THE PROOF OF A SEPARATE STATE. principle or motive to virtue and piety left them, and the privy ciples and motives of goodness, in the following ages, among Jews and christians, had been greatly diminished and enfeebled. At the conclusion of this chapter, I cannot help taking no- tice, though I shall but just mention it, that the multitude of narratives, which we have heard of in all ages of the apparition of the spirits or ghosts of persons departed from this life, can hardly be all delusion and falsehood. Some of them have been affirmed to appear upon such great and important occasions as may be equal to such an unusual event; and several of these accounts have been attested by such witnesses of wisdom, and prudence, and sagacity, under no distempers of imagination, that they may justly demand a belief; and the effects of these apparitions, in the discovery of murders, and things unknown, have been so considerable and useful, that a fair disputant should hardly venture to run directly counter to such a cloud of wit - nesses,.without some good assurance on the contrary side. Ile must be a shrewd philosopher indeed, who upon any other hy- pothesis, can give a tolerable account of all the narratives in Glanvill's " Sadducismus triumphatus," or Baxter's " World of Spirits and Apparitions," &c. Though I will grant some of these stories have but insufficient proof, yet if there be but one real apparition of a departed spirit, then the point is gained, that there is a separate state. And indeed the scripture itself seems to mention such sort of ghosts, or appearances of souls departed, Mat. xiv. 26. When the disciples saw Jesus walking on the water, they " thought it had been a spirit ;" And, Luke xxiv. 37. after his resurrection they saw him at once, appearing in the midst of them, " and they supposed they had seen a spirit; and our Sa- viour doth not contradict their notion, but argues with them upon the supposition of the truth of it, a spirit bath not flesh and bones as ye see me to have." And Acts xxiii. 5, 9. the word "spirit" seems to signify the "apparition of a departed soul," where it is said, " The Sadducees say, there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit," and verse 9.- "If a spirit, or an angel bath spoken to this man," &c. A spirit here is plainly dis- tinct from an angel, and what can it mean but an apparition of it human soul which has left the body ? SECT. IV. Objections answered. Having pointed out so many springs of argument, to sup- port this doctrine from the word of God, as well as from reason and tradition, I proceed now to answer some particular objections, which are raised against it. Objection L The scripture is so far from supposing, that the soul of man is immortal, or that there is any such thing as the
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