398 OF THE PLACE AND MOTION OF SPIRITS. have the same liberty and range to do extensive good offices to men : But what a theatre of contest and combat would this habit- able world be between the pious and the wicked spirits, accord- ing to their different and contraryinclinations and designs ofgood and evil, if spirits of themselves could move indefinitely six feet, or even but six inches of solid matter ? Again, If a good spirit departed from the body had power to move any small portions of matter indefinitely, would not its re -union to one particular body at the resurrection be a sore and unhappy retrenchment of its nativeliberty, and a confinement to a prison again ? And is this sort of philosophy suited to the blessed idea which the scrip- tures give us of the resurrection of good men ? Is not the resur- rection of the body designed for their greater advantage and hap- piness ? And is it not more reasonable to believe, that it shall render them capable of more extensive service, by enabling them to have some communications with the material world again, from which they had been cut off by the death of the body ? Upon the whole therefore, is it not far more agreeable to the rules of reason and religion, to suppose that a spirit can of itself move no part of matter, nor hath any power over it, but by the particular appointment of God ? And doth not this better ac- count for the first union of each particular spirit to its own body, as a part of the providential government ofthe world by the will of God ? I)oth it not also better adjust the powers of departed spirits, by reducing them to their native impotence of moving matter ? And give a better representation of the resurrection and the re-union of each spirit to its own body ? III. The argument will still grow upon us, and carry further force in it to prove that a spirit has not in itselfa native power to move matter, when we consider .how exceeding limited is the power that a human spirit has over its own body to which it is united ; and thence it will appear, that this power, with its special limitations, was given it merely by special commission from God himself. This spirit, by all its volitions, can move nothing but those particular parts of the body which God has subjected to voluntary motion, and for which proper muscles are provided, together with the nervous powers which are necessary to move those muscular parts. It cannot make the pulse of the heart, which is a great muscle, beat quicker or slower ; it cannot accele- rate the motion of any of the juices, viz. bloodor lymph, &c. in any of the containing vessels, it cannot alter the shape or situa- tion of any atoms of which the flesh, blood and bones are com- posed, by an immediate act of the will upon them ; nor can it move any member, except only in that way of muscular motion which God has appointed in the engine of the human body. In this viewof things there are ten thousand times more mo-
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