man is a rational, accountable creature: and, this being the true foundation in nature for the belief of the immortality, the true notion of nature must needs be this; that man, as fuch, fhall live to account for his doings. The queftion then, upon the foot of nature, is this, What conftitutes the man? and whoever observes with any care, will find that this is the point upon which the learned of antiquity divided. The vulgar fpoke of men after death juft in the fame manner as they did of men on earth: and Cicero obferves, that the common error (as he calls it) fo far prevailed, that they supposed such things to be transacted apud inferos, quæ fine corporibus nec fieri poffent, nec intelligi; which could neither be done, nor conceived to be done, without bodies. The generality of men could not arrive to abftracted notions of unbodied fpirits: and, though they could not but think that the body, which was burnt before their eyes, was diffipated and deftroyed; yet fo great was the force of nature, which was ever suggesting to them that men fhould 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 abfurd 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 fame individuals fhould continue. The natural confequence then was from these principles to exclude the body from being any part of the man and all, I believe, who afferted an immortality, agreed in this notion. The Platonifts un

doubtedly did; and Cicero has every where declared it to be his opinion: Tu habeto, says he, te non effe mortalem, fed corpus: nec enim is es quem forma ifta declarat; fed mens cujufque is eft quifque. 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 cafe, the controverfy was neceffarily brought to turn upon the nature of the foul; and the belief of immortality either prevailed or funk, according as men conceived of the natural dignity and power of the foul. For this reason the corporealifts rejected the opinion: for, fince it was univerfally agreed among the learned that all that was corporeal of man died, they, who had no notion of any thing elfe, neceffarily concluded that the whole man died.

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From this view you may judge how the cause of immortality ftood, and what difficulties attended it, upon the foot of natural religion. All men bad a natural fenfe and expectation of a future life. The difficulty was to account how the fame individuals, which lived and died in this world, and one part 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, fuppofed that juft fuch men as lived in this world fhould live in the next; overlooking the difficulties which lay in their way, whilft they ran haftily to embrace the fentiments of nature. This advantage they had however, that their opinion preserved the identity of individuals, and they conceived themselves to be the very fame with respect to the life to come, as they found themfelves to be in regard to the life

prefent. But then, had they been preffed, they could not have ftood the difficulties arifing from the diffolution of the body, the lofs of which, in their way of thinking, was the lofs of the individual.

The learned, who could not but fee and feel this difficulty, to avoid it, shut out the body from being any part of the man, and made the foul alone to be the perfect individuum. This engaged them in endless disputes upon the nature of the foul; and this grand article of natural religion by this means was made to hang by the flender threads of philofophy; and the whole was entirely loft, if their first pofition proved false, that the foul is the whole man and it is an affertion which will not perhaps ftand the examination. The maintainers of this opinion, though they fuppofed a fenfitive as well as a rational foul in man, which was the feat of the paffions, and, confequently, the fpring of all human actions; yet this fenfitive foul they gave up to death as well as the body, and preserved nothing but the pure intellectual mind. And yet it is fomething furprising to think that a mere rational mind fhould be the fame individual with a man, who confifts of a rational mind, a fenfitive foul, and a body. This carries no probability with it at first fight, and reafon cannot undertake much in its behalf.

But, whatever becomes of these fpeculations, there is a farther difficulty, which can hardly be got over; which is, that this notion of immortality and future judgment can never ferve 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 fin, yet their bodies fhall fleep in peace; no material, no fenfible fire fhall ever reach them, but there is fomething within them purely intellectual, which fhall fuffer 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, upon the common apprehenfions of mankind; and therefore abstracted metaphyfical notions, beat out upon the anvil of the schools, can never support natural religion, or make any part of it.

In this point then nature feems to be lame, and not able to fupport the hopes of immortality which fhe gives to all her children. The expectation of the vulgar, that they fhall live again, and be juft the fame flesh and blood which now they are, is juftifiable upon no principles of reafon or nature. What is there in the whole compass of beings which yields a fimilitude of duft and ashes rifing up again into regular bodies, and to perpetual immortality? On the other fide, that the intellectual foul fhould be the whole man, how juftifiable foever it may be in other refpects, yet it is not the common fense of nature, and therefore moft 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 confiftent fcheme of religion? which yet in the point now before us feems to be wanting. The account of this we cannot learn from reafon or

nature; but in the facred hiftory the fact is cleared beyond difpute. The abfurdity upon the common notion of immortality arifes from the diffolution of the body at death; and the great difficulty upon 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 upon the ftate 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 wife man tells us, that God made not death: for he created all things that they might have their being; and the generations of the world were healthful; and there is no poison of deftruction in them; nor the kingdom of death upon earth; for righteousness is immortal. But ungodly men with their works and words called it to them. If immortality was the condition of the creation, if death came in as a surprise upon nature, no wonder if she stands mute and astonished at the fatal change, and feems neither willing to part with her hopes of immortality, nor yet able to maintain them. Upon the plan of nature the common notion of immortality was the true one for take death out of the queftion, which is the only feparation of foul and body that we know any thing of, and there is no pretence for diftinguishing between the man and the intellectual mind. The vulgar certainly retained the true original notion of nature; but, when the original ftate of nature was loft, the notion grew abfurd; and it could not be otherwife. God made man immortal, and gave him confiftent hopes and fears man made himself mortal by fin: must not