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may accurately take off, not only the real form, but the internal nature and ftate of things, with all their properties, and prefent them to the immediate intuition of the perceptive principle, juft as they are in themselves; whereas at present the mind apprehends things only as the dull and imperfect bodily fenfes exhibit them to it. It may be able to contract itfelf to the examination of the internal structure of the body of the minuteft animalcule; and it may, as it goes on to improve and enlarge its powers, come to fuch a perfection, as to diffuse its actual prefence and intelligence over a kingdom, or round the whole globe, fo as to perceive all that paffes in every spot on the face of it. It may enter into, and examine the fublime ideas which are treasured up in the mind of an angel, and as now, by perufing a book, it acquires new views, and by flow degrees perfects those it had before acquired; fo it may hereafter attain fuch a capacity of comprehenfion, as to be able to take off at one intuition a whole new fcience. Thus new powers and faculties, for which we have at prefent no names, may be for ever fpringing up in the mind, which will ever find new employment in examining and inquiring into truth. For the object of the mind is infinite.

That our fpecies fhould have another state to enter upon, wholly different from the prefent, is fo far from being unreasonable to expect, that it is analogous to the whole scheme of Nature. For there is no fpecies, as far as we know, that do not live in different fucceffive ftates. But to inftance only the infect tribe, many of that fpecies, befides their animalcule ftate, before they be propagated from the male, in which they differ in nothing from the whole animal creation, appear first as eggs, and afterwards as living reptiles, capable of motion and feeding; then they enter upon their nymph or aurelia state, and continue for feveral months as it were coffined up in their flough, and totally infenfible. At laft they burft their prifon, expand their wings, and fly away in the fhape of butterflies, dragon-flies, or other winged infects, according to their feveral fpecies. This fucceffion of states, of which the laft is the most perfect, has been confidered as emblematical of our mortal

life, our intermediate ftate, and refurrection to immortality.

But the moft irrefragable proofs for the future immortality of the human fpecies, feparate from thofe which revelation yields, are taken from the confideration of the perfections of the Maker and Governor of the world, who defigns all his works according to infinite wisdom and goodness, and according to the true ftate of things. No one can fuppofe that the God of Truth would have allowed that a whole order of rational creatures fhould, by any means whatever, be misled into an univerfal perfuafion of a ftate for which they never were intended. For it is evident, that if we are not formed for a future immortal ftate, we can have no more concern with any thing beyond death, than with the world in the moon, and confequently, our whole bufinefs being with the prefent life, it is not to be fup. pofed, that our infinitely wife Creator would have fuffered our attention to have been taken off from it, by our being led into the notion of any other; much less that our whole fpecies fhould be irrefiftibly poffeffed with the fame ufelefs and hurtful delufion: nor that he would have univerfally impreffed their minds with a false notion of an account to be hereafter given of all their thoughts, words, and actions. Had he wanted them to conform themfelves to his general scheme in the government of the world, he could have brought that about, and certainly would, by any other means, rather than by fuffering them to be mifled into a series of groundless imaginations and delufions. Nor would the infinitely-wife Creator have given us these vast and infatiable defires after endless improvement in knowledge, this reach of thought, which expatiates through creation, and extends itself beyond the limits of the univerfe; nor would he have fired our fouls with the profpect of an endless existence for carrying on those improvements, only to curfe us with a cruel difappointment. Nor would he have made the human foul for himself; fixed its defires and wifles upon the enjoyment of his own perfections; drawn and engaged it to love, admire, and breathe after the fruition of him;

raised it to this lofty height of ambition only to throw it down, baffled and difappointed, into a ftate of infenfibility and annihilation. Nor would he have formed the mind with a capacity for continual advances in goodness, and nearer approaches to himfelf, only to give us an opportunity of fitting ourfelves for a future ftate of perfection and happiness, to which, according as we approached nearer and nearer, we fhould approach nearer and nearer to the total disappointment of all our labours and all our hopes, and find the whole at last to have been no other than a golden dream.

The only reafon why any one has recourse to artifice and deceit, is, that he has not fagacity enough to gain his ends by proceeding in a fair and open manner. Whoever is mafter of his scheme, has no need of tricks and arts to compafs his defigns. And who will dare to affirm, that Infinite Wifdom had no way of bringing about his important defigns for the good of his universe, but by deluding his reafonable creatures, or fuffering them to be univerfally deluded, which is the fame, into the belief of a future Utopia? We know of nothing in nature analogous to this. Whatever our fpecies, or any other, are liable to be mistaken in, is owing to the mere imperfection of fsense or understanding, unavoidable in beings of inferior rank: but we have no idea of a whole species irrefiftibly led into a pofitive error, efpecially of fuch confequence as that of the expectation of a future ftate, if it were an error. And here it is highly worthy of remark, that it is not the weak, the fhort-fighted, and the ignorant part of the human kind, that are moft inclinable to the persuasion of the immortality of the foul, as might have been expected were it an error; but quite otherwise. While the most fordid, degenerate, and barbarous of the fpecies have overlooked, or not been fufficiently perfuaded of it; the wifeft and greatest of mankind have been believers and teachers of this important doctrine; which fhews it in a light wholly unaccountable, if it be fuppofed an error.

The irregular diftribution of happiness and mifery in the prefent ftate renders it highly probable, that this is

(Book II. only a part, not the whole of the Divine economy with refpect to our fpecies.

Do we not find, that in the prefent ftate, the highest degree of goodnefs is, in fome cafes, attended with the greateft unhappiness? For though virtue muft, in general, be owned to be the likelieft means for procuring happiness in the prefent; as well as future ftate; yet there are numerous exceptions to this rule. I appeal to the experience of every man, who, from a course of thoughtleffness and libertinifin, has had the happiness to be brought to fome concern about the interefts of futurity, whether he does not now fuffer a thousand times more of the anguifh of remorfe from a reflection upon the leaft failure, than he did formerly for the groffeft enormities. If fo, it is evident, that improvement in virtue brings with it fuch a delicacy of fentiment, as must often break in upon the tranquillity of the mind, and produce an uneafinefs, to which the hardened finner is wholly a ftranger. So that in this inftance we fee, that virtue is not in the prefent life its own reward, which infers the neceffity of a future reward in a life to

come.

Nor is the permiffion of perfecution or tyranny, by which the best of mankind always fuffer the most severely, while wickednefs reigns triumphant, at all reconcileable with the Goodnefs of the univerfal Governor, upon any footing but that of a future ftate, wherein the fufferings, to which the mere incapacity of refifting, or the ftrict adherence to truth, has expofed multitudes of the fpecies, of the best of the fpecies, fhall be suitably made up for. When an Alexander, or a Cæfar, is let loofe upon his fellow-creatures, when he pours defolation, like a deluge, over one fide of the globe, and plunges half the human fpecies in a fea of their own blood, what must be the whole amount of the calamity fuffered by millions, involved in the various woes of war, of which great numbers must be of the tender fex, and helplefs age! What must be the terror of those who dread the hour when the mercilefs favage, habituated to fcenes of cruelty, will give orders to his hellhounds to begin the general maffaçre? What the carnage when

it is begun? Men flaughtered in heaps in the streets. and fields; women ravifhed and murdered before their husbands' faces; children dafhed against the walls in the fight of the parents; cities wrapt in flames; the fhouts of the conquerors; the groans of the dying; the ghaftly visages of the dead; univerfal horror, mifery, and defolation. All to gain a spot of ground, an ufelefs addition of revenue, or even the vifionary fatiffaction of a founding name, to fwell the pride of a wretched worm, who will himfelf quickly fink among the heaps his fury has made, himself a prey to the univerfal leveller of mankind. And what is all history full of but fuch horrid fcenes as thefe? Has not ambition or fuperftition fet mankind, in all ages and nations, in arms against one another; turned this world into a general fhambles, and fattened every foil with flaughtered thoufands?

The blood-thirfty inquifitor, who has grown grey in the service of the Mother of Abominations, who has long made it his boaft, that none of her priefts has brought fo many hundreds of victims to her horrid altars as himfelf; the venerable butcher fits on his bench. The helpless innocent is brought bound from his dungeon, where no voice of comfort is heard, no friendly eye glances compaffion; where damp and ftench, perpetual darkness and horrid filence reign, except when broken by the echo of his groans; where months and years have been languifhed out in want of all that Nature requires; an outcaft from family, from friends, from ease and affluence, and a pleasant habitation, from the blessed light of the world. He kneels; he weeps; he begs for pity. He fues for mercy by the love of God, and by the bowels of humanity. Already cruelly exercifed by torture, Nature fhudders at the thought of repeating the dreadful fufferings, under which he had almoft funk before. He protefts his innocence. He calls Heaven to witnefs for him; and implores the Divine power to touch the flinty heart, which all his cries and tears cannot move. The unfeeling monfter talks of herefy, and profanation of his curfed fuperftition. His furious zeal for priestly power and a worldly church, ftops his $

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