material body: and hence it is, that no repentance, no real change of life, can afterwards take place, but the influent life from the Lord and heaven is determined and fixed, the moment it enters, according to the form, quality, and state, of the ultimate principles of the mind.
They, who have loved themselves and the world above all things, and who have not endeavoured, by the proffered means of salvation, to induce upon their minds a beneficial change of disposition, while the possibility was extended to them, confirm themselves hereafter more and more in their evils, and at last enter wholly into the loves and the life of hell. But they, who have loved the Lord above all things, and their neighbour as themselves, and who have endeavoured to live in conformity with the divine laws, are more and more confirmed in habits of good, and at length enter wholly into the loves and the life of heaven. The life of heaven is what is called in the Word eternal life; and the life of hell is what is called eternal death.
It is indeed the common belief, that the material body, which is committed to the grave, will rise again at some future period, called the day of judgment, when the visible heavens and the habitable earth are to be destroyed by fire; that these are to be succeeded by a new heaven and a new earth; and that in the mean time the souls of those who are deceased are either hovering in the air in anxious suspense and expectation, or else are dissipated, being incapable of living as men until they are re-united with their former bodies. These and similar vain ideas have been formed by many in the church, in consequence of not understanding the true sense of the Sacred Scriptures, which treat of spiritual things under natural images: and they have moreover been confirmed therein by the
