A DISCOURSE CONCERNING THE REDEEMER'S DOMINION OVER THE INVISIBLE WORLD, AND THE ENTRANCE THEREINTO BY DEATH. SOME PART WHEREOF WAS PREACHED ON OCCASION OF THE DEATH OF JOHN HOGHTON, ESQ. TO THE MOST DESERVEDLY HONOURED AND TRULY HONOURABLE SIR CHARLES AND THE LADY MARY HOGHTON, Grace, mercy, and peace, &c. OF HOGHTON TOWER. You will, I know, count it no indecency, that, when God hath so nearly, many years ago, joined you in relation, in affection, and now so lately, in the affliction equally common to you both, I do also join your names on the same paper, and make this solemn address to you together. It is by the inestimable favour of Heaven, that the mutual interest God hath given you in each other, as it obligeth, doth also (as I have great reason to hope) effectually dispose and enable you so not only to partake in the comforts, but in the sorrows, that are common to you both, as that the former shall be greatly increased, and the latter proportionably allayed and mitigated, thereby. Thus is the advantage of your conjugal state both represented in God's designation, and apprehended in your own experience. And you are to consider the blessing of God herein as having a peculiarity in it, not being extended to all so related, neither to all that were great in this world, nor to all that were pious and good. Great worldly felicity hath been rendered insipid and spiritless, great calamities much the more bitter, by the want of a meet mutual helpfulness between such relations. A great and a good man,* in his time, a prince, as he is thought to have been, in his country; "a man that was perfect and upright, one that feared God, and eschewed evil;" when he lost not one, not the eldest only, of his numerous offspring, (as you have,) but all at once, seven sons and three daughters, with such concomitant circumstances of accumulated afflictions, as, blessed be God, are not in your case; and might now expect some relief from his other self, the nearest and most inward companion of his life, and partaker of his joys and sorrows; all the succour he had from her, was an impious endeavour to provoke and irritate his spirit; that taunting scoff, "Dost thou still retain thy integrity?" and that horrid advice, "Curse God and die." Whereas that rational, religious, soul-composing thought, "Shall we receive good things at the hand of God, and not also evil things?" was deeply fixed in the mind of the one. how much more effectually relieving had it been, if it had circulated between both the relatives; and they had alternately propounded and enlarged upon it to one another! With you, I cannot doubt, it hath been so; and that you have made it your business to improve your mutual interest, not to aggravate, but to alleviate your affliction each to other. You have both of you great occasion and obligation to revolve and recount to each other the many good things you have received at the hand of God, to mitigate what there is of evil in this dispensation. Both of you have sprung of religious and honourable families, favoured of God, valued and beloved in the countries where he had planted them. They have been both seats of religion, and of the worship of God: the resorts of his servants: houses of mercy to the indigent, of justice to the vicious, of patronage to the sober and virtuous, of good example to all about them. You were both dedicated to God early, and he gave early testimony of his accepting the dedication. He began with you both betimes, blessing your education, and owning you for his, by disposing and forming your spirits to own betin es the God of your fathers. He hath blessed you indeed, adding the spiritual blessings in heavenly things to your many earthly comforts. Which Jabez might mean, not content with a common blessing; and the more probably, from the acceptance he found, 1 Chron. iv. 9, 10. God granted his request, as Solomon's, when his request was as little vulgar, 1 Kings iii. 10. You both concurred in the dedication of this your son, as in the rest of yours; and I doubt not with great seriousness, you covenanted with God in Christ, to be his God. And if he enabled you to be in good earnest herein, even that was of special grace and favour, and ought to come into the account of the many good things you have received of God's hand; as offering to God willingly did in the estimate of David, when the oblation was of a meaner kind, 1 Chron. xxix. 14. But then you ought to consider, what the import and meaning was of that your covenant, wherein you accepted God in Christ to be the God of your son; and dedicated him to God through Christ to be his. Was it not absolute, and * Job i. 1. without limitation, that God should be a God to him entirely and without reserve, and that he should be his absolutely, and be disposed of by him at his pleasure? Otherwise, there was a repugnancy and contradiction in the very terms of your covenant. To be a God to him! Is not God the name of a Being incapable of limitation? Doth it not signify infinite, unlimited power and goodness? To be a God to any one, therefore, under restriction, is to be a God to him, and no God. And so to covenant with God, can neither have sincerity in it, nor good sense. He can be under no restraint in the exercises of his power and goodness towards any to whom he vouchsafes to be their God in covenant; but what he is pleased to lay upon himself, which must be from his own wisdom and good pleasure, to which in covenanting we refer ourselves; with particular faith-in reference to what he hath expressly promised; and with general that all shall be well, where his promise is not express. But from ourselves, nothing can be prescribed to him. He must be our all, or nothing; in point of enjoyment, as our sovereign, all-comprehending good; in point of government, as our sovereign, all-disposing Lord. So we take him, in covenanting with him for ourselves and ours: for he so propounds and offers himself to us. If we accept and take him accordingly, there is a covenant between him a us; otherwise we refuse him, and there is no covenant. When he promises, as to his part, he promises his all; to be God all-sufficient to us; to be ours in all his fulness, according to our measure and capacity: we are not straitened in him, but in ourselves. He undertakes to be to us, and do for us, all that it belongs to him, as a God, to be and do. To give us grace and glory, about which, there can be no dispute or doubt: they are always and immutably good; and to withhold from us no good things: here, are comprehended, with the former, inferior good things, about which, because they are but mutably, and not always good, there may be a doubt, whether now, and in present circumstances, they will be good for us, or no. And now, it belongs to him, as he is to do the part of a God to us, to judge and determine for us, (for which he alone is competent, as being God only wise, and otherwise he were not God all-sufficient,) and not to leave that to us, who are so apt to be partial and mistaken in our judgment. But when he makes his demand from us, of what we on our part are to be, and do, he demands our all, absolutely; that we surrender ourselves and ours, whatsoever we are and have, to his pleasure and dispose, without other exception or restriction than by his promise he hath laid upon himself. Nor are we to think it strange there should be this difference, in the tenor of his covenant, between his part and ours. For we are to remember, that the covenant between him and us is not as of equals. He covenants as God; we, as creatures: He, according to the universal, infinite perfection and all-sufficiency of a God; we, according, to the insufficiency, imperfection, and indigency of creatures. These things were, I doubt not, all foreknown, and I hope considered, by you, when you so solemnly transacted with God, concerning this your son; wherein you could not but then take him for your God, as well as his God. It needs now only to be applied to the present case; and it manifestly admits this application, viz. That this his disposal of him, in taking him now up to himself, to be glorified by him, and to glorify him in the heavenly state, was a thing then agreed upon by solemn covenant, between God and you. It was done by your own virtual and unretracted consent. The substance of the thing was agreed to expressly; that God should be his God, and finally make him happy and blessed in himself. But if you say, you would only have had his complete blessedness yet a while deferred; I will only say, Could you agree with that God whose he was, and whose you are, about the substance of so great a transaction; and now differ with him about a circumstance? And besides, all circumstances must be comprehended in your agreement. For, taking him to be your God, you take him to be supreme Disposer in all things, and his will to be in every thing the rule and measure of yours; which you have expressly consented to as often as you have prayed, either in the words, or after the tenor, of that prayer, wherein our Lord hath taught us to sum up our desires, and represent the sense of our hearts. But besides the duty that is, both by his law, and by covenant-agreement, owing to God, it is also to be considered as a high dignity put upon you, to be the covenanted parents of a glorified son; a matter of greater boast, than if you could say, "Our son" (to repeat what I formerly wrote) " is one of the greatest princes on earth!" How far should paganism be outdone by Christianity, which exhibits to our view death abolished, life and immortality brought to light, by Jesus Christ, in the Gospel! 2 Tim. i. 10. Which sets before us all the glories of the other world in a bright representation! Which, if we believe, that faith will be to us the substance of what we hope for, and the evidence of what we see not. Thus, though you saw not the kind reception and abundant entrance of this son of your delights into the everlasting kingdom, it will yet be a thing evident to you, and your faith will render it a great and most substantial reality. Pagans had but obscure glimmerings of such things; and in such afflicting cases, when they have occurred, comparatively lank and slender supports; yet such as were not to be despised. Should I transcribe what I find written in way of consolation, by Plutarch to Apollonius, upon the loss of a son, you would see what would give both instruction and admiration. I shall mention some passages. He praises the young person deceased, for his comeliness, sobriety, piety, dutifulness towards parents, obligingness towards friends; acknowledges that sorrow, in the case of losing such a son, hath (pvaskhv dox) a principle in nature, and is of the things that are (ov ip' hμiv) not in our power, or which we cannot help; that to be destitute of it is neither possible nor fit; that an apathy, or insensibleness, in such a case, is no more desirable than that we should endure to have a limb, a part of ourselves, cut or torn off from us, without feeling it. But yet affirms, that immoderate sorrow, upon such an occasion, is (rapà púoir) preternatural, and hath a pravity in it, and proceeds from a misinformed mind; that we ought in any such case to be neither (arabcis, nor dvorabeîs) unaffected, nor ill affected. He tells his friend a story (the meaning whereof is more considerable to us, than the credit of it, as perhaps it was to him) concerning two Grecian youths, Cleobis and Biton, whose mother having a duty to perform in the temple of Juno, and the mules not being at hand, in the instant when she expected them to draw her chariot thither, they most officiously drew it themselves; with which act of piety, their mother was so transported, that she made her request to Juno, on their behalf, that if there were any thing more desirable unto mortals than other, she would therewith reward her sons; who, thereupon, threw them into a sleep, out of which they awaked no more: thereby signifying, that death was the best gift that could be bestowed upon persons of such supposed piety as they! To which purpose, is what he relates concerning the death of Euthynous, an Italian, referred to towards the close of the following discourse, son and heir to the ample estate of Elysius, a person of principal dignity among the Terinæans; to whom, anxiously inquiring of diviners concerning the cause of this calamity, the spectre of his son, introduced by the father of the latter, appeared in his sleep, showing him certain Greek verses, the sum whereof was, Thy inquiry was foolish. The minds of men are vain, Euthynous rests by a kindly decreed death, He afterwards adds, A good man, when he dies, is worthy, not so much of lamentations, as of hymns and praises. He animadverts upon the aptness of parents to quarrel with any circumstances of a son's death, be they what they will. If he die abroad, then the aggravation is, that neither the father nor the mother had opportunity to close his eyes; if at home, then, How is he plucked away, even out of our hands! * Ps. lxxxiv. 11. He gives divers memorable instances, of sundry great persons, bearing, with strange composure of mind, the same kind of affliction; I omit what he wrote to his wife on their loss of a child; as also to recite many very instructive passages out of Seneca writing to Marcia, on the same account, viz. by way of consolation for her loss of a son, and to Helvia, for her loss in the same kind; to Polybius, having lost a near relation, &c. But we have the oracles of God, and do, too commonly, less need to receive instruction from Heathens than deserve to be reproached by them; that there is so frequent cause for the complaint of that ancient worthy in the Christian church; Non præstat fides quod præstitit infidelitas-The infidelity of pagans performs greater things than the faith of Christians. Their sedate temper, their mastery over turbulent passions, may in many instances shame our impotency and want of self-government, in like cases. For who of them have ever had, or could have, so great a thing to say, as is said to us by the word of the Lord, 1 Thess. iv. 13. for this very purpose, "that we may not sorrow concerning them that are asleep, even as others who have no hope:" i. e. ver. 14. " If we believe that Jesus died, and rose again, even so, them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For (ver. 15.) this we say to you," (and 'tis said by the forementioned authority; the Lord himself having revealed it to this great apostle, and directed him to say it,) "that we who are alive, and remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall not prevent them which are asleep." Ver. 16. "For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first." Ver. 17. "Then we which are alive, and remain, shall be caught up, together with them, in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord." Ver. 18. " Wherefore comfort one another with these words." I have transcribed these few verses, that they might readily appear to present view. And because all their efficacy, and all our advantage by them, depend upon our believing them, let us closely put the question to ourselves, Do we believe them, or do we not? The apostle seems to design the putting us upon this self-reflection, ver. 14. by inserting the supposition, If we believe, q. d. This will effectually do the business of allaying all our hopeless sorrow. For if we believe that one fundamental truth, (and therefore let us see whether we do or no,) of Christ's dying and rising again, it will draw such a train of consequences, all tending to fill our souls with a vital joy, as will leave no place for undue sorrow any longer. That faith will be still urging and carrying us forward, will make us wholly intent upon prospect and expectation. What are we now to look for upon such a foundation, so firmly laid, and fully believed? If we believe that Jesus died! He did not submit to die without a design; and his rising again, speaks him master of his design, and that he hath it now entirely in his power. He died not for himself, but for them he was to redeem! And being now risen again, what must become of them? All that follows, is now matter of glorious triumph! If Plato, Plutarch, or Seneca, had but once had such a revelation from heaven as this, and had that ground to believe it that we have, how full would their writings have been of it! How had they abounded in lofty paraphrases upon every period and word of it! The faith of such things would surely make a truly Christian heart so earnestly press forward in the expectation of the great things still to ensue, as to leave it little leisure for retrospection. And this is the source of all our intemperate sorrow, in such a case as this—our framing to ourselves pleasing suppositions of being as we were, with such and such friends and relatives about us as we heretofore enjoined. As hope of what is future and desirable feeds our joy; so memory of good things past doth our sorrow. In such a case as this, which the apostle here speaks to, the decease of our dear friends and relatives fallen asleep, we are apt to look back with a lingering eye upon that former state of things, and to say, as he, O mihi preteritos-O that God would recall for me the years that are gone over!-Or, as in sacred language, "O that I were as in months past-when the † secret of God was upon my tabernacle; when the Almighty was yet with me; when my children were about me!" What pleasant scenes do we form to ourselves afresh, of past things, on purpose to foment present sorrow! And whether we have that design or no, we are more prone to look back to former things we have known, than forward to future we know not; especially, if the further we look back the less we find of trouble intermingled in our former course. A smooth and pleasant path we would go over again, if reason and the necessity of affairs do not recall us, and urge us forward. And so, Sir, might you find matter for a very copious and not ungrateful recollection, to call over again, and revolve in your thoughts, the pleasures of your youth, (more innocent than of many others,) when you were encumbered with no cares, entertained with various delights of one sort and another, in this or that pleasant seat of your parents. But how remote is it from you, upon consideration, to wish yourself back into your juvenile state and circumstances! How much more generous and Godlike pleasure is it, to be doing good in the world, and still to abound therein; to go forward, and do still more and more! And, Madam, who could have a more pleasant retrospect upon former days than you? recounting your Antrim delights, the delight you took in your excellent relations, your garden-delights, your closet-delights, your Lord's-days delights! But how a much greater thing is it to serve God in your present station; as the mother of a numerous and hopeful offspring; as the mistress of a large family; where you bear your part, with your like-minded consort, in supporting the interest of God and religion, and have opportunity of scattering blessings round about you! But our business is not recurring, or looking back. God is continually calling us forward. Time is a stream running on towards the vast ocean. Tending backward, is vain striving against the stream. And as it is the course and method of nature, of providence, and grace, to tend forward, and carry us from less to greater things in this world; so do all these conspire to carry us on (because our aun, our highest pitch, cannot be here) to yet far greater things in the greater world. Of which vast world, it is the design of the following discourse to give you some account; though, God knows, it is but a very imperfect one. Such as it is, if God only make it an occasion to you, of fixing your minds and hearts upon that mighty theme, you will find it easy and pleasant to you to amplify upon it and enlarge it to yourselves. And thereby, through God's blessing, I doubt not, arrive to a fulness of satisfaction concerning this late dispensation, which hath a gloominess upon it; but is in very deed only gloomy on one side, viz. downwards, and towards this wretched world, this region of sorrow and darkness: but on the side upwards, and towards that other world which casts its lustre upon it, its phasis and appearance will be altogether bright and glorious. And the more you look by a believing intuition into that other world where our blessed Redeemer and Lord bears rule in so transcendent glory, the more will you be above all the cloudy darkness of this event of Providence towards yourselves and your family. Herein your perusal of this very defective essay may be of some use to you. And I reckoned it might be of more lasting and permanent use to you, and yours after you, and to as many others into whose hands it 'might fall, as a little book, than as one single sermon. You will, however, I doubt not, apprehend in it the sincere desire to assist you in this your present difficult trial; followed by the faithful endeavour of, Most honoured in the Lord, * Hierom. in him, and for his sake, JOHN HOWE. THE REDEEMER'S DOMINION, &c. REV. I. 18. -AND HAVE THE Keys of hell (haDES, OR THE UNSeen world) and OF DEATH. THE peculiar occasion of this present solemnity (I mean, | that is additional to the usual business of the Lord's day) may be somewhat amusing to narrower and less consider ing minds; i. e. That I am now to take notice to you of what the most would call) the premature or untimely death of a most hopeful young gentleman, the heir of a very considerable family, greatly prepared by parts and pious sentiments, and further preparing by study and conversation, to be useful to the age, cut off in his prime, when the mere showing him to the world had begun to raise an expectation, in such as knew him, of somewhat more than ordinary hereafter from him, his future advantageous circumstances being considered, of which you will hear further towards the close of this discourse. Nor did I know any passage in the whole sacred volume, more apt to serve the best and most valuable purpose in such a case, than the words now read; none more fitted to enlarge our minds, to compose them, and reduce to a due temper even theirs who are most concerned, and most liable to be disturbed, or to instruct us all how to interpret and comment aright upon so perplexing and so intricate a providence as this, at the first and slighter view, may seem unto us. In order whereto, our business must be to explain and apply this most weighty awful saying, First, For the explication, these three things are to be inquired into. 1. Who it is that claims and asserts to himself this power here spoken of. II. What it is about which this claimed power is to be conversant. III. What sort of power it is that this emblematical expression signifies to belong to him. said to appear in the vision that exhibits him as one .ike unto the Son of man, that we might certainly understand him so to be, v. 13-16. And such things said of him as are incident to a mortal man, the shedding of his blood, v. 5. and that he was dead, v. 18, former part. Yea, and expressions of this different import intermingled, that we might know it was the same Person that was continually spoken of under these so vastly different characters; as, I am the first and the last; I am he that liveth and was dead, v. 17, 18. We may thereupon very reasonably conclude that he is not here to be conceived under the one notion or the other, neither as God nor as man, separately or exclusively of each other; but as both together, as Ocáv Oporos, as God-man, under which conjunct notion, he receives and sustains the office of our Redeemer, and Mediator between God and man. Which will enable us the more clearly to answer the third inquiry, when we come to it, concerning the kind of that power which is here claimed; and which, because there can be no doubt of the justice of his claim, we are hereby taught to ascribe to him. For the management whereof, we are also hence to reckon him every way competent; that he was par negotio, that it was not too big for him; no expressions being used to signify his true humanity, but which are joined with others, as appropriate to deity. And that nothing therefore obliges us to narrow it more than the following account imports, which we are next to inquire about; viz. II. The large extent of the object about which the power he here claims is to be conversant; i. e. Hades (as we read hell, but which is truly to be read the unseen world) and death. The former of these we, with a debasing limitation, and (as I doubt not will appear) very unreasonably, do render hell. I. Who it is that claims the power here spoken of; where the inquiry is not so much concerning the person that makes this claim, which all the foregoing context The power belonging to Christ, we are elsewhere taught puts out of question to be our Lord Christ; but touch-to conceive, is of unspeakably greater latitude. And here ing the special notion and capacity wherein he claims it, we are not taught to confine it to so vile and narrow limits, and according whereto it must be understood to belong to as this translation gives it. All things in the context conhim. spire to magnify him, and, agreeably hereto, to magnify his dominion. When therefore the apparent design is to speak him great, that he should only be represented as the Jailer of devils, and their companions, is, to me, unaccountable; unless a very manifest necessity did induce to it. And whereas he is described by very distinct titles and attributes, promiscuously interwoven in the preceding verses of the chapter, viz. that sometimes he is introduced speaking in the style of a God; (as v. 8. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty. And again, v. 11. I am Alpha and Omega ;) but that sometimes he is represented in the form of a man, and accordingly described even from head to foot, and a Ostendunt terris hunc tantum, fata nec ultra esse sinunt. For the word a,dns, there can be no pretence for it. Though it ought to be extended, it is by no means to be restrained to that sense; which as it is the ignoblest, so it will appear but a very small, minute part of its signification; whether we consider the literal import, or the common use, of the word. Literally, it signifies but what we see not, or what is as to say, His dominion is of unknown limits; such as no out of our sight. And as the word of which it is compound-eye can measure. We think with a sort of veneration, of ed signifies also to know, as well as to see, it may further what is represented as too big for our knowledge. We signify, that state of things which lies without the compass have a natural awe and reverence for unsearchable darkof our knowledge, even out of the reach of our mental ness. But in the meantime we herein suffer a just dimisight; or concerning which, though we are to believe what nution of ourselves, that when our inquiry stops, and can is revealed, we cannot immediately or distinctly know it; proceed no further, it being but a very little part of the and in reference whereto, therefore, we are to walk by universe that lies within our compass, having tired our faith, not by sight, 2 Cor. v. 7. inquiring eye and mind; upon all the rest we write, Hades; call it unseen, or unknown. And because we call it so, in reference to us, God himself calls it so too; it being his way, (as is observed by that noted a Jew) speaking to men, to use the tongue of the children of men, to speak to them in their own language, and allow them to coin their own words: which at first they often do very occasionally; nor, as to this, could they have a fairer or a more urgent occasion, or that is more self-justifying, than in one word to say of that other world, that it is hades, or invisible, when that is truly all that they have to say, or can have any immediate notice of about it. And the common use of the word hath been very agreeable hereto, with the writers of all sorts; i. e. to signify indefinitely the unseen world; or the state of the deceased out of our world, who are, consequently, gone out of our sight, whether they were good or bad; so as not peculiarly to signify hell, or any place or state of torment only. It were easy to abound in quotations to this purpose, if it were either needful or proper in a discourse of this na ture. What I intend in this kind, I shall only set down on the bye in the margin, upon which they that will may cast their eye; that the discourse be not interrupted as to others, that either have no need to be informed in this matter, having known as much before as can be now told them; or no inclination to be diverted from their present purpose in reading; apprehending that what is generally told them, only concerning the usual signification of a word, is not said without some ground. And let texts of Scripture be consulted about that, how hades, and the correspondent word in the Old Testament, sheol, are used there. If we take the help of interpreters, the impartial reader is to judge of their fidelity and ability who go our way.c Upon the whole, it being most evident that hell is but a small and mean part of what is signified by hades, it will be very unreasonable to represent or conceive of the power here ascribed to our Lord, according to that narrow notion of it. And would be a like incongruity, as if, to magnify the person of highest dignity in the court of a mighty prince, one should say, "He is the keeper of the dungeon." The word itself, indeed, properly taken, and according to its just extent, mightily greatens him, i. e. 'tis as much b And here it may suffice to take notice, that Greek writers, poets, philosophers, historians, and other writers, that have made only occasional mention of this word ans, or of the words next akin to it, ats, or aidns, or lexicogra phers, that have purposely given an account of it, from Greek authors, that must be supposed best to understand the use of words in their own tongue; generally such as have not been engaged in a controversy, that obliges men usually to torture words to their own sense, or to serve the hypothesis which they had espoused; have been remote from confining this, or the cognate words, to that narrow sense as only to signify a place or state of torment for bad men, but understood it as comprehending, also, a state of felicity for the pious and good. For such as have been concerned in interpreting this or other like words with reference to the known and famous controversy, which I need not mention, their judgments must weigh according to the reputation they are of with the The Greeks no doubt, best understood their own language. And among them can we think that Homer in the beginning of his 1 Iliad, when he speaks of the many brave souls of his heroes, those puoi xai, which the war he is describing sent into the invisible regions, aide apoiaev, that he ever dreamt they were all promiscuously despatched away to a place of torment? Not to mention other passages where he uses the words ons to the same purpose. Divers others of the Greek poets are cited by several ready to our hands, with which I shall not cumber these pages That one is enough, and nothing can be fuller to our purpose, which is quoted by Clem. Alexand. Str. 1. 5 as well as by sundry others, and ascribed to the comic Diphilus, though by others to another Philemon. Και γαρ reader. καθ' αδην δυο τριβους νομιζόμεν Μιαν δικαίων, κατεραν ασεβων οδον. In hades we reckon there are two paths, the one of the righteous, the other of the wicked: plainly showing that hades was understood to contain heaven end hell. Plato, when in his Phædo he tells us that he that comes into hades, apuntos, kaι arελ£525, not initiated and duly prepared, is thrown into Bopẞo. Dos, a stinking lake, but he that comes into it fitly purified, shall dwell with the gods; as expressly signifies hades to include the same opposite states of misery and felicity. In that dialogue called Axiochus, though supposed not to be his. written by one that sufficiently knew the meaning of such a word, we are told that when men die they are brought into the IIεdiov aλnoetas, the field of truth. where sit judges that examine riva Biov, what manner of life every one lived while he dwelt in the body, that they who, while they lived here, were inspired by a good genius or spirit, go into the region of pious men, having before they came into hades been purified. Such as led their lives wickedly are hurried by furies up and down chaos, in the region of the wicked. In the third Book de Repub. Plato blames the poets that they represent the state of things in hades too frightfully, when they should uadλov eravεiv, praise it rather. Plutarch de Superst. brings in Plato speaking of hades, as a person or a god, Dis, or Pluto. as they frequently do. and says he is Xv0pons, benign or friendly to men; therefore not a tormentor of them only. Calius Rhodigin quotes this same passage of Plutarch, and takes notice that our Saviour speaks of the state of torment by another word, not hades, but Gehenna; which sufficiently shows how he understood it himself. And whereas there are who disagree to this notation of this word, that nakes it signify unscen as some will fetch from the Hebrew, and go as far It hath therefore its rise from ourselves, and the penury of our knowledge of things; and is at once both an ingenuous confession, with some sort of modest cover, and excuse of our own ignorance: as with geographers, all that part of this globe which they cannot describe, is terra incognita; and with philosophers, such phenomena in nature as they can give no account of, they resolve shortly and in the most compendious way into some or other occult quality, or somewhat else, as occult. How happy were it, if in all matters that concern religion, and in this, as it doth so, they would shut up in a sacred venerable darkness what they cannot distinctly perceive; it being once by the undeceiving word expressly asserted that it is, without therefore denying its reality, because they clearly apprehend not what it is. With too many their religion is so little, and their pride and self-conceit so great, that they think themselves fit to be standards; that their eye or mind is of a size large enough to measure the creation, yea, and the Creator too. And by how much they have the less left them of mind, or the more it is sunk into earth and carnality, the more capable it is of being the measure of all reality, of taking back as Adam in their search, alleging for this the authority of an old sibyl. will have it go for anons, and signify as arepans, unpleasant; nothing is, plainer than that this other is the common notion, which (though fancy hath not a greater dominion in any thing than in etymology) would make one shy of stretching invention to find how to differ from the generality. Therefore Calepin, upon this word, tells us that the Greek grammarians do, against the nature of the Etymon, (which plainly enough shows what they understood that to be,) generally direct its beginning to be written with the asper spirit, but yet he makes it signify obscure, or not visible. And though Plato is endeavoured to be hooked in to the deriving it from Adam by a very far fetch; yet it is plain that his calling it Torov adnor, in a place before referred to, shows he understood it to signify invisible; and so lexicons will commonly derive it (Fulgo, says Cælius Rhodig.) But its extensiveness, as comprehending a state of happiness, is our principal concern, which way (as we might show by mauy more instances) the common stream carries it. Pausanias in his 'APKAAİKA, speaking of Hermes (according to Homer) as Atos diaкovor, and that he did lead souls vro roy any, could not be thought to mean that they were then universally miserable. 'Sext. Empir. is an authority good enough for the meaning of a Greek word. When (Adversus Mathem.) he tells us, though by way of objection, all men have a common notion Epi Twv ev adov, (using the gendative, being understood,) and yet, as to the thing, he afterwards distinguishes itive with E, as Homer and others do, another word, house or abode, in the poets' fables, and what, from the nature of the soul itself, all have a common apprehension of. As also Diog Lært. hath the same phrase, mentioning the writings of Protagoras, who, he says, wrote one book Epi rwv ev adov, using the genitive, as here, after ev, as hath been usual, on the mentioned account. And though his books were burnt by the Athenians, because of the dubious title of one of them concerning the gods, so that we have not opportunity to know what his opinion of hales was, we have reason more than enough, to think he understood it not of a state of torment only for evil spirits. lenge, that this word properly signifies the other world, the place or state of the Only if any think in some or other text of Scripture this word must signify hell only, since it is of that latitude as to signify heaven in other places, an impartial view of the circumstances of the text must determine whether there it be meant of the one, or the other or both. d Maimonides. |