. Priestley are considered as Materialists, or
philosophical Necessarians. According to the doctor's writings, he
believed,--

1. That man is no more than what we now see of him; his being commenced at
the time of his conception, or perhaps at an earlier period. The corporeal
and mental faculties, inhering in the same substance, grow, ripen, and
decay together; and whenever the system is dissolved, it continues in a
state of dissolution, till it shall please that Almighty Being who called
it into existence, to restore it to life again. For if the mental
principle were, in its own nature, immaterial and immortal, all its
peculiar faculties would be so too; whereas we see that every faculty of
the mind, without exception, is liable to be impaired, and even to become
wholly extinct, before death. Since, therefore, all the faculties of the
mind, separately taken, appear to be mortal, the substance or principle,
in which they exist, must be pronounced mortal too. Thus we might conclude
that the body was mortal, from observing that all the separate senses and
limbs were liable to decay and perish.

This system gives a real value to the doctrine of the resurrection from
the dead, which is peculiar to revelation; on which alone the sacred
writers build all our hope of future life; and it explains the uniform
language of the Scriptures, which speak of one day of judgment for all
mankind, and represent all the rewards of virtue, and all the punishments
of vice, as taking place at that awful day, and not before. In the
Scriptures, the heathen are represented as without hope, and all mankind
as perishing at death, if there be no resurrection of the dead.

The apostle Paul asserts, in 1 Cor. 15:16, that "if the dead rise not,
then is not Christ risen; and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain,
ye are yet in your sins: then they also who are fallen asleep in Christ
are perished." And again, verse 32, "If the dead rise not, let us eat and
drink, for to-morrow we die." In the whole discourse, he does not even
mention the doctrine of happiness or misery without the body.

If we search the Scriptures for passages expressive of the state of man at
death, we shall find such declarations as expressly exclude any trace of
sense, thought, or enjoyment. (See Ps. 6:5. Job 14:7, &c.)

2. That there is some fixed law of nature respecting the will, as well as
the other powers of the mind, and every thing else in the constitution of
natur