Aye! this, this is the pinch of the argument, which Asgill should have proved, not merely asserted. Are these human laws, and these forms of law, absolutely good and wise, or only conditionally so--the limited powers and intellect, and the corrupt will of men being considered? P. 64. And hence, though the dead shall not arise with the same identity of matter with which they died, yet being in the same form, they will not know themselves from themselves, being the same to all uses, intents, and purposes.... But then as God, in the resurrection, is not bound to use the same matter, neither is he obliged to use a different matter. The great objection to this part of Asgill's scheme, which has had, and still, I am told, has, many advocates among the chief dignitaries of our church, is--that it either takes death as the utter extinction of being,--or it supposes a continuance, or at least a renewal, of consciousness after death. The former involves all the irrational, and all the immoral, consequences of materialism. But if the latter be granted, the proportionality, adhesion, and symmetry, of the whole scheme are gone, and the infinite quantity,--that is, immortality under the curse of estrangement from God,--is rendered a mere supplement tacked on to the finite, and comparatively insignificant, if not doubtful, evil, namely, the dissolution of the organic body. See what a poor hand Asgill makes of it, p. 26:-- And therefore to signify the height of this resentment, God raises man from the dead to demand further satisfaction of him. Death is a commitment to the prison of the grave till the judgment of the great day; and then the grand 'Habeas corpus' will issue 'to the earth and to the sea', to give up their dead; to remove the bodies, with the cause of their commitment: and as these causes shall appear, they shall either be released, or else sentenced to the common goal of hell, there to remain until satisfaction. P. 66. Thou wilt not leave my 'soul' in the grave.... And that it is translated 'soul', is an Anglicism, not understood in other languages, which have no other word for 'soul' but the same which is for life. How so? 'Seele', the soul, 'Leben', life, in German; [Greek: psychae] and [Greek: zo_ae], in Greek, and so on. P. 67. Then to this figure God added 'life', by breathing it into him from himself, whereby this inanimate body became a living one. And what was this life? Something, or nothing? And had not, first, the Spirit, and next the Word, of God infused life into the earth, of which man as an animal and all other animals were made,--and then, in addition to this, breathed into man a living soul, which he did not breathe into the other animals? P. 75.-78-81. 'ad finem': I have a great deal of business yet in this world, without doing of which heaven itself would be uneasy to me.