Scripture and taught by the
Fathers. They argued that the soul is not an independent entity,
but is merely the life of the body. Proceeding thus far on the
principles of a materialistic science, they professed to complete
their theory from Scripture, without doing violence to any
doctrine of the acknowledged religion.6 The finished scheme was
this. Man was naturally mortal; but, by the pleasure and will of
God, he would have been immortally preserved alive had he not
sinned. Death is the consequence of sin, and man utterly perishes
in the grave. But God will restore the dead, through Christ, at
the day of the general resurrection which he has foretold in the
gospel.7 Some of the writers in this copious controversy
maintained that previous to the advent of Christ death was eternal
annihilation to all except a few who enjoyed an inspired
anticipatory faith in him, but that all who died after his coming
would be restored in the resurrection, the faithful to be advanced
to heaven, the wicked to be the victims of unending torture.8
Clarke and Baxter both wrote with extreme ability in support of
the natural immortality and separate existence of the soul. On the
other hand, the learned Henry Dodwell cited, from the lore of
three thousand years, a plausible body of authorities to show that
the soul is in itself but a mortal breath. He also contended, by a
singular perversion of figurative phrases from the New Testament
and from some of the Fathers, that,

6 Coward, Search after Souls.

7 Hallet, No Resurrection, no Future State.

8 Coward, Defence of the Search after Souls. Dodwell, Epistolary
Discourse. Peckard, Observations. Fleming, Survey of the Search
after Souls. Law, State of Separate Spirits. Layton, Treatise of
Departed Souls.

in counteraction of man's natural mortality, all who undergo
baptism at the hands of the ordained ministers of the Church of
England the only true priesthood in apostolic succession thereby
receive an immortalizing spirit brought into the world by Christ
and committed to his successors. This immortalizing spirit
conveyed by baptism would secure their resurrection at the last
day. Those destitute of this spirit would never awake from the
oblivious sleep of death, unless as he maintained will actually be
the case with a large part of the dead they are arbitrarily
immortalized by the pleasure of God, in order to suffer eternal
misery in hell! Absurd and shocking as this fancy was, it obta