fact that there is a futurity of consciouness, can be known only through God's revelation of himself in the Person and the Gospel of his Son," p. 389.
And now hear Priestley:
"Man, according to this system" (of materialism), "is no more than we now see of him. His being commences at the time of his conception, or perhaps at an earlier period. The corporeal and mental faculties, in being in the same substance, grow, ripen, and decay together; and whenever the system is dissolved it continues in a state of dissolution till it shall please that Almighty Being who called it into existence to restore it to life again."—Matter and Spirit, p. 49.
And again:
"The doctrine of the Scripture is, that God made man of the dust of the ground, and, by simply animating this organized matter, made man that living percipient and intelligent being that he is. According to Revelation, death is a state of rest and insensibility, and our only though sure hope of a future life is founded on the doctrine of the resurrection of the whole man at some distant period; this assurance being sufficiently confirmed to us, both by the evident tokens of a Divine commission attending the persons who delivered the doctrine, and especially by the actual resurrection of Jesus Christ, which is more authentically attested than any other fact in history." Ibid., p. 247.
We all know that "a saint in crape is twice a saint in lawn;" but it is not yet admitted that the views which are consistent with such saintliness in lawn become diabolical when held by a mere Dissenter.[1]
I am not here either to defend or to attack Priestley's philosophical views, and I cannot say that I am personally disposed to attach much value to episcopal authority in philosophical questions; but it seems right to call attention to the fact that those of Priestley's opinions which have brought most odium upon him have been openly promulgated, without challenge, by persons occupying the highest positions in the state Church.
I must confess that what interests me most about Priestley's materialism is, the evidence that he saw dimly the seed of destruction which such materialism carries within its own bosom. In the course of his reading for his "History of Discoveries relating to Vision, Light, and Colors," he had come upon the speculations of Boscovich and Mich ell, and had been led to admit the sufficiently obvious truth that our knowledge of matter is a knowledge of its properties; and that of its substance—if it have a substance—we know nothing. And
- ↑ Not only is Priestley at one with Bishop Courtenay in this matter, but with Hartley and Bonnet, both of them stout champions of Christianity. Moreover, Archbishop Whately's essay is little better than an expansion of the first paragraph of Hume's famous essay on the Immortality of the Soul: "By the mere light of reason it seems difficult to prove the immortality of the soul; the arguments for it are commonly derived either from metaphysical topics, or moral, or physical. But it is in reality the Gospel, and the Gospel alone, that has brought life and immortality to light." It is impossible to imagine that a man of Whately's tastes and acquirements had not read Hume or Hartley, though he refers to neither.
