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Rh by their descriptions of the infernal abodes. But this is manifestly absurd; since it is universally agreed, that all the antient theological poets and philosophers inculcated the doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments in the most full and decisive terms; at the same time occultly intimating that the death of the soul was nothing more than a profound union with the ruinous bonds of the body. Indeed if these wise men believed in a future state of retribution, and at the same time considered a connection with body as the death of the soul, it necessarily follows, that the soul’s punishment and subsistence hereafter is nothing more than a continuation of its state at present, and a transmigration, as it were, from sleep to sleep, and from dream to dream. But let us attend to the assertions of these divine men concerning the soul’s conjunction with a material nature. And to begin with the obscure and profound Heraclitus, speaking of souls unembodied: "We live," says he, "their death, and we die their life." And Empedocles, blaming generation, beautifully says of her:

The species changing with destruction dread,

She makes the living pass into the dead.

And again, lamenting his connexion with this corporeal world, he pathetically exclaims:

For this I weep, for this indulge my woe,

That e'er my soul such novel realms should know.

Plato, too, it is well known, considered the body as the sepulchre of the soul; and in the Cratylus consents with the doctrine of Orpheus, that the soul is punished through its union with body. This was likewise the opinion of the celebrated Pythagorean, Philolaus, as is evident from the following remarkable passage in the Doric dialect, preserved by Clemens Alexandrinus in Stromat. lib. 3. p. 413. i. e. "The antient theologists and priests also testify, that the soul is united with body for the sake of suffering punishment; and that it is buried in body as in a sepulchre." And lastly, Pythagoras himself confirms the above