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we have now beeii contending for produce upon the ancient patriarchs , —upon Abraham , when he said , " Behold I have taken upon me to speak to the Lord , who am but dust and ashes ; " upon 13 avid , who said , Thoti
knowest whereof we are made : thou rememberest we are but dust \ " upon Isaiah , who said , " All tlesh is as grass , and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass ; " and
upon others , who represent
themselves as having their foundation in the dust , and as being crushed before the moth . —Tbis doctrine is best calculated to inspire the Christian ' s mind with gratitude . Contemplating what he is by nature—a frail and dying mortal *
he feels himself peculiarly indebted to that good being * who first gave rise to his existence , for the
promise of a resurrection to eternal life by Jesus Christ , which he hath engaged to effect . —The sentiment of his heart exactly
corresponds with that of the apostle Peter ' s , who introduces his first epistle by saying , — " Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ , which according to his abundant mercy , haih begotten us again unto a lively hope ( the hope of living again ) by the insurrection of Jesus Christ from
the dead , or with St . Paul , who closes his admirable chapter on the resurrection of the dead , with
devout exultation : . " Thanks be unto God who giveth us the victory , " ( viz . over death and the grave ) " through our Lord Jesus Christ . " The Divine Being shews us by death , that he can deprive
us of existence if lie please i ^—that what he first gave he can take away : and if from his own be * nignity , he is pleased to restore
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what he coulH justly withhold , we have the most increased cause for gratitude , which heightens
with the magnitude o'f the gift . Further , we urge in favour of the material doctrine , the purity of its tendencj ^ , throughout the whole chain of the Christian doc
trine . Had the doctrine of the simple materiality of man been uniformly maintained , that most irrational and absurd creed which asserts , that 6 * as the body and soul make but one man , so God
and man make but one Christ , ' had never existed , ; neither could the Romish doctrines of purga - tory , of prayeis for the dead and to the dead have ever crept into the church : —these errors would
have had no root from whence they ' could have sprung ; the wild imaginations of men would have been kept more completely within the bounds of rationality ; and in short , most of the principal corruptions of Christianity would have been prevented .
18 th . 1 here is a natural advantage in this doctrine , which may be justly urged in its favoup , and that is , the intimate connexion between the two states , the present and the future . Death , upon the material hypothesis , is
an unconscious state ; consequently , the intervening period between death and the resurrection however long , is entirely lost in the account . The two
percipient states of man , are the present and the future ; and the latter , to all appearance , will immediately succeed the former . It was with this view I conceive
that the apostles and the first Christians desired to be " cloathed upon , " " with their house which was from heaven . " and thus it
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650 General Arguments in favour of the Doctrine of Materialism .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1808, page 650, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2399/page/14/
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