man? And who ever observes with any care will find that this is the point upon which the learned of antiquity divided. The vulgar spoke of men after death just in the same manner as they did of men on earth and Cicero observes, that the common error, as he calls it, so far prevailed, that they supposed such things to be transacted apud inferos, quæ sine corporibus nec fieri possent nec intelligi; which could neither be done, nor conceived to be done, without bodies. The generality of men could not arrive to abstracted notions of unbodied spirits; and though they could not but think that the body, which was burnt before their eyes, was dissipated and destroyed; yet so great was the force of nature, which was ever suggesting to them that men should 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 absurd 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 same individuals should continue. The natural consequence then was, from these principles, to exclude the body from being any part of the man; and all, I believe, who asserted any immortality, agreed in this notion. The Platonists undoubtedly did; and Cicero has everywhere declared it to be his opinion: Tu habito, (says he) te non esse mortalem, sed corpus: Nec enim is es quem forma ista declarat; sed mens cujusque is est quisque. 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 case, the controversy was necessarily brought to turn upon the nature of the soul; and the belief of immortality either prevailed or sunk, according as men conceived of the natural dignity and power of the soul. For this reason the corporealists rejected the opinion: for, since it was universally agreed among the learned that all that was corporeal of man died, they who had no notion of anything else necessarily concluded that the whole man died.

From this view you may judge how the cause of immortality stood, and what difficulties attended it, upon the foot of natural religion. All men had a natural sense and expectation of a future life.

The difficulty was to account how the same individuals, which lived and died in this world, and one part of 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, supposed that just such men as lived in this world should live in the next; overlooking the difficulties which lay in their way, whilst they ran hastily to embrace the sentiments of nature. This advantage they had, however, that their opinion preserved the identity of individuals, and they conceived themselves to be the very same with respect to the life to come as they found themselves to be in regard to the life present. But then, had they been pressed, they could not have stood the difficulties arising from the dissolution of the body, the loss of which, in their way of thinking, was the loss of the individual.

The learned, who could not but see and feel this difficulty, to avoid it, shut out the body from being any part of the man, and made the soul alone to be the perfect individuum. This engaged them in endless disputes upon the nature of the soul; and this grand article of natural religion, by this means, was made to hang by the slender threads of philosophy; and the whole was entirely lost, if their first position proved false, that the soul is the whole of man; and it is an assertion which will not perhaps stand the examination. The maintainers of this opinion, though they supposed a sensitive, as well as a rational soul in man, which was the seat of the passions, and consequently the spring of all human actions; yet this sensitive soul they gave up to death as well as the body, and preserved nothing but the pure intellectual mind. And yet it is something surprising to think that a mere rational mind should be the same individual with a man, who consists of a rational mind, a sensitive soul, and a body. This carries no probability with it at first sight, and reason cannot undertake much in its behalf.

But, whatever becomes of these speculations, there is a farther difficulty, which can hardly be got over; which is, that this notion of immortality and future judgment can never serve 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 sin, yet their bodies shall sleep in peace; no material, no sensible fire shall ever reach them; but there is something within them purely intellectual, which will suffer 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 apprehensions of mankind; and therefore

abstracted metaphysical 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 seems to be lame, and not able to support the hopes of immortality which she gives to all her children. The expectation of the vulgar, that they shall live again, and be just the same flesh and blood which now they are, is justifiable upon no principles of reason or nature. What is there in the whole compass of things which yields a similitude of dust and ashes rising up again into regular bodies, and to perpetual immortality? On the other side, that the intellectual soul should be the whole man, how justifiable soever it may be in other respects, yet it is not the common sense of nature, and therefore most certainly no part of natural religion.

But it may be worth inquiring, how nature becomes 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 consistent scheme of religion? which yet in the point now before us seems to be wanting. The account of this we cannot learn from reason or nature: but in the sacred history the fact is cleared beyond dispute.

Lastly, if we consider how our Saviour has enlightened this doctrine, it will appear that he has removed the difficulty at which nature stumbled. As death was no part of the state of nature, so the difficulties arising from it were not provided for in the religion of nature. To remove these was the proper work of revelation; these our Lord has effectually cleared by his Gospel, and shown us that the body may and shall be united to the spirit in the day of the Lord, so that the complete man shall stand before the great tribunal, to receive a just recompense of reward for the things done in the body. * * * This has restored religion, which had hardly one sound foot to stand on, and made our faith and our reason consistent, which were before at too great a distance. Nature indeed taught us to hope for immortality; but it was in spite of sense and experience, till the great Prince of our peace appeared, who brought life and immortality to light through his Gospel.

359. SONNETS.

SPENSER.

MEN call you fair, and you do credit it,
For that yourself ye daily such do see:
But the true fair, that is the gentle wit,

And virtuous mind, is much more praised of me :
For all the rest, however fair it be,

Shall turn to nought, and lose that glorious hue;
But only that is permanent and free

From frail corruption, that doth flesh ensue.
That is true beauty: that doth argue you
To be divine, and born of heavenly seed;
Derived from that fair spirit, from whom all true
And perfect beauty did at first proceed:
He only fair, and what he fair hath made;
All other fair, like flowers, untimely fade.

Since I did leave the presence of my love,
Many long weary days I have outworn;
And many nights that slowly seem'd to move
Their sad protract from evening until morn.
For, when as day the heaven doth adorn,
I wish that night the noyous day would end:
And, when as night hath us of light forlorn,
I wish that day would shortly reascend.
Thus I the time with expectation spend,
And fain my grief with changes to beguile,
That further seems his term still to extend,
And maketh every minute seem a mile.
So sorrow still doth seem too long to last;
But joyous hours do fly away too fast..

DRUMMOND.

Sleep, Silence' child, sweet father of soft rest,

Prince whose approach peace to all mortals brings,
Indifferent host to shepherds and to kings,
Sole comforter of minds with grief oppress'd.

VOL. IV.

N N

Lo, by thy charming rod all breathing things
Lie slumb'ring, with forgetfulness possess'd,
And yet o'er me to spread thy drowsy wings
Thou spares (alas!) who cannot be thy guest.
Since I am thine, oh, come, but with that face
To inward light which thou art wont to show,
With feigned solace ease a true-felt woe,
Or if, dear God, thou do deny that grace,
Come as thou wilt, and what thou wilt bequeath,
I long to kiss the image of my death.

I know that all beneath the moon decays,
And what by mortals in this world is brought
In Time's great periods shall return to nought,
That fairest states have fatal nights and days:
I know how all the Muses' heavenly lays,
With toil of sprite which are so dearly bought,
As idle sounds, of few or none are sought,
And that nought lighter is than airy praise.
I know frail Beauty like the purple flower,
To which one morn of birth and death affords,
That Love a jarring is of minds' accords,
Where Sense and Will unvassal Reason's power:
Know what I list, this all cannot me move
But that (oh me!) I both must write and love.

My lute, be as thou wast, when thou didst grow
With thy green mother in some shady grove,
Where immelodious winds but made thee move,
And birds on thee their ramage did bestow.
Sith that dear voice, which did thy sounds approve,
Which used in such harmonious strains to flow,
Is reft from earth to tune those spheres above,
What art thou but a harbinger of woe?
Thy pleasing notes be pleasing notes no more,
But orphan wailings to the fainting ear,
Each stop a sigh, each sound draws forth a tear,
Be therefore silent as in woods before,