Page:A Compendium of the Chief Doctrines of the True Christian Religion.djvu/110

106 us and you there is a great gulf fixed; so that they, who would pass from hence to you, cannot; neither can they pass to us, who would come from thence," Luke xvi. 26. The same is also denoted by the following: "He that is unjust, let him be unjust still; and he that is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still,; and he that is holy, let him be holy still," Apoc. xxii. 11. Whence it follows, that they, who are once consigned to hell, abide there to eternity; and they, who are once raised by the Lord into heaven, abide there also to eternity.

THE world of spirits, or that world into which every man passes immediately on the death of his body, is an intermediate state and place between heaven and hell. That there must be, in the nature of things, such an intermediate state, is plain from a due consideration of what it is that constitutes heaven, and what hell; and how rare and uncommon it is for either of those states to be perfected in the present life. Now as good and truth, together with their conjunction in man, constitute heaven both within him and without him; and as, on the other hand, evil and falsehood, together with their conjunction in man, constitute hell both within him and without him; and yet neither of these two opposite states can be supposed to be completed in this life, every man (with few exceptions, if any,) being partly in good and truth, and partly in evil and falsehood; it therefore necessarily follows, that man dying in this mixed state is, on his first entrance into another life, neither