this, if there be a sense in which it can be applied to either. Now, if a living soul means any thing that has life, or in other words, the spirit of God united to corporeal organs, (aud that being the only principle common to all to whom it is applied, seems to be the only defensible sense of it ;) then it will be seen to be an error, to confine it to mean an immortal part of man, and thence to infer that man is immortal, because he is said in scripture to possess a soul. Two remarkable instances in which "living soul" is applied to man, confirm this view of the subject; in Genesis it is said "And God formed man of the dust of the earth; and breathed into him the breath of life, and man became a living soul." Now, St. Paul says "The first Adam was a living soul; the second Adam a quickening spirit ;" and if both are equally inmortal, so far from there being an opposition between them, as is plainly the intention of the apostle, they are identically the same thing, for neither contains any allusion to good or evil. The apostle had previously said that which is sown a natural body, is raised a spiritual body; that it was sown in corruption, in dishonour, in weakness; raised in incorruption, in glory, in power: that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, yet the first man was a living soul: he was of the earth, earthy; and as is the earthy, such are they also as are earthy. Then in both these instances the word soul is used as describing the spirit of God, united to the organs God formed of the dust of the earth, and so far from implying immortality, excludes it by including man in the same genus with brutes, who confessedly have not immortality.

I will quote a few instances of the application of

this word to animal life only, and refer the reader to an appendix to Bishop Law's Theory of Religion, where he will find, perhaps, every instance of its use in scripture, and no one that is incapable of being included in this general meaning, the Spirit of God united to corporeal organs.

Genesis, c. i. v. 20. "The moving creature that hath life." (Hebrew-soul.)

Job, c. xii. v. 10. "In whose hand is the soul (Hebrew-life) of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind." (Hebrew-all flesh of man.)

Leviticus, c. xxii. "If the priest buy any soul with his money, he shall eat of it."

God, who does nothing in vain, has declared by His holy apostle, that all men shall rise again with their bodies, to give account of their own works. Need we any plainer testimony that a body, either earthy, or spiritual, is an essential part of the man? Now, if the blessed only are to have spiritual bodies, what follows from the immortality of the spirit? The scripture tells us the "the spirit returns to God who gave it," freed from the pollution of the flesh by separation from it, but without personality, without individuality, without that which constituted it man. For a body being necessary to suppose the wicked to be immortal, involves one of these absurdities, viz. either that their present mortal perishing bodies are eternal, or that a spiritual body is given to them, contrary to the spirit and meaning of St. Paul's words, to be miserable in. Now those who,

* Paley argues, in a sermon on the separate state, that a body is necessary for the blessed, from 1st Corinthians, c. 15. and by that authority limited to them alone. Who shall provide the wicked bodies to be eternally miserable in?

in our Saviour's words, are accounted worthy to attain the resurrection, being the children of God, though sown in corruption, are raised in incorruption; sown in dishonour, they are raised in glory; sown in weakness, yet raised in power; sown a natural body, but raised a spiritual body. This marked change being confined to the children of God, how shall the natural man, tied and bound with the chain of his sins, put forth his hand and take and eat of the tree of life, and live for ever? He surely, no less than the righteous, was sown in corruption, in dishonour, in weakness, a bare natural body; and he is as surely excluded from immortality, as from honour, from power, from spirituality, and glory. And those who shall have tasted how gracious God is, and know that there is no life but in Him, will feel that that must be withdrawn, when Omnipotence shall say, "depart from me ye cursed;"

* Extract from a Sermon by the Rev. W. Jones of Nayland. Page 126.

"What did man gain by eating the forbidden fruit?-Mortality. What then did he lose?--Immortality. Therefore it is the doctrine of Moses that man was intended for immortality; and that his mortality was an accident occasioned by the entrance of sin.

"The word life, in many places of the law, can mean nothing but eternal life. What else can it signify, when it is applied to God?" as I live saith the Lord."

"And when it is told the people by Moses that God is their life and the length of their days, (Deutoronomy, c. xxx. v. 20.) nothing can be understood but a divine life; no days but the days of eternity as when it is said Christ is our life, (in the other Testament) it means according to his own sense, "I am the resurrection and the life;" and again, "because I live, ye shall live also." The reason of the thing is the same in both Testaments, for the life of God must be eternal; and there is to mortal man, whose life here is a shadow, no length of days but by the resurrection from the dead."

whilst those that attain to resurrection, as including immortality, those raised in glory shall have spiritual bodies provided for them, and their mortal having then, and not till then, put on immortality, all the rest of mankind are left in their natural mortality; ← dust they are, and to dust they shall return." And who shall mock at God's precaution, who removed them from the tree of life, lest they should eat and live for ever? or put by the flaming sword that turneth every way? Shall man, whose breath is in his nostrils? shall the son of man, who fadeth like a flower of the field?

The sentence pronounced upon Adam, must be that which attaches to those, who inheriting his nature, sin after the similitude of his transgression, and undeniably that was death, and not Eternal Torments. If the latter is the effect of Christ's coining on earth, then, according to His declaration; that "broad is the way, and wide the gate that leadeth unto destruction, and many there be that go in thereat; whilst narrow is the way, and straight the gate that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it ;" His coming has been productive of more misery than

* Galatians, c. iii. v. 10. "For as many as are of the works of the law, are under the curse; for it is written, cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law, to do them."

13th. "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us; for it is written, cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree."

19th. "Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made."

22d. "For the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe."

happiness, beyond comparison. But our Saviour has guarded against this suspicion, by declaring that the world was condemned already, and that He came to save, not to condemn. If then Christ's words and works are any thing to us, I know of no authority in heaven or earth which can make us receive this doctrine, whilst the words on which it is founded can possibly be true in any other sense.

Whilst we ascribe this doctrine to God, we dare not imitate it by acting in the same spirit, although, our noblest rule is to aim at His perfection. We hereby make God the author of evil, by His doing ill that good may come of it; or subject to some controul that limits His omnipotence, and arrests that progress to destruction and dissolution, which it has here been attempted to prove, both experience and revelation shew to be the consequence of disobedience to His laws. Although in Him alone we live, and move, and have our being, yet on this system, apart from Him, in the night, when no man can work, when no good to man, no glory to God can arise, we still shall live, and move, and retain our being; notwithstanding "the wages of sin is death," and we shall "of the flesh reap coruption." Although our capacity for immortality arises from the spirit of God dwelling in us, yet, like the fabled giant of old, we are to be ever renovated, by being cast to our parent earth. God has said, "dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return;" but this doctrine says, spirit thou art, and spirit thou shalt continue, even when that spirit shall have returned to God who gave it, and He shall have pronounced "depart from me ye cursed." Thus we seize an immortality for sinners to be miserable in, although God said, let us remove Adam (and in him