on the Soul when departed from her decayed tenement and convey her to that place and society which the rectitude or obliquity of her moral Nature hath fitted her for There are two opposite Principles or contrary Natures in the World between which there is an eternall and irreconcilable Feud viz. Sin Righteousness to one of which every man ioyns himself and becomes a member of a society or body Politick and carries on 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an immortal warr Sin is nothing but a deflection from the divine Nature a transposition or undue connexion and dis-harmonious union of some principles in the Creation which raises a perturbation and disorder in the Soul of man and when confirmed by repeated acts becomes a habit and incrassates obnubilates the mind crowding it into narrowness and servility But righteousness is a concord or agreement and suitableness with those living laws impressed upon every moral agent when the Soul acts adequately and conformably to those innate notions of truth and holiness and this enlarges and sets free the Spirit of man from Tyranny and slavery And hence it comes to pass that the actions of men are not as the transient effects of necessary causes as a stone to fall downwards but being the results of spontaneous principles have a moral influence of good or evil upon their future states and conditions For men arrive not to the utmost degrees and completion of goodness or iniquity in a moment but as in Naturals so likewise Morals there is a latitude required and things ascend gradually to their perfections and consequently the wicked or righteous Nature respectively dispreads it self and incorporates and conjoyns the Soul either with Hell or Heaven in this life For Hell in a moral sense is nothing but an Orbe of sin and unrighteousness a state of penury anxiety and sucks in and draws as it were with hidden cords and strings every thing that is like to it self so that every wicked man truly carries the beginnings of Hell and miâ—ery within his breast and to this purpose is that of Porphyry 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Spirit is said to be in Hades because it partakes of the dark nature and void of light But Heaven is the region of serenity and quiet a state of righteouâ—ness peace and joy and takes hold of every thing congenerous to its own Nature elevating and winding the spirits of men off from their commerce with vice and the alluring objects of sense and transforming them into it's own beauteous Image and pulchritude and the further they recede from the Cuspis of the love of wickedness and the unrighteous Nature the more liberty they find and when once they are so farr risen that the utmost projections of this dark shadow cannot touch them then are they arrived to an eternal and boundless freedom Every man therefore so fatally adjoyning himself either to Heaven or Hell in this life it will inevitably fall to his share to be happy or miserable when departed out of it which cannot be except the Memory and Sense of his past actions return upon his separation from the body And that it does so is not only a probable but necessary consequence from the Nature of the Soul For Memory being a radicated faculty of the Soul and having no greater dependance upon the body than all other exertions and operations of the mind whatsoever it will remain safe and entire notwithstanding the various turnings and transmutations of corporeal principles Indeed were Memory and those other Faculties which not without great reason we attribute to a knowing and intelligent Principle the sole effects of the re-action or tremulous motions of certain pieces of matter striking upon each other it were a necessary deduction from thence that Death should spoil their sport and quite deface and obliterate whatever their nimble friskings and incertain agitations might represent unto us but this is already sufficiently demonstrated to our hands to be both frivolous and precarious by an excellent Person who has divested Matter of all cogitative powers and properties And if we well weigh the state of the Soul after death it will appear that Memory will then be more vivid and lively and Conscience which is nothing but a reflexe act of Memory more sensible and awakened For the great cause of all our weak and imperfect actions in this life is the stubbornness and inobsequiousness of matter to the powers of the Soul whereby they become dull languishing and inactive but when death shall give us entrance into another World and the Soul united to a more ductil and pliable vehicle her operations will become more sprightly and the Memory bring into view many and diverse things which before it was not able to command the Conscience afflict or cheer according to her deportment in the former life Neither is this any more than what we find already in the natures and causes of things For if Memory being lost by the violence of a disease or some other extraordinary indisposition of the body yet returns and is regained upon the cessation and amotion of the distemper and reduction of the spirits to their pristine temperament I see no reason why it should thus totally be despoiled by Death there being oft-times a greater change and perturbation in some malignant diseases than we see happen to sound and healthy persons whom the casualties of Warr or other sudden Fate hath brought to an untimely end This only difference is assigned which yet when severely examined carries no great moment with it that when Nature or Art hath expelled the morbifick matter and restored the body to a healthfull vigour and the spirits depurated and rectified from their vitiosity become accommodate instruments for the operations of the Soul her vital union with matter continues which in Death say they is totally lost and dissolved and how the Soul unbared from all commerce with matter can be capable of acting seems utterly unintelligible Whether therefore the Soul does or does not act without the help of matter when her garments of mortality are laid aside is not my present purpose to discuss Only I shall cast in this by the way that no man can be demonstratively certain that the Soul cannot act without the assistance of matter but if he remind himself of that intimate dependance the Soul hath upon matter in this life even in her sublimest exercises for I omit here the power of moving the body which is likewise performed by the motion of matter directed according to the will and pleasure of the Soul as also her sympathy with the mutations and alterations of the Air whereby the mind becomes more elevate and serene or cloudy and dull and those infinite varieties likewise which a man may observe in his own temper and constitution not to instance in any other but those of an extraordinary joy and cheerfulness of spirit at sometimes and at others as great a pensiveness and melancholy of which a
A Private LETTER of Satisfaction to a FRIEND Concerning 1. The Sleep of the Soul 2. The State of the Soul after death till the Resurrection 3. The reason of the seldom appearing of Separate Spirits 4. Prayer for departed Souls whether lawful or no 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Origen Printed in the Year 1667. SIR I Received yours In which upon the sudden death and abruption of your dear Lady having wasted her silent hours in pensive sighs and moistned her funeral Cypresse with a shower of tears you have now converted the Griefs into Patience and a noble Charity and made your sorrows the Scene of Divine Speculations concerning the memory of your dead Saint And admitting her into your retired thoughts such as she desired to be that is amiable and pleasant Not to discompose the quiet serenity of your mind by any afflictive circumstance but to administer a lenitive to your sadness and elevate and advance your joyes To this end you have propounded these following Questions To which out of a due sense of gratitude and of that service and obedience I owe you I shall not detract to give you the best Solution I can 1. Whether the Soul when separated from this terrestrial body sleeps till the general Resurrection 2. Whether upon the quitting this body she be immediately carryed either to Heaven or Hell 3. Why Separate Souls do seldome appear 4. Whether it be not lawful to pray for our reparted Relatives or whether the duties and obligations of friendship are extinct by their death That there is in us a Principle of life and motion wholly independent upon matter and which by an intrinsick virtue actuates this stupid and heavy body we carry about us I think there are few so gross and sensual as to deny At least if there be any such I shall not now concern my selfe with them but take into consideration that odd Hypothesis which some have fallen upon who fancy the soul though distinct from the body to fall into such a profound sleep as never to be awakened but by that shril-sounding Trump which shall eccho through the arched roof of Heaven and rouz the dead from the silence of their dormitories to appear before the just tribunal of the Son of God Which if examined to the bottom will prove little less than a piece of Epicurism and a branch of new modell'd Atheism to exclude and banish all hopes of a future reward in those immortal regions of love and joy out of the minds and spirits of men It will be necessary as well for the promoting of righteousness and holiness as the discouraging vice and impiety to shew the lubricous and brittle foundation upon which this doctrine is built In order to which we may consider the Soul of man as a spiritual Essence capable of acting and subsisting if God so please after she is disengaged from this weight of dull mortality to which by a vital harmony and essential congruity she became at first united Which happy Crasis being worn out by the length of time or discomposed through the violence of a disease or some other disordered motions in the body that sweet Tye is presently dissolved and broken and the Soul freed from her terrestrial prison becomes a denizon of another world For what cords or springs can retard a spirit Or what walls can detain and imprison so subtil and penetrative a Being as the Soul of man For that the Soul at any time separates from the body is not from her own actual will but from the vitiated temperament of the body she is united with which by harsh and uneven motions becomes very unpleasant and disharmonious to her inward sense or plastick life so that being once loosened from the body she regains a vital energie or power far more vigorous than before and attains to a clearer perception of things than when cloystred within these walls of flesh No law of Fate or Immutability can stop her flight from the insensate Corps which is no longer in a capacity of entertaining it's departing Guest So then this sleep of the soul must be resolved into the cessation of her operations upon her disunion with the body For Death say they quite obliterates and wipes off all those various phantasms with which the mind was stored here below which being excited and stirred up in her by the presence of their several objects now that she is dispread and fallen back as it were into that universal Life can never re-enter her knowledg nor can she be conscious of ought but must lye thus senselesse for ever unless that benign Spirit which first brought her into Being awaken her from this mortal Sleep But he that shall consider those several powers and faculties the great Creator of the World who made all things well bestowed upon the Soul of man and how orderly in their due time and place they awaken into act will be forced to confess that Infinite Wisdome has so happily contrived it that she shall never want proportionate instruments of action whatsoever state the various revolutions of an unerring Providence shall place her in Those clear eyes of Heaven and divine Omniscience foreseeing all the possible fates of men beheld them not only as being inhabitants of this terrestrial World but as those that were not farr removed from the confines of eternity and capable of dwelling in that Kingdome of light and glory which no mortal eye can behold and live and to this end endued them with such powers as should make them happy both in the enjoyment of themselves and God in that condition of Being wherein they are While we are here in this Region of mutability we are in a state of banishment from our native home and the life of the body grown so powerful and vigorous that the gentle touches and soft vibrations of our more divine part are scarce perceptible within us Those fatal Inclinations which at first pent up our spirits which lay wide as the World embracing the Creation in an extensive love and sunk them down to a boundless indulgence and regard of sense and corporal pleasures are now most lively and active and the more near approaches we make to this muddy life the more gross and feculent are the apprehensions and Idea's of our minds The scorching flames of Envy and degenerate Malice dry up the gentle dews of heaven that enlarge and widen the soul with a divine fertility the vile and impure motions of Lust bemire the internal beauty of this Daughter of heaven and every caitive affection captivates her to a new invented pleasure and a further deflection from her Original and Primitive good This is the lowest degree of life that is seated in the Soul of man this is that pleasing Magick which bewitches and enchants the Mind with these poor and contemptible Goods Thus Adam lost his Paradise by listning to the charming voice of his new espoused Bride and thus we fell with him and became mancipated and
man can give no account or reason from any external cause but only from the purified and more subtle or fulsome and gross steams ascending into the brain and withall consider that the great Crown of our Faith and Patience the happiness and reward of glorified Spirits to purchase which for mankind the ever blessed Son of God left the sacred mansions of Heaven the bosome of blessedness and veiled his glory under the clouds of flesh and blood shall be an ethereall and heavenly body which Plato calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a resplendent vehicle and St. Paul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a spiritual body he I say that attentively perpends this that the instruments of the Souls operations both in this life and the next are corporeal will likewise think it probable that she is not wholly denudated of Matter in the intermediate space between death and the resurrection at what time she shall be possessed of her long expected joy and her vile body shall be transformed into the similitude of the glorious body of the Son of God Supposing then the Soul vitally united with matter after death she will both act and also be capable of pleasure or pain which are the unavoidable concomitants of her transactions in this life For can we imagine that God will put a stop to the course of Nature and alter that order and constitution of things which bears upon it the signature and Image of his eternal Wisdome Surely it cannot be that he should frustrate the hopes and expectations of men when all things so favourably conspire to give them an energetical and vital reception into the other World And if God do not drench the Souls of men in this lake of oblivion and soporiferousness which we have all the reason in the world to believe and ought to be confident that he will not they will infallibly be instated upon their dereliction of their earthly bodies into a condition of happiness or misery which will altogether take away that fanciful dream of their sleep till the great day of judgment For although here the voice of Conscience may be drowned by the clamours of Sense and those many Diversions arising from the present state of affairs in this life yet when death shall draw aside the curtain of mortality and those various objects which so often presented themselves to our view pass away like a shadow leaving nothing to the Soul but the vast prospect of an eternal Tragedy the conscience will then awake and pierce her with an extraordinary resentment and vexation For besides that the Soul shall see all her wicked attempts and designs blasted upon Earth the memory of her name cursed and detested and become throughly apprehensive of the miscarriage and iniquity of her past life and have a full and clear sight of all her impious actions stript of their painted gloss and varnish in their proper colours and genuine circumstances besides this I say the Fame of her unrighteous demeanour will go before her into the other World and quickly be dispread over the secret regions and receptacles of Spirits by those vigilant spectators who take cognizance and give intelligence of humane affairs which cannot but afflict her even unto death to see her self abandon'd both of good Angels and the spirits of just and holy men and confined to the society of degenerate Fiends and Daemons reserved to the judgâ—ment of the great Day And these fiery stings and gripeings of conscience shall rage perpetually and if we can imagine any intermission it will be but like the sleeps of the wind in a storm or the broken sighs of a tempest to recover its exhausted spirits and return with a greater impetuousness and fury But to take a view of those good and holy persons whom the Father of spirits has called out of this present life who yet are in as small a probability of being overtaken by this long night as the other there wants not sufficient employment to keep them vigilant and active For whether it be that they delight in converse and society they will find those immense tracts of space not empty desarts and wildernesses but replenished with diverse sorts of Beings some equal to others more noble than themselves who all studiously endeavour to promote and carry on that great and general design of the diffusion of the Life and Nature of God over the whole Creation they may there likewise meet with many of their departed Friends and Relatives with whom they may again renew their antient leagues of friendship and entertain an amicable correspondence and familiarity or whether they be contemplative and affect a solitary retiredness and recess from the rest of the World they may there call to mind their almost obliterate Speculations and please themselves in the exertions of the innate Idea's and notions of their minds and raise within them a high sense of joy and delectation in finding out many choise Theorems of Nature and Providence besides many other advantages which are not allowed or permitted to this state So that there is no fear the Soul should sleep or cease from acting when loosened from this earthly body The resurrection of the Sonne of God from the dead is so palpable a pledge of the Soul 's living and acting after death that he must commit a rape upon his faculties and do violence to all his intellectual powers who will not be convinced by it For that he should by wicked hands be bereaved of his innocent life and so throughly slain that his malitious enemies the Jews never question his death and which further confirms the truth of it lye three dayes buried in the grave and afterward rise again and exercise the proper functions of a living man and that not for some small and inconsiderable time but conversing forty dayes with his Disciples upon Earth to take away all cause and suspicion of delusion and then ascend in the sight and presence of his Disciples and Friends to the comprehensions of that Glory which not long before his death he prayed to his Father to glorify him withall this I say is a full and convictive Demonstration even to outward sense that that dull and lethargick stupour shall never take away sense and action from our Souls when they depart from their living graves and monuments of flesh and blood And as it was with him so shall it be with us in our order measure and proportion Christ our head lives and is seated at the right hand of God in the highest glory and felicity for he there makes intercession for his Church and because he lives we his members shall live also He is a living Vine and all the members of his mystical body are living branches not only in a moral but natural and physical sense For God is not the God of the dead but of the living 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for all live unto him Now if the Souls of men fall into so permanent a sleep they are
gust of the Bodily Life the suggestions of the Intellectual Nature will be like the sudden immission of light upon sore eyes burdensome and offensive and the man is no more capable of the force and power of such argumentations than a Swine of Morality or the savage Tygers of Ingenuity and Goodness I come now to your second Question which is Whether upon the quitting this Body the Soul be immediately carried either to Heaven or Hell The Holy Scriptures which give us all imaginable certainty of a blessed reward of our Faith and Patience at the Great Day of Recompences when God shall have put all his enemies under his feet are very silent in delineating and depainting out to us the state and condition of the Soul between Death and the Resurrection Yet this we are assured of in general That the Souls of Good and Holy Men are alwaies under the careful eye of Heaven and live in joy and felicity farr above the troubles and discontents that attend this obscure and evanid life they lead on Earth and on the contrary That shame and misery await the refractory and irreclaimable spirits of Impious persons upon their separation from their terrestrial bodies But whether the one be in Heaven properly so called and partake of those great diffusions of Glory which shall be conferred on the children of the Resurrection and the other in Hell that is in that place of torment prepared for the Devil and his Angels or into which Death and the Grave shall be cast when time shall be no more immediately upon their disunion from their Bodies the Sacred Writ hath no-where determined He therefore who will seek further may indeed light upon some probable Conjectures which may bear the visage and phisnomy of truth but can never positively assert them as convictive and indubitable The only remain in Speculations of this Nature is To decide them by free and unprejudiced Reason and Philosophy and if by that light and conduct the mind of man fall upon any conclusion consentient with the Attributes of God or those eternal and immutable laws implanted and wrought in the essential frame of the Creation though I do not say it is impossible for him then to erre yet his miscarriage will be exceeding pardonable pleasant and ingenuous I confess the world hath been long contented to live in an easie and affected ignorance and men either out of a deplorable proclivity to vice and impiety or from a stupid and blockish zeal to Religion willingly profess that all things are uncertain and sit down in this that we can know nothing as if the wise and benign Author of our Beings had made the very essential principles of our Natures fallacious and that we should then be most of all deceived when we think we have the clearest apprehensions and most distinct Idea's of the things we converse about Reason is the Image of God in the Soul of Man and when assisted by the Divine Wisdome is the only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to discriminate between truth and falshood And though it be true that an honest and sincere heart be dear and precious in the eyes of God and sufficient to instate a man in that happiness which attends the faithful adherents of the Kingdome of Light yet he that employes his faculties in searching out such considerable truths in Nature and Providence as may benefit the world and do good to the generations of men ennobles his Soul and widens it for the reception of some greater good and influence from that inexhaustible Fountain which gave life and being to the whole frame of Nature But I fear my Pen has been too luxuriant in pleading for the free use of Natural Reason and I have need of your pardon and shall make amends by falling immediately upon the Question in hand I say therefore So far as the Light of Nature is able to judg the Soul doth not immediately go to Heaven or Hell in their strict significations upon it's separation from the body but that there is some middle State of Being between Death and the Resurrection And that you may not think I take in the ashes of the Church of Rome and seek to revive and blow up that ridiculous Doctrine of Purgatory I shall crave leave to tell you that by this middle State I mean no such condition of Being as that wherein a man from his impious transactions in this life shall undergo very sharp and acute torments the protraction or abbreviation of which yet depend upon the will and pleasure of his Holiness and mercenary Priests and after such a time of penance and purgation be delivered and translated into Heaven but such a state wherein by a due purification of their minds and subjugation of those stubborn lusts and desires which exalt themselves against the life of God and which were not throughly tamed in this life the Soul of man becomes wholly dead to every inordinate affection and daily kindles that fire of Divine Love till at last it arise to a perfect flame and triumphantly carry up the duly prepared soul like Elijah in his fiery chariot to the beatifical vision and enjoyment of God And this is no more than what Reason it self assures us of For he that shall consider that the operations of the Spirit of God upon mens hearts and their progress in Holiness and Virtue are wrought successively by parts and distant proportions and that a man is not a Saint in an instant or by the Piety and Religion of a day but attains and reaches to that glorious Crown by patient continuance in well doing and that by sharp and unwearied conflicts with Lust and Sin by habitual and persevering acts of Virtue and an undaunted Resolution he must demonstrate himself a true and faithful disciple and souldier of the Son of God must necessarily conclude either that the infinitely far greater part of men are damned yea those who have had very small and few opportunities of doing good to themselves or others in this life or else that there is a time and place of bettering themselves and where that benign Spirit who expressed his dear compassion in hovering over the new born world will be as ready to help forward the tender inchoations of the life of God and perpetually raise and lift up those fettered souls into the true liberty of the sons of Heaven and Immortality As the efformations of the spirit of Nature out of fitly-prepared Matter are not instantaneous but gradually arrive to their perfection and maturity So are the operations of that Universal Spirit of Love and Goodness upon the hearts of men where-ever he meets with fit and kindly dispositions and capacities And surely no man can without blasphemy think that God ever was or will at any time or place be wanting to the faithful endeavours and attempts of sincere persons after the participation of his own Image and the renovation of their minds and spirits into that divine frame
evil Genii we may proportionably guess at the state of those better Souls who have nothing more to do upon the Earth when they are once departed from it or if they appear again it is upon a great necessity and for a weighty occasion and then they scorn and abhorr those ignoble wayes of making themselves objects of our Senses and having effected their design they are no more heard of but rest in peace and quietness chiefly aiming at the loosening and freeing themselves from their commerce with the impurer parts of matter For as the other do delight in incrassating so these are continually intent upon attenuating their Vehicles and awakening to life their aethereal congruity which having attained they become invisible to the Aereal Inhabitants And as when we traverse the hills and suck in the purer gusts of air we are more vivid and cheerful and 't is an affliction to stay in a thicker and unwholsome Region so these purer Spirits having free access to the tops of mountains and more serene Quarters of heaven find themselves sensibly pained when they descend into these lower tracts and coagulate their looser bodies into a visible consistency To give some further light to the Physical consideration of this Argument in reference to the Apparitions both of Good and Bad Spirits it may be it will require almost as deep a degree of Fancy to constipate their aery Bodies to visibility as it doth to attain to that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or separation and disjunction of the Soul from this terrestrial Body without Death and then it is no wonder if so few appear to us For though the matter of their Vehicles may be very pliable and easily formed into any shape yet the efformation of it into this or the other particular 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 depends not so much upon the will or arbitrarious power as upon a very strong imagination impressed upon and reaching the plastick Faculty and it seems to be no more in their power to condense their Bodies into visibility than it is in ours to rarifie our Blood into Steam and vapour Their bodies therefore naturally falling into humane shape and retaining the characteristical personality they bare in this world if at any time they constrain them to represent another effigies or contract and constipate the laxe and diffuse particles of their vehicles so as to become sensible to us it cannot be counted a spontaneous action that is effected by an arbitrary power but depends upon the strength of Imagination which although it act more quick and perceptibly upon their tenuious bodies yet all effects are not equally produced by the same degree of Fancy or Imagination Thus the signature or impression of a Cherry upon the Foetus in the womb is more easily produced than the transformation of all it's members into those of a Cat or Dog And as it is storied of Cardan that by use and custome he had so altered his body that he could when he pleased fall into a perfect 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so I deny not but some separate spirits may by practice and the aid of the Spirit of Nature which may not improbably be thought assistant at such Feats as these without any great pain or trouble become visible Having given you this brief account of the Question I shall digress a little if I may call it so to another Speculation not unlike the former and that is Why Good Angels and pure and defecate Souls whose exalted State makes them no less lovers of Men than when their radiant Goodness was clothed with Humanity and dwelt among them should nevertheless hide it by their short and seldome Converse with the World The great Cause of it therefore seems to lye in the general wickedness and impurity of mens lives insomuch that wickedness has delug'd the World and Impiety and Vice like a mighty torrent swept away the ruinous and broken remains of Virtue and defaced the air and features of the Divine Image so that Holiness looks like a strange and unknown thing as if it were as much forsaken of God as despised of men For surely did a real Spirit of truth and righteousness prevail in the hearts of mankind and were they inoffensive and harmless as the Sons of God and virtue laying aside all Envy Pride and Self-interest and expelling the principles of the impious Nature and becoming in all things conformable to the mind and temper of the Holy Jesus there would be no such strangeness between Heaven and Earth but the communications of the Divine and Terrestrial Nature would be more frequent and the Holy Angels and the departed Souls of Just Men would descend upon Earth and visit the World and Men would be made one Polity with them and to Dye would be no more than to walk out of a close Prison into the free and unbounded Air. For what else can there be that should impede or put a stop to such happy entertainments since their pretensions and designs on both parts are the same that is the carrying on the Divine Life in triumph to its utmost completion and perfection and the utter eversion of the Kingdome of Sin and Darkness The Angels though much more noble than we yet are no narrow and self-contracted Beings sporting themselves in the circles of their own glory in an utter oblivion or abhorrence of the poor and calamitous condition of the Inhabitants of the Earth but full of love and benignity remembring them as those who were once invested with the same happiness themselves now enjoy and therefore are careful Observators of them and Promoters of their felicity Nor can we imagine that Death can alienate the affections of pious and holy men departed this life from their fellow mortals or make them less compassionate and studious of their good and welfare but rather increase and fann their Love into Flames and gentle Ardors and having more knowledge and a greater resentment of their wants and necessities become not uninteressed Spectators but earnest Abettors of their innocent and faithful attempts in recovering their ancient glory 'T is to be hoped therefore that the time will come before the periods of this World are run out and unravell'd that the Divine Life shall have a general conquest over the hearts and minds of men and a Spirit of Love and Righteousness overspread the face of the Earth and men shall be fully assured and convinced even to outward sense of the immortality of their Souls and the joyes of a future life by the frequent entercourse and converse of holy and benign Spirits with them in these regions of the Earth To resume and conclude my former argument That the apparitions of separate Souls are rare and infrequent proceeds from the causes above recited but that there have been some in all ages serves to carry on that great design of Providence in assuring men of the future subsistence of their Souls and confronting that dull and sottish spirit of Atheism