wealth and power by various vices; and to persecute, even to poverty and death, the best of men for their virtues. This, however, is but now and then; in general it is otherwise. Yet, is wealth or power in this world, happiness? Or is poverty and death, misery? Certainly not, unless conscience hath been fast asleep all the time, and unless the Atheist can demonstrate, there can be no judgment to come, no life after this. If matter can think, will, and choose, it must be on the strength of some qualities and powers, very opposite to all those in it wherewith we are acquainted, and not only utterly unknown to us, but absolutely unknowable. To say, there may be in matter such qualities and powers, for aught we know, and to infer from thence, that, in fact, it does. think, is saying just nothing. Such conclusions, if admissible in Bedlam, can pass on mankind nowhere else. Its incapacity of moving itself, which we know, in any manner that hath the least appearance of design, or reason, wholly precludes the supposition of such qualities or powers. But matter, in some instances, as of light and electricity, is so attenuated, and moves with a rapidity so equal to that of thought, that its capacity of thinking may from thence be well enough supposed. We must be allowed here to insist, that it never moves at all, but is only moved; and even so, never is moved with a rapidity equal to that of thought, if thought must be called a motion, which I flatly deny. Between thought and motion there is not so much as a bare analogy, but only as the former may be a cause of the latter. The thought of a man lying motionless in his bed, ranges in one moment beyond the fixed stars, whereas light is too sluggish to do the same perhaps in less than half an hour; for it takes seven minutes to come hither from the sun, which, in comparison, is but from next door. Query, Whether the man can be said to know what thought is, who takes it for the same as motion, or imagines that mere motion may, at any time, produce it, any otherwise than as it may, by accident, furnish an occasion of thinking to somewhat of a very different nature from matter? It is true, fire and fermentation seem to shew, that matter is sometimes so circumstanced, as to produce motion in and of itself. Were it so (which is a fact too disputable to reason from), what is this motion to thinking? Does the exploding gunpowder, or the fermenting ale, discover any signs of thought, or a greater aptitude to thinking, than a mere stone or block? But the nerves may be so finely spun, and the animal spirits so attenuated, as to think. To think! we wait to see it

proved. They may indeed become fitter instruments for soul to work with, than cables, or iron in fusion. But by what arguments is their capacity of thinking supported? They are easily moved; but do they move themselves? Or is motion and thinking the same thing? If they are, the ball, moving from the mouth of a cannon, thinks; and, as it moves with greater force, is a superior thinker. The philosopher, not content to think with people of common sense, sets himself to investigate the entire nature of soul and matter; thinks rationally enough for a step or two; but, pushing himself and his subjects into the dark corner of a deeper inquiry, where he hath neither datum nor experiment to work on, is quickly involved in confusion and nonsense; yet his vanity still predominating, comes forth with a system, wherein soul is annihilated, and matter set up as a thinker. To support this, appearances are to be sought for, which art and sophistry are to thicken into a sort of solidity. As he leaves nothing in the universe, but matter, he hath abundance of dust to throw, which sticks wherever vice hath predisposed the eye to receive it. If he was not quite a fool when he began his inquiry, he comes out at the end on't so absolute a fool, as not to have sense enough left to perceive it; no, his cunning (for he is now a knave too) keeps him in countenance; and his proselytes, who greatly wanted the benefit of deception, cry him up as a genius, superior to Newton. If any thing however could possibly prove, that a man may be no better than a mere machine, the exhibition of this (what shall I call him?) would be the shrewdest argument to prove the inutility of a soul. Inquiries about religion, and every thing else, when pushed beyond the verge of human capacity, leave the mind in such a wilderness of probabilities, improbabilities, appearances, uncertainties, that the inquirer can with no safety fix on any thing. Neither man, nor any other created being, can, by his own efforts, arrive at a perfect, or even competent knowledge of himself. Our Maker alone knows us. All arguments against the being of our souls can result in nothing but the denial of a Maker; that is, in Atheism, as they did of old, and are now doing again. It is no wonder, if I cannot tell how I bend my finger, that I should not be able, by the mere light of my nature, to tell how my soul and body are connected; nor, to the satisfaction of a wilful infidel, demonstrate the necessity in me of somewhat, wholly different from, and superior to matter, in order to account for thought, choice, and action, in myself. Let nature say what she will (and, indeed, a

great deal she does say), much is still left for God to say by revelation, to put the being of a soul beyond all doubt; and so much He hath said, with such proofs of his saying it, as leave no room for doubt in a mind that will attend to them. As a man, with the helps that have been afforded him, may know enough of his mental faculties, of his passions, appetites, and affections in a state of natural corruption, and of the trinity of natures, a perfect vegetable, a perfect animal, and yet imperfect angel, which constitute his composition; so, if he sets himself philosophically to pry into either the spirit or matter, whereof he consists, a sort of knowledge, no way requisite to his happiness, he finds himself so lost and bewildered, that at one time he may think he hath no body, and at another that he hath no soul. As his eye cannot be an instrument of light to itself, but by rebound and reflection, so a man must look abroad to know himself. His Maker alone can teach him this knowledge; and does it, but so only as not greatly to encourage his itch of speculation, but rather so as to form him for the government of a superior being, which his dependent nature renders necessary to his happiness. Having said so much of our bodies, I purpose, presently, after dismissing the subject of matter, to say somewhat of our souls. To return however to common sense, which the philosopher ought to respect, and to the light of nature, which he idolizes, at least in himself, I insist, matter can only perform the office of an instrument in sensation, where its power in the human make is confessedly greatest. The eye, considered as an eye only, cannot see. The finger, considered only as a finger, can by no means feel. Yet seeing and feeling are thinking. But, if the eye and finger are able to think, they have still a great deal more to do. It is wonderful that Locke should so much as intimate a possibility in matter to think, after dwelling so copiously as he does, on reflex acts of the mind, and ideas of reflection. The eye, as an instrument of light, or give it what higher power we will, can by no means see that it sees, nor the finger feel that it feels. Per se they can neither see nor feel, much less can the former perceive that it sees, nor the latter that it feels. These acts are confessedly performed by somewhat more inward. Were it otherwise, the eye of a man newly dead, or of an ox, prepared for the camera obscura, might still see, for they still refract the light to the retina. The finger of a man too, chopped off from his hand, might feel the floor on which it is thrown. But that inward somewhat, which sees and feels through

these organs, knows that it sees and feels; and, in more exalted objects of thought, understands that it understands; is conscious of its own power and capacity. The materialist asserts, that a mass of clay, properly organized, may do all this. Organized by whom, or what? Why, by the Creator. Is there a Creator then? If there is, what need of organization? Is the Creator any thing better himself than matter? If he is a spirit, why might he not have created souls, as well as bodies? For my own part, who know Him to be infinitely wise by what He hath made, there is nothing so repugnant to my understanding, as to think Him only a mass of matter. There is, most certainly, something else of a different and higher nature in Him. As in God there is a Trinity of Persons, or somewhat analogous to persons, so there is in every human being a trinity of natures. Possibly this may be one reason, why man is said to be formed in the image of God. Sure I am at least, that this infinitely distant similitude in us to the Divine Being aids, in some measure, our conception of Him, and in a still greater degree, our faith in the work of salvation, as carried on by the concurrence of the Three Divine Persons, which, not conceived, leaves that work unintelligible. Man is as truly a vegetable, as any herb or tree; is fed from the earth, grows in size, blooms, bears fruit in maturity, good or bad, according to the nature and culture of the tree; declines, and rots in the same manner with other vegetables. Man is as truly an animal as a horse or sheep, moves this way and that way as appetite calls, and hath an animal soul, added to his vegetable nature, an immaterial soul, which thinks, feels, sees, and exercises its other senses, as a brute does. The Cartesians, having condemned the brute creation to the order of mere machines, have given occasion to others to sink the human species into the same rank.-Locke nibbles at the same opinion, as to man, but does not, that I remember, expressly so far degrade the brutes. Yet his denying them the faculty of forming abstract ideas, assigning this as the great difference between men and them, carries with it a pretty clear indication of his opinion in that particular. Yet brutes distinguish the several species of animals, and often of plants, from one another. A dog evidently forms a general or specific idea of mankind. He immediately welcomes the stranger who visits his feeder with a nose presented on his knee, and a wagging tail, not less valuable than a flattering tongue. To me he seems to form, in this mode of address, two abstracted

ideas, one of a man; and another, more refined, of a gentlemani friendly to his feeder and master. But as he barks at a beggar, one may easily guess where he had his education, and what sort of company he kept. Philosophers, so apt to degrade the mere animal world, ought better to remember the beaver, the bee, the ant, the formicaleo, and the liverymen or Ariadne caterpillar, as I may justly call it. It is evident, that in them there is more than matter, call it by what name we will. I call it a soul. Let it be remembered here, that I do not say, the soul of a brute is intended for immortality. Of this matter I say nothing, because I know nothing. To the vegetable and animal nature in man there is, in some degree, superadded the nature of an angel, that is, a soul endued with intellect, and moral freedom, capable of knowing God, and of being happy for ever. Here is what I call a trinity of natures in one person; a spirit, soul, and body in one man. Thus it is that St. Paul expresses this union of nature in a prayer, put up for his Thessalonian disciples, that in them all three might be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. When man was to be created, God said, Let us make man in our image;' that is, as I understand it, let us, who are Three Persons, and yet one being or essence, make an image, one image of us, both as three and one, by uniting three natures in his single person. Now, as to the spirit and soul in man, common sense and common reason know sufficiently how to distinguish and prove their existence by their peculiar effects, thought, volition, &c. not one of which matter or body is capable of. This is enough for all the intents and purposes of human conduct and happiness. But if man, stirred up by his vanity, attempt philosophically to look farther into the nature of spirit and matter, or of his own existence, of motion, space, duration, substance, quality, or indeed of any thing else, than his own occasions require the use of, he employs his bounded faculties to a purpose, for which they were not lent him, and to which they are wholly inadequate. Supposing there is nothing in him but matter, how was it possible for him to form ideas, which could not have been received by his senses, nor have had any the smallest dependence on matter, howsoever organized, as of God, existence, substance, volition? When he fairly considers this, his confusion still increases, and leaves him under the difficulty at least of arguing from properties of matter, wholly unknown to him. Can matter form general ideas and propositions? Can it from thence draw