I was under this Law of Death once; and while I lay under it, I felt the terror of it, till I had delivered myself from it by those thoughts which must convince them that have them. And in this thing only, I wish, for their sakes, that all men were as I am. The reason why I believe that this doctrine is true, is, because God hath said it: yet I could not thus assert it by argument, if I did not conceive it with more self-conviction than I have from any maxims or positions in human science. The Covenant of Eternal Life is a Law of itself and a science of itself, which can never be known by the study of any other science. It is a science out of Man's way, being a pure invention of God. Man knows no more how to save himself than he did to create himself; but to raise his ambition for learning this, God graduates him upon his degree of knowledge in it, and gives him badges of honour as belonging to that degree, upon the attainment whereof a man gains the title of a Child of the Resurrection: to which title belongs this badge of honour, to die no more but make our exit by translation, as Christ, who was the first of this Order, did before us. And this world being the academy to educate Man for Heaven, none shall ever enter there till they have taken this degree here. “Let the Dead bury the Dead! and the Dead lie with the Dead! And the rest of the Living go lie with them! I'll follow him that was dead, and is alive, and living for ever. And though I am now single, yet I believe that this belief will be general before the general change, of which Paul speaks, shall come; and that then, and not before, shall be the Resurrection of the Just, which is called the first Resurrection; and after that the Dead so arisen, with the Living, then alive, shall have learned this faith, which shall qualify them to be caught up together in the air, then shall be the General Resurrection, after which Time shall be no more.