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"It is worth our confideration, fays he, ib. p. 264, whether active power be not the proper attribute of fpirits, and paffive power of matter. of matter. Hence it Hence it may be con"jectured, that created fpirits are not total"ly feparate from matter, because they are "both active and paffive. Pure fpirit, viz. "God, is only active, pure matter is only paffive, thofe beings that are both active "and paffive we may judge to partake of "both."

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"inconceivable attraction in matter, at immenfe and in"comprehenfible diftances." ib. p. 147.

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"The gravitation of matter towards matter, by ways "inconceivable to me, is not only a demonftration that "God can, if he pleafes, put into bodies powers and ways of operation above what can be derived from our "ideas of body, or can be explained by what we know of "matter, but also an unquestionable and every where vifible inftance that he has done fo." p. 149.

"When you can make it conceivable how any created "finite dependant fubftance can move itfelf, or alter or "ftop its own motion (which it must to be a free agent) "I fuppofe you will find it no harder for God to bestow this power on a folid, than an unfolid created substance."

P. 166.

"He that confiders how hardly fenfation is, in our "thought, reconcileable to matter" (it must be remembered that Mr. Locke thought brutes to be wholly material) 16 or existence to any thing that has no extenfion at all, "will confefs that he is very far from knowing what his "foul is. It is a point which feems to me to be put out "of the reach of our knowledge. And he who will give "himself leave to confider freely, and look into the dark "and intricate part of each hypothefis, will fcarcely find "his reafon able to determine him fixedly for or against "the foul's materiality." p. 168.

I cannot help thinking that he who could maintain these pofitions, viz. that spirits exift in place, and have proper loco-motion, that matter may be made to think, that the fouls of men are probably in part material, and alfo that the fouls of brutes are not immortal, was not far from a proper materialism; and that to have been confiftent with himself, he certainly ought to have declared for it without regarding vulgar prejudices.

Indeed, the tendency of thefe principles to materialism was fo evident, that almost all the subsequent defenders of the immmateriality and natural immortality of the foul have difclaimed them. Among others, Dr. Watts has moft clearly and largely proved (Philofophical Effays, p. 133) &c. that the neceffary confequence of admitting fpirits to exift in fpace, and to be capable of a proper motion from one place to another, is that they muft have proper extenfion, figure; and a corporeal fubftance.

"With regard to confcious beings, whe"ther created or uncreated," he fays (ib. p. 381) "I confefs I have no clear idea how they "can have any proper locality, refidence, fi"tuation, nearnefs, or juxta-pofition among

bodies, without changing the very effence "or nature of them into extended beings, "and making them quite other things than "they are. When we fay that God, the in"finite fpirit, is every where, in a strict philofophical fenfe, we mean that he has an

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“immediate and unlimited consciousness of "and agency upon, all things, and that his knowledge and power reach alfo to all "poffibles, as well as to all actual beings. "When we fay the foul of man is in his body, we mean he has a confciousness of "certain motions and impreffions made on "that particular animal engine, and can "excite particular motions in it at plea"fure."

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This being the only confiftent system of immaterialism, it is that which is held by Mr. Baxter, and all the most approved modern writers upon the subject.

From the whole of this fection, and the preceding, it will appear, that the modern idea of an immaterial being is by no means the fame thing that was fo denominated by the ancients; it being well known to the learned, as has been fhewn, that what the ancients meant by an immaterial being, was only a finer kind of what we should now call matter; fomething like air or breath, which first fupplied a name for the foul, or else like fire or flame, which was probably fuggefted by the confideration of the warmth of the living body. Confequently, the ancients did not exclude from mind the property of extenfion, and local prefence. It had, in their idea, fome common properties with matter, was capable of being united to it, of acting and being acted upon by it, and of moving from place to place along with it.

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But it was justly confidered by the moderns, that fuch an immaterial fubftance as this was, in fact, no immaterial fubftance at all, but a material one; it being the opinion of all modern philofophers (though it was unknown to the ancients) that all matter is ultimately the fame thing, all kinds of bodies differing from one another only in the fize or arrangement of their ultimate particles, or atoms. therefore, feen, that if the powers of fenfation or thought could belong to fuch a material fubftance as the ancients had denominated an immaterial one (being only an attenuated kind of matter) it might be imparted to the very grossest matter; fince it is naturally capable of the fame attenuation; and therefore, that the foul and body, being in reality the fame kind of fubftance, must die together.

To avoid this conclufion, of which divines entertained a very unreafonable dread, they refined upon the former notion of fpirit, excluding from it every property which it held in common with matter; making it, in the ftrict metaphysical sense of the term, an immaterial thing, without extenfion, that is, occupying no portion of fpace, and therefore bearing no relation to it; and confequently incapable of motion from one place to another. In fact, there was no other method of keeping clear of a proper materialism. For there can be no medium between abfolute materialism, and this proper and ftrict immate

rialism.

rialism. Now what I maintain is, that this dread of materialifm has driven thefe refiners among the moderns, to adopt a system with respect to human nature, that is not only contradicted by fact and experience, as I think has been fully proved, but is likewife abfurd and impoffible in itself. For by denying to fpirit every property in common with matter, it neceffarily makes them incapable of mutual action or influence; in confequence of which it will be naturally impoffible that the divine mind fhould either have created matter, or be capable of acting upon it.

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A brief Hiftory of Opinions concerning the STATE OF THE DEAD.

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FTER reciting the foregoing series of opinions concerning the foul in general, it may not be amifs to confider by itself what has been thought concerning its condition between the death of the body and the refurrection. And the revolution of opinions, with refpect to this queftion, has been not a little remarkable.

It was unqueftionably the opinion of the apostles and early chriftians, that whatever be the nature of the foul, its percipient and thinking powers cease at death; and they had

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