BAXTER'S DYING THOUGHTS. 41 souls are no more than one, and so that there is no place for uniting or partition, there is no place then for the objection of all souls becoming one, and of losing individuation, unless they mean by annihilation. But that God who,(as is sdid) delighteth both in the union, and yet in the wònderful multiplicity of creatures, and will not make all stars to be only one ; though fire have a most uniting or aggre- gative inclination, bath further given experimental notice that there is individuation in ,the other world as well as here, eyen innu- merable angels and devils, and not one only as apparitions and witches, and many other evidences, prove ; of which more anon. So that, all things considered, there is no reason to fear that the souls shall lose their, individuation or activity,.(though they change their manner of action) any more than their being or formal power; and so it is naturally certain that they are immortal. And'if holy souls are so far immortal, I need not prove that they will be immortally happy ; for their holiness will infer it ; and few wilt ever dream that it shall there go ill with them that are good, and that the most just and holy God will not use those well whom he maketh holy. II. That holy souls shall.,be hereafter happy, seemeth to be one of the common notices pf nature planted in the consciences of mankind ; and it is therefore acknowledged by the generality of the world that freely use their understandings. Most, yea, almost all the heathen nations at this day believe it, besides the. Mahome- tans ; and it is the most barbarous cannibals and Brazilians that do not, whose understandings have had the least improvement, and who have rather an inconsiderate nescience of it, than a denying opposition. And though some philosophers denied it, they were a small and contemned party : and though many of the rest were somewhat dubious, it was only a certainty which they professed to want, and not a probability or opinion that it was true; and both the vulgar and the deep-studied men believed it, and .those that questioned it we're thehalf-studied philosophers, who, not rest- ing in the natural notice, nor -yetreaching full intellectual evidence ofit by discourse, had found out matter of difficulty topuzzle them, andcame not to that degreeof wisdom as would have resolved them. And even among apostates from Christianity, most, or many, still acknowledge'the soul's immortality, and the felicity and re- ward of holy souls, to be of the common notices, known by nature to mankind, Julian was so much persuaded, of it, that, on that account, he exhorteth his priests and subjects to great strictness and holiness of life, and to see that the Christian did not exceed them: and, among us, the Lord Herbert de Veritate, and many others that seem not to believe our supernatural revelations of VOL. u. 6
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