'when separated from the body. 289

shewn itself to be the greatest contradiction •Vvhere will the remaining difficulty lye ? Thiswhole affair, how dark and abstruse soever,bray, I conceive, with submission, be yetreduced to this plain and familiar state: Whe-ther the same quality, (energy, power, ofVertue, if we please now metaphorically toascribe these to matter) may be continued,0r preserved, in any individual particle, orQuantity of matter, by that fame Power whichfirst endued it with that quality; this powerbeing indefinitely great? If this can be allowed,and I think it will amount to a contradictionnot to allow it; then even we may conceiveit feasible, or possible, (and that is all thatis contended for) that the constitution of ourbodies may be such in an after-statfe, thatthere (hall be no change of matter in them j°r that the same individual matter shall al-ways serve to the same purposes: since, afterthe nature of matter is discovered to be whatit is, as in that second section, it is not con-ceiveable to us,that such an unactive substanceshould, by the constant succession of it, re-cruit our bodies, unless it were by the imme-diate indesinent power of the First Being,impressed upon it. It must undoubtedly ap-j Vol, I, U pear