ESSAY VIII. 421 vitally united to it, but are now so no longer, than it bath to particles of matter to which it was never united, this would be bard to determine." 2. The apostle spews it shall be different matter from that which was laid in thegrave, by theverymanner of his arguing : For when he uses the simile of a G0 grain of wheat dying ii the ground," he says, ver. 37, 38. " Thou sowest not that body that shall be, but thou sowest a bare grain ; and God giveth it a body (i. e. another body) as pleaseth hiin. And then lie goes on to shew what different sorts of bodies there are, and how different the bodies in the resurrection shall be from what were buried. 3. It is hardly possible that all the very same bodies should rise; that is, all the same atoms or particles that were buried: For when bodies turn to dust, this dust or earth grows up in vegetation, andbecomes thebody of grass or plants ; sheepand oxen eat these plants, and other men eat the sheep and oxen ; and thus the particles of one man's body may frequently become the parts of another man's body. And this is more conspicuous in the country of cannibals, where they kill and eat their slaves. How then is it possible that each human body should have its own particles ?? 4. There is sufficient ground tosay,the same person rises again from the dead though there be not one atom of the same matter that was buried, which goes to make up the body in the resur- rection ; for Methuselah, when a child, and when one, two, three, four, or five hundredyears old, and when he had lived nine hun- dred and sixty years before his death, had actually by perspira- tion, and attrition, &c. changed the atoms that composed his body perhaps thirty or forty times over, and yet it is the same compound substance of soul and body, the same consciousbeing or person still, it is Methuselah both at his birth, at five hundred years old, and at his death. Besides, If all thesame atoms that ever belonged to Methuselah must be raised, what a bulky man would that be? Qn further, what need is there that the last dying withering particles should be raised to make Methuselah again, when any other atoms that ever belonged to him, and in which he practised virtue or vice, are as much the same Methu- selah? And yet all of these cannot be crouded into his body, without making a giant of him. $'o that we see there is no need of the saine atoms or particles to make the same person, if there be but the same thinking mind conscious of his actions in this life, united to a proper portion of matter. It is consciousness makes the person. This the force of the arguments of those who deny the ne- cessity of having the same body raised. And I think the argu- ments ouboth sides have some real strength in them. Now I D d 3
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