S22 Biographical Memoir o/'Dr Priestley/. 



tianity, personified the Word, which, according to the idea of 

 Plato, and the first Christian platonists, was but an abstract 

 quahty, an attribute, an act of divinity ; that the desire of ho- 

 nouring more highly the legislator of the Christians, without too 

 much altering the fundamental doctrine of the unity of God, 

 made the person of Jesus be identified with these creatures of 

 the imagination; that, from the intermediate agent of the Gnos- 

 tics, Arianism is more particularly derived, while from the per- 

 sonification of the Word results the consubstantiation of Atha- 

 nasius and the Nicene Fathers, and consequently the doctrine 

 of the Trinity. 



Priestley differed no less from the common opinions in the 

 metaphysical part of his creed. True metaphysics has demon- 

 strated in these latter times that it is impossible for the think- 

 ing substance to know by itself its own nature, just as it is im- 

 possible for the eye to see itself, because it would be necessary 

 for it to issue out of itself, to contemplate itself and compare it- 

 self with other objects ; while, on the contrary, it is only in 

 itself, and its proper modifications, that it sees them, or thinks it 

 sees them. 



Priestley was either ignorant of these results, or was not re- 

 strained by them. Scripture and experience agree, in his opinion, 

 in making the mind material. The fibres of the brain are the 

 depositaries of the images produced by the senses : the power 

 which these fibres have of mutually exciting their vibrations, is 

 the source of the association of ideas. Feeling perishes with 

 the body ; but it revives with it at the resurrection, in virtue 

 of the will and power of God. Until that period we shall sleep 

 in total insensibility ; the distribution of rewards and punish- 

 ments awaits us only then. 



A material mind is subjected to the necessary empire of ex- 

 ternal agents : there is no free will ; absolute necessity regu- 

 lates all our determinations. Why, then, rewards and punish- 

 ments ? Precisely that we may have this additional determi- 

 nating cause in favour of virtue. Thus, it will easily be seen 

 that he did not believe in the eternity of punishments *. It is 



* His principal metaphysical works are : 



Hartley's Theory of the tluman Mind. 1775, 8 vo, 



Researches regarding Matter and Mind, with a history of the philosophi- 



