Catholic communion defended against both extremes, and unnecessary division confuted in five parts ...…Catholick communion defended against both extreams, and unnecessary division confuted in five parts ...…

7. As God made Adam's Soul of an immortal Nature, so sin changed not his Essence, but his Quality and Relation. And tho it made him mortal in the dissolution of his humanity or composition, and liable to pain, it did not turn him into an Animal of another species, nor acquit him from all future suffering. God having made his Soul naturally durable or immortal, man's merits were but to determine whether it should be immortal happiness or immortal misery. God was not bound to change man's Essence to shorten his suffering, because man vitiated it.

8. If one should preach, that Christ came to make Humane Souls immortal that were all naturally mortal, it would make Faith so hard a Work, as would greatly hinder the conversion of the Infidels. It would be an hard thing to believe that Christ maketh Saints of another species from all other men, as men are from Brutes: And if ones Soul be naturally mortal, and others, by the Spirit, immortal, it would seem a specific difference: And Philosophers and Mahometans, who can say so much for the immortality of the Soul, would despise Christians as less Orthodox than they.

8. If one should preach, that Christ came to make Humane Souls immortal that were all naturally mortal, it would make Faith so hard a Work, as would greatly hinder the conversion of the Infidels. It would be an hard thing to believe that Christ maketh Saints of another species from all other men, as men are from Brutes: And if ones Soul be naturally mortal, and others, by the Spirit, immortal, it would seem a specifick difference: And Philosophers and Mahometans, who can say so much for the immortality of the Soul, would despise Christians as less Orthodox than they.

9. I have elsewhere proved, that the Jews held the Souls immortality, except the Sadducees: He that said, Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? spake but their common Opinion; as did all they that believed that any rose from the dead.