating the grounds of his belief in a future resurrection of the body. And as I believe my body shall be thus raised from the grave, so I believe the other part of me, my soul, shall never be carried to it; I mean, it shall never die; but shall be as much, yea, more alive when I am dying, than it is now; by so much my soul shall be the more active in itself, by how much it is less tied and subjected to the body. And farther I believe, that as soon as ever my breath is out of my nostrils, my soul shall remove her lodging into the other world; there to live as really to eternity, as I now live here in time. Yea, I am more certain, that my soul shall return to God that gave it, than that my body shall return to the earth out of which I had it. For I know it is possible my body may be made immortal; but I am sure my soul shall never be mortal. I know that at the first the body did equally participate of immortality with the soul; and that had not sin made the divorce, they had lived together like loving mates, to all eternity. And I dare not affirm that Enoch and Elias underwent the common fate; or suppose they did, yet sure I am, the time will come, when thousands of men and women shall not be dissolved and die, but be immediately changed and caught up into heaven, or, to their eternal confusion cast down to hell; whose bodies, therefore, shall undergo no such thing as rotting in the grave, or being eaten up by worms, but, together with their souls, shall immediately launch into the vast ocean of eternity. But whoever yet heard or read of a soul's funeral? Who is it? Where is the man, or what is his name, that wrote the history of her life and death? Can any disease arise in a spiritual substance, wherein there is no such thing as contrariety of principles or qualities to occasion any disorder or distemper? Can an angel be sick and die? And if not an angel, why a soul, which is endowed with the same spiritual nature here, and shall be adorned with the same eternal glory hereafter? No! no! deceive not thyself, my soul! for 'tis more certain that thou shalt always live, than that thy body shall ever die! Not that I think my soul must always live in spite of Omnipotence itself, as if it was not in the power of the Almighty to take my being and existence from me. For I know I am but as a potsherd in the potter's hand; and that it is as easy for him to command my soul out of it's being as out of it's body; and to send me back into my mother "Nothing," out of whose womb he took me, as it was at first to fetch me thence. I know he could do it if he would, but himself hath said, he will not: and therefore I am sure he cannot do it, it being impossible for him to do that which he hath not will to do. And that it is not his will or pleasure ever to annihilate my soul, I have it under his own hand, that my "Dust shall return to the earth as it was, and my spirit to God who gave it." And if it return to God, it is so far from returning to nothing, that it returns to the Being of all beings; and so death to me will be nothing more than going home to my father and mother; my soul goes to my Father, GOD, and my body to my Mother, EARTH. 66 Thus likewise hath it pleased his sacred Majesty to assure me, that "if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens;" so clearly hath the great God brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel." The light of nature shews the soul can never perish or be dissolved, without the immediate interposition of God's Omnipotence; and we have his own Divine Word for it, that He will never use that power for it's dissolution. And therefore I may, with the greatest assurance, affirm and believe, that as really as I now live, so really I shall never die; but that my soul, at the very moment of it's departure from the flesh, shall immediately mount up to the tribunal of the most high God, there to be judged, first, privately by itself (or perhaps with some other souls, that shall be summoned to appear before God at the same moment); and then from these private sessions, I believe, that every soul that ever was, or shall be separated from the body, must either be received into the mansions of heaven, or else sent down to the dungeons of hell, there to remain till the Grand Assizes, the "Judgment of the Great Day, when the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised, incorruptible, and we shall be changed." And when our bodies, by the word of Almighty |