they could fairly conclude was, that, for any thing which they knew to the contrary, it may have existed from eternity, not that it must have existed. But this amounts not to knowledge.
Are the modern priests any wiser than the ancient philosophers? Have they any knowledge from experience of matter having ever been created from nothing? I think they have not.[1] Then how can they conclude that it was created from nothing? They cannot know any thing about it; they are in perfect ignorance.
If matter have always existed, I think we may conclude that it will always exist. But if it have not always existed, will it always continue to exist? I think we may conclude it to be probable that it will. For if it have not always existed it must have been created (as I will assume) by God. God would not create any thing which was not good. He will not destroy any thing that is good. He is not changeable or repents what he has done: therefore he will not destroy the matter which he has created. From which we may conclude, that the change of form which we see daily taking place is periodical; at least there is in favour of this what the Jesuits would call a probable opinion; and this brings us to the alternate creations and destructions of the ancients. A learned philosopher says, “The bold and magnificent idea of a creation from nothing was reserved for the more vigorous faith and more enlightened minds of the moderns, who seek no authority to confirm their belief; for as that which is self-evident admits of no proof, so that which is in itself impossible admits of no refutation.”[2]
This doctrine of the renewal of worlds, held by the ancient philosophers, has received a great accession of probability from the astronomical discoveries of La Place, who has demonstrated, that certain motions of the planetary bodies which appeared to Newton to be irregular, and to portend at some future period the destruction of the solar system, are all periodical, and that after certain immensely elongated cycles are finished, every thing returns again to its former situation. The ancient philosophers of the East had a knowledge of this doctrine, the general nature of which they might have acquired by reasoning similar to the above, or by the same means by which they acquired a knowledge of the Neros.
This is not inconsistent with the doctrine of a future judgment and a state of reward and punishment in another world. Why should not the soul transmigrate, and after the day of judgment (a figure) live again in the next world in some new body? Here are all the leading doctrines of the ancients. I see nothing in them absurd—nothing contrary to the moral attributes of God—and nothing contrary even to the doctrines of Jesus of Nazareth. It has been thought that the doctrine of the pre-existence of souls may be found in the New Testament.
Many of the early fathers of the Christians held the doctrine of the Metempsychosis, which they defended on several texts of the New Testament.[3] It was an opinion which had a very general circulation both in the East and in the West. It was held by the Pharisees or Persees, as they ought to be called, among the Jews; and among the Christians by Origen,[4] Chalcidius, (if he were a Christian,) Synesius, and by the Simonians, Basilidians, Valentiniens, Marcionites, and the Gnostics in general. It was held by the Chinese, and, among the most learned of the Greeks, by Plato and Pythagoras. Thus this doctrine was believed by nearly all the great and good of every religion, and of every nation and age; and though the present race has not the smallest information more than its ancestors on this subject, yet the doctrine has not now a single votary in the Western part of the world. The Metempsychosis was believed by the celebrated Christian apologist, Soame Jenyns, perhaps the only believer in it of the moderns in the Western parts.
