Thus the foul, in its state of feparation, is represented to us as wounded in its powers, and operations, to that degree, which feems to extinguish the very nature of it. But,

Solut. 1. We deny that the foul knows nothing now but by phantafms, and images; for it knows itself, its own nature and powers, of which it cannot poffibly feign, or form any image or reprefentation. What form, shape, or figure, can the fancy of a man caft his own foul into, to help him to understand its nature?

And what fhall we fay of its understanding during an extafy, or rapture? Doth the foul know nothing at fuch a time? Doth a dull torpor feize and benumb its intellectual powers? No, no, the understanding is never more bright, clear, apprehenfive, and perfect, than when the body, in an extafy, is laid aside, as to any ufe or affiftance of the mind: The foul for that space uses not the body's affiftance, as the very words extafy and rapture convince us.

2. To understand by fpecies, doth not agree to the foul naturally and neceffarily, but by accident, as it is now in union with the body: Were it but once loofed from the body, it would understand better without them, than ever it did in the body by them. A man that is on horseback, must move according to the motion of the horfe he rids; but if he were on foot, he then uses his own proper motion as he pleaseth; fo here. But though we grant the foul doth in many cafes now make use of phantafms, and that the agitation of the fpirits, which are in the brain and heart, are conjunct with its acts of cogitation and intellection: Yet, as a fearching † fcholar well obferves, the fpits are rather subjects than inftruments of thofe actions; and the whole effence of those acts is antecedent to the motion of the fpirits As when we ufe a pen in writing, or a knife in cutting, there is an operation of the foul upon them, before there can be any operation of the foul upon them, before there can be any

:

The understanding contemplates objects incorporeal and immaterial, fuch as God and intelligent beings. But thefe by no means affect the phantafy, for they are beyond the reach of corporeal powConimb on the foul. l. 3. c. 8. q. 8.

ers.

For if this belongs not to the nature of the foul, but by accident agrees to it, namely from this, that it is tied to the body, as the Platonifts affirm, then the queftion is eafily folved. For the foul being loofed from the body, will return to its own nature. p. I. 2. 8. Art. 1.

Howe's Blefedness. p. 174, 175.

Aquin.

operation by them: They act as they are first acted, and fo do these bodily fpirits. So that to fpeak properly, the body is bettered by the use the foul makes of it in thefe its noble actions; but the foul is not advantaged by being tied to fuch a body; it can do its own work without it; its operations follow its effence, not the body to which it is for a time united.

Upon the whole; it is much more absonous and difficult to conceive a ftupified, benummed, and unactive foul, whofe very nature is to be active, lively, and always in motion, than it is to conceive a foul freed from the fhackles and clogs of the body, acting freely according to its own nature. I wish the favourers of this opinion may take heed, left it carry them farther than they intend, even to a denial of its existence and immortality, and turn them into downright Somatifts or Atheists.

Propofition 6. That the feparated fouls of the just having finifhed all their work of obedience on earth, and the Spirit having finished all his work of fanctification upon them, they afcend to God, with all the habits of Grace inherent in them; and all the comfortable improvements of their graces accompanying and following them.

This propofition is to be opened and confirmed in these four branches.

4.

"There is no

(1.) When a gracious foul is feparated from the body, all its work of obedience in this world is finifhed. Therefore death is called the " finishing of our courfe," Acts xx. 24. "The night when man works no more," John ix. "working in the grave," Eccl. ix. 10. for death diffolves the compofitum, and removes the foul immediately to another world, where it can act for itself only, but not for others, as it was wont to do on earth. "I fhall fee man no more (faith Hezekiah) with the inhabitants of the world," Ifa. xxxviii. 11. That which was faid of David's death, is as true of every Chri. ftian, that "having ferved his generation according to the will "of God, he fell asleep," Acts xiii. 36.

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I do not fay this lower world receives no benefit at all by them after their death? for though they can speak no more, write no more, pray for, and inftruct the inhabitants of this world no more, nor exhibit to them the beauty of religion in any new acts or examples of theirs (which is what I mean by faying they have finished all their work of obedience on earth); yet the benefit of what they did whilft in the body, fill remains after they are gone: As the apostle speaks of Abel, Heb. xi. 4. "Who being dead, yet fpeaketh." This way indeed aVOL. III.

Na

bundance of fervice will be done for the fouls of men upon earth, long after they are gone to heaven. And this fhould greatly quicken us to leave as much as we can behind us, for the good of pofterity, that after our decease (as the apostle speaks, 2 Pet. i. 15.) they may have our words and examples in remem brance. But for any fervice to be done de novo, after death, it is not to be expected: We have accomplished, as a hireling, our day, and have not a stroke more to do.

(2.) As all our work of obedience is then finifhed by us, fo at death all the work of God is finished by his Spirit upon us. The laft hand is then put to all the preparatory work for glory, not a stroke more to be done upon it afterwards; which appears as well by the immediate fucceffion of the life of glory, (whereof I shall speak in another propofition) as by the ceffation of all fanctifying means and inftruments, which are totally laid afide as things of no more ufe after this ftroke is given; Adepto fine, ceffant media, means are useless when the end is attained. There is no work (faith Solomon) in the grave. How fhort foever the foul's ftay and abode in the body was, though it were regenerated one day, and feparate the next, yet all is wrought upon it, which God ever intended fhould be wrought in this world, and there is no preparation-work in the other world.

(3.) But though the foul leave all the means of grace behind it, yet it carries away with it to heaven all those habits of grace which were planted and improved in it in this world, by the bleffing of the Spirit upon those means: Though it leaves the ordinances, it lofeth not the effects and fruits of them; though they ceafe, their effects ftill live. "The truth dwelleth in us, "and fhall be in us for ever," John ii. 17. "The feed of "God remaineth in us," 1 John iii. 9.

Common gifts fail at death; but faving grace flicks fast in the foul, and afcends with it into glory. Gracious habits are infeparable; glory doth not defroy, but perfect them: They are the foul's meetness for heaven, Col. i. 12. and therefore it fhall not come into his prefence, leaving its meetnefs behind it. In vain is all the work of the Spirit upon us in this world, if we carry it not along with us into that world, feeing all his works upon us in this life have a refpect and relation to the life

to came.

Lock, therefore, as the fame natural faculties and powers which the foul bad (though it could not ufe them) in its imperfect body in the womb, came with it into this world, where they freely exerted themselves in the most noble actions of natural life; fo the habits of grace, which, by regeneration, are

here implanted in a weak and imperfect foul, go with it to glory, where they exert themselves in a more high and perfect way. of acting than ever they did here below. The languishing spark of love is there a vehement flame; the faint, remifs and infrequent delight in God, is there at a constant, ravishing and tranfporting height.

(4.) To conclude, As all implanted habits of grace afcend with the fanctified foul to heaven; (for the foul afcends not thither as a natural, but as a new creature) fo all the effects, refults, and fweet improvements of those graces which we gathered as the pleasant fruits of them on earth, thefe accompany and follow the foul into the other world also ; "Their works follow "them," Rev. xiv. 13. They go not before in the notion of merits, to make way for them, but they follow or accompany them as evidences, and comfortable experiences. I doubt not, but the very remembrance of what passed betwixt God and the foul here, betwixt the day of its efpousals to Christ, and its divorce from the body, will be one sweet ingredient in their bleffedness and joy, when they fhall be finging in the upper region the fong of Mofes and of the Lamb. They were never given to be loft, or left behind us. And thus you fee with what a rich cargo the foul fails to the other world, though if it had no other, it would never drop anchor there.

Propofition 7. The fouls of the just when feparated from their bodies, do not warder up and down in this world, nor hover about the fepulchres where their bodies lie; nor are they detained in any purgatory, in order to their more perfect purification; nor do they fall asleep in a benummed stupid ftate: but do forthwith pass into glory, and are immediately with the Lord.

When once the mind of man leaves the fcripture-guidance and direction, which is to it what the compafs or pole-star is to a fhip in the wide ocean, whither will it not wander? In what uncertainties will it not fluctuate? and upon what rocks and quick-fands muft it inevitably be caft? Many have been the foolifh and groundless conceits and fancies of men about the recep tacles of departed fouls.

1. Some have affigned them a restless wandering life, now here, now there, without any certain dwelling-place any where. The only grounds for this fancy, is the frequent apparitious of the ghosts or fpirits of the dead, whereof many inftances are given; and who is there that is a stranger to fuch stories? Now, if departed fouls were fixed any where, this world would be quiet aud free from fuch difturbances.

I make no doubt, but very many of thefe ftories, have been the industrious fictions and devices of wicked and fuperftitious votaries, to gain reputation to their way, fpeaking lies in hypocrify, to draw disciples atter them. And many others have been the tricks and impoftures of Satan himself, to shake the credit of the faints reft in heaven, and the imprisonment of ungodly fouls in hell, as will more fully appear when I come to speak to that queftion more particularly.

2. Others think, when they are loofed from the body at death, they hover about the graves and folitary places where their bodies lie, as willing, feeing they can dwell no longer in them, to abide as near them as they can; juft as the furviving turtle keeps near the place where his mate died, and may be heard mourning for a long time about that part of the wood. This opinion feeks countenance and protection from that law, Deut. xviii. 10, 11. which prohibits men to confult with the dead; of which reftraint there had been no need or ufe, if it had not been practifed; and fuch practices had never been continued, if departed fouls had not frequented thofe places, and given anfwers to their questions. But what I faid before of Satan's impostures, is enough for the prefent to return to this alfo.

3. The Papifts fend them immediately to purgatory, in order to their more thorough purification. This purgatory * Bellarmine thus defcribes: "It is a certain place wherein, as in a "prifon, fouls are purged after this life, that were not fully

purged here, to the intent they may enter pure into heaven "and tho' the church (faith he) hath not defined the place, yet "the schoolmen fay, it is in the bowels of the earth, and upon "the borders of hell." And, to countenance this profitable fable, divers fcriptures are by them abused and mifapplied, as 1 Cor. iii. 15. Matth. v. 25, 26. 1 Pet. iii. 19. All which have been fully rescued out of their hands, and abundantly vindicated by our divines, who have proved, God never kindled that fire to purify fouls; but the Pope to warm his own kitchen.

4. Another fort there are, who affirm, they neither wander about this world, nor go into purgatory, but are caft by death into a swoon or fleep; remaining in a kind of benummed condition, till the refurrection of the body. This was the error of Beryllus; and Irenaeus feems to border too near upon it, when he faith t, "The fouls of difciples fhall go to an invifible place

*Bellarmin lib. 2. de Purg. cap. br

Difcipulorum anime abibunt in invifibilem locum, definitus

eis