137 



can endue matter with a faculty of thinking : ?> 

 we answer, no otherwise than he can endue a spirit 

 with solidity and extension ; that is, lie can change 

 spirit into matter : and he can change matter into 

 spirit. But even the Almighty cannot make it think 

 while it remains matter ; because this implies a con- 

 tradiction. 



12. The union of the soul and body is another of 

 those things which human understanding cannot ap- 

 prehend* That body and spirit cannot, be implicated 

 or twisted together like two bodily substances, we 

 know. But how two substances of so widely dif- 

 ferent natures, can be joined at all, we know 

 not. All we can tell is this ; God has ordered 

 that certain perceptions in the soul, should constant^ 

 ly follow certain motions of the body, and certain 

 motions of the body, such perceptions in the soul. 



13. How mankind began, is another point, which 

 is too hard for our reason to determine. That men 

 always existed, is no way probable, were it only on 

 this account, the late invention of arts. For since it 

 appears, at what time the most necessary arts were 

 invented, we cannot reasonably suppose, that men, 

 began to exist long before that period : seeing, if they 

 had always existed no reason can be given, why 

 these aud many more arts, were not invented long 

 before. And yet the accounts given of the origin of 

 mankind, by the wisest of the heathen philosophers, 

 are so above measure ridiculous, that they serve as a 

 melancholy proof of the weakness of barely natural 

 reason. 



14. The scriptural account is this : God made the 

 body of man out of the earth, and breathed into him 

 the breath of life : not only an animal life, but a spi- 

 ritual principle, created to live for ever. Even his 

 *body was then perfect in its kind ; neither liable to 

 death nor pain. But what the difference was, be- 



