that our FOR is differently descended, or we had lost a great reasoner, who bears as thorough an antipathy to Greek, as ever did Monsieur Gomberville!

He goes on, And if I may be allowed to argue in the same way as Mr. Warburton. The Public, I believe, will pardon him, let him begin when he will. Well, but allow him to do what, however, we are never to expect of him, to talk a little plain sense; what then? Why the Ancients could not strictly believe this doctrine [that the soul was part of God, because it is greatly INCONSISTENT with another well-known opinion amongst them, that souls were linked to bodies for a punishment, or sent down as into a state of trial. Now for his reason-FoR to suppose in the gross sense, that pieces or parts of the ever perfect and supreme God were so served, IS WHAT NO

ONE WILL IMAGINE THE PHILOSOPHERS CAPABLE OF.

pp. 66, 67. FOR is here again, as usual, on very desperate service. He promises to shew the inconsistency between two metaphysical opinions. What reader now but would expect a metaphysical reason? Instead of that, he puts us off with a moral_one. No one will imagine the philosophers capable of holding both those opinions. And to finish the absurdity, this is called arguing like me, in an instance where I proved the meaning of a metaphysical term by a metaphysical opinion. If I may be allowed, says he, to argue in the same way as Mr. Warburton.

2. But to be at a word with him and his philosophers together. What both are CAPABLE OF we shall now

see.

It is agreed that Pythagoras and Plato held that souls were linked to bodies for a punishment, or sent down as into a state of trial. Yet of this very PYTHAGORAS Cicero speaks thus: Nam Pythagoras, qui censuit animum esse per naturam rerum omnem intentum commeantem ex quo nostri animi CARPERENTUR, non vidit distractione humanorum animorum DISCERPI ET LACERARI DEUM. Of PLATO and his followers, Arnobius speaks thus: Ipse denique animus qui IMMORTALIS a vobis & DEUS ESSE NARRATUR, cur in Egris æger sit, in infantibus stolidus, in senectute defessus? Delira & fatua & insana! Here we see what two great writers of antiquity thought the philosophers capable of. Was he ignorant

ignorant of this? No; I had quoted them in the discourse he pretends to confute *. Did he attempt to confute them? No; nor a great number more to the same purpose, unless this may be called a confutation, And we may observe, that SOME of his authorities to prove this are exceedingly strained, and, as himself acknowledges more than once, are otherwise understood by learned men. SOME? What then are the rest? But as to these some, does he prove what he says? Yes: And how? By quoting my acknowledgment, that they are differently understood by learned men. And now, reader! What dost thou imagine our Advocate capable of?

X. He goes on. And because the philosophers, speak ing of the soul, often call it the image of God, divine and immortal, &c. he would lead the reader, from such expressions, unwarily to imagine, that it was literally a part of God, eternal à parte antè, the same as the soul of the world, &c. But I hope to make the contrary appear by some plain testimonies of antiquity: and the first I shall produce is one Mr. W. himself has helped me to, and is from Stobæus, where Speusippus, one of Plato's followers, says, that the mind was neither the same with the "One or the Good, but had a peculiar nature of its own." This, Mr. W. owns, expressly contradicts what he asserted of Plato's holding the soul to be part of God; but he says that "Stobæus and the learned Stanley were both "mistaken in thinking Speusippus spoke of the human

still

mind, whereas, says he, it relates to the third person in "the trinity." Now supposing we take Mr. Warburton's judgment before that of Stobaeus or Stanley, we may fairly conclude, that if even the third person in the trinity was not the same as God, but had a peculiar nature of his own, much less was the soul of man the same; but that it had a distinct nature likewise. pp. 67, 68.-He would lead, says he, the reader by such expressions unwarily to imagine, that it was literally a part of God. Hear, then, by what kind of expressions I would mislead the unwary reader. A natura Deorum (says Cicero) ut doctissimis sapientissimisque placuit, haustos animos & libatos habemus. And again, Humanus autem animus

decerptus ex mente divina, cum alio nullo nisi cum ipso Deo comparari potest *.--He will not dispute whether Stobæus and Stanley, or I, be in the right. He does well. But then he says, IVe may still FAIRLY CONCLUDE, that if even the third person in the trinity was not the same as God, but had a peculiar nature of his own, much less was the soul of man the same; but that it had a distinct nature likewise.-Such a concluder would have made Aristotle forswear syllogism. In the first volume of the Divine Legation he saw these words: "Again, "the maintainers of the immateriality of the Divine "Substance were likewise divided into two parties; the "first of which held but one person in the Godhead; the "other two or three. So THAT AS THE FORMER BE

LIEVED THE SOUL TO BE PART OF THE SUPREME

"GOD; THE LATTER BELIEVED IT TO BE PART ONLY

OF THE SECOND OR THIRD HYPOSTASIS.' What is to be done with this prevaricator? Will he plead guilty, to have the benefit of his clergy? Or will he own he could not read, and so stand upon his defence?“ You may complain (I hear him say) but whose fault is it? "You had put this passage amongst your nice distinctions, divisions, and subdivisions: and those I was not obliged to take notice of, after having so fairly given you warning that I passed over all such, as needless curiosities.

66

--

But I begin to be quite weary of my Advocate; I am drawing towards a conclusion with him, and will dispatch him with all possible expedition. What follows won't stay us long. As to the passage which he quotes from M. Antoninus, it is nothing more than an exhortation to consider what will become of the soul when it is disunited or separated from the body: and though Mr. W. makes him to speak of its being resolved into the anima mundi ; yet he owns at the same time, that neither Gataker in his notes, or Casaubon, had any notion that the doctrine of refusion was here alluded to. p. 68.—Gataker and Casaubon did not understand it in my sense. Does he pretend to say I understand it wrong? He pretends to know nothing of the matter: so I leave it to those who do. For I should have a strange love for answering, if * Div. Leg. Book III. § 4.

+ Ibid.

46

I gave this any other reply than Antoninus's own words: [To die] is not only according to the course of Nature, "but of great use to it. [We should consider] how "closely Man is united to the Godhead, and in what part of him that union resides; and what will be the "condition of that part or portion of it when it is "resolved [into the 'anima mundi]*.”

66

upon us.

The next authority (says he) I shall produce, is from PLOTINUS, who tells us that the soul is from God; and therefore necessarily loves him, yet it is a different existence from him.-Here again he plays his old trick Plotinus, a philosopher deep in the times of Christianity. I have tried in vain to make him understand. I will try now if I can make him blush; while he forces me to repeat, for the second time, the following words of the Divine Legation. "Such was the general "doctrine on this point" [namely, that the soul was God, or part of God] before the coming of Christianity ; "but then those philosophers, who held out against its "truth, after some time new-modelled both their philo"sophy and religion; making their philosophy more "religious, and their religion more philosophical.--So, amongst the many improvements of Paganism, THE 66 SOFTENING THIS DOCTRINE WAS ONE. The modern "Platonists confining the notion of the soul's being part of the divine substance, to that of brutes.-And it is "remarkable that then, and not till then, the philosophers began really to believe the doctrine of a future "statet." How true this is, we may see by this very quotation from Plotinus. And one of common apprehension would have seen, by his words, yet it is a different existence from him, that this was an innovation in philosophy. For were it not the common opinion, that the soul was of the same existence with God, or part of him, this caution and explanation had been impertinent, However, he goes on unmercifully to shew the orthodoxy of Plotinus, and of his commentator Ficinus, in this point: Where speaking I don't know what, nor why, of the vegetative soul, he takes an opportunity to criticise a passage I brought from Plutarch. Of this soul [namely the vegetative] it is of which Plutarch manifestly speaks, * Div. Leg. Book III. § 4.

66

+ Ibid.

where

where he says, "that Pythagoras and Plato held the soul "to be immortal; for that launching out into the soul of "the universe, it returned to its parent and original,"

THAT THIS MUST BE INTENDED OF THE VEGETATIVE

SOUL IS PLAIN, from his mentioning two other souls from the same authorities, immediately after, in a quite different light. Pythagoras and Plato, says he, hold "that the rational soul is immortal; for that this soul is not God, but the workmanship of the Eternal God; "and it is the irrational soul which is mortal and corruptible." So that unless we can suppose Plutarch intended to make Pythagoras and Plato contradict themselves, we must conclude their opinions in this passage to be, that the vegetative soul was diffused into the life of the universe; that the sensitive or irrational soul was mortal and corruptible; and that the rational soul was a distinct existence made by God. But this last part is not at all taken notice of by Mr. Warburton, though in the very same paragraph with the first which he quotes. pp. 70, 71.

1. Unless we can suppose (says he) Plutarch intended to make Pythagoras and Plato contradict themselves. Suppose, Quotha! Did he never hear that this Plutarch wrote an express treatise on the Contradictions of the Stoics? A sect of as good a house as either Pythagoras or Plato. Will he never see, that if the philosophers had a double doctrine, which he has laboured to prove, they must perpetually contradict themselves? But our Advocate is so captivated a lover (Pref. p. v) so enamoured of his dear philosophers, that the very air of a contradiction shocks him.

2. Well then, not to disgust the delicacy of a lover, I will humour him. It shall be no contradiction; nor will I suppose Plutarch such a brutal as to insinuate any thing so gross. But now, if, like a true inamorato, he will not suffer them to be defended by any hand but his own, then we shall begin to differ. He tells us that when Plutarch says Pythagoras and Plato held the soul to be immortal, IT IS PLAIN THIS MUST BE INTENDED OF THE VEGETATIVE SOUL.-An immortal vegetative soul! 'Tis a prodigy that deserves an expiation. But to know whether Plutarch or our Advocate be the real father of