Tracts & Letters (Vol 3) - Calvin - XIV - Tract 4 (Psychopannychia) concluded

Required reading
Tracts and Letters (Volume 3) by John Calvin (Available from Amazon or free here) - Conclude Tract IV (Psychopannychia).

My summary
Today we finish the tract on psychopannychia (soul sleep). 

Basically Calvin dismantles each of the arguments from those supporting the doctrine of soul sleep.  Their arguments are:
(i) God did not infuse into man any other soul than that which is common to him with the brutes;
(ii) the soul, though endowed with immortality, lapsed into sin, and thereby sunk and destroyed its immortality;
(iii) those who have died are in many places said to sleep, as in the case of Stephen and Lazarus;
(iv) Ecclesiastes 3:18-21;
(v) there is one judgement which will render to all their reward and no blessedness or misery is fixed before that day.

Most of the last part of the tract looks at one proof text after another.

What grabbed me
Good description of the death of the soul: 'Would you know what the death of the soul is? It is to be without God - to be abandoned by God, and left to itself: for if God is its life, it loses its life when it loses the presence of God. That which has been said in general may be shown in particular parts. If without God, there are no rays to illumine our night, surely the soul, buried in its own darkness, is blind. It is also dumb, not being able to confess unto salvation what it has believed unto righteousness. It is deaf, not hearing that living voice. It is lame, nay, unable to support itself, having none to whom it can say, "Thou hast held my right hand, and conducted me in thy will." In short, it performs no one function of life.'

What a fearful thing to contemplate.

Next week's reading
Begin Tracts and Letters (Volume 4) by John Calvin (Available from Amazon or free here) by reading the Advertisement, Preface and Letters I to XIV.

Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.