ESSAY VII. 417 body or engine which is united to any particular spirit : That body then becomes a moveless mass, and not an animal ; it is no more capable of obeying the volitions or commands of the soul, nor of communicating any external motions by the nerves to the brain, to give the soul notice of any sensible object. Thence it follows by divine appointment, that that spirit is no more con- scious of whit passes in that body, and no more employed in managing it, or acting ripen it, or conversing with the Material creation by the organs ofthat engine. Being therefore unemployed and unimprest by the corporeal world, its thoughts perhaps are more purely intellectual, or at least it has,no new sensations, but its ideas are raised in another manner. It reflects upon its own temper and actions in this life ; it is conscious of its virtues or its vices ; it has an endless spring of peace and joy within; flowing from the sense of its wise and holy, behaviour in the state of trial, or it is tormented with the bitter anguish of a self- condemning conscience in the reflection on its past crimes. This is one great part of heaven and hell. And then with regard to God and its fellow- creatures, if we speak of them in this our incarnate state, we must be forced to use language borrowed from corporeal things, and say, This departed soul appears at once in the pure intellectual or separate world, like a native there ; it stands among innumerablemillions of spirits, itself a kindred spirit, gains swift acquaintance with them, grows conscious of their ideas and actions in their own way and method, which God has not yet revealed to us in this life : And above all, it has an immediate perception of God the infinite spirit, a consciousness of his power and presence, and an intimate and delightful taste of his love, or a dreadful sense of his anger; and thus the soul feels immediately, and possesses a second part of its heaven or its hell ; and all this without any local motion, or any relation to a place, or change of distances. might illustrate this by two similes, and especially apply them to the case of holy souls departing. 1. Suppose a torch inclosed in a cell of earth, in the midst of ten thousand thousand torches that shine at large in a spa- cious amphitheatre. While it is inclosed, its beams strike only on the walls of its own cell, and it has no communion with those without : But let this cell fall down at once, and the torch that moment has full communion with all those ten thousands ; it shines as freely as they do, and receives and gives assistance to all of them, and joins to add glory to that illustrious place. 2. Or suppose a man born and brought up in a dark prison, in the midst of a fair and populous city ; he lives there ina-close confinement, perhaps he enjoys only the twinkling light of a lamp, with thick air, and much ignorance ; though he has some distant hints and reports of the surrounding coy and its affairs, VOL. vtn, D d
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