MISCELLANEOUS THOUGHTS. 4555 lently prevent his governing justice from distributing rewards and punishments according to their works : Ile would never make a creature capable of breaking his laws and insulting his authority, and then defying his Maker to punish him ; a creature wbo might do outrage to his Creator, and yet have power to escape beyond the reach of his avenging hand. This would be such a piece of conduct as would tempt one to suspect great weakness in the Creator and Governor of the world ; which God forbid. Perhaps it may be said here, that God can find a way to reward or punish, by raising his creatures again from the dead to a more firm and durable life. To this I answer two ways. First, If the thinking spirit in man, or the conscious prin- ciple, be entirely extinguished at the death of the body, the resurrection of man to a new consciousness, is the creation of e new conscious being, and it is mot the sane conscious being, which once merited reward or punishment ; and where would be the justice of such punishments or rewards ? It is possible in- deed, that almighty power might make a new conscious being which should suppose itself to remember things done in a for- mer state, before it had any existence ; but this would be pro- perly a false apprehension, an error, and not real memory of what was done before, and would lay no just foundation for the recompences of vice or virtue. Secondly, This very resurrection must be a miracle, a su- pernatural exercise of divine power, in contradiction to the laws of nature, and not acccording to the course of nature. Now is it not hard to say, and very unreasonable to suppose, that God ha& so contrived the nature of his creature man, that though hè be capable of high degrees of virtue, or of most insolent and horrid vices, yet, according to the course of 'nature, he cannot effectually and certainly reward or punish him ; or that the wise Creator and righteous Governor of the universe cannot effect - ually and certainly distribute the recompences of virtue and vice, without a miracle ? Upon the whole, cloth it not evidently follow from this argu- ment, that since God is a wise Creator and Governor of the world, since man is capable of voluntary vice or virtue, and consequently of deserving rewards or punishments, there is, and there most be, some living conscious principle in man which may be naturally capable of rewards and punishments, answerable to his behaviour I That there is a soul in man which survives his animal life, and is immortal, which cannot put an end to its own life and consciousness, nor to the life and consciousness of its fellow-souls ? And by this natural immortality of the soul it comes to pass, that it is not in the power of a wicked man to
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