IMMORTALITY of the SOUL. 143 
as ingenuous as serious. Generous minds are always inge- 
nuous with others, fhall they not be To to themfelves ? And if 
they are fo in the lefler affairs of life, fhall they not be the fame 
in the momentous concerns of eternity ! We cease to be Chri- 
stians, when we cease to believe the immortality of the foul. 
Indeed we cannot adopt the tenets of jews, or mahomme- 
dans, nor of fome pagans, without believing it. 
However the mind might labor under the ignorance in which 
it was once involved, the common dictates of reason, if we 
could feparate them from the religion we profefs, now feem to 
plead irrefiftibly in behalf of this great truth. 
u Its the divinity that dwells within us , 
“ 1 *is heaven itfelf that points out an hereafter y 
“ And intbnates eternity to man 1 ” 
God ! man’s freedom of adling ! virtue ! vice ! immortality ! 
eternity ! the diftindt ideas of thefe, enforce the belief of each 
other. Adieu. I am yours, &c. 
LETTER XLVIII. 
To the fame . 
Madam, 
T O form an adequate notion of religion, we mult confider 
that the great objedt of the foul, is the god from whom 
it is derived, who made us and the world ; who made all that 
is made. Hence we may conclude, how unworthy it is of the 
excellency of our nature, “that the children of this world 
u fhould be wiser, in their generation, than the children of 
4 light 
