The other, that it is a very useful Impreffion, as Plato fays, that Vices, when they escape the Dif- Vice punished covery and Cognizance of Human Juftice, by the Divine 6 are ftill within the Reach of the Divine, Justice after which will pursue them even after the Death. Death of the Guilty.' Man is exceffively follicitous to prolong his Being, and has, to the utmost of his Power, provided for it: He lays his Body in the Earth to preferve it, and aims at Glory to perpetuate his Name: He has employed all his Thoughts to the Rebuilding of himfelf (uneafy at his Fortune) and to prop himself by his Inventions. The Soul, by reafon of its Anxiety and Feebleness, being unable to ftand by itself, wanders up and down to feek out Comfort, Hope, and Foundations, and alien Circumstances, to which it adheres and fixes: And, how light or fantastic foever they are, relies more willingly, and with greater Affurance upon them, than itfelf. But 'tis wonderful to obferve, how fhort the most obftinate Maintainers of this fo juft and clear Perfuafion of the Immortality of the Soul do fall, and how weak their Arguments are, when they go about to prove it by human Reason. Somnia funt non docentis fed optantis, fays one of the Ancients. By this Teftimony Man may know, that he owes the Truth, he himself finds out, to Fortune and Accident; fince that even then, when it is fallen into his Hand, he has not wherewith to grasp and maintain it, and his Reason has not Force to avail himfelf of it. All Things produced by Reafon and Sufficiency, whether true or falfe, are fubject to Uncertainty and Controversy. 'Twas for the Chastisement of our Pride, and to convince us of our Mifery and Incapacity, that God caufed the Perplexity and Confufion at the Tower of Babel. Whatever we undertake without his Affistance, whatever we see without the Lamp of his Grace, is but Vanity and Folly. We corrupt and debafe the very Effence of Truth, which is uniform and conftant, by our X 2 Weak * Cic. Acad. lib. iv. c. 38. 1 i. e. They are the Dreams of a Man, who wishes that Things were true, which he takes no Pains to prove. Cicero, in this Paffage has his Aim only at Democritus, who, by fuppofing a Vacuum and Atoms of different kinds, ridiculously pretended to account for the Formation of all Things. 6 Book II. Weakness, when Fortune puts it into our Poffeffion. What Course foever Man takes of himself, God ftill permits it to end in the fame Confufion, the Image whereof he fo lively reprefents to us in the juft Chastisement wherewith he crushed Nimrod's Prefumption, and fruftrated the vain Attempt of his Pyramid. Perdam fapientiam fapientum, et prudentiam prudentium reprobo m. I will deftroy the Wisdom of the Wife, and will bring to nothing the Understanding of the Prudent.' The Diversity of Idoms and Languages with which he disturbed this Work, what is it elfe but the infinite and perpetual Altercation and Discordance of Opinions and Reasons, which accompanies and confounds the vain Building of Human Wifdom? And 'tis to very good Effect, that it does fo. For what would hold us if we had but one Grain of Knowledge? This Saint has very much pleased me by faying, Ipfa veritatis occultatio, aut humilitatis exercitatio eft, aut elationis attritio ". i. e. The very Concealment of the • Truth tends either to exercife Man to Humility, or to mortify his Pride.' To what a Pitch of Prefumption and Infolence do we carry our Blindness and Folly? But to return to my Subject; it was truly very good 'Tis by Reve- Reason, that we fhould be beholden to God only, and to the Favour of his Grace, for the Truth of fo noble a Belief, fince from his fole Bounty we receive the Fruit of Immortality, which confifts in the Enjoyment of eternal Beatitude. Let us ingenuously confefs, that God alone has dictated it to us, and that Faith is its Bafis. For 'tis no Leffon of Nature and our own Reafon. And whoever will make fresh Trial of his own Being and Power, both within and without, without this Divine Privilege: Whoever fhall confider Man without Flattery, will fee nothing in him of Efficacy, nor Faculty, that relishes of any thing but Death and Earth. The more we give and owe and render to God, we are the greater Chriftians. That which this Stoic Philofopher fays, he held from the fortuitous Consent of the popular Voice; had it not been better, that he had held it from God? Cum de animorum æternitate lation we are affured of the Soul's Immor tality. 1 aternitate differimus, non leve momentum apud nos habet conJenfus hominum, aut timentium inferos, aut colentium. Utor bac publica perfuafione. i. e. When we difcourfe of the Soul's Immortality, the Consent of Men, that either fear or adore the infernal Power, is of no fmall Moment to us. I make use of this public Perfuafion. P. What conftitutes the Soul's according to feImmortality, veral Philofo phers. Now the Weakness of Human Reasoning, upon this Subject, is particularly manifeft by the fabulous Arguments they have fuperadded to this Opinion, in order to find out of what Condition this Immortality of ours is. Let us omit the Stoics, who give to Souls a Life after this but finite. Ufuram nobis largiuntur, tanquam cornicibus; diù manfuros aiunt animos; femper negant . i. e. They give us a long Life, as alfo they do to Crows; they fay the Soul fhall continue long; but that it fhall exift always, they deny. The molt univerfal and received Fancy, and which continues down to our Times (in Perfia) is that, of which they make Pythagoras the Author; not that he was the original Inventor, but because it received a great deal of Weight and Repute by the Authority of his Approbation, viz. That Souls, at their Departure out of us, did nothing but shift from one Body to another, from a Lion to a Horse, from a Horfe to a King, continually travelling, at this Rate, from one Habitation to another.' And he himself faid, That he remembered he had been Athalides, then Euphorbus, and afterwards Hermotimus; and finally, from Pyrrhus, was paft into Pythagoras, having remembered himself Two Hundred and fix Years.' And fome have added, that the very fame Souls fometimes remount to Heaven, and come down again. . O pater, anne aliquas ad Cælum hinc ire putandum eft X 3 Senec. Epift. 117. P Cic. Tufc. lib. i. c. 31. i. ļ i. e. O Father, is it then to be conceiv'd, } For wretched Life, whence does fuch Fondness come? Origen makes them eternally to go and come, from a good to a worse Estate. The Opinion that Varro makes mention of, is, that, after Four Hundred and forty Years Revolution, they are re-united to their firft Bodies. Chryfippus held, that this would happen after a certain Space of Time not known nor limited. • Plato (who profeffes to have embraced this Opinion from Pindar, and the an-, cient Poets) thinking it is to undergo infinite Viciffitudes • of Mutation, for which the Soul is prepared, having neither Punishment nor Reward in the other World, but what is Temporal, as its Life in this is but Temporal, concludes that it has a fingular Knowledge of the • Affairs of Heaven, of Hell, and of the World, through all which it has paft, repast, and made stay in its feveral Voyages; Matters enough for its Memory.' Obferve its Progrefs elsewhere: The Soul that has lived well is reunited to the Star, to which it is affigned: That which has lived ill removes into a Woman, and, if it do not then reform, is again metamorphofed into a Beast ⚫ of a Condition fuitable to its vicious Manners, and shall fee no End of its Punishments, till it be returned to its native Conftitution, and has by the Force of Reason purged itself from those gross, ftupid, and elementary Qualities it was poffeffed with.' But I will not omit the Objection the Epicureans make against this Tranfmigration from one Body to another, and a pleasant one it is. They afk, What fhould be done, if the Number of the Dying fhould chance to be greater, than that of those who are coming into the World? For the Souls, turned out of their old Habitation, would tread on one another, ftriving first to get Poffeffion of the new Lodging.' And • they In Menone, p. 16, 17. they further demand, How they fhall pass away their Time, whilft waiting till the new Quarters were made ready for them? Or, on the contrary, if more Animals fhould be born than die, the Body, they fay, would be but in an ill Condition, whilft in expectation of a Soul to be infufed into it; and it would fall out, that ⚫ fome Bodies would die, before they had been alive.' Denique connubia adveneris, partúfque ferarum, Effe animas præfto deridiculum effe videtur, Et fpectare immortales mortalia membra Innumero numero, certareque præproperanter Inter fe, quæ prima potiffimaque infinuetur`. i. e. 'Tis fond to think that whilft wild Beafts beget, Others have stopped the Soul in the Body of the Deceafed, with it to animate Serpents, Worms, and other Vermin, which are faid to be bred out of the Corruption of our Members, and even out of our Afhes; others divide the Soul into two Parts, the one Mortal, the other Immortal. Others make it Corporeal, and nevertheless Immortal. Some make it Immortal without Science or Knowledge. And there are even some of us who have believed, that Devils were formed of the Souls of the Damned; and Plutarch thinks that Gods were made of those that were faved. For there are few Things which that Author is fo pofitive in, as he is in this; maintaining elsewhere a doubtful and ambiguous Way of Expreffion. We are to hold, fays he, and ftedfastly to believe, that the Souls of virtuous Men, both according to Na⚫ture and the Divine Justice, become Saints, and from Saints, Demy-Gods, and from Demy-Gods, after they are perfectly, as in Sacrifices of Purgation, cleanfed and purified, being delivered from all Paffibility, and all Mortality, they become not by any civil Decree, but X 4 6 t Lacret, lib, iii, v. 757 r. • in |