'We should rather imitate here the modesty of the apostolic Doctors': Bishop Bull and the Middle State after death

From Bishop Bull's sermon 'The Middle State of Happiness or Misery', an extract rejecting both the doctrine of purgatory and speculative theories about the post-mortem state, resting instead in a conventionally Reformed understanding of "the plain doctrine of the Holy Scriptures", with no need to go beyond the "modesty of the apostolic Doctors". Bull here echoes how the Prayer Book Burial of Dead - a graveside prayer of which is quoted in this extract - rests in the promises of Scripture and eschews fanciful speculations:

I have shewn you, that the Apostolic writers were wont to express the different place and state of good and bad men presently after death, by this and the like phrases, that they went to their "own proper, due," or "appointed places": that is, to places agreeable to their respective qualities, the good to a place of happiness, the wicked to a place and state of misery ...

I have now said all that I can think necessary concerning the state of separate souls, good and bad, keeping myself from all needless curiosities, within the bounds of the Holy Scriptures, and the received doctrine of the primitive Catholic Church.

The sum of all is this. All good men without exception are in the whole interval between their death and resurrection, as to their souls, in a very happy condition; but after the resurrection, they shall be yet more happy, receiving then their full reward, their perfect consummation of bliss, both in soul and body, the most perfect bliss they are capable of, according to the divers degrees of virtue, through the grace of God on their endeavours, attained by them in this life. On the other side, all the wicked as soon as they die are very miserable as to their souls; and shall be yet far more miserable, both in soul and body, after the day of judgment, proportionably to the measure of sins committed by them here on earth. This is the plain doctrine of the Holy Scriptures, and of the Church of Christ in its first and best ages, and this we may trust to.

Other inquiries there are of more uncertainty than use, and we ought not to trouble or perplex ourselves about them. But least of all are we fiercely to dispute about the places of separate souls where determinately they are stated. We should rather imitate here the modesty of the apostolic Doctors, who (as you have heard) were content to say of the souls of men, both good and bad, after death, that they are gone "to their own proper places, to their due places, to their meet places, to places appointed by God" for them.