Dr. _Warburton_ takes much pains to get rid of the only true sense of the following texts of _Moses_. Thus, _Let us make man in our own image and likeness_. From these words, he says, _it is inferred, that the soul is immaterial_. But he thinks _Moses intimated quite another matter_. And so do I; for to intimate the _immateriality_ of the soul, by saying, that man was made in the _image and likeness_ of God, is quite short of the sense of the words: to say, that the soul is _immaterial_, is saying no more, than that it is not a _circle_ or a piece of _clay_, it is saying nothing at all of it but only of something that it is not. Therefore _Moses_ cannot be supposed to intimate such a nothing as this, by the image and likeness of God. But he asserts a much higher matter, namely, that being created in the image of God, he was made a partaker of the divine nature, and therefore had not only immortality, but the riches and perfections of the Deity grounded and growing up. And this is the true ground of our eternal happiness, that is, of that _eternal increase_ of union, perfection and glory, which the redeemed soul will find in God; it is because the image of God, being as a seed sown into it at its _creation_, it will to all eternity, after his admission into heaven, open more and more its divine nature, and spring forth in new and farther fruits of _glory_, _beatitude_ and _union_ with God.
Every thing that is endless, numberless in the depth of eternity, is endless and numberless in the silence of the soul; what _seeing_ is, what _hearing_, _feeling_, &c. are in their boundless variety, and ever increasing newness of delights in eternity, these, with all their wonders, are the innate birthright and sure inheritance of every immortal godly soul. And on the other hand, the same boundless, numberless depth and growth of every tormenting, painful, frightful sensation, will open itself in every soul, _that_ has lost its God, and is left to its own immortal life within itself.
Vain therefore, is that principle published to the world, by a celebrated philosopher of the last century, that the soul in its _first created state_, is a mere _rasa tabula_, or _blank paper_. A fiction, that is contradicted by all that we know of every created thing in nature.
For every creature of this world, animate or inanimate, is in its degree, a _microcosm_ of all the powers, that are in the great world, of which it is a part. And nothing through all this universe, has in its essence, only the nature of a _rasa tabula_, or blank paper, but is in its kind, full of the riches, and powers of all outward nature.
In like manner must it be with the eternal world; every thing which comes from it, must be in its degree, a _microcosm_ of all the powers and glories of eternity.
Let it be said, that the _matter of this world_, was in its first created state, free from all extension, solidity and parts, and this would be as grave a saying, and as much founded in nature, as the _rasa tabula_ of the soul: say again, that by degrees it got a materiality of length, breadth and parts, from _without_, and this would be no greater a wonder, than that a soul, created inwardly destitute of any principle of knowledge, should from outward causes grow up into a profound philosopher. _Again_, say that the soul was at first, but a _blank paper_, till the organs of the body began to act upon it; and may not the enemies of religion, as justly say, that it must be the same blank paper again at the last, when the body shall be broken off from it?
If therefore the _Essay upon human understanding_ (which the Doctor calls the most original book that ever was published) has produced a metaphysicks, in many points dangerous to religion, and greatly serviceable to false, and superficial reasoning, it is not to be wondered at, since so eminent an error, is the fundamental principle on which it proceeds.
But to return to the Doctor: he says, “The divine image and likeness must consist in something that is peculiar to man,――that the two things _peculiar_ to man, are his shape, and his reason; that it cannot be in his shape, therefore it must be in his reason.”¹
¹ Page 554.