single and homogeneous, not consisting of two component parts or principles, body and soul, matter and spirit, but of matter only; that the soul is the brain, and the brain is the soul; that nothing survives the stroke of dissolution, but that, at the moment the thinking powers of man are extinguished, all the elements of his frame are dissolved, his consciousness ceases, to be restored only at the period of the final resurrection.

From these premises it seems to be a necessary inference, that the hope of a future state of existence is entirely delusive; for, if the whole man perishes, if all that composes what I call myself is dissipated and scattered, and I cease to exist for ages as a sentient and intelligent being, personal identity is lost, and being once lost, it is impossible to conceive it ever restored without the greatest absurdity. Thus the very subject of a future life, the very thing of which it is affirmed, perishes from under us, on the unitarian hypothesis; and a future state can be predicated of any man only in a lax and figurative sense.

Matter is incessantly liable to mutation; the matter of which our bodies are composed is so eminently so, that it is generally thought by physiologists that every particle of which it is constituted disappears, and is replaced by fresh accession in the course of about seven years. Let it be admitted, then, that the constitution of human nature is homogeneous, or, in other words, that it consists of matter only, and it will

necessarily follow, that in the course of forty-nine years the personal identity has been extinguished seven times, and that seven different persons have succeeded each other under the same name. Which of these, let me now ask, will be rewarded or punished in another life?

Such are the moral prodigies which disfigure the system of modern unitarianism; such the hopelessness of reconciling it with human accountability, and the dispensation of rewards and punishments in the world to come.

V. The unexampled deference it displays to human authority. This may excite surprise, because there is nothing which its abettors proclaim [with] such loud and lofty pretensions, as their unfettered freedom of thought, their emancipation from prejudice, and their disdain of human prescription. They, and they only, if we believe them, have unfurled the banners of mental independence, have purged off the slough of obsolete opinion and implicit faith, and shine forth in all the freshness, vigour, and splendour of intellectual prowess.

VI. Their rage for proselytism, difficult to be accounted for on their principles.

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VI.

ON ANGELS.

HEB. i. 14.-Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?

In this part of the epistle, St. Paul is engaged in establishing the superiority of our Lord Jesus Christ to angels: of this he adduces various proofs out of the ancient Scriptures: the title of Son, by which he [God] addresses the Messiah; the command he issues, when he brings him into the world, that all the angels of God should worship him: "He maketh his angels spirits, his ministers a flame of fire: but of the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever." Nor did he ever say to the most exalted of these, "Sit on my right until I make thine enemies thy footstool." He then brings in the words of the text, "Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?"

As this is one of the most clear and precise accounts we meet with in the Sacred Volume of the nature and offices of angels, it may form a proper basis for a few reflections on that subject. This account embraces two particulars :

I. They are ministering spirits.

II. They are sent forth to minister to them who shall be heirs of salvation.

I. They are spirits. They have not those gross and earthly bodies which we possess; sluggish, inactive, and incapable of keeping pace with the nimble and more rapid movements of the mind. "Who maketh his angels spirits: his ministers a flame of fire." They resemble fire in the refined subtlety of its parts, and the quickness and rapidity of its operations. They move with an inconceivable velocity, and execute their commissions with a despatch of which we are incapable of forming any [adequate] apprehension.

St. Paul styles them angels of light, probably not without a view to the ease with which they transport themselves to the greatest distances, and appear and disappear in a moment. From their being called spirits, it is not necessary to conclude that they have no body, no material frame at all: to be entirely immaterial is probably peculiar to the Father of spirits, to whom we cannot attribute a body without impiety, and involving ourselves in absurdities. When the term spirit is employed to denote the angelic nature, it is most natural to take it in a lower sense, to denote their exemption from those gross and earthly bodies which the inhabitants of this world possess. Their bodies are spiritual bodies, "for there is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body;" the latter of which the righteous are to receive at the resurrection, who are then to be made equal to the angels.

The passage just before adduced seems to exclude the idea of the utter absence of matter:

"who maketh his angels spirits: his ministers a flame of fire."

2. These spirits are very glorious. They occupy a very exalted rank in the scale of being, and are possessed of wonderful powers. They are celebrated by the Psalmist as "those who excel in strength." To this it may be objected, that David, in describing man, represents him as made a little lower than the angels: it should, I apprehend, be rendered, "for a little time lower than the angels," that is, during the time he [the Son of God] condescended to become incarnate. Their great power is sufficiently manifest from the works they have performed by divine commission:-the destruction of the first-born of Egypt; the overthrow of Sodom and Gommorrah; the destruction of 180,000 men in Sennacherib's army. One angel destroyed 70,000 men, by bringing a pestilence, when David numbered the people of Israel.*

Their appearance was such as to fill the greatest of prophets with consternation and horror. "And there remained no more strength in me, and my comeliness was turned into corruption, and I retained no strength."

With ease an angel rolled away the stone, a large fragment of rock, laid at the door of our Saviour's sepulchre and at the sight of him the Roman guard trembled, and became as dead men. "After these things I saw another angel coming

*2 Sam. xxiv. 15.

+ Dan. x. 8.

E