but are governed and directed by the will of the living agent.

Hence our organs of sense, and our limbs are merely instruments, which the living agents, ourselves, make use of, to perceive and move with. And hence we may have no other kind of relation to them, than to any foreign instrument of perception and motion, as a microscope, or a staff,-(we speak here of kind, and not of degree of relationship):-and therefore there is no probability that the alienation or dissolution of these instruments, is the destruction of the perceiving and moving agent.

Since, then, the dissolution of matter, in which living agents are most nearly interested, is not their own dissolution; and the destruction of the organs of perception and motion with which they are furnished, is not their own destruction;-there is no ground to think that the dissolution of any other matter, or the destruction of any other organs, will be the dissolution or destruction of the living agents, from the like kind of relation. And we have no reason to think we stand in any other kind of relation to any thing which we find dissolved by death.

III. Neither is there any ground to think that the dissolution of this body, will be the destruction of our present powers of reflection, or even of their suspension ; because our powers of reason, memory, and affection,

do not depend upon our body, as our perception by organs of sense does.

Our present existence may be divided into two states. When our senses are affected, or appetites gratified, we exist in a state of sensation; when none of our senses are affected, or appetites gratified, and yet we perceive, and reason, and act, we exist in a state of reflection. External organs are necessary, to convey ideas to the reflecting powers, (as carriages and scaffolding are necessary in architecture); but when ideas are conveyed, we can reflect intensely, and enjoy pleasure or feel pain from thus reflecting, without any assistance from the senses, or from the body that will be dissolved by death.

Again, there are mortal diseases which do not at all affect our intellectual powers; in some, even the moment before death, persons appear in the highest vigour of life: they have apprehension, memory, reason, &c. all entire. Now how is it probable that a progressive disease, when arrived to such a degree as is mortal, will destroy the powers, which were neither impaired, nor even affected by it, during its whole progress up to that degree? And if death, by diseases of this kind, is not the destruction of our reflecting powers, it is not probable that death, by any other means, is.

Moreover, since there appears so little connection

between our bodily powers of sensation, and present powers of reflection; since these latter may be exercised without any assistance from our body, and that often in a lively manner to the last; there seems no probability that death, (which destroys the body) will even so much as discontinue or suspend the powers of reflection: so that our posthumous life may be only a continuance of our present one, with certain additions; and thus death may correspond to our birth, which does not suspend or totally change the life we had in the womb, but continues it with certain alterations and additions: hence death may introduce us into a more enlarged state of life, and into new scenes, with greater capacities and a more extensive sphere of action.

But even should death suspend all our powers, the experience of a sleep or a swoon shows, that suspension is not destruction.

Hence, leaving speculations, and arguing from experience; as there appears no probability, from the reason of the thing, that living agents will ever cease

1 The destruction of vegetables affords no argument from analogy against this supposition, because they possess not what human beings do, viz. perception and action. Neither, again, with respect to brutes, does it seem in the least probable that they are endued with any latent capacities of a rational and moral nature: the economy of the universe might require such creatures, and all objections may be at once answered by adverting to our own ignorance, and utter incompetency to understand the whole subject.

to be such, so there is none from the analogy of

nature.

As religion implies a future state, any presumption against that state, is a presumption against religion. And the foregoing observations remove not only all presumptions of that sort, but also prove, to a very considerable degree of probability, one fundamental doctrine of our religion, viz., the probability of a future state, which if seriously believed, would dispose the mind to attend to the general evidence of the whole.

ARGUMENT. The probability of a Future Life being established, there are strong arguments from analogy, to prove that it will be one either of happiness or misery, dependent on our actions here. Daily experience shows that God exercises a sort of government over mankind in this world, by His having attached certain painful or pleasurable results to certain modes of conduct. He gives us a capacity of foreseeing, in many cases, the consequences of our actions, and thus makes our happiness or misery here dependent upon our own choice.

Hence, the doctrine of rewards and punishments in a future world, is only analogous to what we already experience in this; and there is, therefore, clearly