Therefore our Saviour meaneth that those patriarchs were immortal; not by a property consequent to the essence and nature of mankind; but by the will of God, that was pleased of His mere grace to bestow “eternal life” upon the faithful. And though at that time the patriarchs and many other faithful men were “dead,” yet as it is in the text, they “lived to God”; that is, they were written in the Book of Life with them that were absolved of their sins, and ordained to life eternal at the resurrection. That the soul of man is in its own nature eternal, and a living creature independent on the body, or that any mere man is immortal otherwise than by the resurrection in the last day, except Enoch and Elias, is a doctrine not apparent in Scripture. The whole of the 14th chapter of Job, which is the speech not of his friends, but of himself, is a complaint of this mortality of nature; and yet no contradiction of the immortality at the resurrection. “There is hope of a tree,” saith he (verse 7), “if it be cast down. Though the root thereof wax old, and the stock thereof die in the ground, yet when it scenteth the water it will bud, and bring forth boughs like a plant.