living being, intrinsically and properly one and individual, not compound or separable, not, according to the common opinion, made up and framed of two distinct and different natures, as of soul and body, but that the whole man is soul, and the soul man, that is to say, a body, or individual substance, animated, sensitive and rational; and that the breath of life was neither a part of the divine essence, nor was it the soul itself, but as it were the inspiration of some divine virtue fitted for the exercise of life and reason, and infused into the organic body; for man himself, the whole man, when finally created, is called in express terms "a living soul." Hence the word used in Genesis to signify soul, is interpreted by the Apostle, 1 Cor. xv. 45, “ animal." Again, all the attributes of the body are assigned in common to the soul: the touch, Lev. v. 2, "If a soul touch any unclean thing,"—the act of eating, Lev. vii. 18, 20, soul that eateth of it shall bear his iniquity :” “The soul that eateth of the flesh, and in other places-hunger, Prov. xiii. 25, Prov. xxvii. 7, "To the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet”thirst, Prov. xxv. 25, “as cold waters to a thirsty soul.”— Isai. xxix. 8,—Capture, 1 Sam. xxiv. 11, “ Thou huntest my soil to take it" Ps. vii. 5, "Let the enemy persecute my soul ind take it." 66 "the Where we speak of the body as a mere senseless stock, there the soul must be understood as signifying either the spirit, or its secondary faculties, the vital or sensitive faculty for instance. Thus it is as often distinguished from the spirit as from the body itself. Luke i. 46, 47, 1 Thess. v. 23: “Your whole spirit and soul and body"—Heb. iv. 12, " To the dividing asunder of soul and spirit." But that the spirit of man should be separate from the body, so as to have a perfect and intelligent existence independently of it, is nowhere said in Scripture, and the doctrine is evidently at variance both with nature and reason, as will be shown more fully hereafter. For the word soul is applied to every kind of living being; Gen. i. 30, "Every beast of the carth wherein there is life," (Hebrew "a living soul.")* Gen. vii. 22, “All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, (Heb. living soul,) of all that was in the dry land, died;" yet it is never inferred from these expressions that the soul exists separate from the body in any of the brute creation. On the seventh day God ceased from his work, and ended he whole business of creation; Gen. ii. 23. It would seem, therefore, that the human soul is not created daily by the immediate act of God, but propagated from father to son in a natural order; which was considered the more probable opinion by Tertullian and Apollinarius, as well as by Augustine and the whole western church in the time of Jerome, as he himself testifies, Tom. ii. Epist. 82, and Gregory of Nyssa in his treatise on the soul. God would in fact have left his creation imperfect, and a vast, not to say a servile task, would yet remain to be performed, without even allowing time for rest on each successive Sabbath, if he still continued to create as many souls daily as there are bodies multiplied throughout the whole world, at the bidding of what is not seldom the flagitious wantonness of man. Nor is there any reason to suppose that the influence of the divine blessing is less efficacious in imparting to man the power of producing after his kind, than to the other parts of animated nature; Gen. i. 22, 28. Thus it was from one of the ribs of the man that God made the mother of all mankind, without the necessity of infusing the breath of life a second time, Gen. ii. 22, and Adam himself begat a son in his own likeness after his image, Gen. v. 3. Thus, 1 Cor. xv. 49, “as we have borne the image of the earthy :" and this not only in the body, but in the soul, as it was chiefly with respect to the * Living soul, “nephesh chaiyah, a general term to express all creatures endued with animal life, in any of its infinitely varied gradations, from the half reasoning elephant down to the polype, which seems equally to share the vegetable and animal life."-Dr. A. Clarke. Notes on Gen.i. 24. H. soul that Adam was made in the divine image.* So, Gen. xlvi. 26, "All the souls which came with Jacob into Egypt, which came out of his loins." Heb. vii. 10, “Levi was in the loins of Abraham :" whence in Scripture an offspring is called seed, and Christ is denominated “the seed of the woman.' Gen. xvii. 7, "I will be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee." 1 Cor xv. 44, 46, "It is sown a natural body... that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural.” But besides the testimony of revelation, some arguments from reason may be alledged in confirmation of this doctrine. Whoever is born, or shapen and conceived in sin, (as we all are, not David only, Ps. li. 5,) if he receive his soul immediately from God, cannot but receive it from him shapen in sin; for to be generated and conceived, means nothing else than to receive a soul in conjunction with the body. If we receive the soul immediately from God, it must be pure, for who in such a case will venture to call it impure? But if it be pure, how are we conceived in sin in consequence of receiving a pure soul, which would rather have the effect of cleansing the impurities of the body; or with what justice is the pure soul charged with the sin of the body? But it is contended, God does not create souls impure, but only impaired in their nature and destitute of original righteousness. I answer, that to create pure souls destitute of original righteousness, to send them into contaminated and corrupt bodies, to deliver them up in their innocence and helplessness to the prison house of the body, as to an enemy, with understanding blinded and with will enslaved,-in other words, wholly deprived of sufficient strength for resisting the vicious propensities of the body-to create souls thus circumstanced, would God on thee Abundantly his gifts hath also poured Paradise Lost, VIII., 219. argue as much injustice, as to have created them in pure would have argued impurity; it would have argued as much injustice, as to have created the first man, Adam himself, impaired in his nature, and destitute of original righteousness. Again, if sin be communicated by generation, and transmitted from father to son, it follows that what is the original subject of in, namely, the rational soul, must be propagated in the same manner; for that it is from the soul that all sin in the first instance proceeds, will not be denied. Lastly, on what principle of justice can sin be imputed through Adam to that soul, which was never either in Adam, or derived from Adam? In confirmation of which Aristotle's argument may be added, the truth of which is, in my opinion, indisputable. If the soul be equally diffused through any given whole, and throughout every part of that whole, how can the human seed, the noblest and most intimate part of all the body, be imagined destitute of the soul of the parents, or at least of the father, when communicated to the son by the laws of generation? It was probably by some such considerations as these that Augustine was led to confess that he could neither discover, by study nor prayer, nor any process of reasoning, how the doctrine of original sin could be defended on the supposition of the creation of souls. The texts which are usually advanced, Eccles. xii. 7, Isai. lvii. 16, Zech. xii. 1, certainly indicate that nobler origin of the soul implied in its being breathed from the mouth of God; but they no more prove that each soul is severally and immediately created by the Deity, than certain other texts, which might be quoted, prove that each individual body is formed in the womb by the immediate hand of God. Job x. 8-10, "Thine hands have made me.... hast thou not poured me out as milk?" Ps. xxxiii. 15, "He fashioneth their hearts alike." Job xxxi. 15, “Did not he that made me in the womb make him?" Isai. xliv. 24, " Thus saith Jehovah he that formed thee from the womb." Acts xvii. 26, "He hath made of one blood all nations of men.' We are not to infer from these passages, that natural causes do not contribute their ordinary efficacy for the propagation of the body; nor on the other hand, that the soul is not received by traduction from the father, because at the time of death it again betakes itself to different elements than the body, in conformity with its own origin. With regard to the passage, Heb. xii. 9, where "the fathers of the flesh" are opposed to "the father of spirits,” I answer, that it is to be understood in a theological, not in a physical sense, as if the father of the body were opposed to the father of the soul; for flesh is taken neither in this passage, nor probably anywhere else, for the body without the soul; nor "the father of spirits" for the father of the soul, in respect of the work of generation; but "the father of the flesh" here means nothing else than the earthly or natural father, whose offspring are begotten in sin; "the father of spirits" is either the heavenly father, who in the beginning created all spirits, angels as well as the human race, or the spiritual father, who bestows a second birth on the faithful; according to John iii. 6, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit." The argument, too, will proceed better, if the whole be understood as referring to edification and correction, not to generation; for the point in question is not, from what source each individual originated, or what part of him thence originated, but who had proved most successful in the employment of chastisement and instruction. By parity of reasoning, the apostle might exhort the converts to bear with his rebuke, on the ground that he was their spiritual father. God is, as truly the father of the flesh as "of the spirits of the flesh," Numb. xvi. 22, but this is not the sense intended here, and all arguments are weak which are deduced from passages of Scripture originally relating to a different subject. With regard to the soul of Christ it will be sufficient to answer that its generation was supernatural, and therefore can |