judgment, and then thy misery shall be consummated. "Consider this, ye that forget God, lest he tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver." To shut up all, let us pray and labour that we may never, never be gathered, or come into "the place of Judas," the place and state of reprobate and for ever lost spirits; "from this, good Lord deliver us," that when we die we may go to the region of the godly, to Paradise, to Abraham's bosom, and at the resurrection may sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven. And in order hereunto, let us here thoroughly purge "ourselves from all filthiness, both of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God †," for there is no purgation to be expected in the other life. Yea, let us endeavour to excel in virtue here, that so we may have a more abundant entrance both into the joys of Paradise, and also into the fuller glories of the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. * Psa. 1. 22. 2 Cor. vii. 1. CHAPTER XIII. WATTS. THE following essay, towards the proof of a separate state of souls between death and the resurrection, was written by Dr. Isaac Watts, who, as is well known, was an eminent dissenting minister, a man of extensive learning, and fervent and sincere piety. His first section begins thus : SECTION I. The Introduction or Proposal of the Question, with a distinction of the Persons who oppose it. It is confessed that the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead at the last day, and the everlasting joys and the eternal sorrows that shall succeed it, as they are described in the New Testament, are a very awful sanction to the Gospel of Christ, and carry in them such principles of hope and terror as should effectually discourage vice and irreligion, and become a powerful attractive to the practice of faith and love and universal holiness. But so corrupt and perverse are the inclinations of men in this fallen and degenerate world, and their passions are so much impressed and moved by things that are present or just at hand, that the joys of heaven and the sorrows of hell, when set far beyond death and the grave, at some vast and unknown distance of time, would have but too little influence on their hearts and lives. And though these solemn and important events are never so certain in themselves, yet being looked upon as things a great way off, make too feeble an impression on the conscience, and their distance is much abused to give an indulgence to present sensualities. For this we have the testimony of our blessed Saviour himself. "The evil servant says, my Lord delays his coming; then he begins to smite his fellowservants, and to eat and drink with the drunken *:" and Solomon teaches us the same truth. "Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil t." And even the good servants in this imperfect state, the sons of virtue and piety, may be too much allured to indulge sin * Matt. xxiv. 48. † Eccles. viii. 11. ful negligence, and yield to temptations too easily when the terrors of another world are set so far off, and their hope of happiness is delayed so long. It is granted, indeed, that this sort of reasoning is very unjust; but so foolish are our natures that we are too ready to take up with it, and to grow more remiss in the cause of religion. Whereas if it can be made to appear from the Word of God, that at the moment of death the soul enters into an unchangeable state, according to its character and conduct here on earth, and that the recompences of vice and virtue are in some measure to begin immediately upon the end of our state of trial; and if besides all this there be a glorious and a dreadful resurrection to be expected with eternal pain or eternal pleasure both for soul and body, and that in a more intense degree, when the theatre of this world is shut up, and Christ Jesus appears to pronounce his public judgment on the world, then all those little subterfuges are precluded which mankind would form to themselves from the unknown distance of the day of recompence: virtue will have a nearer and stronger guard placed about it, and piety will be attended with superior motives, if its initial rewards are near at hand, and shall commence as soon as this life expires; and the vicious and profane will be more effectually affrighted if the hour of death must im mediately consign them to a state of perpetual sorrows and bitter anguish of conscience, without hope, and with a fearful expectation of yet greater sorrows and anguish. I know what the opposers of the separate state reply here, viz. that the whole time from death to the resurrection is but as the sleep of a night, and the dead shall awake out of their graves utterly ignorant and insensible of the long distance of time that hath passed since their death. One year or one thousand years will be the same thing to them, and, therefore, they should be as careful to prepare for the day of judgment, and the rewards that attend it, as they are for their entrance into the separate state at death, if there were any such state to receive them. I grant, men should be so in reason and justice, but such is the weakness and folly of our natures, that men will not be so much influenced nor alarmed by distant prospects, nor so solicitous to prepare for an event which they suppose to be so very far off, as they would for the same event, if it commences as soon as ever this mortal life expires. The vicious man will indulge his sensualities, and lie down to sleep in death with this comfort, I shall take my rest here for a hundred or a thousand years, and perhaps in all that space my offences may be forgotten, or something may happen that I |