is the very Paschal Lamb which was offered for us, and hath taken away the sin of the world: who, by his death, hath destroyed death, and by his rising to life again, hath restored us to everlasting life: therefore with angels and archangels, and with all the company of heaven, I laud and magnify thy glorious name, evermore praising thee, and saying, Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of hosts, heaven and earth are full of thy glory. Glory be to thee, O Lord most High. Amen.

FOR THE EFFECTS OF CHRIST'S RESURRECTION.

BLESSED Jesus, who hast triumphed over the powers of darkness, and conquered hell and the grave, who by thy glorious resurrection hast made known the power of thy divinity, and proved thyself to be the true Messias; keep me stedfast in this faith, and grant that all the actions of my life may testify the reality and sincerity of my belief. Make me to rise from the death of sin to the life of righteousness; that as I am buried with thee by baptism, I may mortify all my corrupt lusts and af fections, and no longer esteem the pomps and vanities of this wicked world; and by being conformed to the likeness of thy resurrection, may put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. That I may place my affections entirely on things above, and spend the remaining part of my life to secure that happiness thou hast purchased for me; that by thy strength I may fight against all my ghostly enemies, and by thy power overcome them. Suffer not the thoughts of death to be any longer uneasy to me, since thou hast taken out the sting, and divested it of any power to hurt: but teach me to look upon it as a deliverance from sin and sorrow, and as a passage to a

happy eternity; that when I shall depart this life, I may rest in thee, and at the general resurrection at the last day be found acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my Saviour and Redeemer. Amen.

CHAP. XVI,

EASTER MONDAY.

Q. What shews the great solemnity of the Easter Festival?

A. The particular care the church has taken to set apart the two following days after the Sunday, for the exercise of religious duties, to the end that we might have leisure to confirm our faith in the grand article of our Saviour's resurrection, and to exert our devout affections in all those happy consequences that are deducible from it.

Q. What are the consequences deducible from our Saviour's resurrection?

A. That though, through the fall of Adam, we are all made subject to death, yet that our souls, when separated from our bodies, shall live in another state; and that even our bodies, though committed to the grave, and turned to dust, shall, at the last day, rise again, and be united to our souls; and being thus united and purified, the whole man, body and soul, shall be made capable of happiness to all eternity. By our Saviour's rising from the dead, he is become the firstfruits of them that slept ; and he who hath promised to raise us up, did raise himself from the dead; which is a security for us that he will make his word good.

Q. What do you mean by the soul?

A. An immaterial principle in man, distinct from the

a 1 Cor. xx. 20.

body, which is the cause of those several operations, which by inward sense and experience we are conscious to ourselves of. It is that whereby we think and remember, whereby we reason and debate about any thing, and do freely choose and refuse such things as are presented to us.

Q. What do you mean by the immortality of the soul?

A. That this immaterial principle in man called the soul, is so created by the divine wisdom and goodness, as not to have in itself any composition or principles of corruption; but that it will naturally, or of itself continue for ever, and will not by any natural decay or power of nature, be dissolved or destroyed, That when the body falls into the ground, this principle will still remain and live separate from it, and continue to perform all such operations towards which the organs of the body are not necessary; and not only continue, but live in this separate state, so as to be sensible of happiness and misery. But yet nevertheless it depends continually upon God, who has power to destroy and annihilate it, as he can all other creatures, if he should so think fit.

Q. What proof have we of the soul's immortality? A. That there is an immaterial principle in man distinct from the body, which shall continue for ever capable of happiness and misery, has great probability from the evidence of reason, and natural arguments incline us to believe it. But that which gives us the great assurance of it, is the revelation of the gospel, whereby life and immortality is brought to light." This is the only sure foundation of our hopes, and an anchor for our faith: because the authority of God is

above all reason and philosophy; other arguments may be disputed, but this leaves no place for doubt, having in a manner made it visible to us by our Saviour's rising from the dead.

Q. What are the arguments from reason, in their own nature, apt to persuade us that the soul is immortal?

A. The arguments from reason may be taken from the nature of the soul itself, and those several operations which we are conscious to ourselves of, and which cannot, without great violence to reason, be ascribed to matter. From the universal consent of mankind, which shews it to be a natural notion and dictate of the mind. From those natural notions we have of God, and of the essential difference of good and evil; and from the natural hopes and fears of men. These are such arguments as in reason the nature of the thing will bear; for an immortal nature is neither capable of the evidence of sense, nor of mathematical demonstration; and therefore we should content ourselves with these arguments in this matter, so far as to suffer ourselves to be persuaded, that it is highly probable; the thorough belief of it can only be fixed upon revelation.

Q. How does it appear that the soul is immortal from the nature of the soul itself?

A. Because those several actions and operations which we are conscious to ourselves of, such as liberty, or a power of choosing or refusing, and the several acts of reason and understanding, cannot without great violence be ascribed to matter, or be resolved into any bodily principle, and therefore we must attribute them to another principle, different from matter, and consequently immortal and incapable in its own nature of corruption. It is by this principle in us, that we

abstract, compare, infer, and methodize, and by which we conceive many things, which no material phantasm can represent to us, as relations, proportions, and proportionality, as the geometricians call the relation of one proportion to another. In like manner the notions we have of truth and falsehood, right or wrong, good and evil, which nothing that comes into our minds by the senses can represent to us.

Q. But cannot the infinite power of God endow matter with a capacity of thinking?

A. The extent of infinite power and of the capacities of material nature, are such secrets to us that it is hard to pretend to strict demonstration against either of them. But this is not fairly urged by the men of reason and philosophy, which shews their cause very indefensible; because if men will reason about such matters, all such appeals should be laid aside, and they should only argue from their own sensations, and from the known appearances of nature; for though it is difficult to pretend to say what infinite power can or cannot do, yet, according to the known principles of philosophy, there is no relation between matter and thought; nay, as far as we can judge, an utter incapacity in matter to think; and it seems not intelligible, how God should superadd to matter this faculty of thinking unless he change the nature of matter. And it may as well be maintained, that God, by his omnipotence, may superadd to immaterial beings the faculty of extension and divisibility, which would be to make them quite other things than they are. When we seek for natural evidence, we must be content with such evidence as sense and reason, and the philosophy of nature afford: and at the same time there is not any pretence of reason against the possibility of an immaterial principle in man distinct from body.