I would have explain'd to him that which he thought a Contradiction in Genesis, with regard to the Luminaries, and to Light; and have shewn how far he was mistaken concerning the Resurrection; but he laugh'd at me, and all my Arguments: Indeed he was for admitting the Omnipotence of God, but then in this Case he did not think it necessary. For why, said he, should there be a Resurrection after this Life? What Necessity for exterminating the Race of Man, to bring them to Life again hereafter? If Christ was God, could not he have exempted Man from that Death, as well as from the other? And besides, if we were all to be living at one time, which way should we subsist? There would not be Provision enough for a Breakfast thro' the whole Country. But, said I, our Bodies will be of another Nature; we shall neither eat, nor drink, nor be subject: to any natural Infirmity; and moreover, God will translate us into the Heaven of Heavens, where we shall be fill'd with his Glory.
What! are you to be mounted above the Sky? Pray, Friend, what Notion have you then, continued he, of Heaven? As for our parts, we believe that the Air we breathe is infinitely more gross than that which is above, and that the higher we are from the Earth, Matter is more subtil. This being so, the Heaven of the Blessed must be like a Vacuum, in comparison with the lower Heavens, as to the Matter which fills it. Farewell then to the Lungs, because there will be no more Breathing; farewell to the Use of the Larynx for Speech; farewell to the Intestines, and in a Word, to the whole Body, which the Blood, for want of being cool'd, will throw into a burning Fever that will soon consume it. But suppose that all this be retain'd as a very useless Load, what is it to rest upon? What is it will sustain such material heavy Bodies? They will be sustain'd, said I, by the Almighty Power of God. I am weary to hear you talk so much, reply'd he, of the Power of God. I plainly perceive that you practise the very same thing in your Religion, that we observe in our Mysteries of Nature; when we are at a Loss to give a Reason for a Thing, we say that 'tis the Effect of some latent Power. I say it again, I make no manner of question of God's Power; but I don't see the Necessity of inventing Chimeras in order to have recourse to it. If yours indeed were a Paradise of Pleasures, well and good; but a Place intirely devoid of every thing, where the Body shall absolutely enjoy no Pleasure, where there shall be no Object to affect the Senses, no Odours to please the Sense of Smelling, no Viands to stimulate the Palate, no Instrument of Music to tickle the Ear, nothing to divert the Eye; surely this is miraculous. Certainly you must be extremely sensual, because notwithstanding the Eternity you attribute to your Souls, which you believe to be capable of subsisting independently from the Body, you choose rather to embarras the Soul again, and to clog it with a terrible Weight, which, by the way, according to you, is to have no Basis to rest on, rather than leave it at full Scope, and abandon this Lump of Flesh to that Corruption from which it cannot possibly be exempt.
'Tis not the Soul alone, I reply'd, that does Good or Evil. The Body and the Mind both contribute to it, and they must equally partake of the Rewards or the Punishments which the Sovereign Judge of the World shall think them worthy of. All this, said he, is not enough to convince me. Our Bodies are every Moment changing, and no Man ever liv'd to Twenty-five Years of Age, that retain'd any one thing that he brought into the World. The Blood, Flesh, Skin, Nerves, and Bones, are continually diminishing on one hand, and increasing on the other, and the whole Machine is every now and then renew'd. Our Inclinations vary also according to our Age and Constitution; for we are often great Deboshees at Thirty Years of Age, and at Sixty extremely devout and retired. With which of these two Bodies, pray, are we to rise again? With the old decrepid and weak Body which has liv'd perfectly well, and whose Actions have been exemplary to the Youth and edifying to those advanced in Years? Or are we to rise again with that juvenile, straight, vigorous, handsome Body, which deserv'd twenty times to be doom'd to the Mines? You see plainly that take it which way you will, 'tis extremely perplexing, and that 'tis pretty evident that whoever was the Author of this Opinion, he did not foresee all those Inconveniences. If I were for the Resurrection, t'would be a Matter of Indifference to me what Parts the Body was to be composed of when it rose again, for 'tis the same thing to the Soul; and I should lay it down for a certain Maxim, That would be the Condition, and not the Place, that was to make us happy; but all these things are meer Trifles, unworthy of a Man of Sense.
But I must own to you, he added, that tho' I don't comprehend what you mean by a Soul, by a Spiritual Substance destitute of all Matter, or by a Spirit properly constituted by Thought, and yet confin'd in a Body, where its Powers are limited to prompt or make him to act according to its Will, and in a Body too which 'tis not oblig'd at all to for its Existence, yet as the Idea you form of it is agreeable, in that it gives you hopes of another Life, I am not surpris'd that there are People who acquiesce in your Opinion. They are undoubtedly of the common Class of Understandings, yet nevertheless they are happy; for Felicity, generally speaking, consists meerly in the Imagination. They who are full of this Opinion, that Death is but a Passage to a Life of Glory, cannot be so loth to leave the World as others (especially where they are so wedded to that Opinion, as I observe they are in your Parts) and must have some Taste beforehand of that pretended Eternal Felicity. So that whether it be true, or not, the Thing is all one to them, neither more nor less than my Satisfaction would be, supposing I have 10000 Kalη in my Coffer, which I shall never want, and which I firmly believe to be of the best Metal that is dug out of our Mines, tho' they are all the while but Iron.
My Comrade, who was a religious Man, was enrag'd to hear this Pagan call in question the Mysteries of a Worship founded upon the pure Word of God; he gave me to understand several times, that he could hardly contain himself, and that he wanted at least to reprove him by plain Passages out of holy Scripture. But I always dissuaded him from it, because the other deny'd that they were divine Writings, and as he also pretended they were but a Medley of very ill-concerted Fictions, it would have disgusted him to have talk'd any more to him about it.
I told them, however, with a real Design to alarm them, that I was not only persuaded of an eternal State of Happiness for those who did good Works, and had Faith, but that there were also Torments and a Hell prepar'd for the Wicked and Unbelievers, and that every one would infallibly be dealt with according to the Good or Evil that he had done in this Life.
What you have already said, reply'd the Priest, tends to as much; but this is an Error as gross as the former; for besides that 'tis making God the most cruel of all Beings, to have created Man in order to damn him everlastingly, on pretence that he infring'd one of his Commands, and a Command too which was only that he should not eat an Apple, the very Thought of which really makes me shrink with Horror; I deny that any body is capable of doing Good or Evil, with respect to God; and I ask you seriously, whether you your self believe it? Undoubtedly, I do, said I; and methinks it is so clear, that one cannot question it without shocking common Sense.
What, said I, are not Whoredom, Murder, Theft, and Blasphemy, Crimes of Offence against the Majesty of the Almighty? Not at all, reply'd the Priest; for in the first Place, if Whoredom was a Sin, God himself would be the Author of it, and, what is worse, of Incest it self, because, according to you and your great Moses, as there were at first but one Man and one Woman, their Descendants must have committed several Acts of Incest before there were Persons enough living for them to avoid it: And as to the pretended Necessity of it at that time, I can't bear to hear it, for God could as easily have created a hundred Persons, as only one. We are all Children of the first Man. There are Degrees of Consanguinity among us, but in the Sight of God 'tis not so. Women and Goods were in common at first, as Air and Water are now. But Men, who seem to have been form'd for Society, observing the Disorder which this occasion'd, thought it proper that every Father of a Family should have one or more Women, a certain Extent of Ground, and a particular Number of Cattle, at his sole Disposal. They were also oblig'd afterwards by common Consent, to make Laws imposing Penalties on those who did not observe them. So that if any body is offended by the Transgression of those Laws, 'tis properly the Society, or the Heads that represent it, and not at all the universal Spirit, who can by no means be offended by any Person. The same thing may be said of Robbery and Murder, whereby, properly speaking, no Hurt is done to any Being but to the Person whose Life or Property is taken away. And as to Blasphemy, tho' we punish it more severely than other Crimes, 'tis not because we think that God is offended at it; not at all; it would be a Weakness in him, if he were capable of it; but 'tis because we cannot tolerate Ingratitude, of which the blackest Instance that Man can be guilty of, is to affront or not to pay due Respect to him who is the Author of his Being, and of all the Benefits he is capable of receiving; besides, that it sets an ill Example to Children and Inferiors, with regard to their Parents and Matters.
As much as I dislik'd this Discourse, I was willing to hear him out; but upon his stopping I reply'd: You yourself acknowledge that Men seem to have been form'd for Society; and from hence I argue, that God, who form'd them for this Purpose, must will and intend, that they should avoid all those Actions which introduce Disorder and Confusion in Society, as you allow Whoredom, Murder, Theft, &c. to do. Does it not follow then, that God must be offended by these Actions which are so directly contrary to his Will and Intention? Give me a Reason why the Society, or Heads that represent it, should be offended by such Crimes, which will not hold as strongly for God's being so? Is it because their Will, express'd by their Laws, is offended and transgress'd? And is not the Will of God, express'd plainly in his forming us for Society, equally offended and transgress'd? When we speak of God's being offended or angry, we do not mean that he suffers what Men suffer on those Occasions: Anger is call'd a Passion, and it would be a Weakness in God (as you say) if that could be properly apply'd to him: but when we speak of him as angry or offended by our Actions, we consider his Disposition of Mind, on such Occasions, only with regard to the Effects of it towards us: we mean to signify not what he feels inwardly, but what we may expect to feel as the Punishment of our Crimes. Upon these and other Considerations, I, for my part, am firmly persuaded, that God may and must be offended by such Actions as you just now instanced in.
Do you believe, continued I, that God, who is a God of Order, and hates Confusion, has prescrib'd Rules to Man, and given him Laws, by which he is oblig'd to conduct himself and regulate his Actions? No, said he, in the Sense that you take it, I don't believe it, nor was it necessary, because he gave him Will and Understanding whereby to conduct himself, as you see we do. As there, is no Pride, Vanity, Jealousy or Desire, of Dominion in the Beasts, so God has not made them subject to any Civil Laws, nor would there have been any greater Need of such for rational Creatures, than there is for the Brutes, only as soon as some endeavour'd to impose upon the Weakness or Good-nature of others, there was a Necessity of inventing Punishments for those who transgress'd certain Rules, and these Rules were multiply'd as fall as the unbridled Licentiousness of some turbulent Spirits gave occasion for them.