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Polytheist. "All arguments for the Unity, from metaphysics, are manifestly vain, and merely grounded on our ignorance. You Believers (says he) must be confined to Scripture: Now Scripture assures us, THERE ARE GODS MANY," which, by the way, I think a stronger text, certainly a directer, against the unity of the Godhead, than any this learned Writer has produced for the sleep of the Soul. But what say Believers to this? They say, that Scripture takes the unity, as well as the cristence of the Deity, for granted; takes them for truths demonstrable by natural light. Just so it is with regard to that immaterial substance, the Soul. Scripture supposes men to be so far informed of the nature of the Soul, by the same light, as to know that it cannot be destroyed by any of those causes which bring about the extinction of the body. Our Dreamers* are aware of this, and therefore hold with Unbelievers, that the Soul is no substance, but a quality only; and so have taken effectual care indeed, that its repose shall not be disturbed in this, which we may emphatically call, the SLEEP OF DEATH. We can never prove (says another of these sleepers †) that the Soul of man is of such a nature that it can and must exist and live, think, act, enjoy, &c. separate from, and independent of, the body. All our present experience shews the contrary. The operations of the mind depend CONSTANTLY and INVARIABLY upon the state of the body, of the brain in particular. If some dying persons have a lively use of their rational faculties to the very last, it is because death has invaded some other part, and the brain remains sound and vigorous‡. This is the long-exploded trash of Coward, Toland,

*St. Jude's filthy dreamers only defiled the Flesh. These defile the Spirit.

+ Taylor of Norwich.

Ib. p. 401.

04

Collins,

Collins, &c, And he who can treat us with it at this time of day, has either never read CLARKE and BAXTER on the subject (in which he had been better employed than in writing upon it), or never understood them. So far as to the abstract truth. Let us con

sider next the practical consequences. Convince the philosophic Libertine that the Soul is a quality arising out of matter, and vanishing on the dissolution of the form, and then see if ever you can bring him to believe the Christian Doctrine of the RESURRECTION! While he held the Soul to be an immaterial substance, existing, as well in its separation from, as in its conjunction with, the body, and he could have no reason, arising from the Principles of true Philosophy, to stagger in his belief of this revealed Doctrine.-Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die*, is good philosophy as well as good divinity: for if the body, instead of its earthly nature, were to have a heavenly, it must needs pass through death and corruption to qualify it for that change. But when this body died, what occasion was there for the Soul, which was to suffer no change, to fall asleep?

But their sleep of the Soul is mere cant: and this brings me to the last consideration, the sense and consistency of so ridiculous a notion. They go, as we observed, upon the Sadducean principle, that the Soul is a quality of body, not a substance of itself, and so dies with its substratum. Now sleep, is a modification of Existence, not of non-existence; so that though the sleep of a Substance hath a meaning, the sleep of a quality is nonsense. And if ever this Soul of theirs re-exerts its faculties, it must be by means of a REPRODUCTION, not by a mere AWAKING; and they may as well talk of the SLEEP of a mushroom turned *St. Paul. (1 Cor. xv. 36.).

again into the substance of the dunghill from whence it arose, and from which, not the same, but another mushroom shall, in time, arise. In a word, neither Unbelievers nor Believers will allow to these middle men that a new-existing Soul, which is only a quality resulting from a glorified body, can be identically the same with an annihilated Soul, which had resulted from an earthly body. But perhaps, as Hudibras had discovered the Receptacle of the ghosts of defunct bodies, so these gentlemen may have found out the yet subtiler corner, where the ghosts of defunct qua lities repose.

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APPENDIX,

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LATE noble and voluminous Author who hath written with more than ordinary spleen against THE RELIGION OF HIS COUNTRY, as it is founded in Revelation and established by Law, hath attacked with more than ordinary fury the Author of The Droine Legation of Moses demonstrated, and of The Alliance between Church and State vindicated. V

I shall shortly find a fitter place to examine his reasoning against the Alliance. At present let us sce what he has to urge against the argument of the Divine" Legation, which is founded on these two facts, the omission of the Doctrine of a future State of Rewards and Punishments in the Mosaic Dispensation; and the administration of an extraordinary Providence in the same Dispensation.

His Lordship begins with the OMISSION, which he acknowledges and to evade the force of the argument arising from it, casts about for a reason, independent of the EXTRAORDINARY PROVIDENCE, to account for it.

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His first solution is this," MOSES DID NOT BE LIEVE THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL, nor the "rewards and punishments of another life, though it "is possible he might have learnt these Doctrines "from the Egyptians, wo TAUGHT THEM VERY,

*Lord Bolingbroke,

EARLY,

46

EARLY, perhaps as they taught that of the Unity of "God. When I say, that Moses did not believe the

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immortality of the soul, nor future rewards and pu̟nishments, my reason is this, that he taught neither, "when he had to do with a people whom a Theocracy "could not restrain; and on whom, therefore, terrors “of Punishment, future as well as present, eternal, as well as temporary, could never be too much "multiplied, or too strongly inculcated *."

This reasoning is altogether worthy of his Lordship. Here we have a DOCTRINE, confessed to be plausible in itself, and therefore of easy admittance; most alluring to human nature, and therefore embraced by all mankind; of highest account among the Egyptians, and therefore ready to be embraced by the Israelites, who were fond of Egyptian notions; of strongest efficacy on the minds of an unruly People, and therefore of indispensable use; Yet, all this notwithstanding, Moses did not believe it, and, on that account, would not teach it. But then, had MOSES's integrity been so severe, How came he to write a History which, my Lord thinks, is, in part at least, a fiction of his own? Did he believe that? How came he to leave the Israelites, as my Lord assures us he did, in possession of many of the superstitious opinions of Egypt? did he believe these too? No, but they served his purpose; which was, The better governing an unruly People, Well, but his Lordship tells us, the doctrine of a future state served this purpose best of all; for having to do with a People whom a Theocracy could not restrain, terrors of punishment, FUTURE as well as present, ETERNAL as well as temporary, could never be too much multiplied, or too strongly inculcated. No matter for that. Moses, as other men may, on a sudden grows Vol. iii. p. 289..

scrupulous

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