2. What shall become of it ? ' It shall return to the earth as it was ; ' Gen. iii. 19, ' Dust tliou art, and unto dust shalt thou return ; ' Ps. civ. 29, ' Thou takest away their breath ; they die and return to their dust ; ' Ps. cxlvi. 4, ' He returneth to his earth.' Which should teach us to take care for a better estate : 2 Cor. v, 1, ' For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.' The soul dwelleth now in an earthly house ; it should look out for a more glorious mansion.
Secondly, Of the soul three things are spoken, which are so many arguments to prove its immortality, which is the subject I mainly intend —
1. The kind of it ; it is a spirit. The matter of which the body is made is the earth, and so it is still maintained : ' He bringetli forth food for them out of the earth,' Ps. civ. 14 ; and so breedeth and casteth out corruption every day ; but the soul is a simple substance, not com- pounded of corruptible principles, and therefore cannot be resolved into any. The body liveth by the soul and from the soul, but the soul de-
SEEMON UPON ECCLESIASTES XII. 7. 63
pendetli upon nothing but God. The argument is good ; it is incor- poreal and immaterial, therefore immortal ; for mortality hath reference to some compounded substance, which hath in itself some principle and cause of motion, as well as a material and' passive part, that may be moved by that principle, and signifieth no more but a capacity of the material and passive part to be deprived of the inward and active prin- ciple of its motion. In short, if the soul die, it must be from the violence of some external power, or some principles of corruption within ; not by violence without : Mat. x. 28, ' And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul.' And it hath no principles of corruption, whereby it should destroy itself, for it is a spirit.
2. The author ; 'God gave it.' Our bodies are also his v/orkmanship, but the soul is immediately framed by God, both in the first creation and the continual propagation of mankind. At the first creation, we read the body was created out of the earth or the dust of the ground, but the soul out of nothing, but immediately breathed into Adam by God : Gen. ii. 7, ' And the Lord formed man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.' And still the soul is immediately created by God : Zech. xii. 1, ' He stretcheth forth the heavens, and laid the foundation of the earth, and formeth the spirit of man within him.' The creating of the soul is reckoned among the works of his omnipotency : Heb. xii. 9, ' Furthermore, we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence; shall we not much rather be in sub- jection unto the Father of spirits ? ' The fathers of our flesh are distinguished from the Father of spirits. Our natural parents under God are the instruments of our natural and earthly being, as they procured the matter out of which our bodies were derived ; they are T^9 (TapKo<i '7raTepa<i, ' the fathers of our flesh,' but God is irdrrjp irvev- fidvcov, ' The Father of our spirits.' The spirit of man runneth not in the material channel of fleshly descent; it is not educed out of the power of the matter, but immediately made by God.
3. The disposal of it. When it flitteth out of the body, ' it returneth to God ; ' that is, to God as a judge, to be disposed of by him into its everlasting estate. God challengeth souls as his, or belonging to his government, as universal king and judge of the world : Ezek. xviii. 4, ' All souls are mine.' He will give to every one according to his works, adjudging and sentencing them either to heaven, the mansion of the blessed, or 'spirits of just men made perfect,' Heb. xii. 23, or to hell, the place where damned spirits are kept in prison : 1 Peter iii. 19, ' He went and preached unto the spirits in prison.' The body is not said to return to God, but to return to the earth as it was ; but the soul is said to return to God ; therefore the whole man dieth not, and is not extinguished with the body. All these particulars import the immortality of the soul.
DocL That the soul of man is immortal, and dieth not when the body dieth, but remaineth in that estate into which it is disposed by God.
First, There is a threefold immortality —
1. An essential immortality, which iraporteth an absolute necessity of existence ; so it is said, 1 Tim. vi. 16, ' God only hath immortality.'
64 SEKMON UPON ECCLESIASTES XII. 7.
2. There is a natural immortality, which hath a foundation in tlie being of the creatures ; so the angels and spirits of men are in their nature immortal, so as they cannot be destroyed by any second cause, and have no principle of corruption in themselves, though by the power of God they might be annihilated.