the body, but actually do so, appeareth from scripture. First take a passage next the text : Phil. i. 23, ' For I am in a strait between two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better." 'Avdkvcrai is to be dissolved ; it giveth us the right notion of death; it is not a destruction of the godly, but the separation of the soul from the body, dissolving of things before conjoined, when the soul is set at liberty from the tetters and captivity wherein it remained in the body. That was it he desired, to set sail for heaven. But how can it be rrroWa) fiaXXov Kpelaaov, by ' much more the better/ if the soul were deprived of all sense and feeling, and did remain in a dead sleepy estate ? Is it not better for a gracious man to wake than to sleep, to work than to be idle and sit still, to use the faculties granted us by God than to lie in a senseless condition ? What profit is it to be with the Lord, and not to enjoy his company? or not to know where we are? Oh, it is better to have our present knowledge of Christ and service to him, and those sips and tastes of spiritual comfort which the present state will admit, than to lie in such a stupid lethargy, without all understanding or spiritual sense. It would be a loss of happiness for Paul to be dissolved, when his body should lie rotting in the grave, and his soul without all fruition of God. What can be imagined to be a happiness, but to be eased of present labours ? God's people are wont to reckon much of their present service and enjoyment of God, though accompanied with afflictions. Surely Paul would never be in a strait, if to be only reduced into a condition of stupid sleep, without the enjoyment of God, wherein we do nothing, feel nothing. God's people, I say, are wont to prefer the most afflicted condition with God's presence above the greatest contentment in his absence : ' If thou go not up with us, carry us not up hence/ Exod. xxxiii. 15. Better be with God in the wilderness than in Canaan without him. So that this drowsy doctrine, which puts the soul in such an inactive estate, cannot be endured, wherein souls departed enjoy no more happiness than stocks and stones, or inanimate creatures, till the resurrection. So 2 Cor. v. 1, 2, 'For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens : for in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven/ Surely if the soul slept till the resurrection, they should not say, when this house is dissolved, but when this body is raised, and this tabernacle is restored. When they desire to part with the body, it is not for want of love to their bodies, but out of love to their souls. Paul could have wished mortality to be swallowed up of life, that the mortal body might have gone to life with the immortal soul. It were absurd to long for the dissolution of that state in which we feel the love of God and Christ to us with joy unspeakable and glorious, only for an estate where there is no sense of God, or Christ, or itself, or celestial and heavenly things. It followeth afterwards, ver. 6, ' Therefore we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord/ We should rather be absent from him when out of the body, and have no understanding, no love, no com- munion with him. The next place is Luke xxiii. 43, 'This day shaft thou be with me in paradise,' saith Christ to the good thief. By paradise is meant heaven. See 2 Cor. xii. 4. What he calls the
192 SERMONS UPON PHILIPPIANS I. 21. [SeR. II.
third heaven, ver. 2, he calls paradise, ver. 4 ; an allusion, not to ordinary gardens, as Eden, or that garden which Adam dressed in innocency. Christ saith he was in paradise in regard of his soul, for his body was to be laid in the sepulchre. His divine nature is not intended, for so he was always in heaven : John iii. 13, ' No man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man who is in heaven.' Now this soul of Christ, when separated from the body, was it destitute of all sense, yea or no ? Can any christian think so of their blessed Lord and Saviour ? Surely then it is not contrary to nature that the soul act or feel out of the body. He promiseth the penitent thief he shall be with him. Surely he speaketh it to comfort him, and this com- fort was not to commence till sixteen or seventeen hundred years afterwards, if the soul slept till the resurrection. To evade the place, they refer a^/xepov, 'to-day/ to Xeyco, 'I say, I say to-day ; ' but the point- ing in the Greek copies showeth otherwise. The sense is otherwise, for it is Christ's answer to his desire, ' Remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.' But now Christ, to encourage him, promiseth more than was asked, as God usually doth abundantly above what we can ask or think : I will not defer thy desire so long. None can imagine the words to be a denial, or that Christ would put him off to some hundred years after. Christ's hodie, ' to-day ' answereth his quando, ' when,' in that parable, which must be supposed to speak according to the current of those times : Luke xvi. 22, ' The beggar died, and was carried by angels into Abraham's bosom ; ' in the twinkling of an eye, or the turning of a thought. A great comfort when you come to die ; in a moment angels will carry you to Christ, and Christ to God. Agonies of death are terrible, but there are joys just ready ; as soon as you are loose from the prison of the body, you enter into your eternal rest ; the soul flieth hence to Christ to be where he is. In short, men are in their final estate as soon as they die ; they go to their own place : wicked men to the prison of hell, 1 Peter iii. 19 ; good men to ' the spirits of just men made perfect,' Heb. xii. 23. Would those things be said of them if they did lie only in a dull sleep without any life, light, joy, or act of love to God ? Now present sleep is a burden to the saints, as it is an interruption to their service.