Daily Dying and Rising
Pulter engages in a conventional meditation on death and resurrection in “Of Night and Morning”. Such meditations were designed to remind Christians of the inevitability of death as well as the promise of everlasting life if they were among the chosen. In his sermon delivered on August 24, 1651, the preacher Edmund Calamy offers clear associations between death and resurrecting from the grave and the everyday rituals of going to bed at night and waking in the morning:
… [W]hen God’s people awake out of the sleep of death, they shall be made active for God, then ever they were before; when you lie down in the grave, you lie down with mortal bodies; It is sown a mortal body, but it shall rise up an immortal body, it is sown in dishonour, but it shall rise up in honour; it is sown a natural body, but it shall rise up a spiritual body.
… As when a man ariseth in the morning, though he hath slept many hours, may suppose he could sleep 20 years together, yet notwithstanding, when he awakes, these 20 years will seem to be but as one hour unto him. So it will be at the day of Judgment, all those that are in their graves, when they awake, it will be tanquam somnus unius horae, but as the sleep of an hour unto them. (sig. A3r)
Later in the sermon, Calamy urges Christians to perform meditations on death and resurrection every night and every morning:
To beseech you all every night when ye go to bed, to remember this text, and especially to remember these four things. First, When you are putting off your clothes, remember that you must shortly put off your bodies. And Secondly, When you go into your beds, remember that it will not be long before you must go down into your graves. And Thirdly, When you close your eyes to sleep, remember that it will not be long before death must close your eyes. And Fourthly, When you awake in the morning, remember that at the resurrection you must all arise out of the grave, and that the just shall arise to everlasting happiness, but the wicked to everlasting misery. (sig. A3v)
On the state of the soul after death, Calamy differentiates between the souls of the godly and ungodly. He clarifies that both kind of souls go to sleep in death; however, the souls of the saved immediately go to heaven to rest in peace with God while the souls of the wicked go to hell and suffer nightmarish dreams. In his explanations, Calamy refutes the Anabaptists’ belief in “soul-sleeping,” the notion that the souls of the dead lie in an unconscious state, neither alive nor dead, until the final day of the resurrection:
It is true, when a child of God dies, the soul goes to sleep. How is that? The soul goes to sleep in a Scripture-sense, that is, it goes to rest in Abraham’s bosom (O blessed sleep). It goes rest in the embraces of God, it goes into the arms of its Redeemer, it goes to the heavenly Paradise, it goes to be always present with the Lord. But take heed of that wicked opinion, to say that the soul sleeps in an Anabaptistical sense; that is, that it lies in a strange kind of lethargy, neither dead, nor alive, neither capable of joy nor sorrow, until the resurrection. Though Stephens body fell asleep, yet his soul did not fall asleep, but immediately went unto Jesus Christ in Heaven. (sig. A3r)
Some men are much disquieted in their sleep by hideous and fearful dreams; Nebuchadnezzar when he was asleep, had a most scaring dream, and when he awoke, he was amazed therewith. So it is with a wicked man. Death to a wicked man is a sleep, but it is a terrifying sleep; the soul goes immediately to hell, where it is burned with fire that never shall be quenched and where the worm that never dies is always gnawing upon it. The body, that indeed lies in the grave, [is] asleep, but how? Even as a malefactor that sleeps in prison the night before he is executed, but when he awakes he is hurried and dragged to execution: so the wicked man falls asleep in death; but when he awakes he awakes to everlasting damnation. But now a child of God, when he sleeps the sleep of death, he sleeps in his Father’s house; and when he awakes, he awakes to everlasting happiness. (sig. A4r)