immediately recover its pristine purity. But what then becomes of the chriftian doctrine, upon his own hypothefis, of vicious habits (which are the proper difeafe of the mind) inhering in the foul after death, and its being liable to punishment, in a feparate unembodied ftate, on that account?

Mr. Baxter, however, fays, vol. ii. p. 161. "The foul cannot have a disorder lodged in "itself, nor be fubject to any disease. A man "who confiders the fimple nature of it will "never affirm this.-The foul can admit of cc no disease from matter, as having no parts to be difordered. It can fuffer no alteration "in its own fubftance, if that fubftance be "not annihilated.-We would have the foul "to grow up, to decay, to fleep, to be mad, "to be drunk. Who does not fee all these

are ridiculous fancies, too gross to be en"tertained concerning a fimple uncompound"ed fubftance? If the foul were mad, or had "the difeafe lodged in itself, what could cure << it ???

If this reasoning have any foundation, it will follow, that nothing is requifite to difcharge all the vices of the foul, but to detach it from its fatal connection with the body, and leave it to itfelf. All vice and disorder, as it came with the body, and always inhered in it, muft terminate and depart with it.

SECTION

Advantages attending the Syftem of MATERIALISM, efpecially with respect to the Doctrines of REVEALED RELIGION,

IT

T is a great advantage attending the fyftem of materialifm, that we thereby get rid of a great number of difficulties, which exceedingly clog and embarrass the opposite system; fuch, for inftance, as these, what becomes of the foul during fleep, in a fwoon, when the body is feemingly dead (as by drowning, or other accidents) and efpecially after death; alfo what was the condition of it before it became united to the body, and at what time did that union take place? &c. &c. &c.

:

If the foul be immaterial, and the body material, neither the generation nor the destruction of the body can have any effect with respect to it. This foreign principle must have been united to it either at the time of conception, or at birth, and muft either have been created at the time of fuch union, or have exifted in a separate state prior to that period. Now all these fuppofitions are clogged with great difficulties, and indeed can hardly be confidered at all, without being immediately rejected, as extremely improbable, if not abfurd.

Muft

Muft the divine power be neceffarily employed to produce a foul, whenever the human species copulate? Or must some of the pre-existent spirits be obliged, immediately upon that event, to defcend from the fuperior regions, to inhabit the new-formed embrio? If this be the cafe, (which was the original hypothefis of the feparability of the foul from the body) by what rule must this descent be regulated? Muft these unembodied fpirits become embodied in rotation, according to fome rank, and condition, or muft it be determined by lot, &c?

If man be actuated by a principle diftinct from his body, every brute animal must have an immaterial foul alfo; for they differ from us in degree only, and not at all in kind; having all the fame mental, as well as corporeal powers and faculties that we have, though not in the fame extent; and they are poffeffed of them in a greater degree than thofe of our race that are ideots, or that die infants.

Now the state of the fouls of brutes is perhaps more embarraffing than that of human beings. Are they originally, and naturally, the fame beings with the fouls of men? Have they pre-exifted, and are they to continue for ever? If fo, how and where are they to be disposed of after death; and are they also to be re-united to their prefent bodies, as well as the fouls of men? These are only a few of

the difficulties which muft neceffarily occur to any thinking' perfon who adopts the opinion of the effential difference between foul and body.

Some hypothefis or other every person, who maintains the immaterial fyftem, and reflects upon it all, muft neceffarily have, in order to folve these questions, and many others of a fimilar nature. For every general fyftem must be confiftent, and also have all its parts properly filled up. The queftions that I have mentioned muft perpetually obtrude themfelves upon those perfons whofe fyftem admits of their being asked, as indeed is evident from the formal difcuffion of moft of them by fyftematical writers; and whether any perfon be able to fatisfy himself with respect to them or not, he cannot be without fome hypothefis or other for that purpose. Now I will venture to pronounce, without difcuffing the questions above mentioned particularly, that there is no method of folving them that can give any tolerable fatisfaction to an ingenuous mind.

Metaphyficians, who have conceived high notions of the dignity of immaterial fubftances, and who have entertained a great contempt for every thing material, are much embarbarraffed when they confider the use of the body. The ancients, indeed, who imagined all fouls to have pre-exifted, and to have been fent into the bodies in which they are now confined as a punishment, for offences com

mitted in their pre-existent state, found no difficulty in this cafe. The body is neceffarily a clog, and an impediment to the foul, and it was provided for that very purpose. But the moderns, who have dropped the notion of pre-existence, and of offences committed prior to birth, and yet retain from that system the intire doctrine of the contagion of matter, which is a language that, among others, Mr, Baxter makes ufe of (fee Matho, vol. ii. p. 212) must neceffarily be exceedingly embarraffed when they connect with this mutilated heathenifh fyftem the peculiar doctrines of christianity.

Indeed, what is advanced by the most acute of these christian metaphyficians upon this fubject, is little fhort of a contradiction in Terms. Mr. Baxter, for instance, says, Matho, vol. ii. p. 211, that " nothing could "be fitter than matter to initiate beings, whose "firft information of things is from fenfe, "and to train them up in the elements of "knowledge and admiration." Let us now see what consistency there is between this notion of the ufe of matter, with what he had faid before, p. 173, of the abfolute unfitness of matter for this purpofe of training up the foul in the elements of knowledge.

"We know not," fays he, "nor can we "name a greater abfurdity, than that union “to a dead and torpid substance should give the foul life and power, or any degree of them; or that feparation fhould again de