SECTION 1V, SI Is supposed to be the principle of life to the animal body ; and sometimes it signifies the intellectual soul, the conscious and active principle in man ; and therefore whatsoever may be said of the spirit's dying or being lost, is no proof that the conscious principle in man dies, which is a very different thing from breath or air. Perhaps it will be said here, does not Moses suppose breath to be the soul or spirit in man, when he says ; Gen. ii. 7. God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. I answer it is evident that Moses makes a plain difference between God's formation of man and brutes, for he makes no distinction between their soul and body in their creation ; but he distinguishes the soul from the body of man, in his creation, speaking according to the common language and philosophy of that age, as though the soul were in the breath Nor was it pro- per to speak in strict philosophical language to those ignorant people ; nor were the modes of expression in the bible, so pecu- liarly formed to teach us philosophy as religion. But of this distinction between the soul of a brute and the soul of a man, there seems to be a plain intimation given by So- lomon in the book of Ecclesiastes, chapter iii. verse 2E Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of a beast that goeth downward to the earth ? That the spirit of man, that is, his conscious and intellectual principle, goeth up- ward, or survives at the death of the body, but the spirit of the beast, that is, the spring of its animal life goeth down to the earth, is mingled with the common elements of this material, world, and entirely lost. But the wise man in this place perhaps, expresses some of his former atheistical doubts, saying, who knows whether there is any difference between them ? Yet it intimates thus much, that men who pretended to wisdom in that age, supposed such a dif- ference between the spirit of man and the spirit of a brute. Objection II. is taken from Psalm vi. 5. In death there is no remembrance of thee ; in the grave who shall give thee thanks? And Psalm cxlvi. 4. His breath goeth forth, he i'eturn- eth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish. And Ec. ix. 5. The living know that they shall die, but the dead know not any thing. From all which words, some would infer there is no such thing as a separate state of souls. Answer. Both David and his son Solomon, exclude all such sort of thoughts and actions, both religious and civil, from the state of death, as are practised in this life; all the pursuits of their present purposes, their present way and manner of divine worship, and their management or consciousness of human affairs : But they do not exclude all manner of consciousness,
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