entertainments which are described in such writers. The poets were the Papists of antiquity, who corrupted the genuine sentiments of nature, and obscured the light of reason, by introducing the wild conceits of folly and superstition: and when once they had grafted the slips of superstition on the stock of nature, they throve so fast, and grew so rank, that the natural branches were even starved by the luxuriancy of this wild olive. But still the root was natural, though the fruit was wild. All that nature teaches is, that there is a future life, distinguished into different states of happiness and misery, in which men will be rewarded or punished according as they have pursued or neglected the rules of virtue and honor. And this notion prevailed where the fables of Greece had never been heard of; and wicked men felt in themselves the fear of the wrath which is to come, though they had never so much as learnt the names of Tantalus or Sisyphus, or any other sufferer in the poets' scene of hell.

The natural evidence then of life and immortality stands equally clear of the inventions of poetry, and the subtilties and refinements of philosophy; and though it be allied to both, yet it arose from neither. The truth of the case with regard to both is this: the poets found men in possession of the doctrine of a future state, with rewards and punishments for good and bad men on this foundation they went to work; and the plain draught of nature was almost hid under the shades and colors with which they endeavored to beautify and adorn it. The philosophers found the same persuasion in themselves and others, and, as their profession led them, sought out for physical reasons to support the cause. This inquiry has furnished us with the various opinions of antiquity concerning the nature and operation of the soul, its manner of acting in the body and out of it, its eternity and immortality, and many other curious pieces of learning. How far any or all of these inquirers into nature succeeded in their attempt to prove the immortality of the soul from physical causes, is another question. As to the present point, it is plain the natural evidence is not concerned in their success, whatever it is; for the natural evidence is prior to their inquiries, and stands on another foot, on the common sense and apprehension of mankind: and the schools

may determine the soul to be fire, or air, or harmony, or what else they please; yet still nature will make every man feel that the grave will not secure him from appearing before the great tribunal, to which he is accountable.

So true is this, that, had it not been for philosophy, there had remained perhaps no footsteps of any unbelievers in this great article for the sense of nature would have directed all right; but philosophy misguided many. For those who denied immortality, did not deny the common sense of nature, which they felt as well as others; but they rejected the notice, and thought it false, because they could not find physical causes to support the belief, or thought that they found physical causes effectually to overthrow it. This account we owe to Cicero, one of the best judges of antiquity; who tells us plainly that the reason why many rejected the belief of the immortality of the soul, was, because they could not form a conception of an unbodied soul. So that infidelity is of no older date than philosophy; and a future state was not doubted of till men had puzzled and confounded themselves in their search after the physical reason of the soul's immortality. And now consider how the case stands, and how far the evidence of nature is weakened by the authority of such unbelievers. All mankind receive the belief of a future life, urged to it every day by what they feel transacted in their own breasts: but some philosophers reject this opinion, because they have no conception of a soul distinct from the body; as if the immortality of the soul depended merely on the strength of human imagination. Were the natural evidence of immortality built on any particular notion of a human soul, the evidence of nature might be overthrown by showing the impossibility or improbability of such notion: but the evidence of nature is not concerned in any notion; and all the common notions may be false, and yet the evidence of nature stand good, which only supposes man to be a rational creature, and consequently accountable: and if any philosopher can prove the contrary, he may then, if his word will afterwards pass for any thing, reject this and all other evidence whatever.

The natural evidence, I say, supposes only that man is a rational, accountable creature; and this being the true founda

tion in nature for the belief of the immortality, the true notion of nature must needs be this; that man, as such, shall live to account for his doings. The question then, on the foot of nature, is this-what constitutes the man? and whoever observes with any care, will find that this is the point on which the learned of antiquity divided. The vulgar spoke of men after death just in the same manner as they did of men on earth and Cicero observes, that the common error (as he calls it) so far prevailed, that they supposed such things to be transacted apud inferos, quæ sine corporibus nec fieri possent nec intelligi; which could neither be done, nor conceived to be done, without bodies. The generality of men could not arrive to abstracted notions of unbodied spirits; and though they could not but think that the body, which was burnt before their eyes, was dissipated and destroyed; yet so great was the force of nature, which was ever suggesting to them that men should live again, that they continued to imagine men with bodies in another life, having no other notion or conception of

men.

But with the learned nothing was held to be more absurd than to think of having bodies again in another state: and yet they knew that the true foundation of immortality was laid in this point, that the same individuals should continue. The natural consequence then was from these principles to exclude the body from being any part of the man: and all, I believe, who asserted an immortality, agreed in this notion. The Platonists undoubtedly did; and Cicero has every where declared it to be his opinion: Tu habeto, says he, te non esse mortalem, sed corpus: nec enim is es quem forma ista declarat ; sed mens cujusque is est quisque. It is not you, but your body, which is mortal for you are not what you appear to be; but it is the mind which is the man. This being the case, the controversy was necessarily brought to turn on the nature of the soul; and the belief of immortality either prevailed or sank, according as men conceived of the natural dignity and power of the soul. For this reason the corporealists rejected the opinion: for since it was universally agreed among the learned that all that was corporeal of man died, they, who had no notion of any thing else, necessarily concluded that the whole man died.

From this view you may judge how the cause of immortality stood, and what difficulties attended it, on the foot of natural religion. All men had a natural sense and expectation of a future life. The difficulty was to account how the same individuals, which lived and died in this world, and one part of which evidently went to decay, should live again in another world. The vulgar, who had no other notion of a man but what came in by their eyes, supposed that just such men as lived in this world should live in the next; overlooking the difficulties which lay in their way, whilst they ran hastily to embrace the sentiments of nature. This advantage they had however, that their opinion preserved the identity of individuals, and they conceived themselves to be the very same with respect to the life to come, as they found themselves to be in regard to the life present. But then, had they been pressed, they could not have stood the difficulties arising from the dissolution of the body, the loss of which, in their way of thinking, was the loss of the individual.

The learned, who could not but see and feel this difficulty, to avoid it, shut out the body from being any part of the man, and made the soul alone to be the perfect individuum. This engaged them in endless disputes on the nature of the soul; and this grand article of natural religion by this means was made to hang by the slender threads of philosophy; and the whole was intirely lost, if their first position proved false, that the soul is the whole man: and it is an assertion which will not perhaps stand the examination. The maintainers of this opinion, though they supposed a sensitive as well as a rational soul in man, which was the seat of the passions, and, consequently, the spring of all human actions; yet this sensitive soul they gave up to death as well as the body, and preserved nothing but the pure intellectual mind. And yet it is something surprising to think that a mere rational mind should be the same individual with a man, who consists of a rational mind, a sensitive soul, and a body. This carries no probability with it at first sight, and reason cannot undertake much in its behalf.

But whatever becomes of these speculations, there is a farther difficulty, which can hardly be got over; which is, that this notion of immortality and future judgment can never serve

the ends and purposes of religion, because it is a notion which the generality of mankind can never arrive at. Go to the villages, and tell the ploughmen, that if they sin, yet their bodies shall sleep in peace; no material, no sensible fire shall ever reach them, but there is something within them purely intellectual, which shall suffer to eternity; you will hardly find that they have enough of the intellectual to comprehend your meaning. Now natural religion is founded on the sense of nature, that is, on the common apprehensions of mankind; and therefore abstracted metaphysical notions, beat out on the anvil of the schools, can never support natural religion, or make any part of it.

In this point then nature seems to be lame, and not able to support the hopes of immortality which she gives to all her children. The expectation of the vulgar, that they shall live again, and be just the same flesh and blood which now they are, is justifiable on no principles of reason or nature. What is there in the whole compass of beings which yields a similitude of dust and ashes rising up again into regular bodies, and to perpetual immortality? On the other side, that the intellectual soul should be the whole man, how justifiable soever it may be in other respects, yet it is not the common sense of nature, and therefore most certainly no part of natural religion.

But it may be worth inquiring how nature comes to be thus defective in this material point. Did not God intend men originally for religious creatures? and if he did, is it not reasonable to expect an original and consistent scheme of religion? which yet in the point now before us seems to be wanting. The account of this we cannot learn from reason or nature; but in the sacred history the fact is cleared beyond dispute. The absurdity on the common notion of immortality arises from the dissolution of the body at death; and the great difficulty on the foot of nature is how to preserve the individuals for judgment, which are evidently destroyed by death. Now, if this death was really a breach on the state of nature, it is no wonder it should be a difficulty in the religion of nature; for the religion of nature was most certainly adapted to the state of nature. And the wise man tells us, that God made not death: for he created all things that they might have their being; and the