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having to do with regularity, order, decency, or unity of defign, aim, and intention; must look with remorfe on the discordancy and disagreement between the difcerning powers, and thofe of determination and choice; i. e. where the tyranny of paffion or of appetite has furnished the matter of review and reflexion, there confcioufness will have painful apprehenfion, jealousy, and a diftreffing diffidence in all its operations.

Neither are we at all obliged to conclude, that decays of the organized system, or the infirmities of old age should make any, the leaft, change or alteration in this principle, The moral, cannot poffibly have its dependence on the material system for its exiftence; because the moral derives all its ability and capacity from the immaterial; i. e. if God, and the notices of his will, truth, righteoufnefs, as the law of his creature man, be not material objects of attention. And yet, disaster, diftemper, old-age, and natural-decays will, and do difable the exercises and expreffions of the mental or rational powers, as they are converfant with the material fyftem. But it does not fol

low,

low, that the moral principle, the confcioufnefs of man, as it is concerned with truth and GoD is thereby in any wife altered, or injured. The impediment once removed, in all diftemper, that had for a time disabled and fufpended the expreffion of the ability, the exhibition of the habitual temper and taste is restored; and no one appears in another or different character, though the eclipse of it had been almost total, or perhaps wholly fo, and for a long feason too; as in paralytic strokes and various inftances of lunacy and distraction.

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CHA P. II.

Dr. CowARD's fecond thoughts, which would prove the Soul's materiality; remarked upon.

ITH fome attention have I read W Dr. Cow ARD's fecond thoughts con*** cerning human Soul; published in 1702. which book appears, to have all the strength of argument in it, that has been fince offered by more modern writers, who would defend the opinion of the Soul's mechanifm, materiality and mortality. His definition of Soul, is, a breath originally infufed by God into infenfible matter, by which it lives and exerts fenfe and reafon." -But in relation to the continuation of that afflatus, which gives another denomination to the word Soul, but is not really diftinguifked from it, being generally called, life ;-that is, 2dly the

Second thoughts, p. 90.

firft and primary act of feminal matter, originally breathed on, continued. 3dly The mind or understanding, is a thinking, reasoning faculty. And to oppofe the notion of an immaterial Soul, he afferts, there is no fuch Spiritual fubftance in man, but that all thofe operations of reafon, motion, &c. may be, and are performed by an extraordinary or supereminent power; first at the creation implanted by God, in matter or material man, which power ceases to be when the body dies, and will not be renewed again, or re-implanted in the fame matter, until the day of the refurrection.

And yet, Man propagates this original afflatus or power, in feminal matter from one generation to another; for fupernaturally, and by a divine agent, not only fiones may be revived into the children of Abraham, but also when life is totally extinct and gone; as in the cafe of Lazarus being dead four days, it may be again restored: but according to the rules of nature, I do pofitively aver, that no person once dead totally (I mean perfectly and really dead, not fo in appearance) ever did, or will revive until the day of the refurrection.

Soul

1 P. 104.

P. 22, 23:

a Ibid.

Soul and life, he tells us, are terms of equal meaning; Now if the Soul or life, for I account no diftinction from each other, be infeparable from living man, what abfurdity appears in ranking it (the Soul) amongst the number of infeparable accidents? a

I bave more particular reason to take notice of the blood, because it is the proper fubject on which this afflatus or active power acts; life being, as to the materiality of the action, nothing but the continued circulation of the blood, which whenever wholly flopped or perverted in its regular courfe, man dies, or undergoes extraordinary difmal fymptoms: be. fides, we fee when the animal spirits or regular courfe of the blood feems to move flow or ftagnate, though not wholly deprived of motion, man acts more or less in degrees of perfection, and a brifk circulation generally denotes quicknefs of parts, even as to the very understanding and apprehenfion; fo that the operations of the Soul, as it is ufually called, feem extremely to depend naturally upon the circulation of the blood. And elsewhere,

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If it be asked, what that fpirit of life in man and beaft should be?

Ireply, that the

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