4:3), “Better is he that hath not yet been, than both they”; that is than they that live, or have lived; which, if the soul of all them that have lived were immortal, were a hard saying; for then to have an immortal soul, were worse than to have no soul at all. And again (9:5), “The living know they shall die, but the dead know not anything”; that is, naturally, and before the resurrection of the body.

Another place which seems to make for a natural immortality of the soul, is that where our Saviour saith that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are living: but this is spoken of the promise of God, and of their certitude to rise again, not of a life then actual; and in the same sense that God said to Adam, that on the day he should eat of the forbidden fruit, he should certainly die; from that time forward he was a dead man by sentence; but not by execution, till almost a thousand years after. So Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were alive by promise, then, when Christ spake; but are not actually till the resurrection. And the history of Dives and Lazarus makes nothing against this, if we take it, as it is, for a parable.