and execution, the witnesses, and the Ceremony required of Man, whereby to execute it on his part and take the advantage of it.

By the sacrifice which our Lord offered of himself, this technical but sincere and serious enthusiast argues, more than an atonement was made. "And that this superabundancy might not run to waste, God declared that Man should have Eternal Life absolute as Christ himself had it; and hence Eternal Life is called the Gift of God through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, over and above our redemption. Why then," he asks, "doth Death remain in the World? Why because Man knows not the Way of Life—the way of Life they have not known.' Because our faith is not yet come to

us

'when the Son of Man comes shall he

find faith upon the earth?'

Because Man is

a beast of burden that knows not his own strength in the virtue of the Death and the power of the Resurrection of Christ. Unbelief goes not by reason or dint of argument, but is a sort of melancholy madness, by which if we once fancy ourselves bound, it hath the

same effect upon us as if we really were so. Death is like Satan, who appears to none but those who are afraid of him: Resist the Devil and he will flee from you. Because Death had once dominion over us, we think it hath and must have it still. And this I find within myself, that though I can't deny one word I have said in fact or argument, yet I can't maintain my belief of it without making it more familiar to my understanding, by turning it up and down in my thoughts and ruminating upon some proceedings already made upon it in the World.

"The Motto of the Religion of the World is Mors Janua Vita; if we mean by this the Death of Christ, we are in the right; but if we mean our own Death then we are in the wrong. Far be it from me to say that Man may not attain to Eternal Life, though he should die ; for the Text runs double. I am the Resurrection and the Life; he that liveth and believeth on me, shall never die; and though he were dead he shall live. This very Text shows that there is a nearer way of entering into Eternal Life

than by the way of Death and Resurrection. Whatever circumstances a man is under at the time of his death, God is bound to make good this Text to him, according to which part of it he builds his faith upon; if he be dead there's a necessity for a resurrection; but if he be alive there's no occasion for Death or Resurrection either. This text doth not maintain two religions, but two articles of faith in the same religion, and the article of faith for a present life without dying is the higher of the two.

"No man can comprehend the heights and

depths of the Gospel at his it; and in point of order, be destroyed is Death.'

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first entrance into

the last enemy to The first essay of

Faith is against Hell, that though we die we may not be damned; and the full assurance of this is more than most men attain to before Death overtakes them, which makes Death a terror to men. But they who attain it can sing a requiem Lord now lettest thou thy Servant depart in peace!' and if God takes them at their word, they lie down in the faith of the Resurrection of the Just. But whenever he

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pleases to continue them, after that attainment, much longer above ground, that time seems to them an interval of perfect leisure, till at last espying Death itself, they fall upon it as an enemy that must be conquered, one time or other, through faith in Christ. This is the reason why it seems intended that a respite of time should be allotted to believers after the first Resurrection and before the dissolution of the World, for perfecting that faith which they began before their death but could not attain to in the first reach of life: for Death being but a discontinuance of Life, wherever men leave off at their death, they must begin at their resurrection. Nor shall they ascend after their resurrection, till they have attained to this faith of translation, and by that very faith they shall be then convinced that they need not have died.

"When Elijah courted death under the juniper tree in the wilderness, and said-now Lord, take away my life, for I am not better than my fathers,' that request shews that he was not educated in this faith of translation, but

attained it afterwards by study. Paul tells we shall not all die but we shall all be changed ;' yet though he delivered this to be his faith in general, he did not attain to such a particular knowledge of the way and manner of it as to prevent his own death: he tells us he had not yet attained the Resurrection of the dead, but was pressing after it. He had but a late conversion, and was detained in the study of another part of divinity, the confirming the New Testament by the Old and making them answer one another,—a point previous to the faith of translation, and which must be learned before it -in order to it. But this his pressing (though he did not attain,) hath much encouraged me," says Asgill," to make this enquiry, being well assured that he would not have thus pursued it, had he not apprehended more in it than the vulgar opinion.

"We don't think ourselves fit to deal with one another in human affairs till our age of one and twenty. But to deal with our offended Maker, to counterplot the malice of fallen Angels, and to rescue ourselves from eternal