and the "spirits in prison," which are thought to be souls in an intermediate state, are souls in spiritual captivity to sin. "He suffered as a man, and was raised to life by the Spirit of God; by which Spirit [in his life-time] he went about to convert the disobedient:" Isaiah xlii. 7. “I, the Lord, have called thee in righteousness, to bring out the prisoners from the prison:" i. e. the heathen, or the wicked, from their mental bondage. It is not meant that the spirits which were disobedient in the time of Noah, were the same spirits to whom Christ preached, but the same description of persons. 4. Matt. xxii. 32, "I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob God is not a God of the dead, but of the living." This does not prove that the Patriarchs then lived, but that they would live. 5. Phil. i. 23, “I am in a strait between two, having a desire to depart and· ́ to be with Christ, which is far better." To Paul, as to the penitent thief, his departure, as respected his own consciousness, would, on the hypothesis of the sleep of the soul, be an immediate admission to the presence of Christ. The words, 2 Cor. xii. 2, "I kuew a man in Christ (whether in the body or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth) caught up to the third heaven," do not imply that Paul conceived of a separate immaterial soul, that could leave the body; for this could not, even on the hypothesis of the inmaterialists, take place without dissolution He doubts whether he were personally present in heaven, or whether it were a vision of his mind, which had no physical reality. The parable of Lazarus and Dives cannot afford any ground of argument, inasmuch as it is merely a parable; and in this, as in other instances, Jesus might accommodate his discourse to popular

notions.

Against the separate existence of the soul may be instanced, 1. The revival of Lazarus. 2. The rising of many bodies of saints, which slept and came out of their graves, after Christ's resurrection:" Matt. xxi. 52. 3. The translation of Enoch and Elijah. 4. The resurrection of JESUS, in his natural body. 5. The general resurrection, minutely described by Paul the

Apostle, 1 Cor. xv. and insisted upon by him as the sole ground of hope that the patriarchs and martyrs would live hereafter.

Soul, in the English Bible, is used synonymously with life; which has contributed to the notion of an immortal surviving principle. 1 Kings xviii. 22, “And the soul of the child came to him again :" that is, the life.

"Thou shalt not leave my soul in hell, neither shalt thou suffer thy holy one to see corruption."

Though the latter clause in the sentence points out clearly that hell is the grave, which is a very common acceptation, the Romanists interpret this of their purgatory-the Immaterialists in general, of an intermediate state between death and judgment-and Calvin, of the place of suffering for the wicked; where, with amazing ignorance and absurdity, he supposed Christ to have undergone vicariously the anguish of the condemned.

Job xxxiii. 30, "To bring his soul from the pit." No Immaterialist would contend that an inductible spirit could be detained in the pit or grave. The meaning must therefore be acknowledged to be "his life from the grave;" and this is precisely similar to the former.

When the Jews thought that Jesus, from his miracles, was either "John the Baptist, or Elias, or one of the old prophets," it never occurred to them that he was the spirit or soul of those prophets, in the vulgar sense, but that one of them had “risen again" from the dead.

Luke xxiii. 46, "Father! into thy hands I commend my spirit." The original is breath, often rendered soul. He commends to God the life which he was to receive again at his resurrection.

Rev. xx. 4, "I saw under the altar the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years." It it added, "But the rest of THE DEAD lived not again till the thousand years were ended." These souls, therefore, were not disembodied souls. He saw those men living who had been beheaded as martyrs.

Ecclesiast. iii. 21, "Who knoweth the spirit of a man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beasts that goeth downward?" This simply relates to the different posture of the man and the beast. The preacher asks, Who knows any difference between the man and the beast, in respect of their yielding up their breath?" Ver. 19, "That which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast [in respect of death]." Ch. xii. 7, "Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was; and the spirit [breath, or life] shall return unto God, who gave it." This passage, so far from proving a surviving conscious soul, proves directly the contrary. The language of Scripture uniformly supposes the mental consciousness of existence after death to be dependent on a resurrection.

Job xiv. 12, "Man lieth down, and riseth not till the heavens be no more." 13, "O that thou wouldst hide me in the grave, that thou wouldst keep me secret, until thy wrath be past, that thou wouldst appoint me a set time, and remember me!" 14. " If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time will I wait [that is, in the grave] till MY CHANGE COME. 15, Thou shalt call and I will answer thee." xix. 26, " Though worms destroy this body, yet IN MY FLESH shall I see God-[in a changed, yet material form]."

66

Soul is used for self. Thus, Luke xii. 19, 66 I will say to my soul, Soul! thou hast much goods laid up; eat, drink," &c. that is, to my animal life, or to myself. The same word (un) is rendered life in the same chapter. 23, "The life is more than meat." "Mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth," is put into the mouth of JEHOVAH by the prophet Isaiah, xlii. 1. Yet no one supposes that the intellect of God is separate from God himself. 66 Mine elect, in whom I _delight."

Mason (on Self-knowledge), for the sake of facilitating the doctrine of the Trinity, contends that man is a tripartite person. This is from Augustin: "Man

M

has three parts-the spirit, the soul, and body; therefore man is an image of the most holy Trinity."Tractat. de Symbolo.

Mason asserts, most strangely for a Christian reasoner, that "the doctrine [of the soul's natural immortality] is established beyond all dispute; not only by experience [which begs the question], but by authority;" and by this is meant the authority of the Pythagoreans, the Platonists, and the Stoics!

He allows, indeed, that above all these is the authority of Scripture; but his instances are either directly against him, or prove nothing.

Gen. ii. 7. He says that three distinct parts of man's nature are enumerated: "the dust of the earth, or body; the living soul, or the animal and sensitive part; and the breath of life, i. e. the spirit or rational mind." The last gloss is wholly arbitrary. It is said anan was "formed out of the dust;" and that when God"breathed into his nostrils the breath of life," (what has this to do with mind?) he did not receive, but he became a living soul; that is, a living being. It does not appear that the rational principle was communicated by this breathing, but that the structure of man was so previously organized as to require only life for the full exertion both of his animal and mental faculties: he became a perceptive reasoning creature on receiving life from God." In the image of God made he him." The image was not impressed upon him by an after-exertion of power. . It is said also, "dust THOU art, and to dust shalt thou return." There is no mention of any part of the man surviving, or any distinction as to his body only being reduced to its native dust; but the address is to the whole being.

1 Thess. 23. The argument that Paul divides the whole man into "the spirit, and soul, and body," assumes what is in dispute. It is not proved that Paul meant to make a division. He might speak of the mental and corporeal faculties, without supposing them distinct or separate.

NOTE 10, p. 139.

Dr. Chalmers, in his Astronomical Sermons, hazards a speculation that God may have died as a self-atoning victim in each of the planetary worlds. This it is to be "wise beyond what is written." The hypothesis is, however, the legitimate consequence of the dogma of infinite satisfaction. Some zealous theologists, like the Board of Inquisition who condemned Galileo, have swept away philosophy to make room for orthodoxy; and have supposed, that though every particle of matter on this spot of earth be peopled with life, the plurality of habitable worlds is a chimæra, and the immensity of space a void. If God died in this world, he might have died in others; but let us no longer treat with scorn the incarnations of Veeshnoo.

It is by such writers that Unitarianism is designated as "the frozen zone of Christianity." "There is in Unitarianism," it is said, "nothing that interests, nothing that animates."-Veysie's Preservative.

If pardon and peace with a "God who is love" cannot interest or animate; if the coming of Christ in his Father's glory, to raise the dead and reward the righteous, cannot interest or animate, the Romish altar is open to the priests of mystery: where they may press God with their teeth and drink his blood, and offer up God to God a living and invisible sacrifice: this is interesting-this is animating-and what further proof do we require of incontrovertible truth?

NOTE 11, p. 141.

Christ no

Leslie asserts, "Unitarians consider otherwise than as a mere man, and propose him only as a teacher and good example to us." "Set this doctrine of satisfaction aside, and he taught nothing new except the improvement of some morals. Besides, dying does not confirm the truth of any doctrine: it