etrated. Since he was a sinner all his days, his resurrection
body must comprise all the matter that ever formed a part of his
corporeity, and each sinner may hereafter be as huge as the
writhing Titan, Tityus, whose body, it was fabled, covered nine
acres. God is able to preserve the integral soul in being, and to
punish it according to justice, without clothing it in flesh. This
fact by itself utterly vacates and makes gratuitous the hypothesis
of a physical resurrection from punitive considerations, an
hypothesis which is also refuted by the truth contained in Locke's
remark to Stillingfleet, "that the soul hath no greater congruity
with the particles of matter which were once united to it, but are
so no longer, than it hath with any other particles of matter."
When the soul leaves the body, it would seem to have done with
that stage of its existence, and to enter upon another and higher
one, leaving the dust to mix with dust forever. The body wants not
the soul again; for it is a senseless clod and wants nothing. The
soul wants not its old body again: it prefers to have the freedom
of the universe, a spirit. Philip the Solitary wrote, in the
twelfth century, a book called "Dioptra," presenting the
controversy between the soul and the body very quaintly and at
length. The same thing was done by Henry Nicholson in a
"Conference between the Soul and Body concerning the Present and
Future State." William Crashaw, an old English poet, translated
from the Latin a poem entitled "The Complaint: a Dialogue between
the Body and the Soul of a Damned Man."17 But any one who will
peruse with intelligent heed the works that have been written on
this whole subject must be amazed to see how exclusively the
doctrine which we are opposing has rested on pure grounds of
tradition and fancy, alike destitute of authority and reason. Some
authors have indeed attempted to support the doctrine with
arguments: for

17 Also see Dialogue inter Corpus et Animam, p. 95 of Latin Poems
attributed to Walter Mapes.

instance, there are two German works, one by Bertram, one by
Pflug, entitled "The Resurrection of the Dead on Grounds of
Reason," in which recourse is had to every possible expedient to
make out a case, not even neglecting the factitious assistance of
Leibnitz's scheme of "Pre established Harmony." But it may be
deliberately affirmed that not one of their arguments is worthy of
respect. Apparently, they do not seek to reach truth,