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left without any possible true notion of a future state of recompence, and the patriarchs seem to have had no sufficient principle or motive to virtue and piety left them, and the principles and motives of goodness in the following ages, among Jews and Christians, had been greatly diminished and

enfeebled.

At the conclusion of this chapter I cannot help taking notice (though I shall but just mention it) that the multitude of narratives which we have heard of in all ages of the apparition of the spirits or ghosts of persons departed from this life, can hardly be all delusion and falsehood. Some of them have been affirmed to appear upon such great and important occasions, as may be equal to such an unusual event: and several of these accounts have been attested by such witnesses of wisdom and prudence and sagacity, under no distempers of imagination, that they may justly demand a belief; and the effects of these apparitions in the discovery of murders and things unknown, have been so considerable and useful, that a fair disputant should hardly venture to run directly counter to such a cloud of witnesses, without some good assurance on the contrary side. He must be a shrewd philosopher, indeed, who upon any other hypothesis can give a tolerable account of all the narratives in Glanville's Sadducismus Triumphatus, or, Bax

ter's World of Spirits and Apparitions, &c. Though I will grant some of these stories have but insufficient proof, yet if there be but one real apparition of a departed spirit, then the point is gained, that there is a separate state.

And indeed the Scriptures itself seems to mention such sort of ghosts or appearances of souls departed *. When the disciples saw Jesus walking on the water, they thought it had been a spirit. After his resurrection they saw him at once appearing in the midst of them, and they supposed they had seen a spirit ; and our Saviour doth not contradict their notion, but argues with them upon the supposition of the truth of it, "A spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me to have." The word spirit seems to signify the apparition of a departed soul, where it is said the Sadducees say, "There is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit. If a spirit or an angel hath spoken to this man‡," &c. A spirit here is plainly distinct from an angel, and what can it mean but an apparition of a human soul which has left the body ?

* Matt. xiv. 26.

† Luke xxiv. 36.

† Acts xxiii. 8, 9.

SECTION IV.

Objections answered.

HAVING pointed out so many springs of argument to support this doctrine from the Word of God, as well as from reason and tradition, I proceed now to answer some particular objections which are raised against it.

Objection I. The Scripture is so far from supposing that the soul of man is immortal, or that there is any such thing as the life of the soul continuing after the death of the body, that it often speaks of the death of the soul, if the words were translated exactly according to the original. "Whosoever hath killed any person *," Hebrew, any soul. " I have occasioned the death of every soul of thy father's house †." "And Samson said, Let my soul die with the Philistines ‡." "The soul that sinneth it shall die §." "What man is he that liveth and shall not see death? shall he deliver his soul from the hand of the grave || ?" " Elijah requested for himself that he might die 1," Hebrew, that his soul might die.

* Numb. xxxi. 19.

‡ Judges xvi. 30.

|| Psal. lxxxix. 48.

† 1 Sam. xxii. 22.

§ Ezek. xviii. 20.

1 Kings xix, 4.

Answer. The word soul in English, Nephesh in Hebrew, Psyche in Greek, and Anima in Latin, &c. signifies not only the conscious and active principle in man, which thinks and reasons, loves and hates, hopes and fears, and which is the proper agent in virtue or vice, but it is used also to signify the principle of animal life and motion in a living creature. And though these two in themselves are very distinct things, yet upon this account the word soul is attributed to brutes as well as to men: for the Jews, as well as some heathens, in their mistaken philosophy, supposed the same soul of man which gives natural life to the body, to be also that very intellectual principle which thinks and reasons, fears and loves; and upon this account they gave both these principles, how distinct soever in themselves, one common name, and called them the soul.

Now the soul, or the principle of animal life and motion, being the chief or most valuable thing in an animal, it came to pass that the whole animal was called a soul: therefore even birds and fishes are called " living souls *;" and any animals whatsoever in Scripture are called souls or living souls. And then for the same reason, i. e. because the soul of man is his chief part, the whole person of man is called his soul. "Man became a living soul *," i. e. a living person. "All the souls that came out of the loins of Jacob were seventy souls +," i. e. all the persons were seventy.

* Gen. i. 20. Aa

And this is not only the language of the Jews, but even of other nations. In our country we use the word souls to signify persons: so we say a poor soul when we see a person in misery: we use the word a meagre soul for a thin man: we say, there were twenty souls lost in the ship, i. e. twenty persons, &c.

Now the word soul among the Jews being so universally used to signify the person of man, they used the same word to signify the person when he was dead as well as when he was alive. "He shall come at no dead body ‡," in the Hebrew, no dead soul, i. e. no dead man or woman, or perhaps no dead animal.

Since the word soul is taken so often and so commonly to signify the person of a man or woman, no wonder that there is so frequent mention of souls dying in the Scripture, when human persons die.

And if the soul signify a man or woman when they are dead, as well as when living, here is a fair account why the Scriptures may speak of the

* Gen. ii. 7.

† Exod. i. 5.

‡ Numb. vi. 6.

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