DIVINITY OF CHRIST.

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the fame cause which produces a pain in the head, back, or ftomach.

Further: Under the difpenfation of a juft and powerful God, crimes must be punished, and virtue rewarded. What notion can we form of a God, who makes no diftinction between the wretch who ftrangles his father, in order to take poffeffion of his eftate, and the juft man who is difpofed to prefer death to iniquity, from an apprehenfion of offending his Maker ?

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Yet the world has feen the greatest finners elated with prosperity,-arrayed with crimes, as with a raiment of glory,-fwimming in an ocean of pleasures, which the fountains of extortion and injustice supply,-ftrangers to those miferies which, in this world, feem to be the inheritance of the righteous. How many illuftrious, whofe power and credit filence the authority of the laws, whilft the innocent victim is fufpended on the tree, upon the depofition of a perjurer, or from the corruption of a judge! The world has feen a Herod on the throne, after murdering the innocents, and a John the Baptift beheaded, in prison, for exclaiming against inceft,-a Nero fwaying the fceptre of the world, after ripping open his mother's womb,-and a Paul bound with chains, for preaching juftice, judgment, and chaftity. Virtue,

E 2

Virtue, then, being oppreffed in this life, and vice unpunished, the filence of a Juft and All-powerful God,-points out a future ftate, where juftice is to refume its rights, and reward each according to his works. And, if divine juftice points out a future ftate, the foul muft furvive the body.

But you inform us that you believe in a future ftate, though the foul is nothing but a motion of the cerebrum, which perishes along with it: For, fays the Doctor, "God will change "our bodies into fpirits at the last day, when "the world will perish for want of vegetable "food, on account of the mould of the earth "being washed away into the fea; so that no

thing will remain but the bare rocks;” still, he will not admit that the body will rife; but that God will create a fpirit in the room of every body that ever appeared. This extraordinary creed runs through the whole course. of his work; and even in his defence he does not retract it. He apologizes however for denying the existence of the foul, upon. this principle, that his doctrine is the best confutation of that fond and abfurd opinion, Purgatory; and though inspiration and prophecy, which unravel future events, are qualities incompatible with corporeal organs, affected only by present objects, yet the Lord has enlightened his body, in

fuch

fuch a manner, as to understand the revelations of St. John, and to discover the pope in the beaft with the ten borns, though the most part of the Roman pontiffs are bald before they are elected, and that no protuberance appears on their foreheads, no more than on the foreheads of other men.

One should be apt to imagine, that the Doctor in his general attack on all religions, would not point his artillery against one more than another. However as it is cuftomary in a general affault, not to neglect the part of the rampart where less refiftance is expected, it was certainly a good stroke of generalship to use a feint, in order to draw off the attention of his antoganists, and induce them by this ftratagem to divide their forces. He has partly fucceeded; for one of the gentlemen who has entered the lifts against the Doctor, and has ably vindicated the Divinity of Chrift and the immortality of the foul, shakes hands with him, and in a long digreffion attacks Purgatory, with as much warmth, as he attacks impiety and materialism. As for my part, with the general defence of Christianity, I fhall not blend any particular controverted point between Chriftians. I know full well that the fcripture fays, if the tree fall to the North or to the South, there it shall lie. Obfcure paffages and fimiles of the kind are susceptible

fufceptible of different interpretations, and determine nothing. That paffage may as well relate to the body, which when fallen by death can never rife, without the intervention of infinite power. Or if it regard the foul, after its feparation by the fouth, we may as well understand the state of falvation, to which a foul, that departs this life in the ftate of grace, is entitled, though liable to fatisfy the divine juftice for fome venial imperfections. Or it is most likely that, by the tree which falls, is meant death in general, after which we can perform no good works as the tree, after its fall, when it is quite withered, produces no fruit. For the main drift of the infpired writer, is-to enforce good works, during our lives as appears by the whole tenor of the chapter. "Caft thy bread upon the waters for thou fhalt find it, after many days."*

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Spanheim and feveral other Proteftant divines are of opinion, that, in the whole courfe of this life, the foul is never entirely pure. And whoever reflects ferioufly on the weakness and. frailties of man, will readily coincide in opinion with them, without the imputation of bigotry or fuperftition.

There is fuch vanity in our thoughts,—such levity in our words,-fuch tincture of felf-love

*Ecclefiaftes, chap. ii,

in

in our best actions,-that, when the Scrutineer and Searcher of hearts is to make the difcernment, and to separate the chaff from the grain, but a small quantity of wheat will, perhaps, be found fit to be stored up in the granary of the Father of the family: whilft, on the other hand, will be exhibited to our view, great heaps of dry and ufelefs ftraw. Hence, "the juft man "falls feven times:" hence, the moft virtuous ftand in daily need of imploring the forgiveness their daily trefpaffes: hence, the apoftle declares, that, in saying "we are without fin, the "truth is not in us." The eyes must be well purged from mortal mists, before the pure effence of the Divinity is difplayed to their full view for nothing that is polluted can enter (6 : "the holy city." The queftion, then, remains, Whether this purification be wrought in this life, at the last moment, or after death? and this question Spanheim with other Proteftant divines has left undecided.

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Catholics believe that this purification may happen after death, in a place where the prayers and good works of the living may adminifter relief to the fufferers. Doctor Taylor, the Proteftant bishop of Ely, proves beyond contradiction, that in all ages the true believers used to offer up prayers for the dead. The famous Thomas Burnet, in his book on the state of the

dead,