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soul?" (Mark viii. 36), meaning the best part of his constituents. What shall it profit a man to exchange his constituents, i. e., himself; and the best part of himself or bis constituents, for mere incidental and external commodities?

It would be no great advantage to one who undervalued the precious gift of reason or the equally precious gift of charity to have some trifling incidental given him in exchange for it, and such reason or charity removed from a station in which it wanted fit companions to another in which they abounded, according to another saying of our Saviour, HE THAT HATH, TO HIM SHALL BE GIVEN; and he that hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he hath" (Mark iv. 25). So the pound is taken from him who had only one, and given to him who had ten (Luke xix. 24).

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Every individual life is a distinct process or one among others, and being finite must needs have an end too; or rather, being periodical, must needs have many ends answering to the several stages of existence above mentioned. And the more we dive into the subject, the more we shall find of such ends or interruptions in the same and its constituents proceeding from this finite property the circumscription of constituents, according to the verse of the Psalmist addressing their Ruler and Creator, "As soon as thou scatterest them, they are even as a sleep, and fade away suddenly like the grass" (Ps. xc. 5). By which may be understood his paralyzing or disabling of individual constituents by breaking their array, and so putting an end to that effectual co-operation, which gives life to each and is also their common life. And all this may happen or proceed, without any new fiat or decree, from their natural circumscription. Hence all your individual subjects or subordinate combinations of properties either, may be, and are, and will be, in this state at least, of no stay or continuance; as of the human subject, e. g., of which it has been well said, "HE COMETH UP, AND IS CUT DOWN

LIKE A FLOWER; HE FLEETH AS IT WERE A SHADOW, AND NEVER CONTINUETH IN ONE STAY."

This natural circumscription therefore and a consequent instability is what forms in appearance, and is so considered under the name of Mortality, one of the greatest, because one of the most insurmountable evils of life; as its opposites, freedom and stability, may be thought to constitute its greatest good: that being generally dreaded; as these are generally desired accordingly. And though enough could be said to demonstrate the necessity, or even benefit of both; yet the effect of circumscription is hard to reconcile with the feelings of humanity: there is no arguing sometimes with "the terrors of death," when they press severely. For,

Thirdly, the Perpetuity or vivacity of his essential properties would be no more comfort to a man in the pangs of mortality than the toughness of his joints to a sufferer on the rack or between wild horses; when, if the wretch's nerves and ligaments were like iron, his sufferings might still be moderate compared with the "bitter pains of eternal death," which may be reserved for his persecutor, ⚫ and protracted with as much ease by his Almighty Judge, as those of his hapless victim for a few wretched hours, by the persecutor.

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From the same cause, their perpetuity, an host of essential properties is also liable to be reassembled from the state, whatever it may be, in which they expatiate, by the same breath that first drew them together, and restored to their principles like his disbanded army to an unfortunate general from their caves and glens. For it is certain, that there may be other departures besides the first, and as many exhibitions of death, as we shall find there are different editions of life, with as many different kinds and degrees of that as of this; whether general or partial, carnal or spiritual, first, second or third, temporal or eternal. And if either life, or kind, or degree of life,

* From our beautiful, and (in itself) unexceptionable Funeral Service.

should be dissolved entirely, or succeeded by its proper death, it is most probable, that such death could only be superseded entirely by a new creation: as, should any mortal life be reorganized, or any part of the same or of its constituents be reassembled with the old principle of mortality among them, the subject would still be dying, still mortal or dead; and that both generally and particularly-dead in the whole, dead in every part, in every element, property and act; a life of dead acts, or, as it may be said, a "body of death," a collection of centrifugal ingredients like the place they tend to: hence the necessity of a new creation may be obvious: as it was said by Him that sat upon the throne, "Behold I make all things new" (Rev. xxi. 5).

The tendency of the remarks on several properties of essential properties which have now been proposed is, besides other purposes before signified, to reconcile some seeming exceptions to the forthcoming doctrine of the particular constitution of the subject or Kingdom: as it might otherwise be said, that, judging from experience and actual observation, all the subjects of the Kingdom have not individually the several kinds of properties hereafter ascribed to the general subject of the same. For when 1, the natural latency of properties, or of the acts composing them, is taken into consideration; it will appear, that many such might be present in an ordinary, or even in an eminent degree, where they are little suspected by other subjects, or most likely by the owner himself. Or if, 2, the natural circumscription of properties, which must be circumscribed of course in a finite and perishable subject, is considered; it will be easy, if not unavoidable, to conclude, that any single property, or even a whole kind of properties, may be either naturally or prematurely run out, or otherwise lost to their subject, as before observed; and that its disappearance in this way too will not prove any natural exception or peculiarity in the human race, to shew, as some would be glad to have it, that

one man is not naturally made of flesh and blood, as well as another, or of spirit and intellect either, with all their minute constituents. And 3, from the previous notice of the perpetuity of essential properties in themselves, though not in their subjects, several advantages will also accrue hereafter but of these as well as of the preceding more needs not be said at present. There is but one further observation however on the said properties or constituents required before their specification; and that applies to them equally; v. g., that if the same properties or constituents are ascribed to the whole subject of the Kingdom, or to all its subjects generally, they still are not to be aseribed to all in the same proportion: for this would be contrary not only to experience and observation, but to certainty and demonstration. To say, that one subject does not abound chiefly in one of the properties, or of the kinds of properties now to be mentioned-and another, in another, would be a downright contradiction and very far from what is here meant to be asserted.

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It is usual to distinguish three principal kinds of properties, material, spiritual, and intellectual, in the Kingdom, by means of very obvious differences and agreements; which kinds are currently talked of and classed likewise as it will soon appear. And thereupon as it happens with whole men so it happens generally with their constituents, that some turn more after the father, some after the mother; one property is more material, another more spiritual, another more intellectual; but some-> times a property will partake so equally of different kinds, that one shall hardly know which to assign it to, or how to assign it to one class more than another. To a certain extent, however, the three kinds, material, spiritual and intellectual, above mentioned, are distinct enough to be commonly acknowledged both in their sums and particulars, and often also distinctly named: there being at the same time likewise other distinctions, of which some may be useful enough on occasion, though too vague in general

for standing service. Such are, 1, one founded on the difference of sphere or origin supposed among such properties, some as being more particularly celestial, and therefore, allotted only to the enjoyment of a few privileged individuals, as ubiquity in one kind, miracles in another, prescience in another, and sanctity in all: while properties of meaner origin, though bordering on those, and of the very same kinds, are more widely diffused among the sons of men; being such as these, v. g. presence, power, intelligence; gifts appertaining likewise to many brute species, with many good social and private properties too, compounded of the same: 2, another of properties named from the manner of their introduction into this lower sphere; as natural and artificial, innate and acquired--the natural and innate having been also identified by proper names, as Gifts and Endowments; and the artificial and acquired likewise, as Accomplishments, Arts, Acquire. ments; and all together by the common name of Talents.

But these are all shades of difference, and not essential differences in the respects supposed: they are rather properties of its properties, than properties of the subject or kingdom: they may help to display its numerical strength, but add nothing to its real sufficiency, which is nothing like what it seems. Indeed a man who should be at the pains of considering how his most essential, as well as constituent properties are composed, might be surprised and confounded at the flimsiness of his own composition, and at the very few really differing ingredients that it contains. It may well be said, that “man is dike a thing of nought" (Ps. cxliv. 4), considering what he is made of: and yet the subject is not little to know in each of the three divisions above mentioned.

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t. The most convenient order of pursuing this knowledge being, as already intimated, from incidentals to con stituents, and among these, from the lowest upward, the first kind of these to be accordingly considered, will be the materialzare de aviat

VOL. I.

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