Such a Prothesis can scarce be called less than an ocular Revelation, not only shewing us how reasonable it is to expect a future Life, but as it were, pointing out to us the Business of an Eternity, and what we may with the greatest Confidence expect from the eternal Providence, dignifying our Natures with something analogous to the Knowledge we attribute to Angels; from whence we ought to despise all the Vicissitudes of adverse Fortune, which make so many narrow-minded Mortals miserable.
I am now, &c.
LETTER the NINTH.
Reflections, by Way of General Scolia, of Consequences relating to the Immortality of the Soul, and concerning Infinity and Eternity.
SIR,
T
This my last Letter to you, I mean my final astronomical one, I propose as a General Scolia to the rest, the principle Matter being Reflections upon what is gone before, with some Conclusion naturally following or appendant to what has been already said; but which, I could not in any other Place, so properly remark to you.
The Probability of the foregoing Conjectures, chiefly built upon very distant Observations, shew an apparent Necessity for some other kind of Doctrine permitted by Providence, to give Mankind a Knowledge of their Immortality and Dependance upon it, in the first Ages of the World.
And for the same Reason it evidently appears, that the ancient Philosophers had it not in their Power to prove a supream Being and Director of all Things this Way.
And yet, as by a Sort of Instinct, or natural Reason, and Consciousness of a good Principle, we see how many noble Steps they made towards it, and was convinc'd at last of this great Truth, that since there was a Mind in so imperfect a Creature as Man, the perfect Universe, which comprehended all Things, could not possibly be without one; and as Sir Isaac Newton has justly observed in his Principia, "If every Particle of Space be always, and every individual Moment of Duration every where; surely the Maker and Lord of all Things, cannot be never and no where."