Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

with whom their priests converse, from whom they believe themselves to receive courage and success in war, and the productions of the fruits of the earth and, therefore, they are instanced in by some as a nation atheistical, though unjustly, for those spirits which they acknowledge are their gods. However, these very men (as the same Lerius informs us) confess that "the souls of the virtuous," that is, of those who have valiantly defended their country, for this seems to be the chiefest, if not the only virtue, which they admired, "do presently after death fly beyond certain very high mountains, and at last light on most pleasant gardens, where they lead a merry life in perpetual delights and dances and that on the other side, the souls of cowards and degenerate souls go ad stignan, that is, to the devil, and live in torments with him." In a word, I am yet to seek for that nation in the world, among whom the primitive religion, taught by God to the first men, is so utterly corrupted and lost, but that they have still some notion remaining among them of the soul's immortality and permanence after death.

To conclude, therefore, let us firmly adhere to this confessed truth, this great truth, this fundamental truth, not only of our Christian Religion, but of religion in general. Let us take heed of those men who, professing to believe the resurrec

tion promised in the Gospel, do yet deny the subsistence of man's soul in the interval between death and that resurrection. That faith and this denial cannot well stand together; the resurrection of the body necessarily supposing the immortality and permanence of the soul, as I have evidently shewn you. They, therefore, that deny the latter, lay a sure foundation for the denial of the former too, which is the great article of our religion, the subversion whereof renders our whole faith vain, as the apostle tells us, 1 Cor. xv. 16, 17.

But much more are we to beware of those who deny this truth with a direct design to destroy all our hopes or fears of any life to come. Let not the sophistry of these men, who study to shake off their Christianity and the religion of mankind at once, in the least unsettle our persuasion and belief of this established verity. It is here, if any where, certain, that Vox populi (or rather populorum) est vox Dei; the voice of all people and nations, howsoever distant in place, however otherwise differing in religion from each other, yet all here singing the same song, must needs be the voice of God; or at least an echo of that voice, by which God spake to holy men in the infancy of the world, and revealed to them the doctrine of a future life; a voice once so strongly and convincingly uttered, that it went through all the earth, and to the end of the world ;

and there is no speech nor language, no people or nation, where the same voice is not still heard; to allude to the words of the Psalmist, Psal. xix. 3, 4. This was sufficient to arm us against the cavils of those few self-opinionated men, that in every age (especially in this of ours) have made it their business to molest and disturb the common faith of the world. But when we have the consent of nations confirmed by a new divine revelation, a revelation proved to be such by the most undeniable arguments, what madness were it to doubt? Let us not, therefore, give any ear to the voice of the Epicurean, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die;" that is, let us live like beasts, because we are to die as such, 1 Cor. xv. 31. But rather let us resolve to "live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world;" because though as to our bodies we may die to-morrow, and must die shortly, yet our souls are certainly to live and subsist after death, in order to a future doom of happiness or misery. Let us hearken to the wisest of men, Solomon, who having asserted the soul's immortality, "Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it"," presently after, ver. 13, 14, concludes, and his conclusion shall be mine, in these words:

"Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter, Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work 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.

CHAPTER XIII.

BULL.

In his next sermon Bull considers the Doctrine of the Middle State as subversive of the Romanist doctrine of Purgatory. He continues his subject thus:

In my former discourse, having gathered two propositions from it, I fully dispatched 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.

Observation II. 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 Scripture tells us, that the soul of Judas immediately after his death, had not only a place to be in, but also τὸν τόπον τὸν ἴδιον, his own proper

« AnteriorContinuar »