3. To conclude ; In the discourses of the best of men on earth, there is too much froth and vanity ; many words, like water, run away at the waste spout, but there God is the centre, in which all terminates. O therefore let us long to be among the unbodied people ! this world will never suit us with companions in all things agreeable to the desires of our hearts. The best company are got together in the upper-room ; an hour there is better than an age below. Whatever fellowship saints leave on earth, they shall be sure to find better in heaven.
Query 6. Whether the separated souls of the just in heaven^ do incline to a re-union with their own bodies P And how that re-union is at last effected ?
That these blessed souls have no such incHnation or desire, these reasons seem to persuade.
1. That their bodies, whilst they lived in them, were no better, than so many prisons; many were the prejudices, damages, and miseries they have sustained and suffered in them. It kept them at an uncomfortable distance from the Lord, 2 Cor. v. 6. their be- moaning cries spake their uneasy state : how often hath every gra- cious soul thus lamented itself, " Wo is me that I dwell in Me- " sheck." It inclosed their souls within its mud walls, which inter- cepted the light and joy of God's face. Death therefore did a most friendly office, when it set it at liberty, and brought it forth into its own pure and pleasant light and liberty *. These blessed spirits now rejoice as prisoners do in their recovered liberty ; and can it
* The body obstructs and obscures the mind in its conceptions, and pollutes it by its union with the flesh ; hence the light of the mind is more defective, as it passes, in a manner, throu^^h a glass of flesh : doubtless, when, by the power of death, the soul is as it were, squeezed out of the body, to which it was so closely united, and in this man- ner purified, than it breaks from its confinement in the body, to a pure and unmixed light suitable to its nature. TertulUan on the soul.
90 A TREATISE OF THE SOUL OF MA^^
be siip))osed, after all these sufferings, groans, and sighs to be dis- solved, ihey can be willing to be embodied again ? Surely there is as little reason for souls at liberty to desire to be again embodied, as there is for a bird got out of the snare or cage, to fly back again to its place of confinement and restraint. Yea, when we consider how loath some holy souls, when under the excruciating pains of sickness, and as yet in the sight of this alluiing world, have been to hear of a return to it by the recovery of their health ; we can- not think, but being quite out of the sight of this, and in the frui- tion of the other world, the thoughts of the body must needs be more loathsome to them than ever.
AVe read, that when a good man in the time of his sickness was told by his friends, that some hopeful signs of his recovery began now to appear, he answered, And must I then return to this body "^ I was as a sheep driven out of the storm almost to the fold, and then driven back into the storm again : or as a weary travel- ler near his home, who must go back again to fetch something he had neglected : or as an apprentice whose time was almost out, and then must begin a new term. Of some others it hath been also noted, that the greatest infirmities they discovered upon their death-bed, have been their two passionate desires to be dissolved, and their unsubmissiveness to God's will in their longer stay in the body. Now, the bodies of the saints being so cheerfully forsaken, and that only upon a fore-taste of heaven by faith ; how can it be thought they should find any inclination to a re-union, when they are so abundantly satisfied with the joys of his face in heaven ? Certainly the body hath been no such pleasant habitation to the soul, that it should cast an eye or thought that way when it is once delivered out of it : if it were burdensome here, a thought of it would be loathsome there.
2. We have shewed before, that the separate soul w^ants not the helps of the body, but lives and acts at a more free and comfortable rate than ever before. It is true, it is not now dehghted with meat and drink, with smells and sounds, as it was wont to be ; but then it must be considered, that it is happiness and perfection not to need them. It is now become equal to the angels in the way and man- ner of its living ; and what it enjoyed by the ministry of the body, it eminently and more perfectly enjoys without it. What per- fections can the soul receive from matter * ? What can a lump of flesh add to a spirit : And if it can add nothing to it, there is no reason why it should hanker after it, and incline to a re-union
* The rational soul receives no perfection from matter, which it could not receive •without it ; therefore, when it shall be separated from it, it is not said to have a pro- pensity to it. Commb.
A TREATISE OF THE SOUL OF MA'S. 91
with it. It added nothing of happiness to it, but much trouble, and therefore becomes justly undesirable to it.
3. The supposition of such a propension and inclination, seems no way to suit with that state of perfect rest which the souls of the just enjoy in heaven. The scripture tells us, that at death they enter into rest, Isa. Ivii. 2. Heb. iv. 9. That they rest from their labours, Rev. xiv. 13. But that which inclines and desires (especially when the desired enjoyment, as in this case, is suspended so long) must be as far from rest, as it is from satisfaction in the enjoyment of the thing desired. We know what Solomon hath ob- served of such a life, (and his observation is experimentally true,) that "hope deferred makes the heart sick,*" Prov. xiii. 12. Who finds not his own desires a very rack to him in such cases ! If we be kept but a few days in earnest expectation and desire of an absent friend, and he comes not, what an uneasy life do we live ! But here we must suppose some have such an unsatisfied life for hundreds, and others for thousands of years already ; and how much longer they may remain so, who can tell ? We use to say. Lovers hours are full of eternity. These reasons seem to carry it for the negative.
But if the matter be weighed once more, with the following reasons in the counter-scale, and prejudice do not pull down the balance ; we shall find the contrary conclusion much more strong and rational. For,