CHAPTER XII.

BULL.

DR. GEORGE BULL was promoted to the See of St. David's in 1705. He may justly be considered one of the bulwarks of our Church. Though well acquainted with most parts of useful learning, he chiefly cultivated divinity, to which he had solemnly dedicated his studies from the moment he threw off certain youthful follies, a considerable time before. he was ordained priest, which yet was at the early age of twenty-one. The object of two of his sermons is to prove "That the soul of man subsists after death, in a place of abode provided by God for it, till the resurrection."

From Acts i. 25. he draws these two observations, which he discusses with great learning and irresistible clearness of argument:

Observation I. The soul of man subsists after death, and when it is dislodged from the body, hath a place of abode provided by God for it, till the. resurrection of the body again.

Observation II. The soul of every man, presently after death, hath its proper place and state allotted by God, of happiness or misery, according as the man hath been good or bad in his past life.

Of these propositions I shall discourse in their order, and the first of them will be as much as I shall be well able to dispatch within the compass of time at present allotted me. The soul of man subsists after death, &c. And this proposition I shall manage so, as to prove it chiefly by testimonies of the Holy Scripture, supposing that I am to deal with men that acknowledge it's divine authority, (as having been many a time sufficiently proved to them) and only question, whether any such doctrine be clearly delivered in it. Of which sort are many professed Christians, who believe a resurrection and a life to come, and yet deny the distinct subsistence of the soul after the death of the body; and whilst the body remains in the state of death, that the soul dies, and is extinguished with the body; and consequently that the resurrection, which we Christians profess to believe in our creed, is of the whole man both soul and body. Out of the abundance of texts of Scripture that refute this error, I shall make choice of some few, that do it most clearly and expressly.

And first, even in the Old Testament we have a full testimony given to this truth, that the soul

subsists after the death of the body, by Solomon, Eccles. xii. 7. where, describing man's death and dissolution, he saith, "Then shall the dust return to the earth, as it was; and the spirit shall return unto God, who gave it." The plain and evident sense of which words is this: whereas man consists of two parts, body and soul, the condition of these two, when a man dies, will be very different; for the body being at first taken out of the dust of the earth, and so of a corruptible constitution, shall go back into the earth again, and moulder into dust, but the soul, as it is of another and more excellent original (as being at first inspired immediately by God himself into the body) shall not perish with the body, but return to that God from whom it came, in whose hands it shall continue safe and inviolate, according to that of the author of the Book of Wisdom, iii. 1. "But the souls of the righteous are in the hands of God, and there shall no torment touch them." For Solomon seems to speak of the end of man according to God's first intention and ordination, which was, that the soul of man, after death, should go to God and the heavenly beings; and not of the accidental event of things, happening through man's sin and wickedness, whereby it comes to pass, that the souls of many men, when they die, instead of going to God, go to the devil and the infernal regions. Though

it is true, also, that the spirit of every man after death, good or bad, in some sense goes to God, either as a father, or as a judge, to be kept somewhere under the custody of his Almighty Power, in order to the receiving of his final sentence at the last judgment, either of happiness or misery. And accordingly the wise man a little after subjoins the article of a future universal judgment, ver. 13, 14.

But if any man yet doubt what Solomon intends here, by the soul's returning to God, and not to the earth with the body, let him consult the third chapter of this Book of Ecclesiastes; where he first declares his thoughts of an impartial judgment of God, that shall happen at a certain determinate time, both to the righteous and the wicked, according to their different works and actions, ver. 17. " I said in mine heart, God shall judge the righteous and the wicked; for there is a time there for every purpose, and for every work." And then in the following verses to the end of the chapter, he expresseth another thought or suggestion, that sometime came into his mind, opposite to the former, or rather he represents the thought of the profane person, viz. That there is no such future judgment, that religion is a vain thing, that there is no difference between the soul of a man and a brute, but that they both perish together with their bodies; and consequently, that it is a man's best

course freely to enjoy what this present life affords him, and that it is a vain thing to expect any better estate in another world. In which discourse he introduceth the Epicurean (if I may be allowed so to call him by an anticipation) thus deriding the notion of the soul's immortality, ver. 21. "Who knoweth the spirit of a man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?" as if he had said, As for the talk of man's soul being immortal, who can demonstrate that problem? Who can discern any sign of difference betwixt the soul of a man and a brute, that shall prove that the one goes upward to the region of permanent and eternal beings, the other downwards, that is, perisheth together with its body, that moulders in the earth. Certainly, hence it is most clear, that the phrase of " man's spirit going upward," signifies, in Solomon's sense, something directly opposite to the condition of the soul of a beast, that dies together with it's body; that is, that it signifies the immortality of man's soul, and it's subsistence after the death of the body. Now what Solomon doth here in the beginning of this Book, question in the person of the Epicurean, whether the spirit of man when he dies, doth thus go upward, he doth clearly in the text before cited, towards the end of the same Book (where he expresseth his own most serious and resolved thoughts)