by Tho indeed this is a point in which it is more possible for us to arrive at distinct Ideas or somewhat very like them than the other We plainly see that the Union of our Souls to our Bodies consists in a Harmony that God has setled between such an Organization of matter and such Sensations that arise out of the different motions of this Matter so organiz'd Upon which this Matter is in many things under the power of the Mind which by its thoughts commands and moves it and it has from it a continual Influence and Actuation that is called Life so that the Union of the Soul and Body is the result of such a proper Harmony of the Body according to the Mechanical Structure of its necessary parts as makes it fit to give proper Sensations to the Mind and to receive and obey the Impressions of the Mind the breaking of which Harmony brings on death From hence we may apprehend several degrees of the Union of thinking being with Matter The lowest is that if Infants where there is a thought but a thought so entirely under the Impressions of Matter that it is not able to rise above them and either to think of any thing else or to stop the Violence of these Impressions So here is a Spirit wholly immersed in Matter that is in every thing under its dominion and is a slave to it and in this state Ideots continue their whole life long A second degree is that of men in this Life duly ripened in which their Minds are as to their Sensations still subject to Matter that is they must feel pain or pleasure according to the dispositions of Matter but then there is a power in the Soul to govern Matter and not to yield to those Sensations So that there is a lasting struggle between the Sensations that arise from the Body and the Cogitations that spring in the Mind which have the better of one another by turns Here the Soul and Body are as it were equally yoked together only the Soul may by the use of Reason and Liberty be so assisted as to have the ascendant over the Body for the greatest part From these we may conceive two other degrees of Union which may be between Souls and Bodies The one is a State in which the Soul shall have an entire Authority over Matter but yet shall need the assistance of it as a necessary mean of Motion and as having in it a repository of Images and Figures for memory and imagination So that in such a state the Body shall have no power at all over the Mind but shall only serve it as Instruments do a Mechanick and this seems to be a Philosophical Notion of the use that our Bodies shall be of to us in another State in which they shall be no more clogs upon us to give us uneasy or grievous sensations but shall only be the proper Machines for Motion and Memory and for such like uses in which the Body when well tuned can serve the Mind A Fourth degree may be a State in which a Mind may be so entirely perfect in its self and in its own acts that it may have no need of a Body upon its own account but only in order to the ministring to another Spirit that is yet under the power of Matter to give it either Warnings or Assistances which perhaps it cannot communicate but through the Conveyance or by the Mechanical Motions and Impressions of one piece of Matter upon another Upon this account and for this end Spirits of the highest form nay God himself may at some times and for some unknown ends make use of a Body and put it in such a form and so actuate it as thereby to communicate some Light or Influence to minds that are yet much immersed in Matter These are all the ways that we can apprehend of a Mind 's assuming Matter and being united to it which is the having it under its Actuation or Authority so that the Acts of the Mind give such Impressions to the Body as govern and command it By the same way of thinking we may apprehend yet more easily how one Spirit may be united to another which is when a superior Spirit has another of an Inferior Order so entirely under its conduct and Impressions that the Inferior receives constant Communications of Light and Impulse from the Superior And as the Body lives by the presence of the Soul even when it does not by any distinct Act work upon it or enliven it so a superior Mind may have a perpetual conduct of an inferior even when it leaves it to its own liberty and does not break in upon it by any immediate enlightning or animating of it And thus we may conceive the Subsistence of an Intelligent Being to be its acting entirely in it self or upon Matter united to it without any other Spirit 's being constantly present to it actuating it or having it under any immediate Vital and inseparable Influence This seems to give some light towards the Idea of a Subsistence as separated from the Essence and by consequence of one person's Subsistence in by and from another I do not pretend to say that this is the strict Notion of Subsistence but it is the nearest thing that I can imagine to it which will at least help to form some general Idea of it for these being all the distinct Notions that we can frame of the Union of Spirits to other Spirits or of Spirits to Matter they will help us to a more distinct Apprehension of the Union of the Eternal Word to a Human Nature by which it assumed the Man into such an inward and immediate Oeconomy that it did always actuate illuminate and conduct him as we perceive our Souls do our Bodies This is the clearest thought that we give our selves of that Human Nature's subsisting by the Subsistence of the Word that dwelt in it This also agrees well with the Expressions of the Word 's dwelling in Flesh and of the bodily Indwelling of the Fulness of the Godhead in Christ Iesus But having now shewed how far these things may become in some sort intelligible to us I go to my main Design which is to examine no longers whether this ought to be believed or not in case we should find it very expresly affirmed in the New Testament for I hope I have already made that out fully Therefore the only question that now lies before me is Whether this is contained in the New Testament or not for if it is in it and is a part of its Doctrine then since that Doctrine is proved to be all true and revelled by God this must be likewise true if it is a part of it This I will also yield That Authorities brought to prove Articles that are so sublimeâ— as to rise above our ways of Apprehension ought to be made out by a greater fulness of express Proofs and bare Precepts of Morality or more easily
Messias during the Second Temple and about the time that our Saviour appeared which disposed them so easily to hearken to every Impostor Their Temple has been destroyed their Nation dispersed their Genealogies lost by which the certainty of their being Abraham's Seed subsists no more and their Sacrifices have ceased now above 1600. Years So that their hatred of us and yet their Books agreeing with ours when joined together make no small part of our Argument But now to come to the strength of our Cause I lay it thus The Gospels were published in the time when many persons were yet alive who knew and were appealed to for the Passages contained in them Which is made out thus First They mention the Temple and Nation of the Iews as still in being which shews they were written before the Destruction of Ierusalem More particularly St. Luke writ the Acts of the Apostles two Years after St. Paul's going to Rome with which he ends that Book And he begins it with the mention of his Gospel as writ some time before that His Gospel also begins with an Account of some other Gospels that had been then writ Now St. Paul's going to Rome happened two or three and twenty Years after the time of our Saviour's Passion and Resurrection so early were these things put in writing They were no sooner written than they were read in the Assemblies of the Christians as the Iews were wont to read the Law and the Prophets in their Synagogues This we do find from St. Iustin's Apology was the practice of his time which was less than an hundred Years after they were written So that we clearly see these Writings were not kept as Secrets to be divulged as the Depositaries of them thought fit according to the way that the Romans had used about the Sybilline Oracles but were immediately copied out for the use of all the Churches and of as many private Christians as could compass the Copying them The Epistles of the Apostles do carry in them Characters that lead us very near the time in which they were written And by comparing those of St. Paul with the Books writ by St. Luke we see when most of his Epistles were writ many of them being before his going to Rome Now these Epistles were addressed to whole Bodies and Churches and they do often appeal to the Life Death Resurrection and Ascension of Christ as matters which were then well known and firmly believed by all Christians From all which I at present infer no more but that these things were published in the time and were known in many remote Provinces soon after they were transacted and were not kept close to be published in some other Age when it might have been easie for bold Impostors to make any thing pass with a credulous multitude Now all this was published near the Fountain and was so soon spread that in Nero's time we know by Tacitus that there were great numbers of them at Rome who had fallen under a publick Odium and on whom Nero though he had burnt Rome himself threw the hatred of that Conflagration and punished them with the severity that such a Crime if truly proved against them had well deserved In the Gospels we have the Relations of our Saviour's Miracles of many of his Transactions with the Iewish Nation so circumstantiated more particularly the Account of his Death and Resurrection is given so minutely that the Iews who might have been easily Masters of the Books in which these were contained had it in their power to have overthrown the credit of them in many Instances if they had found any falshoods in them If they had not sealed the Sepulchre or asked of Pilate a grant to watch it if that Guard had not run away in the night and given out a story of their having fallen asleep the Iews could have well disproved this upon which the whole depended Now as the Iews were engaged both out of their hatred of our Saviour and his Doctrine and to justifie themselves from the Imputations of having shed his Blood and that of his Followers to have pursued this matter so close as to have convinced the World of its falshood so the progress that it made did alarm them too much to make any one imagine that they could despise it They had it also in their power by the Registers which were in their hands and at least during Agrippa's Reign they were in so happy and flourishing a condition that it cannot be said that the ill state of their Affairs took from them either the heart or the leisure to look after this All which received a great confirmation from St. Paul's Conversion who from being one not only of their Zealots and Pharisees but of the most furious Persecutors of this Religion was so strangely struck down and changed while a company of their own People were about him that he became afterwards the most successful of all the first Planters of Christianity He did very frequently appeal to that matter of Fact in which it had been easie to have taken away his Credit if they could have denied it So far then I have gone to shew that this matter was published early and in the sight of those who were both most concerned and most able to have detected any deceit that might have been in it who did not by any Act of which there remains the least print among either the Writings of their own Nation or of the other Enemies to Christianity attempt to discredit it Had not the Genealogies of Christ been taken exactly out of the Temple-Registers the bare shewing of them had served to have confuted the whole for if in any one thing the Registers of their Genealogies were clear and uncontroverted Since these proved that they were Abraham's Seed and likewise made out their Title to the Lands which from the days of Ioshua were to pass down either to immediate Descendants or as they failed to Collateral Degrees Now this shews plainly that there was a double Office kept of their Pedigrees one was natural and might be taken when the Rolls of Circumcision were made up and the other related to the Division of the Land in which when the Collateral Line came instead of the Natural then the last was dropt as extinct and the other remained It being thus plain from their Constitution that they had these two Orders of Tables we are not at all concerned in the diversity of the two Evangelists on this head since both might have Copied them out from those two Offices at the Temple and if they had not done it faithfully the Iews could have Authentically demonstrated their Error in entitling our Saviour to that received Character of the Messias that he was to be the Son of David by a false Pedigree therefore since no Exceptions were made in the time when the sight of the Rolls must have ended the Enquiry it is plain that they were faithfully Copied out Nor
there was not any one sort of things which the whole World knew better than all that belong'd to Sacrifices At the time of writing the New Testament they certainly were more accustom'd to it and understood it much better than we generally do now in Ages in which those practices have so long ceas'd that the Memory of them is quite extinguished It is indeed very probable that many particular Phrases belonging to them might have been by a Poetical Liberty extended to other Matters for things of the sacred'st nature are by Poets and Orators made use of to give the liveliest Illustrations and raise the strongest passions possible yet after all an entire Thread of a sacrificatory Style was a form of description that the World must have known could belong only to an Expiatory Sacrifice that is to some person or thing that was devoted to God by a Sinner in his own stead and upon the account of his sin and guilt was to be some way destroy'd in sign of what he own'd he had deserv'd and this was to be done in order to the reconciling the guilty Person to God the Guilt being transfer'd from the Person to the Sacrifice and God by accepting the Sacrifice was reconcil'd to the person whose sin was upon that account forgiven This being thus laid down let us look next to the whole strain of the New Testament particularly to those parts of it in which this matter is more fully treated about Here I will again follow the method that I took upon the former Head and not enter so particularly upon the Criticisms of some passages but will view the thing in gross that seeming to be both the most convincing way in it self and the best suited to my present purpose I must further observe that this was a point of vast Consequence as being that which concern'd men's Peace with God the pardon of their sins and their hopes of God's Favour and of Eternal Happiness Therefore we ought not to imagine that Rhetorick or Poetical Forms of Speech could be admitted here to the aggravating of so solemn a piece of our Religion boyond its true value so that we must conclude that here if in any thing the Apostles writ strictly besides that their manner of writing is always plain and simple When then they set forth the Death of Christ with all the Pomp of the sacrificatory Phrases we must either believe it to be a true Propitiatory Sacrifice or otherwise we must look upon them as warm indiscreet men whose Affections to our Saviour heated them so far as to carry them in this Matter out of all measure far beyond the truth Those who oppose this Article believe that Christ only died for our good but not in our stead that by his Death he might fully confirm his Gospel and give it a great Authority that so it might have the more Influence upon us they also believe that by his dying he intended to set us a most perfect pattern of bearing the sharpest Sufferings with the perfectest Patience and Submission to the Will of God and the most entire Charity to those at whose hands we suffer and that by doing this he was to Merit at God's hands that supream Authority with which he is now vested for our good that so he might obtain a Power to offer the World the pardon of sin upon their true Repentance and finally That he died in order to his Resurrection and forgiving a sensible Proof of that main Article of his Religion That we shall all be raised up at the last day therefore he was to die and that in such a manner that no man might question the truth of it that so his Resurrection might give a most demonstrative Proof both of the possibility of it and of our being to be raised up by him who was thus declared to be the Son of God by his Rising from the dead On the other hand we believe that God intending to pardon sin and to call the World by the offers of it to Repentance design'd to do it in such a manner as should both give us the highest Ideas of the guilt of sin and also of his own Love and Goodness to us which he thus order'd That after that Divine Person in whom dwelt the Eternal Word had sufficiently opened his Doctrine and had set a perfect pattern of Holiness to the world he was to be fallen on by a company of perfidious and cruel men who after they had loaded him with all the spiteful and reproachful Usage that they could invent they in conclusion Crucified him he all the while bearing besides those visible Sufferings in his Person most inexpressible Agonies in his Mind both before and during these his Sufferings and yet bearing them with a most absolute Submission to his Father's Will and a perfect Charity to those his Persecutors and that in all this he willingly offer'd himself to suffer both upon our account and in our stead which was so accepted of God that he not only raised him from the dead and exalted him up on high giving to him even as he was Man all power both in Heaven and Earth but that upon the account of it he offer'd to the World the pardon of sinâ— together with all those other Blessings which accompany it in his Gospel and that he will have us in all our Prayers for pardon or other favours claim them through that Death and owe them to it These are two contrary Doctrines upon this Head Now let us see which of them come nearest the Manner and Style in which the Scriptures set it out in the New Testament Christ is said to have reconcil'd us to his Father to be our Propitiation to have born our sins and to have been bruis'd for our Iniquities to have been made sin for us to have been accursed for us to have given himself for our sins that he might redeem us from all Iniquity he is said to have died for or in the stead of our sins to have given his life a ransom for us or in lieu of us he is said to have born our sins on his own body he has appointed a perpetual Remembrance of his Death in these words That his body was broken for us and that his blood was shed for many for the Remission of sins Remission of sins is offered in his name and through his blood God laid upon him the iniquities of us all he was our justification our peace and our redemption He is called the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the World His Death and intercession are very copiously compared to the Expiation made on the solemn day of the Atonement for the whole Nation of the Iews on which after the Sacrifice was offer'd on the Altar the High Priest carri'd in the Blood to the Holy of Holies and set it down before the Cloud of Glory as that which reconcil'd that people to God This is done in so full a