A Compendium of the Chief Doctrines of the True Christian Religion/Chapter 36
XXXVI. Death and Resurrection.
MAN was so created, that as to his internal he can never die: for he can think of God, believe in God, and love God, and so be conjoined to God by faith and love. This capacity, which distinguishes man from the brute beasts, enables him to live for ever. His external, which is called the body, is intended to serve him for uses in the natural world, and to lay as it were the foundation of his future and eternal existence. This external is rejected by death, and, being no longer needful, is never again re-assumed. But his internal, which is called his spirit, is adapted to the performance of uses in the spiritual world; and therefore, as before observed, it never dies. This internal, after the death of the body, is a good spirit or an angel, if the man, while living in the world, had been a good man; but it is an evil spirit or a devil, if he had been a wicked man.
The spirit of a man, immediately after death, appears in the spiritual world in a perfect human form, exactly like a man in the world. He enjoys also the same faculties of seeing, hearing, feeling, and speaking, as in the world; the same faculties of thinking, willing, and acting, as in the world. In short, he is in every respect the same man as he was before, having neither lost nor gained any thing by the change, except the gross material body, with which he was encompassed in the world, as with an earthly clog, or as with something almost foreign to his intrinsic character of a man, and which, being once laid aside, is laid aside for ever. This continuation of life is what is meant by the resurrection.
The life of man after death is the life of his love and of his faith: hence whatever may have been the quality of these, during his abode in the world, such will his life continue to be to eternity, because in his spiritual state the acquired bias of his mind can never be changed. For in order to make any real and permanent change in a man, it is necessary that every principle belonging to him, from the highest or inmost to the lowest or outermost, be kept in a state susceptible of such change; because the renewing or regenerating process, like that of nutrition in the natural body, acts simultaneously as well as successively on the whole man. Now as the change here spoken of ought, in it's measure and degree, to affect every principle at once, it follows, that it is impossible for it to proceed when one of those principles, and that one the basis or ultimate plane of reception, is wanting, or at least quiescent, and thus incapable of alteration. Into this state the externals of the human mind are brought by the death and rejection of the material body: and hence it is, that no repentance, no real change of life, can afterwards take place, but the influent life from the Lord and heaven is determined and fixed, the moment it enters, according to the form, quality, and state, of the ultimate principles of the mind.
They, who have loved themselves and the world above all things, and who have not endeavoured, by the proffered means of salvation, to induce upon their minds a beneficial change of disposition, while the possibility was extended to them, confirm themselves hereafter more and more in their evils, and at last enter wholly into the loves and the life of hell. But they, who have loved the Lord above all things, and their neighbour as themselves, and who have endeavoured to live in conformity with the divine laws, are more and more confirmed in habits of good, and at length enter wholly into the loves and the life of heaven. The life of heaven is what is called in the Word eternal life; and the life of hell is what is called eternal death.
It is indeed the common belief, that the material body, which is committed to the grave, will rise again at some future period, called the day of judgment, when the visible heavens and the habitable earth are to be destroyed by fire; that these are to be succeeded by a new heaven and a new earth; and that in the mean time the souls of those who are deceased are either hovering in the air in anxious suspense and expectation, or else are dissipated, being incapable of living as men until they are re-united with their former bodies. These and similar vain ideas have been formed by many in the church, in consequence of not understanding the true sense of the Sacred Scriptures, which treat of spiritual things under natural images: and they have moreover been confirmed therein by the reasonings of sensual men, who suppose, that all life is confined to the material body, and that, as soon as this latter perishes, the whole man has lost his existence, which can therefore only be renewed by the revivification of the same body that died. But that man, immediately after death, actually rises in the spiritual world, as already stated, or continues to live as a man in a spiritual form and body, similar in appearance to his former body, but essentially different from it in substance, is the clear and express doctrine of Divine Revelation.
In the Old Testament we read, that Samuel, after he was dead and buried, appeared to Saul, and conversed with him, his material body still lying in the grave: see 1 Sam. xxviii. 3, 11 to 19. But we are more particularly instructed concerning this matter in the New Testament, which distinctly states, that, when our Lord was transfigured on the mountain, "two men, which were Moses and Ellas, appeared to him in glory, and spake of his decease, which he should accomplish at Jerusalem," Luke ix. 30, 31. Matt. xvii. 3, 4. Mark ix. 4, 5. To the Sadducees, who denied the resurrection, and started what appeared to them as difficulties attending it, our Lord answered, "As touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living," Matt. xxii. 31, 32. Here Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, are represented as still living in the spiritual world, though their material bodies were consigned to the dust. The same doctrine of immediate resurrection further appears from the case of the rich man and Lazarus, the former of whom was seen to "lift up his eyes in hell, being in torments, while the latter was comforted in Abraham's bosom," Luke xvi. 19 to 31. Lastly, Jesus said to the penitent malefactor on the cross, "To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise," Luke xxiii. 43.
