is true, and to be trusted, you are not pardoned; but if you believe this, and consent to Christ's pardoning covenant, you are pardoned, though you doubt of your own forgiveness.

Q. 18. How may I be sure that I am forgiven?

A. The everlasting punishment is forgiven, when you are one that God by his covenant pardoneth, and that is, when by true faith and repentance you consent to the covenant terms, and give up yourself to God, as your God, and Saviour, and Sanctifier. And when temporal punishments are remitted in soul or body, experience of their removal may tell you.k

Q. 19. What keepeth up doubts of forgiveness of sin?

A. 1. Ignorance of the terms of the pardoning covenant. 2. And ignorance of ourselves and our own sincerity. 3. Especially renewing our guilt by sin, and being so defective in our repentance, and other grace, as that we cannot be sure of our sincerity; above all, when frequent sinning after God's promises makes us not creditable to ourselves.

Q. 20. But is not the cure of a doubting soul to believe, though he find no evidence in himself; and that because he is commanded to believe, and so believing will be his evidence?

A. Believing is a word that signifieth divers acts. As I told you, it is every man's duty to believe God's mercy, and Christ's redemption and sufficiency, and the truth of the conditional promise, and to accept pardon, as offered on the terms of that promise, and then not to cherish doubts of his sincerity. But it is not every man's duty to believe that he is sincere, or that his sin is pardoned; else most should be bound to believe an untruth that it may after become true. Presumption destroyeth far more than despair; for an ungodly, impenitent person to believe that he is godly, and justified by Christ, is to believe himself, who is a liar, and not to believe Christ; yea, it is to believe himself against Christ, who saith the contrary.

Q. 21. What is the use of this article of the forgiveness of sin? A. The use is exceeding great; not to embolden us in sin, because it is pardonable, nor to delay repentance and forsaking sin, for that were to cast away pardon by contempt. But, 1. to show us what a merciful God we serve. 2. And what a mercy

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it is to have a Redeemer, and a pardoning Saviour. 3. And what a comfort to be under a pardoning covenant of grace.

* John iii. 16; Rom. x. 14.

Mark iii. 28; Acts v. 31.

Jer. xxxi. 34, and xxxvi. 3; Luke vii. 12, 13; Acts xxvi. 18; Eph. i.7; Col. i. 14.

4. And it tells us that the review of the sins of our unregenerate state, though they must keep us humble, should yet be still used to raise our hearts to joyful thankfulness to God, for the grace of a Redeemer. 5. And it should keep us from despair and discouragement in all our weaknesses, while we have the evidence of daily pardon. 6. Yea, it should make us hate sin the more, which is against so good a God. 7. We may come with reverent boldness to God, in meditation, prayer, and sacraments, when we know that sin is pardoned. 8. And we may taste the sweetness of all our mercies, when the doubt of our forgiveness doth not embitter them. 9. And we may much the easier bear all afflictions when the everlasting punishment is forgiven. 10. And we may die when God calls us, without horror, when we believe that we are pardoned through Christ. Nothing but sin can hurt or endanger us at Christ's tribunal; when that is forgiven, and there is no condemnation to us, being in Christ, how joyfully may we think of his appearing! 11. What peace of conscience may we have continually, while we can say that all our sins are forgiven us! For, as Psalm xxxii. 1; "And blessed are they whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered, to whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose Spirit there is no guile."

Q. 1. I HAVE oft wondered why there is nothing in the Creed of the immortality of the soul, and its state before the resurrection.

A. 1. The article of Christ's descent tells us, that his soul was among the separated souls, while his body was in the grave; as he told the thief, that he should be that day with him. in Paradise.

2. The resurrection of the body is a thing not known at all by nature, but only by supernatural revelation, and therefore is an article of mere belief. But the immortality, or future life of souls, is a point which the light of nature revealeth, and therefore was taken, both by Jews and sober heathens, as a truth of common notice. Even as the love of ourselves is not expressed

in the Ten Commandments, but only the love of God and others, because it was a thing presupposed.

3. The immortality of the soul is included in the article of the resurrection of the body; for if the soul continue not, the next at the resurrection would be another soul, and a new created one, and not the same. And then the body would not be the same soul's body, nor the man the same man, but another. Who was so unwise to think that God had so much more care of the body than of the soul, as that he would let the soul perish, and raise the body from the dust alone, and join it with another soul?

4. Very learned and wise expositors think, that the Greek word, anastasis, used for resurrection, indeed signifieth the whole life after this, both of the soul first, and body also after, oft in the New Testament. It is a living again, or after this life, called a standing up again. And there is great probability of it in Christ's argument with the Sadducees, and some passages of Paul's, 1 Cor. xv.

Q. 2. What texts of Scripture do fully prove that the soul liveth when it is separated from the body?

A. Very many: ì. God breathing into man the breath of life, and making him a living soul, is said thereby to make him in the image of God, who is the living God; and so the soul is essentially life.

2. God's calling himself the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is by Christ expounded, as proving that he is the God of living Abraham.

3. None ever dreamed that Enoch and Elijah had no company of human souls in heaven. For (Matt. xvii.) Moses also appeared with them on the Mount, and showed that his soul did live.

4. When Saul himself would have Samuel raised to speak with him, it plainly implieth that it was then the common belief of the Jews, that separated souls survive.

5. When (1 Kings xvii. 22) Elijah raised the dead child of the widow of Zarephath; and (2 Kings iv.) Elisha raised the Shunamite's child; and (2 Kings xiii. 21) a dead man was raised; all these proved that the soul was the same that came again, else the persons had not been the same.

6. When Christ raised Lazarus, and Jairus's daughter, (Mark v. 41, 42; Luke viii. 55,) and another, (Luke vii. 12, 14, 15,) the same souls came into them.

7. Many of the dead rose and appeared at Christ's death. And Peter raised one from death, which was by a re-union of the same living soul to the same body.

8. Christ tells us (Luke xii. 4) that men cannot kill the soul. 9. He tells us (Luke xvi. 9) that as the wise steward, when he was put out, was received by the persons whom he had obliged; so if we make us friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, when these things fail us, which is at death, we shall be received into the everlasting habitations.

10. The parable of the sensual Rich Man and Lazarus: one going presently to hell, and the other to the bosom of Abraham in Paradise, fully prove that Christ would have this believed, and would have all men warned accordingly to prepare; and that Moses and the prophets were so sufficient for such notice, as that one from the dead would have been less credible herein. Though it be a parable, it is an instructing, and not a deceiving parable, and very plain in this particular. The name of Abraham's bosom was according to the common sense of the Jews, who so called that state of the blessed, not doubting but that Abraham was then in happiness, and the blessed with him.

11. Herod's thought, that John had been risen from the dead, and the Jews' conceit that Christ had been one of the old prophets risen, and the Pharisees' approbation of Christ's argument with the Sadducees do put it past doubt, that it was then taken for certain truth, that the souls of the faithful do survive by all, except such as the heretical Sadducees.

12. Christ saith, "This is life eternal, to know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." (John xvii. 3.) How is it eternal, if it have as long an interruption as from death till the day of judgment?

13. It is the sum of God's Gospel, that "Whosoever believeth in Christ shall not perish, but have everlasting life." (John iii. 16.) Therefore they perish not till the day of judgment.

14. Christ hath promised, that whoever drinketh of the water which he will give him, (the Spirit,) " it shall be in him a well of water springing up to everlasting life." (John iv. 14.) But if the soul perish, that water perisheth to that soul.

15. To be born again of the Spirit fitteth a man to enter into the kingdom of God. But if the soul perish, all that new birth is lost to that soul, and profiteth the dust only.

16. "He that believeth on the Son, hath everlasting life."

(John iii. 36.) "He is passed from death to life." (John v. 24.) "He giveth meat, which endureth to everlasting life." (John vi. 27.) "He shall never hunger or thirst (that is, be empty) that cometh to Christ." (Ver. 35.) "Of all that cometh to him he will lose nothing;" therefore will not lose all their souls. (Ver. 39.) "They have everlasting life." (Ver. 40, 47.) "He dwelleth in Christ, and Christ in him," and therefore is not extinct. (Ver. 54, 56, 58.) "Verily, verily, I say unto you, if a man keep my sayings, he shall never see death." (John viii. 51.) "I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my hand.” (John x. 28.)

17. "Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." (John xi. 26.)

IS." The Comforter shall abide with you for ever," (John xiv. 26.) "For he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you."

(Ver. 17.) 19. "I will that they whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory." (John xvii. 24.) If the soul perish, it is not they that shall be with him, but others.

20. "To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." (Luke xxiii. 43.)

21. "Father, into thy hands I commend my Spirit." (Luke xxiii. 46.)

22. "Where I am, there shall my servant be." (John xii. 26.) But Christ is not perished.

23. "Stephen called on God, saying, Lord Jesus receive my spirit." (Acts vii. 79.) Therefore it perished not.

"We

24. "If children, then heirs." (Rom. viii. 17.) groan, waiting for the adoption." (Ver. 23.) "Whom he justified, them he glorified." (Ver. 30.) In short, all the whole Gospel, that promiseth life to the sanctified, doth prove the immortality of the soul: for if the soul perish, no man that lived upon earth is saved: for if the soul be not the man, it is most certainly the prime, essential part of the man. The dust of the carcass is not the man; and if another soul, and not the same, come into it, it will be another man, and so all the promises fail.

25. So all the texts that speak of resurrection, judgment, that we shall all be judged according to our works, and what we did in the body. If it be another soul that must be judged,