meet again in those persons who are recovered from drowning, suffocation, and many other apparent deaths?

If the soul receives its motion from the body, must it not remain dead and useless when separated from it? If it be capable of moving itself, must it not be material? If the soul or spirit be not the result of matter, how can matter proceed from a soul or spirit? Is it absolutely necessary for God to make a fresh body for this soul, in order that vice may be punished, and virtue rewarded? Will it be just to punish or reward a body, that hath neither done good nor harm? Cannot God punish vice, and reward virtue, in this life, without deferring it to a future? Will it be just and equitable to punish equally, the lesser and greater faults? Has man the power of committing a crime so horrible, as to deserve eternal punishment? What benefit will the "just men made perfect," or even God, derive from the continual and never-ceasing howlings, groans, weeping, and gnashing of teeth, of those unfortunate and miserable beings, that are burning in fire and brimstone? Is it in this manner that we are to love our enemies? Is it not more noble to forgive an injury than to revenge an insult? Can eternal punishment be reconciled with infinite justice, and infinite goodness, the perfections which are so essentially necessary to a devine nature? In short, a belief in the immortality or even existence of a soul, cannot be visually, nor orally demonstrated: nor can we determine that to be departed which we have never known to be created or begotten, nor seen to exist. And if men are enjoined to love their enemies, and do good to those that ill-treat them, by this God, is it not blasphemy to think that he, himself, will act contrariwise?

Trusting that you will not fail to send me answers to the foregoing questions; or should you receive any communication respecting a future state, and the immorality of the soul, from Messieurs Jesus, Moses, or Elijah, you will not neglect sending me word thereof immediately.

I remain,

Your humble Servant,
JOHN CLARKE.

LETTER XII.

TO DR. ADAM CLARKE.

SIR,

1

In a former letter I promised to take a review of that absurd and incredible story, related of Jesus, when he cured a sick man of the palsy, after the roof of the house had been broken up, to let him down into the room wherein he sat; because his bearers could not enter in at the door for the press of the people. This story seems to me so unaccountably strange, that I must have recourse to my old friend Woolston again, for his opinion concerning it. For me to suppose that Jesus, who could drive his thousands before him out of the temple, and draw as many after him into the wilderness; whose very looks could strike down to the ground a multitude of soldiers, yet could not, by either force or persuasion, cause the people to retreat or make way for this poor man to come to him, and be healed, without causing so much trouble to the sick man and his bearers, besides unnecessarily injuring the house of his friend, cannot, by me, be reconciled to either truth or reason.

2

Woolston says that "this story, (without excepting that of the pool of Bethesda) is the most monstrously absurd, improbable, and incredible of any. There is not one miracle related of Jesus, that does not labour under more or less absurdities, either in substance or circumstance; but this for number and greatness of absurdities, I think, surpasses them all; they actually stare a man in the face, and are so obvious that I wonder they have hitherto been overlooked; and that some considerate and intelligent person has not, before now, hesitated and boggled at them. If interest had not blinded the eyes of our learned clergy, they would

A a

easily have descried the incredibilities and absurdities of this story, and in any other impostor's case, soon have pointed them out to the ridicule of his admirers and adorers.

"If a man were to torture his brains for the invention of a romantic tale of improbable and surprising circumstances, that he might withal hope to palm for a truth, were it but for a week or a day, upon the faith and understanding of the credulous; he could never have presumed I think, so far upon the weakness of their intellects, as to imagine that anything so gross or contradictory to sense and reason, would have gone down with them as this story of the paralytic. Yet it has passed currently through many ages of the church; has been read with attention by the learned, and revered by all Christians, without exception, hesitation, or doubt. In short, so palpable is the falsity of the story of this miracle, that it requires no extraordinary degree of sagacity to detect the falsity thereof.

I

"The people, it seems, so pressed and thronged about the house where Jesus was, that the paralytic and his bearers could not get near the door. For what did they so throng and press ? Was it to see Jesus who, according to the prophet Isaiah, was without form and comliness? Even were he one of the most graceful of all men, as Painters and Publius Lentulus have described him, yet this could be no reason for such a crowd. will grant that an extraordinary person, either for beauty or deformity, may attract the eyes of the people, and occasion too great a throng about him; still this will not account for the press about the person of Jesus at Capernaum, the place where he dwelt, and where he was most commonly seen and well known. Neither could it have been to hear him preach. Though an excellent preacher does sometimes, and a very indifferent one does oftener, draw multitudes after him; yet Jesus as a prophet, was without honour at Capernaum, his own country; consequently it is not to be supposed that for his doctrine he was so much followed there, though we read that he preached the word unto them.

"Was it then to behold him working miracles, and

curing the diseased? This is the likeliest reason of the crowd pressing round the door of the house. And perhaps it was a day appointed beforehand, for his healing of the diseased, which might occasion a more than ordinary concourse of the people. But then this reason would have induced the people to make way for the lame, blind, and paralytics, to come to Jesus, or they frustrated their own hopes and expectations of seeing the miracles wrought; and acted more unreasonably than ever any mob can be supposed to have done, either before or since this miracle.

"But whatever was the reason of this tumultuous crowding, for it is hard to be accounted for, it is said that the poor paralytic with his bearers could not get to the door of the house for the press, and therefore in all haste is he hauled up to the top of the house, and let down through a breach of the roof into the room wherein sat Jesus. What need was there for such haste and pains to get to Jesus for a cure? If they had waited a few hours, at furthest, in all probability, the tumult would have ceased and access easily been had to him. But that the bearers of the poor man should enterprise a trouble and difficulty, that could not require less time than the tumult could be supposed to last, is a little strange and somewhat incredible.

"St. Chrysostom says, that the paralytic saw that the market place or street was thronged with people, who had obstructed all passage to the house where Jesus was, yet did he not so much as say to his friends and bearers, 'What is the reason of this tumult? let us stay till it is appeased, and the house cleared of the people, who ere long will depart; and then we shall privately and quitely get admittance to Jesus.' Then why did he not say so? Any one besides himself and his bearers, if they had any reason or sense about them, would have so argued. St.Chrysostom says, that it was their faith that made them in such haste to get to Jesus; but I should have thought that their faith might have worked a little patience, and disposed them to stay until Jesus came out to them, or they more easily get unto him. And it is an addition to the strangeness and incredibility of this story that it did not.