finite, and comparatively insignificant, if not doubtful, evil, namely, the dissolution of the organic body. See what a poor hand Asgill makes of it, p. 26:

And therefore to signify the height of this resentment, God raises man from the dead to demand further satisfaction of him.

Death is a commitment to the prison of the grave till the judgment of the great day; and then the grand Habeas corpus will issue to the earth and to the sea, to give up their dead; to remove the bodies, with the cause of their commitment and as these causes shall appear, they shall either be released, or else sentenced to the common goal of hell, there to remain until satisfaction.

P. 66.

Thou wilt not leave my soul in the grave. ***

And that it is translated soul, is an Anglicism, not understood in other languages, which have no other word for soul but the same which is for life.

How so? Seele, the soul, Leben, life, in German; ʊx and Zwǹ, in Greek, and so on.

P. 67.

Then to this figure God added life, by breathing it into him from himself, whereby this inanimate body became a living one.

And what was this life? Something, or nothing? And had not, first, the Spirit, and next the Word, of God infused life into the earth, of which man as an animal and all other animals were made,--and then, in addition to this, breathed into man a living soul, which he did not breathe into the other animals?

P. 75.-78-81. ad finem:

I have a great deal of business yet in this world, without doing of which heaven itself would be uneasy to me.

And therefore do depend, that I shall not be taken hence in the midst of my days, before I have done all my heart's desire.

But when that is done, I know no business I have with the dead, and therefore do as much depend that I shall not go hence by returning to the dust, which is the sentence of that law from which I claim a discharge: but that I shall make my exit by way of translation, which I claim as a dignity belonging to that degree in the science of eternal life, of which I profess myself a graduate, according to the true intent and meaning of the covenant of eternal life revealed in the Scriptures.

A man so karox clear-headed, so remarkable for the perspicuity of his sentences, and the luminous orderliness of his arrangement,— in short, so consummate an artist in the statement of his case, and in the inferences from his data, as John Asgill must be allowed by all competent judges to have been,-was he in earnest or in jest from p. 75 to the end of this treatise?-My belief is, that he himself did not know. He was a thorough humorist: and so much of will, with a spice of the wilful, goes to the making up of a humorist's creed, that it is no easy matter to determine, how far such a man might not have a pleasure in humming his own mind, and believing, in order to enjoy a dry laugh at himself for the belief.

That

But let us look at it in another way. Asgill's belief, professed and maintained in this tract, is unwise and odd, I can more readily grant, than that it is altogether irrational and

absurd. I am even strongly inclined to conjecture, that so early as St. Paul's apostolate there were persons (whether sufficiently numerous to form a sect or party, I cannot say), who held the same tenet as Asgill's, and in a more intolerant and exclusive sense; and that it is to such persons that St. Paul refers in the justly admired fifteenth chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians; and that the inadvertence to this has led a numerous class of divines to a misconception of the Apostle's reasoning, and a misinterpretation of his words, in behoof of the Socinian notion, that the resurrection of Christ is the only argument of proof for the belief of a future state, and that this was the great end and purpose of this event. Now this assumption is so destitute of support from the other writers of the New Testament, and so discordant with the whole spirit and gist of St. Paul's views and reasoning every where else, that it is a priori probable, that the apparent exception in this chapter is only apparent. And this the hypothesis, I have here advanced, would enable one to shew, and to exhibit the true bearing of the texts. Asgill contents himself with maintaining that translation without death is one, and the best, mode of passing to the heavenly state. Hinc itur ad astra. But his earliest predecessors contended that it was the only mode, and to this St. Paul justly replies:-If in this life only we have hope, we are of all men most miserable. 1827.

INTRODUCTION TO ASGILL'S DEFENCE

UPON HIS EXPULSION FROM THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.

EDIT. 1712.

P. 28.

For as every faith, or credit, that a man hath attained to, is the result of some knowledge or other; so that whoever hath attained that knowledge, hath that faith, (for whatever a man knows, he cannot but believe :)

So this all faith being the result of all knowledge, 'tis easy to conceive that whoever had once attained to all that knowledge, nothing could be difficult to him.

This whole discussion on faith is one of the very few instances, in which Asgill has got out of his depth. According to all usage of words, science and faith are incompatible in relation to the same object; while, according to Asgill, faith is merely the power which science confers on the will. Asgill says,—What we know, we must believe. I retort,-What we only believe, we do not know. The minor here is excluded by, not included in, the major. Minors by difference of quantity are included in their majors; but minors by difference of quality are excluded by them, or superseded. Apply this to belief and science, or certain knowledge. On the confusion of the second, that is, minors by difference of quality, with the first, or minors by difference of quantity, rests Asgill's erroneous exposition of faith.

NOTES ON SIR THOMAS BROWN'S RELIGIO

MEDICI,

MADE DURING A SECOND PERUSAL. 1808.*

PART I. S. 1.

For my religion, though there be several circumstances that might perswade the world I have none at all, as the generall scandall of my profession, &c.

The historical origin of this scandal, which in nine cases out of ten is the honour of the medical profession, may, perhaps, be found in the fact, that Ænesidemus and Sextus Empiricus, the sceptics, were both physicians, about the close of the second century. A fragment from the writings of the former has been preserved by Photius, and such as would leave a painful regret for the loss of the work, had not the invaluable work of Sextus Empiricus been still extant.

S. 7.

A third there is which I did never positively maintaine or practise, but have often wished it had been consonant to truth, and not offensive to my religion, and that is, the prayer for the dead, &c.

Our church with her characteristic Christian prudence does not enjoin prayer for the dead, but neither does she prohibit it. In its own

* Communicated by Mr. Wordsworth.-Ed.

+ A mistake as to nesidemus, who lived in the age of Augustus.-Ed.