ing how this can be, when men do die, to all appearance, at the close of their life in the world, he assures them, that at the last day of this life they shall be transplanted into life eternal:-" Every one that seeth the son and believeth on him shall have everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the last day." That would be a strange sort of everlasting life, which was to be interrupted by an interval of no one knows how many thousands of years. Even supposing that the body were to live again, it is quite evident that it is not the life of the body of which the Lord is speaking, when he speaks of everlasting life, since the life of the body, is not, upon any hypothesis an everlasting life: consequently, it is not the body of which he speaks when he says, "I will raise him up at the last day." The whole declaration is only applicable to the spirit, which is the man himself, to which the body is only an instrument of service while he remains in a world and state where its services are required: "The flesh," as the Lord says in the same discourse, "profiteth nothing."* The spirit only is the real man: it is of the spirit only that life everlasting can be predicated: it is this only that can be raised to the eternal world: and this resurrection, the Lord assures us, the spirit shall experience, not after a sleep of ages, or at best a state for ages of half conscious existence, but, in all the vigor of true life, as soon as it is emancipated from the shell of clay.

Our accuser, however, applying to the flesh all that is said in the Scriptures of the truc resurrection, hesitates not to add reviling to his anathemas against those who can find in the Scriptures no such sentiment. "A doctrine," he says, "so glorious-so awfully sublime-so clearly taught in the sacred records [where it is not once mentioned so universally believed from the beginning of the Christian era [he might have said,-before the beginning of the Christian era, for it is a purely Jewish doctrine, and from the Jews those Christians who did believe it received it]-so commonly believed by all sects and denominations of Christians even in our day, with the exception of Swedenborgians, who, as many will think, deserve not the name of Christians; this blessed doctrine I say, is not to be given up at the ipse

* John vi. 63.

dixit of a madman," &c.* I make no remark upon the liberality and Christian candor of this sentence, but appeal to you, my reflecting readers, to judge of it as it may deserve. But why is it that most Christians at this day hold the doctrine of the resurrection of the body? I answer, Because they have not searched the Scriptures for themselves, but, finding much said in the Scriptures respecting a resurrection, and having been told from their childhood that the body is to rise again, they conclude, with our accuser, that the resurrection spoken of is the resurrection of the body. And as we, for denying it, are to be put out of the pale of Christianity; and because our accuser here finds it convenient to call the intelligent Swedenborg, who proves its falsehood, a madman;-(though he elsewhere admits that a man who could write as he did could not have been very mad, though he thinks he must have been a little mad;†) as, for these reasons, nothing that we can allege against it from Scripture or reason is to be listened to for a moment, we will call another witness. It will not be said, I suppose, that the great reasoner Locke, the author of a work on the reasonableness of Christianity, was not a Christian, or that he was a madman: and this great man has left on record a testimony of the conclusion to which every rational man, and every unprejudiced Christian, must come, who candidly examines the subject for himself. In his third letter to the Bishop of Worcester, cited also in the note at the end of the chapter on Identity and Diversity, in his Essay on the Human Understanding, he says, "The resurrection of the dead I acknowledge to be an article of the Christian faith: but that the resurrection of the same body, in your Lordship's sense of the same body, is an article of the Christian faith, is what, I confess, I do not yet know. In the New Testament (wherein, I think, are contained all the articles of the Christian faith,) I find our Saviour and the apostles to preach the resurrection of the dead, and the resurrection from the dead, in many places: but I

* Anti-Swedenborg, p. 49.

t "It does appear to many, that either much learning, or something else unknown, had made Baron Swedenborg mad, if not in the highest, yet in a lower degree." Anti-S. p. 6. And in pp. 7 and 8 some important doctrines of Swedenborg's are admitted to be excellent.

do not remember any place where the resurrection of the same body is so much as mentioned; nay, which is very remarkable in the case, I do not remember, in any place of the New Testament, (where the general resurrection of the last day is spoken of,) any such expression as the resurrection of the body, much less of the same body." Mr L. afterwards adds, what many would find a useful caution against a too great facility in taking for granted that all that is usually delivered as the doctrine of Scripture really is such. "I must not part with this article of the resurrection," says he, "without returning my thanks to your Lordship for making me take notice of a fault in my Essay. When I wrote that book, I ook it for granted, as I doubt not but many others have done, that the Scriptures had mentioned, in express terms, the resurrection of the body:-but upon the occasion your Lordship has given me, in your last letter, to look a little more narrowly into what revelation has declared concerning the resurrection, and finding no such express words in Scripture as that the body shall rise, or be raised, or the resurrection of the body,' I shall, in the next edition of it, change these words of my book, 'the dead bodies of men shall rise,'-into those of Scripture, 'the dead shall rise."" Afterwards in strict agreement with our sentiments, which affirm that man rises with a real substantial body, though not with a material body, Mr Locke adds, " Not that I question that the dead shall be raised with bodies; but in matters of revelation I think it not only safest, but our duty, as far as any one delivers it for revelation, to keep close to the words of the Scripture; unless he will assume to himself the authority of one inspired, or make himself wiser than the Holy Spirit himself."

In these few sentences, it must, I think, be generally felt, that Mr Locke has fully anticipated all the arguments of our accuser as professed to be drawn from Scripture, and has shewn that the passages adduced by him as proving his favorite notion, in reality prove no such thing. Whether Mr Locke's own views on the subject were in all respects correct, is unimportant; he has here sufficiently evinced, that the doctrine of the resurrection of the body cannot be proved by Scripture. We will, however, run over the texts brought against us by Mr Beaumont, to demonstrate that Mr Locke is right

in his assertion,-that not one of them speaks of any resurrection of the body.

The three first of Mr Beaumont's texts are taken from a class of testimony which Mr Locke would not admit in this case, the books of the Old Testament; for certainly, whenever the writers of the Old Testament speak of a resurrection, they speak of it in a manner so evidently figurative, that no judicious person would rely much upon an argument drawn from the literal sense of their expressions. It is true that the Lord Jesus Christ draws thence an argument against the Sadducees, which we receive as most conclusive evidence of the reality of a resurrection, and that it takes place immediately after death: but here we have the Old Testament expounded by an infallible Interpreter, and we receive the important truth upon the authority of the Interpreter, rather than because it is clearly discovered in the text from which he deduces it. Indeed, we are authoritatively assured by the writers of the New Testament, that the doctrine of the resurrection is not, in the books of the Old Testament, openly revealed: thus the Apostle's assertion, that "life and immortality were brought to light through the gospel," would not be true, if life and immortality had been brought to light under the law. In defiance, however, of the authority of the Apostles, Mr B. with many others, would fain have us believe, not only that the doctrine of the resurrection, but that of the resurrection of the body, may be clearly proved from the Old Testainent.

He opens his array of texts with the celebrated passage of Job, "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though, after my skin, worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me."* This text, which is commonly understood to teach the resurrection of the body, affords a remarkable instance of the mistakes into which it is easy to run, when we read Scripture with preconceived opinions in our minds. For who does not see, whose eyes are not closed by his preconceived opinions, that this text has nothing at all to do with the subject? Job is here speaking of the wretched state of

* Job xix. 25, 26, 27.

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affliction to which he was then reduced, and declaring his confidence that God would interpose to deliver him before his death,-not at the end of the world. We read in chap. ii. that Satan, after having grievously afflicted Job in his property and family, demanded "permission to touch his bone and his flesh," and that he "smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown. Accordingly, Job complains, a few verses before those quoted by Mr B., of being wasted away to mere skin and bone; which he expresses by saying, "My bone cleaveth to my skin, as to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth."* Because his friends reproached him, imputing his misfortunes to his wickedness, he adds, "Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, my friends; for the hand of God hath touched me. Why do ye persecute me as God, and are not satisfied with my flesh?"-that is, still treat him as though he had not been sufficiently punished, though his flesh was all wasted away. Wherefore he proceeds to express his confidence, that, notwithstanding their uncharitable judgment of him, he may still rely on God as his Vindicator, Redeemer, or Deliverer, and that God will at last appear in his behalf; not at the last day of the world, (neither does the word day occur in the original,) but at the conclusion of his state of trial. When he adds, "and though after my skin, worms destroy this body, [where, likewise, neither worms nor body are mentioned in the original,] yet in my flesh shall I see God;" he does not mean to comfort himself with the thought, that though his body must now die, it will rise again, and he shall see God, in his flesh, perhaps ten thousand years afterwards; but he expresses his confidence that, though wasted to a shadow, he shall not die, but shall see God interpose in his behalf while he still is living in the flesh and has not put it off by death. Therefore he adds, that he shall see God for himself, and his own eyes shall behold him and not another's: meaning, that God will not put off the vindication of his innocence till after his death, in which case, though another might see justice done him, it would be no benefit to himself, but that he himself shall experience the deliverence; and this notwithstanding his anguish, mental and bodily, was aggra+ Job xix. 21, 22.

* Ch. xix. 20.