darkness that must follow that. These feemed to be the natural refults of fuch feveral courfes of life, as well as the effects of divine juftice, rewarding or punishing. For, fince he believed the foul had a diftinct fubfiftence, feparated from the body, upon its diffolution, there was no reason to think it passed into a state of utter oblivion of what it had been in formerly but that, as the reflections on the good or evil it had done must raise joy or horror in it, fo thofe good or ill difpofitions accompanying the departed fouls, they muft either rise up to a higher perfection or fink to a more depraved and miferable ftate. In this life variety of affairs and objects do much cool and divert our minds; and are, on the one hand, often great temptations to the good, and give the bad feme eafe in their trouble; but, in a ftate wherein the foul fhall be feparated from fenfible things, and employed in a more quick and fublime way of operation, this muft very much exalt the joys and improvements of the good, and as much heighten the horror and rage of the wicked. So that it seemed a vain thing to pretend to believe a Supreme Being, that is wife and good, as well as great, and not to think a difcrimination will be made between the good and the bad, which it is manifeft is not fully done in this life.

As for the government of the world, if we believe the Supreme Power made it, there is no reafon to

think

think he does not govern it; for all that we can fancy against it is the diftraction which that infinite variety of fecond caufes, and the care of their concernments, muft give to fae first, if it infpects them all. But as, among men, those of weaker capacities are wholly taken up with fome one thing, whereas those of more inlarged powers can without distraction have many things within their care,as the eye can at one view receive a great variety of objects in that narrow compafs without confufion,fo, if we conceive the divine understanding to be as far above our's as his power of creating and framing the whole univerie is above our limited activity, we will no more think the government of the world a diftraction to him; and, if we have once overcome this prejudice, we fhall be ready to acknowledge a providence directing all affairs a care well becoming the Great Creator.

As for worshipping him, if we imagine our worfhip is a thing that adds to his happiness, or gives him fuch a fond pleasure as weak people have to hear themselves commended, or that our repeated addreffes do overcome him through our mere importunity, we have certainly very unworthy thoughts of him. The true ends of worship come within another confideration, which is this: a man is never entirely reformed till a new principle governs his thoughts ;* nothing makes that principle fo ftrong as deep and

frequent

frequent meditations of God, whofe nature, though it be far above our comprehenfion, yet his goodness and wifdom are fuch perfections as fall within our imagination: and he, that thinks often of God, and confiders him as governing the world and as ever observing all his actions, will feel a very fenfible effect of fuch meditations, as they grow more lively and frequent with him; fo the end of religious worship, either public or private, is to make the apprehenfions of God have a deeper root and a stronger influence on us. The frequent returns of thefe are neceffary, left, if we allow too long intervals between them, these impreffions may grow feebler, and other fuggeftions may come in their room; and the returns of prayer are not to be confidered as favours extorted by mere importunity, but as rewards conferred on men fo well disposed and prepared for them, according to the promises that God has made for answering our prayers; thereby to engage and nourish a devout temper in us, which is the chief root of all true holinefs and virtue.

It is true, we cannot have fuitable notions of the divine effence; as indeed we have no juft idea of any effence whatsoever, fince we commonly confider all things either by their outward figure or by their effects, and from thence make inferences what their nature must be so, though we cannot frame any perfect image in our minds of the divinity, yet we

may,

may, from the difcoveries God has made of himself, form such conceptions of him, as may poffefs our minds with great reverence for him, and beget in us fuch a love of thofe perfections as to engage us to imitate them. For, when we fay we love God, the meaning is, we love that being that is holy, juft, good, wife, and infinitely perfect and loving thefe attributes in that object will certainly carry us to defire them in our felves. For, whatever we love in another, we naturally, according to the degree of our love, endeavour to refemble it. In fome, the loving and worshipping God, though they are just and reafonable returns and expreffions of the fenfe we have of his goodness to us, yet they are exacted of us not only as a tribute to God, but as a mean to beget in us a conformity to his nature, which is the chief end of pure and undefiled religion.

If fome men have at feveral times found out inventions to corrupt this, and cheat the world, it is nothing but what occurs in every fort of employment to which men betake themfelves: mountebanks corrupt phyfic; pettifoggers have entangled the matters of property; and all profeffions have been vitiated by the knaveries of a number of their calling.

With all these difcourfes he was not equally fatisfied: he feemed convinced that the impreffions of God being much in mens minds would be the

powerful means to reform the world; and did not feem determined againft providence. But, for the next state, he thought it more likely that the foul began anew, and that, her fenfe of what he had done in this body lying in the figures that are made in the brain, as foon as the diflodged all these perifhed, and that the foul went into fome other state, to begin a new courfe. But I faid, on this head, that this was at beft a conjecture, raised in him by his fancy; for he could give no reason to prove it true nor was all the remembrance our fouls had of paft things feated in fome material figures lodged in the brain; though it could not be denied but a great deal of it lay in the brain. That we have many abftra&ed notions and ideas of iminaterial things which depend not on bodily figures: fome fins, fuch as falfehood and ill-nature, were feated in the mind, as luft and appetite were in the body; and, as the whole body was the receptacle of the foul, and the eyes and ears were the organs of feeing and hearing, fo was the brain the feat of memory: yet the power and faculty of memory, as well as of feeing and hearing, lay in the mind; and fo it was no unconceivable thing, that either the foul, by its own ftrength, or by the means of fome fubtiler organs which might be fitted for it in another ftate, fhould ftill remember as well as think. But indeed we know fo little of the nature of our

fouls,