Concerning the place wherein men shall enjoy that eternal life which Christ hath obtained for them, the texts next before alleged seem to make it on earth. For if as in Adam all die, that is, have forfeited paradise and eternal life on earth, even so in Christ all shall be made alive; then all men shall be made to live on earth; for else the comparison were not proper. Hereunto seemeth to agree that of the psalmist (Psalm. cxxxiii. 3) upon Zion God commanded the blessing, even life for evermore: for Zion is in Jerusalem upon earth: as also that of St. John (Rev. ii. 7) To him that overcometh I will give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God. This was the tree of Adam’s eternal life; but his life was to have been on earth. The same seemeth to be confirmed again by St. John (Rev. xxi. 2), where he saith, I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband: and again (verse 10) to the same effect: as if he should say, the new Jerusalem, the paradise of God, at the coming again of Christ, should come down to God’s people from heaven, and not they go up to it from earth. And this differs nothing from that, which the two men in white clothing, that is the two angels, said to the apostles that were looking upon Christ ascending (Acts i. 11) This same Jesus, who is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come, as you have seen him go up into heaven. Which soundeth as if they had said he should come down to govern them under his Father eternally here, and not take them up to govern them in heaven; and is conformable to the restoration of the kingdom of God instituted under Moses, which was a political government of the Jews on earth. Again, that saying of our Saviour (Matth. xxii. 30), that in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven, is a description of an eternal life, resembling that which we lost in Adam in the point of marriage. For seeing Adam and Eve, if they had not sinned, had lived on earth eternally in their individual persons; it is manifest, they should not continually have procreated their kind; for if immortals should have generated as mankind doth now, the earth in a small time would not have been able to afford them place to stand on. The Jews that asked our Saviour the question, whose wife the woman that had married many brothers should be in the resurrection, knew not what were the consequences of life eternal: and therefore our Saviour puts them in mind of this consequence of immortality; that there shall be no generation, and consequently no marriage, no more than there is marriage or generation among the angels. The comparison between that eternal life which Adam lost, and our Saviour by his victory over death hath recovered, holdeth also in this; that as Adam lost eternal life by his sin, and yet lived after it for a time, so the faithful Christian hath recovered eternal life by Christ’s passion, though he die a natural death, and remain dead for a time, namely, till the resurrection. For as death is reckoned from the condemnation of Adam, not from the execution; so life is reckoned from the absolution, not from the resurrection of them that are elected in Christ.
Ascension into heaven.
That the place wherein men are to live eternally, after the resurrection, is the heavens, (meaning by heaven, those parts of the world, which are the most remote from earth, as where the stars are, or above the stars, in another higher heaven, called cœlum empyreum, whereof there is no mention in Scripture, nor ground in reason), is not easily to be drawn from any text that I can find. By the Kingdom of Heaven, is meant the kingdom of the King that dwelleth in heaven; and his kingdom was the people of Israel, whom he ruled by the prophets, his lieutenants; first Moses, and after him Eleazar, and the sovereign priests, till in the days of Samuel they rebelled, and would have a mortal man for their king, after the manner of other nations. And when our Saviour Christ, by the preaching of his ministers, shall have persuaded the Jews to return, and called the Gentiles to his obedience, then shall there be a new kingdom of heaven; because our king shall then be God, whose throne is heaven: without any necessity evident in the Scripture, that man shall ascend to his happiness any higher than God’s footstool the earth. On the contrary, we find written (John iii. 13) that no man hath ascended into heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the son of man, that is in heaven. Where I observe by the way, that these words are not, as those which go immediately before, the words of our Saviour, but of St. John himself; for Christ was then not in heaven, but upon the earth. The like is said of David (Acts ii. 34) where St. Peter, to prove the ascension of Christ, using the words of the Psalmist (Psalm xvi. 10), Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, nor suffer thine holy one to see corruption, saith, they were spoken, not of David, but of Christ; and to prove it, addeth this reason, For David is not ascended into heaven. But to this a man may easily answer, and say, that though their bodies were not to ascend till the general day of judgment, yet their souls were in heaven as soon as they were departed from their bodies; which also seemeth to be confirmed by the words of our Saviour (Luke xx. 37, 38), who proving the resurrection out of the words of Moses, saith thus, That the dead are raised, even Moses shewed at the bush, when he calleth the Lord, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living; for they all live to him. But if these words be to be understood only of the immortality of the soul, they prove not at all that which our Saviour intended to prove, which was the resurrection of the body, that is to say, the immortality of the man. Therefore our Saviour meaneth, that those patriarchs were immortal; not by a property consequent to the essence and nature of mankind; but by the will of God, that was pleased of his mere grace, to bestow eternal life upon the faithful. And though at that time the patriarchs and many other faithful men were dead, yet as it is in the text, they lived to God; that is, they were written in the Book of Life with them that were absolved of their sins, and ordained to life eternal at the resurrection. That the soul of man is in its own nature eternal, and a living creature independent on the body, or that any mere man is immortal, otherwise than by the resurrection in the last day, except Enoch and Elias, is a doctrine not apparent in Scripture. The whole of the xivth chapter of Job, which is the speech not of his friends, but of himself, is a complaint of this mortality of nature; and yet no contradiction of the immortality at the resurrection. There is hope of a tree, saith he, (verse 7) if it be cast down. Though the root thereof wax old, and the stock thereof die in the ground, yet when it scenteth the water it will bud, and bring forth boughs like a plant. But man dieth and wasteth away, yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? And (verse 12) Man lieth down, and riseth not, till the heavens be no more. But when is it, that the heavens shall be no more? St. Peter tells us, that it is at the general resurrection. For in his 2nd Epistle, chap. iii. verse 7, he saith, that the heavens and the earth that are now, are reserved unto fire against the day of judgment, and perdition of ungodly men, and (v. 12) looking for, and hasting to the coming of God, wherein the heavens shall be on fire and shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat. Nevertheless, we according to the promise look for new heavens, and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. Therefore where Job saith, man riseth not till the heavens be no more; it is all one, as if he had said, the immortal life, (and soul and life in the Scripture do usually signify the same thing,) beginneth not in man, till the resurrection and day of judgment; and hath for cause, not his specifical nature and generation, but the promise. For St. Peter says, not We look for new heavens and a new earth, from nature, but from promise.
Lastly, seeing it hath been already proved out of divers evident places of Scripture, in chap. xxxv. of this book, that the kingdom of God is a civil commonwealth, where God himself is sovereign, by virtue first of the old, and since of the new covenant, wherein he reigneth by his vicar or lieutenant; the same places do therefore also prove, that after the coming again of our Saviour in his majesty and glory, to reign actually and eternally, the kingdom of God is to be on earth. But because this doctrine, though proved out of places of Scripture not few nor obscure, will appear to most men a novelty, I do but propound it; maintaining nothing in this, or any other paradox of religion; but attending the end of that dispute of the sword, concerning the authority, not yet amongst my countrymen decided, by which all sorts of doctrine are to be approved or rejected; and whose commands, both in speech and writing, whatsoever be the opinions of private men, must by all men, that mean to be protected by their laws, be obeyed. For the points of doctrine concerning the kingdom of God, have so great influence on the kingdom of man, as not to be determined, but by them, that under God have the sovereign power.
The place after judgment of those who were never in the kingdom of God, or having been in, are cast out.
As the kingdom of God, and eternal life, so also God’s enemies, and their torments after judgment, appear by the Scripture to have their place on earth. The name of the place, where all men remain till the resurrection, that were either buried, or swallowed up of the earth, is usually called in Scripture, by words that signify under ground; which the Latins read generally infernus, and inferi, and the Greek ἃδης, that is to say, a place where men cannot see; and containeth as well the grave, as any any other deeper place. But for the place of the damned after the resurrection, it is not determined, neither in the Old nor New Testament, by any note of situation; but only by the company: as that it shall be, where such wicked men were, as God in former times, in extraordinary and miraculous manner, had destroyed from off the face of the earth: |Tartarus.| as for example, that they are in Inferno, in Tartarus, or in the bottomless pit; because Corah, Dathan, and Abiron, were swallowed up alive into the earth. Not that the writers of the Scripture would have us believe, there could be in the globe of the earth, which is not only finite, but also, compared to the height of the stars, of no considerable magnitude, a pit without a bottom, that is, a hole of infinite depth, such as the Greeks in their demonology, (that is to say, in their doctrine concerning demons), and after them the Romans, called Tartarus; of which Virgil (Æn. vi. 578, 579) says,
Bis patet in præceps tantum, tenditque sub umbras,
Quantus ad ætherium cœli suspectus Olympum:
for that is a thing the proportion of earth to heaven cannot bear: but that we should believe them there, indefinitely, where those men are, on whom God inflicted that exemplary punishment.
The congregation of giants.