4RQ ESSAY TOWARD THE [SEC7.I, ing being, has ceased to exist, it is impossible that it should retain any memory of former actions, since itself began to be but in the moment of the resurrection. The doctrine of rewarding or punishing the same soul or intel- ligent nature, which did good or evil in this life, neces- sarily requires that the same soul, or intelligent nature, should have a continue& and uninterrupted existence, that so the same conscious being, which did good or evil, may be rewarded or punished:. IL Those, who suppose the soul of man to havé a real distinct existence when the body dies, but only to fall into a estate of slumber, without consciousness or activity, must, I think, suppose this soul to be material, that is, an extended and solid substance. If they suppose it to be inextended, or to have no parts or quantity, I confess I have no manner of idea of the. existence, or possibilityof such an inextended being, without cónsciousness or active power, nor do they pre- tend to have any such idea, as I ever heard, and therefore they generally grant it to be extended. But if they imagine the soul to be extended, it must either have something more of solidity or density than mere empty space, or it must be quiteas unsolid and thin as space itself : Let us consider both these. If it beas thin and subtile as mere emptyspace, yet while it is active and conscious, I own it must have aproper ex- istence; but if it once begin to sleep, and drop,all con - sciousness and activity, I have noother idea of it, but the same which I have of empty space : and that I conceive to be mere nothing, though it impose upon us with the appearance ofsome sort of properties. If they allow the soul to have any, the least, degree of density above what belongs to empty space, this is soli- dity in the philosophic sense of the word., and then it is solid extension, which I call matter ; and a material beingmay indeed be laid asleep ; that is, it may cease to have any motion in its parts ; but motion is not consci- ousness : And how 'either solid or unsolid extension, either space or matter, can have any consciousness or thought belonging to any part of it, or spread through the whole of it, I knownot; or what any sort of extension can do toward thought or consciousness, I .confess I lerstand not; nor van i frame any more an idea-of it,
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