Paul; and the former with the Apostle John; and they all mention the soul, nay, they mention it in such a manner, as totally overthrows our author's doctrine. Thus, they speak of the place and state of the souls of the righteous after death" Paul, and the rest of the Apostles," says Polycarp," are in the place appointed for them, apa w Kuge, with the Lord.”*

"Many men, persuaded of the utility of the dogma of another life," says Mirabaud, "look upon those who dare combat it as the enemies of society. Nevertheless, it is easy to prove, that the most enlightened and the wisest sages of antiquity, not only believed the soul was mortal and perished with the body, but have even attacked the doctrine of future rewards and punishments. We see it adopted by the philosophers of all sects; the Pythagoreans, the Epicureans, the Stoics-in a word, by all the most holy and most virtuous of the Greeks and Romans. Recollect what Ovid makes Pythagoras say:

"O genus attonitum gelidæ formidine mortis, Quid stygia, quid tenebras, & nomina vana timetis, Materiem vatum, falsique piacula mundi ?"

The

Materialism Examined.

coercion.

The Pythagorean sect acknowledged the doctrine of rewards and punishments was fabulous purely intended for the weak vulgar, and little made for those who cultivate their reason. Aristotle declared formally, man has no good to hope, nor any evil to dread after death. In the system of the Platonists, who would have the soul immortal, there could not have been punishments to be apprehended, because the soul was to return to the Divinity, of whom it was a portion: the Divinity could not be subject to "Zeno," says Cicero, supposed the soul to be a fiery substance; whence he concluded it might be destroyed." "Zenoni Stoico animus ignis videtur. Si sit ignis, extinguetur; interibit cum reliquo corpore." Cicero himself, who was an Academician, did not always hold the language of inmaterialism. In several parts of his works, he has treated the torments of hell as fables, and looked upon death as the end of every thing relative to man. Seneca is full of passages, in which he shews that death is annihilation; "Mors est, non esse. Id quale sit, jam scis; hoc erit post me, quod ante me fuit. Si quid in hac re tormenti est, necesse est & fuisse antequam prodiremus in lucem; atque nullam sensimus tunc vexationem". In speaking of the death of his brother, he says, "Quid itaque

cjus

ejus desiderio maceror, qui aut beatus, aut nulius est?" In fine, the following passage gives decidedly his sentiments: "Si animus fortuita contempsit; si Deorum hominumque formidinem ejecit, & scit non multum ab homine timendum, à Deo nihil; si contemptor omnium quibus torquetur vita, eo perductus est, ut illi liqueat mortem nullius mali esse materiam, multorum finem." Epictetus has the same idea as remarked by Arrian. "But, where go you?" says he, “not to a place of suffering. You do nothing more than return from whence you came, You go quietly to be associated with the elements whence you sprang. That which in your composition is of the nature of fire, will return to fire; that which is of earth, to earth; that which is of water, to water; that which is of air, to air. There is neither a Hell, an Acheron, a Cocytus, nor a Phlegethon." The sage and pious Antoninus says, "One must await death with tranquility, seeing it is nothing but the decomposition of the elements of which one is composed." To these evidences from Pagan antiquity, one may also add the author of Ecclesiastes, who speaks of death, and of the lot of man, like an Epicurean. "For that which befalleth the sons of men, befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them; as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they

have

have all one breath, so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast, for all is vanity." To conclude, how is it possible, we are asked, for Christians to reconcile the utility or the necessity of the dogma of a future life, with the profound silence of the inspired legislator of the Jews, on an article so highly important ?*

It is certainly incomprehensible, as I have often said, how the operations of spiritual beings can be performed. It is not to be conceived, how men can be competent to see, when their eyes are gone; or to grieve, rejoice, and think, when the brain, the medium of thinking, is turned into dirt. Neither can we figure to ourselves, in what manner departed souls can have a knowledge of particulars, which, in general, are supposed to be only discernible to us by bodily senses. Futurity is an abyss invisible to the most eagleeyed, the most piercing sagacity. But is it not

presumptuous to reduce all to the narrow measure of our own capacities; and to conclude certain things impossible to be done, whose manner of doing exceeds our comprehensions? This is to make our comprehension infinite, or God finite. To believe a future state, is not to believe a vulgar error. It is not indeed to be de

monstrated;

Syst. de la Nat.

+ Locke.

monstrated; and no one ever returned that irremeable way, to give us an assurance of the fact. But, the immortality of the soul, and future rewards and punishments, have been insisted upon by the wisest philosophers, and sanctified by Heaven itself, in our own Christian dispensation.

What is the life of man? Is it any thing more than a circulation of little actions? We lie down and rise again; and dress and undress; feed and wax hungry; work or play, and are weary; and then we lie down again, and the circle returns. We spend the day in trifles; and when the night comes, we throw ourselves into the bed of repose, among dreams and broken thoughts, and wild imaginations. Our reason lies asleep with us, and we are, for the time, as the animals that sleep in the field. But, are not the capacities of men higher than those of the brutes? And ought not his ambition and his expectations to be greater? Let us be adventurous then for another world it is at least a fair and a noble chance; and there is little in this worth our thoughts or our passions. If we should be disappointed, we shall be still no worse than the rest of our fellow-mortals; and if we succeed in our expectations, we shall be eternally happy.*

*Burnet.

Man,