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just jealousy, lest they should slip away, or be ravished from him by violence? And in this respect man is most unhappy; for besides the affliction of present evils, reason, that separates him from other creatures, and exalts him above them, is the fatal instrument of his trouble by the prevision of future evils. Ignorance of future miseries is privilege, when knowledge is ineffectual to prevent them. Unseen evils are swallowed whole, but by an apprehensive imagination are tasted in all their bitterness. By forethoughts we run to meet them before they are come, and feel them before they are truly sensible. This was the reason of that complaint in the poet, seeing the prognostics of misery many years before it arrived,

Sit subitum quodcunque paras, sit cæca futuri
Mens hominis fati, liceat sperare timenti.

Let the evils thou preparest surprise us, let us not be tormented by an unhappy expectation of them, let the success of future things be concealed from our sight, let it be permitted to us to hope in the midst of our fears.

Indeed God has mercifully hid the most of future events from human curiosity. For as on the one side by the view of great prosperity, man would be tempted to an excess of pride and joy, so on the other (as we are more sensibly touched with pain than pleasure) if when he begins to use his reason and apprehensive faculty, by a secret of optics he should have in one sight presented all the afflictions that should befal him in the world, how languishing would his life be? This would keep him on a perpetual rack, and make him suffer together and at all times, what shall be endured separately and but once. But though the most of future things lie in obscurity, yet often we have sad intimations of approaching evils that awaken our fears. Nay, how many tempests and shipwrecks do men suffer in terra firma, from the suspicion of calamities that shall never be? Imaginary evils operate as if real, and produce substantial griefs. Now how can such an infirm and jealous creature, in the midst of things that are every minute subject to the laws of mutability, be without inward trouble? What can give him repose and tranquillity in

* Lucan.

his best condition, but an assurance that nothing can befal him but according to the wise counsel and gracious will of God? And in extreme afflictions, in the last agonies, when no human things can afford relief, when our dearest friends are not able to comfort us, but are miserable in our miseries, what can bear up our fainting hope but the divine power, a foundation that never fails? What can allay our sorrows but the divine goodness tenderly inclined to succour us?" Our help is in the Lord who made heaven and earth.” The creation is a visible monument of his perfections. "The Lord is a sun and a shield." He is all-sufficient to supply our wants, and satisfy our desires. As the sun gives life and joy to all the world, and if there were millions of more kinds of beings and of individuals in it, his light and heat are sufficient for them all; so the divine goodness can supply us with all good things, and ten thousand worlds more. And his power can secure to us his favours, and prevent troubles; or, which is more admirable, make them beneficial and subservient to our felicity. He is a sure refuge, an inviolable sanctuary to which we may retire in all our straits. His omnipotence is directed by unerring wisdom, and excited by infinite love, for the good of those who faithfully obey him. An humble confidence in him, frees us from anxieties, preserves a firm peaceful temper in the midst of storms. This gives a superiority of spirits, a true empire of mind over all outward things.

Rex est qui posuit metus,
Occurritque suo libens
Fato, nec queritur mori.

What was the vain boast of philosophers, that by the power of reason they could make all accidents to contribute to their happiness, is the real privileges we obtain by a regular trust in God, who directs and orders all events that happen for the everlasting good of his servants. In the worst circumstances we may rejoice in hope, in a certain and quiet expectation of a blessed issue. In death itself we are more than conquerors. ❝ O Lord of hosts, blessed is the man that trusts in thee."

THE

IMMORTALITY

OF THE

SOUL.

CHAP. VIII.

The Immortality of the Soul depends on the conservative influence of God: Natural and moral arguments to prove that God will continue it for ever. The Soul is incapable of perishing from any corruptible principles, or separable parts. Its spiritual nature is evident by the acts of its principal faculties, The understanding conceives spiritual objects; is not confined to singular and present things: reflects upon itself; corrects the errors of the sense: does not suffer from the excellence of the object. Is vigorous in its operations when the body is decayed, which proves it to be an immaterial faculty. An answer to objections against the soul's spiritual nature. That the first notices of things are conveyed through the senses, does not argue it to be a material faculty. That it depends on the temper of the body in its superior operations, is no prejudice to its spiritual nature.

HAVING dispatched the consideration of the prime fundament

al truth, that there is a most wise and powerful Creator of all things, I shall next discourse of the immortality of the human soul, and the eternal recompences in the future state.

In treating of the soul's immortality, I shall not insist on nice. and subtle speculations, that evaporate and leave nothing substantial for conviction or practice: but consider those proofs that may induce the mind to assent, and work upon the will to make its choice of objects with respect to their endless consequences hereafter. And first, it must be premised, that immortality is

ence.

not an inseparable perfection of its nature; for it is capable of annihilation. Whatever had a beginning may have an end. God only hath immortality in an absolute sense, and communicates it according to his pleasure. The perpetual duration of human souls is a privilege that depends on his sustaining virtue, (without which they would relapse into a state of not being) and as freely flows from his power as the first moment of their existHis will is the measure of their continuance. I shall therefore consider such things as strongly argue that God will not withdraw his conservative influence that is necessary to their immortality. The arguments are of two sorts, natural and moral, The first prove that God has made the soul incapable of death by any internal causes of perishing from its nature, and in that declares not obscurely that he will ever preserve it. The second sort are drawn from the divine attributes, from the ends of the Creator in making the soul, and the visible economy of providence in the government of the world, that are infallible, and will produce a sufficient conviction in minds equally inclined.

1. The soul is incapable of death by any internal causes of perishing in its nature. The dissolution of things proceeds from the corruptible principles of which they are compounded, and the separable parts of which they consist, and into which they are resolved. Therefore all mixed and material beings are subject to dissolution. But the human soul is a spiritual substance, * simple without any disagreeing qualities, as heat and cold, moisture and dryness, the seeds of corruption. The essences of things are best discovered by their peculiar operations, that argue a real distinction between them, and from whence arise the different notions whereby they are conceived. The soul of a brute, performs the same vital acts as the soul of a plant, yet it is visibly of a more elevated nature, because it performs the functions of the sensitive life that are proper to it. The rational soul performs the same sensitive acts as the soul of brutes, but that it is of a higher order of substances, appears by its peculiar objects and immediate operations upon them.

The two principal faculties of the human soul are the understanding and the will, and the actions flowing from them exceed the power of the most refined matter however modified, and

* Et quum simplex animi natura esset, neque haberet in se quicquam admixtum dispar sui, atq; dissimile, non posse eum dividi, Cic. de Senect.

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