But it is only departed saints who are employed to bear God's messages. There is no intimation in scripture, that those who die in their sins, are afterwards sent, or suffered to go abroad. There is reason to believe, that as the saints are made perfect at death, so all that bears an affinity to goodness, ceases at that period, in the unrenewed, and that they put on the complete image of him who is termed their father. If this is the case, they would spread mischief and misery, were they permitted access to those who remain in the body, and liable to temptation. However this might be, we are assured that they are confined in the infernal prison, and will continue prisoners till the great day. This is intimated by our Savior, when he warns the sinner to "agree with his adversary quickly, while in the way with him--lest he should be cast into prison"--because should this happen there will be no release "till he shall pay the utmost farthing." This speaks the state of impenitents, to be from the time of their death, that of prisoners, who can neither break their prison, or obtain, so much as a temporary release, till they shall have suffered all their demerits. The same is intimated in the parable of the rich man Lazarus. The rich sinner is represented as passing, at death, into a place of torment, and confinement, and as despairing of even a momentary enlargement. Other wise he would not have requested that Lazarus might be sent to warn his brethren who were then living on earth, but rather that he might have gone himself. Him they would have known; and he could have given them a feeling description of the miseries which living in pleasure, regardless of the one thing needful, will draw after it. Many advantages might have been expected from this personal appearance to his brethren, but he preferred no such petition. His prayer that Lazarus might be sent, was probably intended to intimate that departed spirits remember their former state on earth, and the relatives and acquaintance whom they leave upon it; that they retain a concern for them; that they know that good spirits are used of God to transact matters relative to their spiritual concerns, and that those who die in their sins are kept in confinement, and not permitted to go forth; no, not to warn fellow sinners, whom they have left behind them. This agrees with what is said by St. Peter, respecting the antediluvians. He speaks of those as being "spirits in prison" in the apostolic age, "who were disobedient, when the long suffering of God waited with them, in the days of Noah."