that they never sin, because they are not free but this is the only condition wanting to make them sinners. The voracious birds and beasts of prey are cruel. Many insects of one and the same species devour one another. Cats are perfidious and ungrateful; monkeys are mischievous; and dogs envious. All beasts in general are jealous and revengeful to excess; not to mention many other vices we observe in them: and at the same time that they are by nature so very vicious, they have, say we, neither the liberty nor any helps to resist the bias that hurries them into so many bad actions. They are, according to the schools, necessitated to do evil, to disconcert the general order, to commit whatever is most contrary to the notion we have of natural justice and of the principle of virtue. What monsters are these in a world originally created for order and justice to reign in? This is, in good part, what formerly persuaded the Manicheans, that there were of necessity two orders of things, one good, and another bad, and that the beasts were not the work of the good principle: a monstrous error! But how then shall we believe that beasts came out of the hands of their Creator with qualities so very strange! If man is so very wicked and corrupt, it is because he has

himself through sin perverted the happy nature that God had given him at his creation. Of two things, then, we must say one; either that God has taken delight in making beasts so vicious as they are, and of giving in them models of what is most shameful in the world; or that they have, like man, original sin, which has perverted their primitive nature.

say,

"The first of these propositions finds very difficult access to the mind, and is an express contradiction to the holy scriptures; which that whatever came out of God's hands, at the time of the creation of the world, was good, yea very good. What good can there be in a monkey's being so very mischievous, a dog so full of envy, a cat so malicious? But then many authors have pretended, that beasts, before man's fall, were different from what they are now; and that it was in order to punish man that they became so wicked. But this opinion is a mere supposition of which there is not the least footstep in holy scripture. It is a pitiful subterfuge to elude a real difficulty: this at most might be said of the beasts with whom man has a sort of correspondence; but not at all of the birds, fishes, and insects, which have no manner of relation to him. We must then have recourse to the second proposition, That the nature

of beasts has, like that of man, been corrupted by some original sin: Another hypothesis, void of foundation, and equally inconsistent with reason and religion, in all the systems which have been hitherto espoused concerning the souls of beasts. What party we are to take? Why, admit of my system, and all is explained. The souls of beasts are refractory spirits which have made themselves guilty towards God. The sin in beasts is no original sin; it is a personal crime, which has corrupted and perverted their nature in its whole substance; hence all the vices and corruption we observe in them, though they can be no longer criminal, because God, by irrevocably reprobating them, has at the same time divested them of their liberty."

These quotations contain the strength of father Bougeant's hypothesis, which also hath had its followers; but the reply to it is obvious. Beasts,though remarkably mischievous, are not completely so; they are in many intances capable of gratitude and love, which devils cannot possibly be. The very same passions that are in the brutes exist in the human nature; and if we choose to argue fom the existence of those passions, and the ascendency they have over mankind at some times, we may say with a great justice, that

the souls of men are devils, as much so that the souls of brutes are. All that can be reasonably inferred from the greater preval

ency

of the malignant passions among the brutes than among men, is, that the former have less rationality than men; and accordingly it is found, that among savages, who exercise their reason less than other men, every species of barbarity is practised, without being deemed a crime.

The misery which brutes undergo is apparent in most of their actions. That they have the sense of feeling, &c. cannot be denied, and we have already shown from scripture the precepts which are given for the alleviation of their sufferings. That they are also liable to death itself is never disputed. To account for these seeming difficulties, we are at no loss, without attributing it to their original sin, or the devils with which father Bougeant says they are possessed. They have no sin, neither original nor actual; nor are they inhabited by devils. What we have already said under Man's Original_Sin,* is sufficient, we hope, to convince our readers,

* This is a work the author intended to have published along with the present; but, for various causes, it is laid aside for a little time.

and explain to them the causes of the external misery, and the death of brutes: however, for the better satisfaction of the unbelieving few, we shall enlarge a little upon the same subject here.

In the chapter on the HUMAN SOUL,* we have shown that, the soul is that immaterial and immortal part which never dies, but endureth for ever. It is only the body therefore, of which we have to treat in the meantime. The body of brutes being made subject to the curse pronounced upon the earth for man's disobedience; consequently,were made partaker of all the miseries that flowed from the same.

We have many passages in scripture, of which we have already given a few,that prove the existence of souls; what they are; and, that they must necessarily be immortal. Although those passages of holy writ that speak of the spirits of beasts, have been wrested not only by the ignorant,but by many of the learned, and basely perverted into meanings for which they never were intended, It can be no subterfuge for a sceptic. Ambiguous, as these passages of scripture seem to be, we think ourselves sufficiently warranted to say, they contain all that is necessary for our conviction and belief. Man being "the noblest