* * * Immortality is incorruptibility, and applies to the body in life and immortality, nor is mortality applied to anything but the body. The evil is that people confound immortality and eternal life—two things totally distinct. I am just as mortal when I have it as before. They must for their theory make Satan mortal as man. I am not very fond of the expression "immortality of the soul," as it gives a handle to them. Man is become mortal or under liability to die, but scripture is as plain as possible and as express, that death does not touch the soul. It is the separation of soul and body, or, as the second death, punishment. These things have vogue for a time with unconverted and unstable souls, and some other heresy springs up; but it is when God calls us to it to be earnestly contended against.
Mr. Minton evidently knows nothing of sin and atonement. That I have invariably found to be the case. Look at the article on the deserts of sin. Now Christ and atonement, or what the cross proves, is wholly passed over and ignored. Their system is merely natural religion, and that false. I find them writhe under the testimony of scripture. So in the article on immortality. I deny righteousness and holiness in Adam unfallen. The statement that death is the cessation of life (save as it is used for life in a body, as we use it now) is formally contradicted in scripture: "Fear not them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do." Life is used in various ways in scripture: "She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth." And I die, or Paul dies, just as much as a sinner, who, according to their own theory, do not cease to exist at all. Christ died. Did He cease to exist? All this is stuff—mere trash—without reference to scripture.
When he says that scripture says that he shall die, it says also that they shall rise again, and "cast body and soul into hell." I do not talk of continuation but of punishment. Destroying does not mean annihilation. A concordance will prove the folly of it. Change the word and see: "O Israel, thou halt annihilated thyself, but in me is thy help"—"He came to seek and save that which was annihilated!"