into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.

In the day of which dreadful judgment God shew mercy to us all, through Jesus Christ our Saviour.

To whom with the Father, and the Holy Ghost, be given all honour and glory, adoration and worship, now and for evermore. Amen.

SERMON III.

CONCERNING THE MIDDLE STATE OF HAPPINESS OR MISERY, ALLOTTED BY GOD TO EVERY MAN PRESENTLY AFTER DEATH, ACCORDING AS HE HAS BEEN GOOD OR BAD IN HIS PAST LIFE, INCONSISTENT WITH THE POPISH DOCTRINE OF PURGATORY.

ACTS i. 25.

That he might go to his own place.

IN my former discourse on this text, having

gathered two propositions from it, I fully despatched the first of them, concerning the subsistence and permanence of man's soul after the death of his body. I am now to proceed (with God's assistance) to the other proposition or observation, which was this:

Observ. 2. The soul of every man presently after death hath its proper place and state allotted by God, either of happiness or misery, according as the man hath been good or bad in his past life.

For the text tells us, that the soul of Judas, immediately after his death, had not only a place to be in, but also Tòv TÓTOV Tòv idov, his own proper place, a place fit for so horrid a betrayer of his most gracious Lord and Master. And I have shewn you, that the apostolic writers were wont to express the different place and state of good and bad men presently after death by this and the like phrases, that

they went to their own proper, due, or appointed places; that is, to plaçes agreeable to their respective qualities, the good to a place of happiness, the wicked to a place and state of misery. If there were one common receptacle for all departed souls, good and bad, (as some have imagined,) Judas could not be said presently after death to go to his own proper place, nor Peter to his; but the same place would contain them both but Judas hath his proper place, and Peter his. And here what avails the difference of place, unless we allow also a difference of state and condition? If the joys of paradise were in hell, hell would be paradise: and if the torments of hell were in paradise, paradise would be hell: Judas therefore is in misery, and Peter in happiness. And what happiness or misery can be there, where there is no sense of either? If presently after death, one common gulph of insensibility and oblivion swallowed up the souls of good and bad alike, the state of Judas and Peter would be the same. The result of all which is manifestly this, that the souls of men do not only subsist and remain after the death of their bodies, but also live and are sensible of pain or pleasure in that separate state; the wicked being tormented at present with a piercing remorse of conscience, (that sleepy lion being now fully awakened,) and expecting a far more dreadful vengeance yet to fall on them; and on the other side, the good being refreshed with the peace of a good conscience, (now immutably settled,) and with unspeakable comforts of God, and yet joyfully waiting for a greater happiness at the resurrection. And to prove this more fully will be my business at this time. Indeed I have been constrained occasionally to intermix some

what of this argument in my former discourse on this text: but it is a subject worthy of a distinct and more copious handling.

There are some who grant, that the soul of man is a distinct substance from his body, and doth subsist after the death thereof; but yet they dream, that the soul in the state of separation, is as it were in a sleep, a lethargy, a state of insensibility, having no perception at all, either of joy or sorrow, happiness or misery. An odd opinion, which seems altogether inconsistent with itself. For how can the soul subsist and remain a soul, without sense and perception? For, as Tertullian somewhere truly saith, vita animæ est sensus, "the life of the soul "is perception." Wherefore, to say an insensible soul, seems a contradiction in terms. It is true, whilst our souls are confined to these bodies, they can have no distinct perception of things without the help of fancy and those corporeal ideas, and, as it were, images of things impressed on it, which being seated in the body, must necessarily die and perish with it. But yet even now we find, that the soul being first helped by imagination, may at length arrive to a perception of some most certain conclusions, which are beyond the reach of imagination. We may understand more than we can imagine; that is, we may by reason certainly collect, that there are some things really existing, whereof we can frame no idea or phantasm in our imaginations. Thus, I am most certain, that there is a Being eternal, that hath no beginning of existence, though I can never be able to imagine a thing, without attributing some beginning of existence to it. A phantasm of eternity I can never have; but that

there is something eternal, I say, I can thus by reasoning demonstrate. Either there is something eternal, that had no beginning, or else it will necessarily follow, that there was a time or space (let it be never so many millions of ages ago, it matters not) when nothing existed. If every being whatsoever had a beginning, before which it was not, then there was a space or time (I may have leave to call it so, for want of a fitter word) when no being at all was. He is a man of a desperately lost understanding, that doth not clearly perceive the evidence of this consequence. Now if ever there was a time when nothing at all was, then nothing ever could have been; for by nothing, nothing could be produced. But we are sure that we ourselves exist, and many other beings; therefore there is an eternal Being, that had no beginning of existence, and by which all other beings that are not eternal do exist. After the same manner we can demonstrate divers other propositions, which are beyond the comprehension of our imagination. We have therefore a faculty or power within us superior to imagination; and of this we affirm, that it shall still remain, act, and operate, even when this grosser imagination of ours ceaseth, and is extinguished.

If it be inquired, in what way the soul perceives, when out of the body, whether by the help of some new subtiler organs and instruments fitted to its present state, which either by its own native power given in its creation it forms to itself, or by a special act of the divine power it is supplied with, or whether without them; I must answer with St. Paul in a like case, 2 Cor. xii. 2. I cannot tell; God knowetha.

3 Οὐκ οἶδα, ὁ Θεὸς οἶδεν.