ESSAY VI. 401 his natural image, and are said to be his offspring, have a native power to move matter also, in certain proportions, according to their order or rank in the spiritual world ? To this I answer, that the great God has a natural, essential, and self-sufficient power to create matter, and Make it exist with all its modes of figure and motion ; no wonder then that he should have a' natural power to move it ; but no such powers or properties of creating matter seem to belong to any created spi- rits, though in many other instances they are made like himself: Though God has an unlimited influence over the worlds of mat- ter and mind, yet created spirits may have no power in a world so foreign to their natures as this material world is. The two worlds of matter and mind are not within each other's reach or influence till God their common maker appoint it. Besides, why may we not suppose it to be a peculiar prero- gative of the great God to move all or any matter, that so the material world may be more entirely under the government of his will, and not be subjected to the capricious and malignant in- clinations and volitions of any of his intelligent creatures, and that he may maintain his sovereignty in a more immediate man- ner over all the worlds which he has made ? Is it not more pro- per to suppose that God has the power of commissioning such a particular spirit to move such an animal body, and to appoint what particular matter any spirit shall move, and what parts of matter shall have power to impress sensations on any particu- lar spirit ? If spirits could move matter without his commission, why might not spirits receive impressions also frommatter without his special appointment ? And if these mutual influences might be without hisorder, what infinite and perpetual tempest and tumult would be raised through the universeby the everlasting and pro- miscuous mutual agencies of bodies and spirits upon one another, 'which the Creator and Governor of the world had never united by any appointment of his ? One might form a scheme of im- mense confusion, and millions of - jarring events, of Milton's war of angels in heaven renewed daily on the earth, of mountains torn up by the roots, with all their woods and forests, and whirl- ed into the air, and of oceans raised highs and whelmed over whole nations by the single or united force of the legions of hell ? What extensivedesolation and ruinous mischief would overspread the tace of the whole creation, if the two different worlds of bo- dies and spirits had a natural and mutual agency or power of act- ing upon each other ? Two comets, or two planets, with all their contents, and all their inhabitants, encounteringwith full force in the mid- heaven, would not raise such a tremendous storm, nor spread such a scene of multiplied confusions, terrors and devas- tations, as these two worlds of mind and matter, upon supposi.. VOL. Viii. C c
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