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follow death, that the soul should not be left in hades , should not remain in 
the mansion of departed spirits, but should reanimate its body, before the 
latter had suffered corruption. Brethren ,* says he, let me speak freely to 
you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried , and his 
sepulchre is with us to this day. He has had no resurrection. It was never 
pretended that he had. His body, like other bodies, has undergone cor¬ 
ruption; and this gives sufficient reason to believe that his soul has shared 
the fate of other souls, and that the prophecy was never meant of him, 
unless in a secondary sense, “ But”f continues he, “ being a prophet, he 
spake of the resurrection of Christ,” or the Messiah: and, to shew how 
exactly both what related to the soul, and what related to the body, had 
their completion in the Messiah, adds, that “ his sold was not left in hades , 
neither did his flesh see corruption .” 
Besides, we have another clear proof from the New Testament, that 
hades denotes the intermediate state of souls between death and the general 
resurrection. In the Apocalypse,* we learn that death and hades, by our 
translators rendered hell as usual, shall , immediately after the general judg¬ 
ment, be cast into the lake of fire. This is the second dea th. In other 
words, the death which consists in the separation of the soul from the body, 
and the state of souls intervening between death and judgment, shall be no 
more. To the wicked these shall be succeeded by a more terrible death, 
the damnation of gehenna , hell properly so called. Indeed, in this sacred 
Book, the commencement, as well as the destruction, of this intermediate 
state, are so clearly marked, as to render it almost impossible to mistake 
them. In a preceding chapter,§ we learn that hades follows close at 
the heels of death ; and, from the other passage quoted, that both are 
involved in one common ruin at the universal judgment. Whereas if we 
interpret hell , in the Christian sense of the word, the whole passage is 
rendered nonsense. Hell is represented as being cast into hell: for so the 
lake of fire, which is in this place also denominated the second death, is 
universally interpreted. 
]f more is not granted us to know; “ if we see, as through a glass 
darkly;” if it has not even entered into the warmest imagination, “ the joys 
that are prepared for the righteous;” if some things are yet covered in 
obscurity; still enough is imparted to make us contemplate this life as a 
* Acts, ii. 29 . 
+ 30, 31. 
t Rev. xx, 14 . 
§ Rev. vi. 18. 
