actually to succeed death. Such are the words of our Lord to the penitent thief upon the cross 104, Stephen's dying petition 105, the comparisons which the Apostle Paul makes in different places 106, between the enjoyment which true Christians can attain by their continuance in this world, and that which they enter on at their departure out of it, and several other passages. Let the words referred to be read by any judicious person, either in the original, or in the common translation, which is sufficiently exact for this purpose; and let him, setting aside all theory or system, say candidly, whether they would not be understood, by the gross of mankind, as presupposing that the soul may, and will, exist separately from the body, and be susceptible of happiness or misery in that state. If any thing could add to the native evidence of the expressions, it would be the unnatural meanings that are put upon them, in order to disguise that evidence. What shall we say of the metaphysical distinction introduced, for this purpose, between absolute, and relative, time? The Apostle Paul, they are sensible, speaks of the saints as admitted to enjoyment, in the presence of God, immediately after death. Now, to palliate the direct contradiction there is in this to their doctrine, that the vital principle, which is all they mean by the soul, remains extinguished between death and the resurrection, they remind us of 105 Acts, vii, 59. 106 2 Cor. v. 6, &c. Philip. i. 21, &c.

104 Luke, xxiii. 43.

the difference there is between absolute or real, and relative or apparent, time. They admit that, if the Apostle be understood as speaking of real time, what is said flatly contradicts their system; but, say they, his words must be interpreted as spoken, only of apparent time. He talks indeed of entering on a state of enjoyment, immediately after death, though there

may be many thousands of years between the

one and the other; for, he means only, that when that state shall commence, however distant in reality the time may be, the person entering on it will not be sensible of that distance, and consequently there will be to him an apparent coincidence with the moment of his death. But, does the Apostle any where hint that this is his meaning? or, is it what any man would naturally discover from his words? That it is exceedingly remote from the common use of language, I believe hardly any of those who favour this scheme, will be partial enough to deny. Did the sacred penmen then mean to put a cheat upon the world, and, by the help of an equivocal expression, to flatter men with the hope of entering, the instant they expire, on a state of felicity; when, in fact, they knew that it would be many ages before it would take place? But, were the hypothesis about the extinction of the mind between death and the resurrection well founded, the apparent coincidence they speak of, is not so clear as they seem to think it. For my part, I cannot regard it as an axiom, and I never heard of any who attempted to demonstrate it. To me it appears merely a corollary from

Mr. Locke's doctrine, which derives our conceptions of time from the succession of our ideas, which, whether true or false, is a doctrine to be found only among certain philosophers, and which, we may reasonably believe, never came into the heads of those to whom the gospel, in the apostolic age, was announced.

I remark, thirdly, that even the curious equivocation, (or, perhaps more properly, mental reservation,) that has been devised for them, will not, in every case, save the credit of apostolical veracity. The words of Paul to the Corinthians are, Knowing, that whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord; again, We are willing rather to be absent from the body, and present with the Lord. Could such expressions have been used by him, if he had held it impossible to be with the Lord, or indeed any where, without the body; and that, whatever the change was which was made by death, he could not be in the presence of the Lord, till he returned to the body? Absence from the body, and presence with the Lord, were never, therefore, more unfortunately combined, than in this illustration. Things are combined here as coincident, which, on the hypothesis of those gentlemen, are incompatible. If recourse be had to the original, the expressions in Greek are, if possible, still stronger. They are, Οι ενδημόντες εν τω σωματι, those who dwell in the body, who are εκδημεντες απο το Κυριs, at a distance from the Lord; as, on the contrary, they are, δι εκδημώντες εκ τ8 σώματος, those who have travelled

out of the body, who are οι ενδημοντες προς τον Kupiov, those who reside, or are present with the Lord. In the passage to the Philippians also, the commencement of his presence with the Lord is represented as coincident, not with his return to the body, but with his leaving it, with the dissolution, not with the restoration, of the union.

The fourth, and only other remark I shall make, on this subject, is, that from the tenor of the New Testament, the sacred writers appear to proceed on the supposition, that the soul and the body are naturally distinct and separable, and that the soul is susceptible of pain or pleasure in a state of separation. It were endless to enumerate all the places which evince this. The story of the rich man and Lazarus 107 the last words of our Lord upon the cross 108, and of Stephen when dying; Paul's doubts whether he was in the body or out of the body, when he was translated to the third heaven, and paradise 109; our Lord's words to Thomas, to satisfy him that he was not a spirit 10; and to conclude, the express mention of the denial of spirits, as one of the errors of the Sadducees"; For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit; unde αγγελον, μηδε πνευμα. All these are irrefragable evidences of the general opinion, on this subject, of both Jews and Christians. By spirit, as distinguished from angel, is evidently meant the departed spirit

107 Luke, xvi. 22, 23. xii. 2, 3, 4.

108 Luke, xxiii. 46.

110 Luke, xxiv. 39.

111

109 2 Cor.

Acts, xxiii. 8.

of a human being; for, that man is here, before his natural death, possessed of a vital and intelligent principle, which is commonly called his soul or spirit, it was never pretended that the Sadducees denied. It has been said, that this manner of expressing themselves has been adopted by the Apostles and Evangelists, merely in conformity to vulgar notions. To me it appears a conformity, which (if the sacred writers entertained the sentiments of our antagonists, on this article) is hardly reconcilable to the known simplicity and integrity of their character. It savours much more of the pious frauds, which became common afterwards, to which I own myself unwilling to ascribe so ancient and so respectable an origin. See Part I. of this Dissertation, § 10.

§ 24. I SHALL Subjoin a few words on the manner wherein the distinction has been preserved between hades and gehenna by the translators of the New Testament; for, as I observed before, gehenna, as a name for the place of future punishment, does not occur in the Old. All the Latin translations I have seen, observe the distinction. All without exception adopt the word gehenna, though they do not all uniformly translate hades. Both the Geneva French, and Diodati, have followed the same method. Luther, on the contrary, in his German version, has uniformly confounded them, rendering both by the word holle. The English translators have taken the same method, and rendered both the Greek names by the word hell, except in one sin