an infinite multitude of objects, especially when the soul shall have passed through the space of many millions of years, and shall reflect with pleasure on the days of eternity. Every other faculty may be considered in the same extent.

We cannot question but that the happiness of a soul will be adequate to its nature, and that it is not endued with any faculties which are to lie useless and unemployed. The happiness is to be the happiness of the whole man; and we may easily conceive to ourselves the happiness of the soul, while any one of its faculties is in the fruition of its chief good. The happiness may be of a more exalted nature, in proportion as the faculty employed is so; but as the whole soul acts in the exertion of any of its particular powers, the whole soul is happy in the pleasure which arises from any. of its particular acts. For notwithstanding, as has been before hinted, and as it has been taken notice of by one of the greatest modern philosophers, we divide the soul into several powers and faculties, there is no such division in the soul itself, since it is the whole soul that remembers, understands, wills, or imagines.

Our manner of considering the memory, understanding, will, imagination, and the like faculties, is for the better enabling us to express ourselves in such abstracted subjects of speculation, not that there is any such division in the soul itself.

Seeing, then, that the soul has many different faculties, or, in other words, many different ways of acting; that it can be intensely pleased or made happy by all these different faculties, or ways of acting; that it may be endued with several latent faculties, which it is not at present in a condition to exert: that we cannot believe the soul is endued with any faculty which is of no use to it; that whenever any one of these faculties is transcendently pleased, the soul is in a state of happiness; and, in

the last place, considering that the happiness of another world is to be the happiness of the whole man, who can question but that there is an infinite variety in those pleasures we are speaking of, and that this fulness of joy will be made up of all those pleasures which the nature of the soul is capable of. receiving?

We shall be the more confirmed in this doctrine, if we observe the nature of variety with regard to the mind of man. The soul does not care to be always in the same bent; the faculties relieve one another by turns, and receive an additional pleasure from the novelty of those objects about which they are conversant.

Revelation, likewise, very much confirms this notion, under the different views which it gives us of our future happiness. In the description of the throne of God, it represents to us all those objects which are able to gratify the senses and imagina tion. In very many places it intimates to us all the happiness which the understanding can possibly receive in that state where all things shall be revealed to us, and we shall know even as we are known. The raptures of devotion, of Divine love, the pleasure of conversing with our Blessed Saviour, with an innumerable host of angels, and with the spirits of just men made perfect, are likewise revealed to us in several parts of the Holy Writ ings. There are also mentioned those hierarchies of governments, in which the blessed shall be ranged one above another, and in which we may be sure a great part of our happiness will likewise consist for it will not be there as in this world, where every one is aiming at power and superiority; but, on the contrary, every one will find that station the most proper for him in which he is placed, and will probably think that he could not have been so happy in any other station. These, and many other particulars, are marked in

Divine Revelation, as the several ingredients of our happiness in heaven, which all imply such a variety of joys, and such a gratification of the soul in all its different faculties, as I have been here mentioning.

Some of the Rabbins tell us, that the cherubims are a set of angels who know most, and the seraphims a set of angels who love most. Whether this distinction be not altogether imaginary I shall not here examine; but it is highly probable, that among the spirits of good men there may be some who will be more pleased with the employment of one faculty than of another, and this perhaps according to those innocent and virtuous habits or inclinations which have here taken the deepest root.

I might here apply this consideration to the spirits of wicked men, with relation to the pain which they shall suffer in every one of their faculties, and the respective miseries which shall be appropriated to each faculty in particular. But leaving this to the reflection of my readers, I shall conclude with observing how we ought to be thankful to our great Creator, and rejoice in the being which he has bestowed upon us, for having made the soul susceptible of pleasure by so many different ways. We see by what a variety of passages joy and gladness may enter into the thoughts of man; how wonderfully a human spirit is framed to imbibe its proper satisfactions, and taste the goodness of its Creator. We may, therefore, look into ourselves with rapture and amazement, and cannot sufficiently express our gratitude to Him, who has encompassed us with such a profusion of blessings, and opened in us so many capacities of enjoying them.

There cannot be a stronger argument that God has designed us for a state of future happiness, and for that heaven which he has revealed to us,

than that he has thus naturally qualified the soul for it, and made it a being capable of receiving so much bliss. He would never have made such faculties in vain, and have endued us with powers that were not to be exerted on such objects as are suited to them. It is very manifest, by the inward frame and constitution of our minds, that he has adapted them to an infinite variety of pleasures and gratifications which are not to be met with in this life. We should, therefore, at all times take care that we do not disappoint this his gracious purpose and intention towards us, and make those faculties which he formed as so many qualifications for happiness and rewards, to be the instruments of pain and punishment.

SECTION XI.

Death and Judgment.

TO THE AUTHOR OF THE GUARDIAN.

SIR,

THE inclosed is a faithful translation from an old author, which, if it deserves your notice, let the reader guess whether he was a Heathen or a Christian.

I am,

Your most humble Servant.

I CANNOT, my friends, forbear letting you know what I think of death; for, methinks, I view and understand it much better, the nearer I approach to it. I am convinced that your fathers, those illustrious persons whom I so much loved and honoured, do not cease to live, though they have passed through what we call death; they are undoubtedly still living, but it is that sort of life which alone deserves truly to be called life. In

effect, while we are confined to bodies, we ought to esteem ourselves no other than a sort of galleyslaves at the chain, since the soul, which is some. what Divine, and descends from heaven as the place of its original, seems debased and dishonoured by this mixture of flesh and blood, and to be in a state of banishment from its celestial country. I cannot help thinking too, that one main reason of uniting souls to bodies was, that the great work of the universe might have spectators to admire the beautiful order of nature, the regular motion of heavenly bodies, who should strive to express that regularity in the uniformity of their lives. When I consider the boundless activity of our minds, the remembrance we have of things past, our foresight of what is to come; when I reflect on the noble discoveries and vast improvements, by which these minds have advanced arts and sciences, I am entirely persuaded, and out of all doubt, that a nature which has in itself a fund of so many excellent things cannot possibly be mortal. I observe farther, that my mind is altogether simple, without the mixture of any substance of nature different from its own; I conclude from thence that it is indivisible, and consequently cannot perish.

By no means think, therefore, my dear friends, when I shall have quitted you, that I cease to be, or shall subsist no where. Remember that while we live together you do not see my mind, and yet are sure that I have one actuating and moving my body: doubt not, then, but that this same mind will have a being when it is separated, though you cannot then perceive its actions. What nonsense would it be to pay those honours to great men after their deaths, which we constantly do, if their souls did not then subsist! For my own part, I could never imagine that our minds live only when united to our bodies, and die when they leave