Angels, being pure, immaterial spirits, have nothing in them, nothing belonging unto their essence, that can die. Beasts have nothing in them that can live when their bodies die. The soul of a beast cannot be preserved in a separate condition, no, not by an act of almighty power ; for it is not, and that which is not cannot live. It is nothing but the body itself in an act of its material powers.
Only the nature of man, in all the works of God, is capable of this convulsion. The essential parts of it are separable by death, the one continuing to exist and 'act
282 PKEFACE TO THE READER.
its especial powers in a separate state or condition. The powers of the whole en- tire nature, acting in soul and body in conjunction, are all scattered and lost by death. But the powers of one essential part of the same nature — that is, of the soul — are preserved after death in a more perfect acting and exercise than before. This is peculiar unto human nature, as a mean partaking of heaven and earth, — of the perfection of angels above, and of the imperfection of the beasts below. Only there is this difference in these things : — Our participation of the heavenly, spiritual perfections of the angelical nature is for eternity; our participation of the imperfec- tions of the animate creatures here below is but for a season. For God hath de- signed our bodies unto such a glorious refinement at the resurrection, as that they shall have no more alliance unto that brutish nature which perisheth for ever ; for we shall be 'KrayyiXoi, —like unto angels, or equal to them. Our bodies shall no more be capable of those acts and operations which are now common to us with other living creatures here below.
This is the pre-eminence of the nature of man, as the wise man declares. For unto that objection of atheistical Epicureans, " As the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath : so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast. All go unto one place : all are of the dust, and all turn to the dust again," — he granteth that, as unto their bodies, it is for a season in them we have a present participation of their nature; but, saith he, here lieth the difference, " Who knoweth the spirit of a man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth down- ward to the earth?" Eccles. iii. 21. Unless we know this, unless we consider the different state of the spirit of men and beasts, we cannot be deUvered from this atheism ; but the thoughts hereof will set us at liberty from it. They die in like manner, and their bodies go equally to the dust for a season ; but the beast hath no spirit, no soul, but what dies with the body and goes to the dust. If they had, their bodies also must be raised again unto a conjunction with them; otherwise, death would produce a new race of creatures unto eternity. But man hath an immortal soul, saith he, a heavenly spirit, which, when the body goes into the dust for a season, ascends to heaven (where the guilt of sin and the curse of the law interpose not), from whence it is there to e-vist and to act aU its native powers in a state of blessedness.
But, as I said, by reason of this peculiar intimate union and relation between the soul and body, there is in the whole nature a fixed aversation from a dissolution. The soul and body are naturally and necessarily unwilling to fall into a state of separation, wherein the one shall cease to be what it was, and the other knows not clearly how it shall subsist. The body claspeth about the soul, and the soul re- ceiveth strange impressions from its embraces ; the entire nature, existing in the union of them both, being unalterably averse unto a dissolution.
Wherefore, unless Ave can overcome this inclination, we can never die comfort- ably or cheerfully. We would, indeed, rather choose to be " clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life," that the clothing of glory might come on our whole nature, soul and body, without dissolution. But if this may not be, yet then do believers so conquer this inclination by faith and views of the glory of Christ, as to attain a desire of this dissolution. So the apostle testifies of himself, " 1 have a desire to depart, and to be with Christ, which is far better " than to abide here, Phil. i. 23. Saith he, Triv i-Tn^v/alecv 'ix,f>v, — not an ordinary desire, not that which worketh in me now and then ; but a constant, habitual inclination, working m vehement acts and desires. And what doth he so desire ? It \i k^iaXvirai, — " to depart," say we, out of this body, from this tabernacle, to leave it for a season. But it is such a departure as consists in the dissolution of the present state of his being, that it should not be what it is. But how is it possible that a man should attain such an inclination unto, such a readiness for, such a vehement desire of, a