[124]. The belief of a separate state is very ancient. Cicero and Seneca have asserted, that all nations believed the immortality of the soul. Yet we know there were not only individuals, but sects who were exceptions. Saul the first king of Israel believed that the soul survived the death of the body, or he would neither have made laws against necromancers, nor have applied to one in his distresses. If Samuel was raised, it is a fact, directly in point, but the words though express, are probably an accommodation to the sentiments of men. The son of Sirach who lived two hundred years before Christ, says that Samuel prophesied after he was dead. (Ecclus. c. 46. v. 20.) And Josephus in his account of the life of Saul, shows his belief to be that Samuel actually arose. The same feats of apparitions which the disciples had, still exist with the common people, and are proofs that they entertain the same sentiment.
Some of the Pharisees, who are represented as believing a separate state, thought souls might return to other bodies. This was the opinion of Josephus with respect to the virtuous; and also of those Jews, who supposed that Jesus was Elijah or Jeremiah; but the question of the disciples, whether a man had been born blind for his own sins, implies a possibility of a return also of the wicked into other bodies. Nevertheless the prevailing opinion of the Pharisees was of a separate state; otherwise Paul’s professing their sentiments, which must have been known to him, was disingenuous; nor, if they had known the difference, would they have protected him. The approbation of the multitude when he proved the doctrine from the words of Jehovah to Moses at the bush, (Matt. xxii. 32.) and the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, evince that the common opinion was such.
This subject, has been enlightened, not first brought to light, through the Gospel, but plainly asserted: this day shalt thou be with me in paradise. At home in the body, and absent from the Lord, absent from the body, and present with the Lord, is descriptive but of two states. The desire to depart to be with Christ, shows an immediate expectation. And otherwise it cannot be said that the spirits of just men are made perfect.
The Jews, Greeks, and Romans assigned the Heaven to the gods, earth to men, and under the earth (שאול, αδης, inferi) to the dead. The passages “the spirit shall return to God,” and “the spirit of a man goeth upwards” are not exceptions, for then they would prove that the evil, as well as the good, went to heaven. That the spirit is disposed of by God, and that the spirit of a man survives the death of the body, seem to be all that is respectively implied. Samuel was believed to come out of, and return to his place under the earth; and Saul was to be with him, below the earth; but, possibly, in a different apartment. Thus Abraham and Lazarus were in sight of, and only divided from the man in torments by a gulph.
Under the gospel the place of separate saints is represented to be in Heaven. Heaven had been always assigned to God among the Jews, and even the heathens thought it the most honourable place: Virgil assigned it to Cæsar. Jesus declared he came from thence, and would return thither; and for the comfort of his disciples, told them, he would prepare a place for them, and take them to himself. They saw him actually ascend. He is to come from thence, and to bring them with him to judgment.
This change of representation implies no contradiction, for pure spirits are not confined to place. Our souls are connected with our bodies, and therefore go and come with, or rather in them. But when the connexion is broken, the soul cannot be said to be in one place more than another, except as it is occupied with material objects. It can attend to one thing only at once, and therefore when in, it cannot be out of the body, and must be wherever occupied, but not in any place, except concerned with material objects. The infinite Spirit had no connexion with space in all the eternity which preceded creation; since time began as every thing is known and supported by him, he is said to be in all places. But the idea of place is not necessary to our conceptions of Spirit.
To speak of the planets as the residence of spirits, and to talk of souls flying through the visible Heavens in quest of paradise is idle. If all souls must ascend to Heaven, from India they go in a direction opposite to our course thither.
There is no sun nor moon enjoyed by saints in glory; the Lord is their light. And spiritual bodies are not flesh and blood, nor belly, nor meats; nor corruptible nor mortal; but fit for the society of spirits. The soul at death is discharged from the prison of these bodies, and not confined to place. It receives new faculties, which entertain it with more than substitutes for the sensations it had in the body; it obtains a perception of light more vivid than in dreams, and permanent. It enjoys the discernment, society, and communion of other Spirits; the presence of God and the Redeemer; and progresses in the knowledge and love of God, and so in holiness and happiness forever.
[125]. Vid. Senec. Epist. 117. Cum de animarum immortalitate loquimur, non leve momentum apud nos habet consensus hominum, aut timentium inferos, aut colentium. Utor hac persuasione publica. Et. Cic. Tusc. Quest. Lib. 1. permanere animos arbitramur consensu nationum omnium; qua in sede maneant, qualesque sint ratione discendum est.
[126]. In Phæd.