the original, a living animal: Hence the same Writer speaks of a dead soul*, as well as a living soul. And indeed not only the propriety of the terms, but the very sense of the Context requires us to confine the meaning of living soul, to living animal. GOD, the great plastic Artist, is here represented as making and shaping out a figure of earth or clay, which he afterwards animates or inspires with life. He breathed, says the sacred Historian, into this Statue, the breath of life; and the lump became a living creature. But St. Paul, I hope, may be believed, whatever becomes of my explanation: who thus comments the very text in question:-And so it was written, the first man Adam was made A LIVING SOUL, The last was made A QUICKENING SPIRIT . Here we find the Apostle is so far from understanding any immortality in this account of Man's Creation, that he opposes the mortal animal ADAM, to the immortal-making Spirit of CHRIST. 3. Again, God in his sentence of condemnation denounced against all the parties concerned in Adam's transgression, says to the serpent, I will put enmity between thee and the woman; and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. It will be allowed that even the most early mortals could not be so stupid as modern infidels would make them, to understand these words in their strict literal sense, that "serpents would be apt to bite men by the heel, and men as ready to crush their heads." But to enable them to understand, by this part of the sentence, that "man should be restored to his lost inheritance of immortality by the sacrifice of Christ on the cross," needed an express revelation of Numb. vi. 6. See also Lev. xxi. 1, & 11. this mystery. What then did the Jews understand by it? This certainly, and nothing but this, that "the evil Spirit, who actuated the Serpent, would continue his enmity to the human race; but that man, by the divine assistance, should be at length enabled to defeat all his machinations." 4. Again, the phrase used by the sacred Historian to indicate the deaths of the Patriarchs, is further urged in support of the opposition-" He died, and was gathered to his People *. And dying is expressed by going down into the grave, or into Hell, SCHEol. -I will go down into the grave (says Jacob) [or into Hell] to my son mourning; which phrases are supposed to intimate the soul's surviving the body, and retiring, on the dissolution of the union, to one common Receptacle of Souls; for that it is not only said, the man died, and was buried, but likewise that he was gathered to his fathers: And Jacob said, he would go down into the grave to his son, who was supposed to have been devoured by wild beasts." But, 1. The Objectors do not reflect on the genius of the Eastern speech, which gives action and motion to every thing; in which to be reduced to one common lot or condition is called being gathered to their People; in this sense Jacob might properly say, he would go down to the grave to a dead son, who was never buried, i. e. that he should find no ease to his sorrows till he was reduced to the same condition. 2. The Objectors forget too the peculiar genius of the Hebrew tongue, that delights so much in Pleonasms; in which to die, and to be gathered to their people, are but two different phrases for the same thing. At the same time, I am ready to allow that this latter phrase originally arose * Gen. xxv. 8. 17.—xxxv. 29.—xlix. 29, & 33.-Numb. xx, 24. 26. 28.--xxvii. 13. + Gen. xxxvii. 35. CC 2 (whatever (whatever People first employed it) from the notion of some common Receptacle of Souls. But we know how soon, and from what various causes, terms and phrases lose the memory of their original. 3. The truth of this interpretation is confirmed by the several contexts, where all these expressions occur; the Historian's purpose being evidently nothing else than to record the period of their existence here on earth. These (except such as have been considered elsewhere) are all the texts. I can find objected to my position, that immortality was not taught by the LAW. How little they are to the purpose is now seen. But little or much, the Reader will remember they make nothing against my general argument, which maintains that the early Jews, (those of them, I mean, and they certainly were but few, who thought any thing of the matter) had at least some vague notion of the Soul's surviving the body. But the particular reason I had to examine them hath been given above. II. We come next to those SCRIPTURES which are urged to prove, that a future state of reward and punishment, or a resurrection of the body, was taught by the Mosaic Law. But before we proceed to the particular texts, it will be proper to consider the general argument brought from the genius of the whole Jewish Law: “ which, as they say, being entirely TYPICAL, or, as the Apostle says, SPIRITUAL, all the promises and denunciations of temporal good and evil, did denote and obumbrate a future state of reward and punishment; for that it was a shadow of things If the to come, but that the body was of CHRIST *. Objectors mean by this, that the sanction of Temporal reward and punishment was no more than a mere representation, in figurative expressions, of the Doctrine of a future state, without any real meaning in the then * Coloss. ii. 17. Providential Providential disposition of the things of this life *: If, I say, this be their meaning, the whole pretence to Moses's divine. Mission is irrecoverably given up. Not to say, that the very pretence would be as absurd as it was false. For a THEOCRACY (from whence flowed temporal rewards and punishments) was no figurative Expression, as appears from the real and substantial Laws made in support of the Thing. In a word, it is a vile and impious imagination, originally conceived by certain Jewish Allegorists after the extraordinary Providence was departed from them and only to be matched by a like madness in certain Mahometan Allegorists, whose early successes made them fancy this extraordinary Providence was come to them; and therefore supposed, on the other hand, that Hell and Paradise in the Alcoran mean no more than the pleasures and afflictions of this life. In which, Both have been outdone by a late Madman of our own, in his Discourses on the Gospel-Miracles. So oddly perverse is the human understanding when it has once forsaken the road of common sense. But if by the Law's being TYPICAL OF SPIRITUAL, no more be meant (as I think no sober man can mean more) than that the TEMPORAL REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS, equally and really distributed, and the RITUAL WORSHIP, daily performed, were typical or significative of the GOSPEL DISPENSATION, and of the life and immortality which that Dispensation brought to light, I acknowledge it for a truth: And, what is more, I require nothing farther to prove my Proposi * See note [FF] at the end of this volume. Il y a parmi les sectateurs d'Ali, une secte qui prend son nom d'un Docteur nommé Alkhatthab, lequel a enseigné que les delices du Paradis & les peines de l'Enfer ne sont autre chose que les plaisirs & les afflictions de la vie. Herbelot, Bibl. Orientale, Mot AKHRAT, & AKURET tion, That a future state of rewards and punishments was not taught to the Jewish People by their Law. The Objectors suppose, as I do, that the Jewish and Christian Religions are two parts of one entire Dispensation. St. Paul tells us the order of these two parts, THAT WAS NOT FIRST WHICH IS SPIRITUAL, BUT THAT WHICH IS NATURAL; AFTERWARDS THAT WHICH IS SPIRITUAL *. Yet, at the same time, he tells us, THE LAW IS SPIRITUAL. How is this to be reconciled? No otherwise than thus, That the Law was TYPICAL of the future spiritual part of the one entire Dispensation.-Again, The Apostles, in order to shew the superior excellence of the GOSPEL, in their reasoning against Jews and Judaizing Christians, set the Law in opposition to it, under the titles of The Law of a carnal Commandment; The ministration of Death; The Law of Works: and call subjection to it, Subjection to the Flesh. Yet these very Writers at the same time own that the Law was SPIRITUAL, Or had a spiritual meaning. But if by this they would teach that the spiritual meaning was generally understood under the Law, their whole argument had concluded in a self-contradiction. For then it was not a Law of a carnal commandment, a ministration of death; but, indeed, a Law of spirit, a ministration of life; only under a dead and carnal cover; which being clearly seen through, or easily taken off, served for no more than a trick of hocus pocus. The consequence of all this would be, that the LAW was of equal dignity, and, though not of equal simplicity, yet, indeed, essentially the same with the GOSPEL. They owned, we see, that the Law had a spiritual sense: but when, and by whom discovered, the Apostle Paul informs us, by calling that sense the NEWNESS OF SPIRIT ‡; + Rom. vii. 14. * 1 Cor. xv. 46. + Rom. vii. 6. which |
