Complete. From “Resolves, Divine, Moral, and Political.”

CICERO is there divine, where he says, Credo Deum immortalem sparsisse animos in humana corpora; and where he further says, Mihi quidem nunquam persuaderi potuit, animos, dum in corporibus essent mortalibus, vivere; cum exissent ex iis, emori. I could never think souls live in mortal bodies, to die when they depart from them. Seneca raises the idea still higher, and asks, Quid aliud voces hunc, quam Deum, in corpore humano hospitantem? What other canst thou think it, but God dwelling in the flesh of man? Conscience, the character of a god stamped in it, and the apprehension of eternity, all prove it to be a shoot of everlastingness. Those who say that the soul is not immortal, yet that it is good for men to think it so, thereby to awe them from vice, and incite them to virtue, even by that argument reason against themselves. Let those who believe not in its immortality be plunged in the horrors of a wounded conscience, and then let them tell me whether they believe in it or not. It is certain, man has a soul; and as certain that it is immortal. But what, and how it is, in the perfect nature and substance of it, I confess my human reason could never inform me, so as fully to explain it to my own apprehension. O my God! what a clod of moving ignorance is man! when all his industry cannot instruct him, what himself is; when he knows not that, whereby he knows that he does not know it! Let him study, and think, and invent, and search the very inwards of obscured nature; he is yet to seek how to define this inexplicable, immortal, incorporeal wonder; this ray of thee, this emanation of thy Deity! Let it then be sufficient for me that God has given me a soul, and that my eternal welfare depends upon it; though he be not accountable to make me understand either how I had it, or what it is. Why should I strive to know that which I know I cannot know? Can a man dissect an atom? Can he grasp a flame, or lay hold of lightning? I am sure I have a soul, and am commanded to keep it from sin. O thou, the God of that little god within me, my soul! let me do that, and I know thou art not such an enemy to ignorance in man, but that thou art better pleased with his admiration of thy secrets than his search of them.