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no other account than what has been given by Bishop Burnet; viz. that it means the invisible place to which departed souls are carried after their separation from the body, and that the soul of Christ continued there until his resurrection from the dead. With this very general explanation I am the better pleased, that it doth not decide the question between those who maintain, and those who deny, the sleep of the soul* between death and the resur

It is well known, that Dr Law, late Bishop of Carlisle, maintained the sleep of the soul by many ingenious arguments, of some of which, if the soul be admitted to be an immaterial substance, distinct from the body and the organization of the brain, it will not be easy to furnish a complete refutation. I have not adopted his opinion; but I can perceive in it no heresy, or dangerous error; and some of the objections which have been urged against it have no validity whatever. It is commonly shrunk from as a gloomy notion, because it implies, that the early patriarchs have been already for thousands of years in a state of insensibility, and may continue in that state for thousands of years to come; but what is there gloomy in this notion? To a man in a state of complete insensibility a thousand, or a million of years, if he be restored from that state, will appear but as an instant; for we never could have acquired a notion of time or duration, but by comparing the succession of our own ideas, with the permanence of ourselves. This has been completely proved by Locke in his Essay, and must, indeed, be acknowledged by every thinking man; so that, if Adam's soul be now in a sound sleep, or state of insensibility, the moment in which he shall be raised from the dead, will to him appear in immediate succession to that in which he died. To him, therefore, who firmly trusts in the promises of God, there can be nothing gloomy in the prospect of the sleep of the soul, between death and the resurrection; and if it be true,

rection; for on either of these suppositions, when "the spirit shall return to God who gave it," we may rest assured that it will be disposed of in what Bishop Horsley calls " a place of safe keeping."

The resurrection of Christ, which is the subject of the fourth article, is the most important event recorded in the volume of inspiration; for as the first and great purpose for which he died was to redeem us from the power of that death, which we had incurred by the fall of our first parents, if he had not himself risen from the dead, the conclusion must have been, that the purpose for which he died had not been accomplished. "If Christ be not raised, says St Paul to the Corinthians, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins; and then, indeed, they who have fallen asleep in Christ are perished." This article, therefore, must be capable of the most complete proof, to afford to us sufficient ground to expect the resurrection of ourselves from the dead; and it has in fact been proved with the force of demonstration by Sherlock, West, Horsley, and many others.

The fifth article-of the Holy Ghost-has been sufficiently explained and established by the Bishops Pearson, Burnet, and Tomline; and, with respect to the sixth, seventh, and eighth articles, you must be already satisfied, if you have studied sufficiently the works which I have pointed out to you

as Solomon says, that "hope deferred maketh the heart sick,"

it

may deserve to be considered, whether the notion of the sleep of the soul be not the least gloomy of the two.

in some preceding Letters. The ninth and tenth articles must be studied together, and I hope you have already studied the doctrines which they teach, in the way laid down in the eighth of these letters. It will be proper, however, to consider the whole subject of the fall of Adam, with its various consequences, a second time, and to compare your own view of it with that laid down in the ninth and tenth articles of religion, keeping always in mind what was the principal object of the compilers of the articles.

In a former Letter I observed, that, before our Redeemer gave his life a sacrifice for the sins of the world, he employed upwards of three years in laying the foundation of his Church, and in the important work of instructing his Apostles in all things that it would be necessary for the members of that Church to believe and to practise, in order to reap the benefits of his all-atoning sacrifice. These instructions are faithfully detailed in the Scriptures of the New Testament, in which we are taught the conditions on which alone we can be admitted to partake of the inheritance of the saints in light. A resurrection from the dead, and everlasting life, or perpetual conscious existence, will, as we have seen, be bestowed on all mankind, in consequence of the death and resurrection of the Redeemer, without exacting any condition on their part; but the foundation of all religion, both natural and revealed, is a firm conviction, that the favour of God can be obtained only by trust in his goodness, and

obedience to his laws; for we have the highest authority for saying, that "he who cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them who diligently seek him.”

There is, however, no mere man whose diligence in seeking him has been such as to have rendered his obedience to the divine will uniform; and hence has arisen a question, on what conditions-if on any-a returning sinner shall be received again into favour, and treated as a just or righteous person by that God whom he had offended. By one party it is said that a sinner shall be justified for his faith, if he can lay hold on Christ, and trust in his merits alone; by another, that repentance, as well as faith, is a condition of justification; and by a third, that we can be justified only by faith, which worketh by love, or, in other words, by faith and obedience to the laws of the Gospel. The controversies which have been carried on by these parties have been frequent and acrimonious; and yet it appears to me that such controversies have generally arisen from the polemics not adverting to the fact, that the word justification is in Scripture certainly employed in three different senses, and not one of these the strictly literal sense.

I need hardly observe, that, in its literal and original sense, the word justification is a forensic term, signifying the judicial acquittal of an innocent person who had been falsely accused of a crime. Such a person cannot, properly speaking, be pardoned; for he had not been guilty; but he has an unques

tionable right to be justified, and this he can be only by being acquitted, or judicially pronounced not guilty, after a trial. At the tribunal of Christ, however, no one can be justified in this sense of the word; "for there is not a just man upon earth, that doth good, and sinneth not." Again, a person accused, and judicially proved guilty of a capital crime, cannot, in the forensic sense of the word, be justified or pronounced innocent; but he may be pardoned by the mercy of the sovereign, either freely, or on such conditions as it shall be deemed proper, or expedient to prescribe. Justification in religion, therefore, is a term of very different import from justification in law; so that he who should reason from the one to the other must often fall into erroneous, and even absurd conclusions; for whosoever shall be justified before God, must, in the first place, be pardoned; whilst he who stands in need of pardon cannot, by any human tribunal, be justified or pronounced inno

cent.

But the word justification has different senses even in the Scriptures themselves, where it is never used as in courts of law. By St Paul, for instance, it is certainly used on one occasion to denote our restoration to that inheritance, whatever it was, which had been forfeited by the fall of Adam; and in that sense of the word, we are all freely justified by the gift of God through Christ, without any condition either of faith or of works to be performed by us; for if through the offence of one many be

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