is fo likely of fuch Traditions wherein Nations were agreed before that mutual Commerce, and the Art of Letters by which they might communicate their Inventions to each other. However there can be lit tle doubt but that the Primitive Chriftians were agreed in it. They believed Separate Souls to have vifible Bodies, of the fame Shape with thofe wherein themselves lived formerly. Yet they believed thofe Bodies allo Mortal, as being capable of fenfible Pain by the Corporeal Fire of Hell.

All

Poffibility was by them believed to be a Tendency to Diffolution, as I have already intimated. As therefore these separate Souls were capable of fenfible Pain in the Interval between their first Death and the final Judgment, fo they might be diffolved by that more exquifite Fire, which was to prevail in the laft Conflagration. At least, fo far as to deprive them of any fenfibility of Pain, which they afcribed to a Separation of their Parts. And without Senfe we can hardly frame any Idea of a Rational Soul: None certainly that can be capable of Punishment. That therefore the Souls of wicked Chriftians fhall be enabled to endure Eternal Burnings without Diffolution, is, by these Principles, to be afcribed to the fame Almighty Power, by which the three Children were preserved in the Fiery Furnace. Only what was then performed

in Mercy, will here be afcribed to a Design of inflicting a more exquifite Punishment. Yet the groffness even of these feparate Vehicles (if we may call them fo) was the Reason why even Souls, defigned for Happiness, were thought difabled to afcend to Heaven till the Day of Judgment; and in the mean time were thought to need the Prayers of their living Brethren on Earth, whilft they continued in those feparate Receptacles; whither Evil Spirits were permitted to have Access.

the Sodo

As therefore even thefe actually-mortal 36. Souls were generally thought to furvive Yet they these groffer Bodies, fo there is Reafon to might probably perbelieve that they may reach the general fevere in Conflagration. And indeed the New Tefta. their Bement Revelations feem generally to fuppofe day of the ing till thë that they fhall indeed reach it. How elfe general could the Men of Nineveh, or the Queen The Judgof Sheba, rise up in Judgment with the Ge- Punishneration which beard our Saviour's Preach- ment of ing, and condemn it; if they were not, at mites not leaft, to appear before that fame Tribunal, in Hell to which the Defpifers of our Saviour's Preaching were refponfible? How could our Lord pronounce the Cafes of Tyre and Sidon, mentioned in the Old Testament, and thofe of Sodom and Gomorrah, as more tolerable in the day of Judgment, than those of Chorazin and Bethfaida, and Capernaum, where he preached and wrought his Miras L 2 elés;

Fire.

cles, if thofe Heathens were not to appear at the day of Judgment? Nor is it eafily intelligible, how the Cafe of those Heathens before the Gospel could be more intolerable at the day of Judgment, than the Cafe of those who had the Honour to bear our Saviour's Preaching, and to fee his Miracles; if, befides the Vengeance, for which they were fo famed in the Hiftory and Prophecies of the Old Testament, they had a new Arrear of Punishment to commence at the day of Judgment, that was to be Eternal, and fuitable to the monstrous Nature of the Crimes for which they were to be inflicted. But the Cafe will be very eafie, if their appearing at the day of Judgment, be with no Defign of concerning them in the Judgment of the Day, but only in the Retrospective part of the Day, for vindicating the Divine Providence, in Relation to what had been tranfacted by it formerly. In this Regard, that most formidable Example of Divine Vengeance on the Sodomites, by Fire from Heaven, was not to be compared with the Punishment of the meanest Criminals under the Evangelical Difpenfation, on account of this fingle Confideration alone, that the Fire of the Sodomites had an end, and proceeded no farther than that Generation; but the Fire prepared for Evangelical Criminals, is Eternal, and exercifed on Subjects extraordinarily enabled to fuffer it eternally.

But

But I know the excellent Dr. Hammond conceives the Sodomites themselves to be in Hell, and proves his Opinion from the Words of St. Jude, v. 7. where he affirms them to fuffer the Vengeance of Eternal Fire. This he gathers, because the Participle

σ, is in the Prefent Tenfe, which that great Perfon understands fo, as if the Sodomites were then in Hell when S. Jude wrote that Epistle, and as if S. Jude reafoned from that Suppofition, that they were fo. But had he reafoned fo, he could not have reason'd from any Authority of the Old Teftament. That had mentioned nothing concerning them, but what was past; no Fire in relation to them, but that wherein they and the Cities about them, as well as the Inhabitants, had perished; no Hell revealed there, wherein any but Devils were concerned; no Revelation then that any Men fhould be concerned in that Hell, which was originally prepared only for the Devil and his Angels; nothing concerning the Eternal Punishment of them who were there; nothing particularly of the Sodomites being there, or continuing there. to the Times of the Apostles. How then could S. Jude gather any fuch Doctrine from the Revelations of the Old Testament ? or reafon from it, as he does here, against them who were to be concluded by those elder Authorities? The Stile indeed of the

Old Teftament Prophecies, is full of Allufions to the Judgments of the laft Day, even when it foretels Judgments confeffedly Temporal, and which were fulfilled long before the Apoftles Age. The reviving of the dry Bones in Ezekiel, was performed in the Return of the Jews from their Captivity. The Day of the Lord in Joel, is by S. Peter interpreted of that very time when he Preached, though defcribed with all those formidable Circumstances which cannot be literally applied to any but the last and general Judgment. And it is plain, that those Dramatical Hyperbolical Expreffions in the Prophecies of the Old Teftament, were not understood of any fuch general Judgment by the Jews of the Apoftles Age. they been fo, there had been no need of a new Revelation to the Apostles for this fame Purpofe, for fatisfying their Contempora ries of the Truth of it. S. Juda therefore must have argued from his own Authority, and that of his Fellow-Apostles, if this had been his Meaning. Why then did he not add, according to my Gospel, as S. Paul does in the fame Cafe, Rom. ii. 16. where he infifts on this Revelation of the New Teftas ment, concerning the Day of Judgment ? But to what Purpofe had he done for against thefe Defpifers of Dominions, and Blafphe

Had

rs of Dignities; thefe Separaters of them elves as more excellent, than any other

then