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• If these notions be true, as I verily believe they are, I thought they might be worth publishing at this time, for ← which reafon they are fent in this manner to you by,

SIR,

Your most humble Servant,

M. N.

N 3

SECT.

SECT. X.

IMMORTALITY of the Soul, and a FUTURE STATE.

Nefcio quomodo inbaret in mentibus quafi feculorum quoddam augurium futurorum; idque in maximis ingeniis altiffimifque animis exiftit maximè & apparet facillimè. Cic. Tufc. Quæft.

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To the SPECTATOR,

SIR,

I

Am fully perfuaded that one of the beft fprings of generous and worthy actions, is the having generous and worthy thoughts of our felves. "Whoever has a mean opinion of the dignity of his nature, will act in no higher a rank than he has allotted him€ felf in his own eftimation. If he confiders his Being as circumfcribed by the ⚫ uncertain term of a few years, his defigns will be contracted into the fame

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narrow fpan he imagines is to bound his Existence. How can he exalt his "thoughts to any thing great and noble, who only believes that, after a fhort turn on the ftage of this world, he is to fink into oblivion, and to lofe his Consciousnels for ever?

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For this reason I am of opinion, that fo useful and elevated a contemplation as that of the Soul's Immortality cannot be refumed too often. There is not a more improving exercise to the human. mind than to be frequently reviving its own great privileges and endowments; nor a more effectual means to ' awaken in us an ambition raised above low objects and little purfuits, than to value our felves as heirs of eternity.

It is a very great fatisfaction to confider the beft and wifeft of mankind in all nations and ages, afferting, as with one voice, this their birth-right, and to find it ratify'd by an exprefs revelation. At the fame time, if we turn our thoughts inward upon ourfelves, we may meet with a kind of fecret fenfe concurring with the proofs of our own immortality.

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You have, in my opinion, raised a good prefumptive Argument from the increafing appetite the mind has to knowledge, and to the extending its own faculties, which cannot be accomplished, as the more reftrained perfection of lower creatures may, in the limits of a fhort life. I think another probable conjecture may be raised from our appetite to duration itself, and from a reflection on our progress thro' the several stages of it: We are complaining, as you obferve in a former fpeculation, of the fhortness of life, and yet are perpetually hurrying over the parts of it to arrive at certain little fettlements or imaginary points of reft, which are dif perfed up and down in it.

Now let us confider what happens. to us when we arrive at these imaginary points of reft: Do we ftop our motion, and fit down fatisfied in the fettlement we have gained? or are we not remoC ving the boundary, and marking out new points of reft, to which we prefs forward with the like eagerness, and which cease to be fuch as fast as we attain them? Our cafe is like that of a traveller upon the Alps, who should

fancy

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fancy that the top of the next hill must end his journey, because it terminates his profpect; but he no fooner arrives at it, than he sees new ground and other hills beyond it, and continues to travel on as before.

This is fo plainly every man's condition in life,, that there is no one who has obferved any thing, but may observe, that as faft as his time wears away, his appetite to fomething future remains. The use therefore I would make of it, is this; That fince Nature (as fome love to exprefs it) does nothing in vain, or, to speak properly, fince the Author of our Being has planted no wandering paffion in it, no defire which has not its object, Futurity is the proper object of the paffion fo conftantly exercifed about it; and this restleffness in the present, this affigning our felves over to farther ftages of duration, this 'fucceffive grafping at fomewhat still to come, appears to me (whatever it may to others) as a kind of inftinct or natural fymptom which the mind of man has of its own immortality.

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I take it at the fame time for granted, that the immortality of the foul is NS fuffi

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