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The Immortality of the Souls.—Cap. XVII.

The elect departed are in peace, and rest from their labours; not that they sleep and come to a certain oblivion, as some fantastic heads do affirm, but they are delivered from all fear, all torment, and all temptation, to which we and all God's elect are subject in this life; and therefore do bear the name of the Kirk militant. As contrariwise, the reprobate and unfaithful departed have anguish, torment, and pain, that cannot be expressed; so that neither are the one nor the other in such sleep that they feel not joy or torment, as, in the parable of Christ Jesus in the sixteenth chapter of Luke, His words to the thief, and these words of the souls crying under the altar, "O Lord, Thou that art righteous and just, how long shalt Thou not revenge our blood upon them that dwell upon the earth!" do plainly testify.