Abraham Cummings

“ And what better method of acquiring it can we conceive so easy and natural as that of their contemplating the moral conduct of mankind through all ages of the world. May we not then indulge the idea that, when the humble and afflicted leave this body of sin and death, they hear the voice of the Beloved saying, “Come ye blessed of my Father:” possess in perfection my spirit of holiness and unerring wisdom, to know as you as are known. Great is the work for which you are ordained. ”

“ Is not a voice better understood by any auditory, if there be some intermediate space between the speaker and hearer? What did they want a candle for, unless they wanted to be deceived? The Spectre was white; so is a deceiver by a candle. The Spectre told them the exact time of night; so could a deceiver by a candle. Did they want a candle in order to see her? They had learned, or might have learned already, that she could make herself as visible without a candle, as any person living could with it. ”

“ Therefore, when this material organization ceases, all cogitation must cease: Body and soul, life and intelligence die together. Thought, and the capacity of thought have no existence between death and the last day. Now if this position and inference be true, the doctrine of Spectres is overthrown at once. Sure we may be that what never exists can never really appear, however I may be deluded by my own imagination, or the artifice of others. ”

“ Addison and of Mr. Hartly are not impertinent: “I think a person who is terrified with the imagination of ghosts and Spectres, much more reasonable than one, who, contrary to the report of all historians, sacred and profane, ancient and modern, and to the traditions of all nations, thinks the appearance of Spirits fabulous and groundless. Could not I give myself up to this general testimony, I should to the relations of particular persons, who are now living, and whom I could not distrust in other matters of fact.” ”

“ Or if the ghost had first appeared to a magistrate: should we not have been told how much more probable it was that a magistrate should bear a part in some artifice which afforded him profit, than that a miracle had happened equal to the transition from a state of manhood to that which preceded our birth? It is no dishonor to the most illustrious of mankind that they frequently entertain the same opinion as that of their inferiors. ”

“ But may I not say, with Doctor Owen, that they unwarrantably limit the Holy One of Israel? In absolute monarchies the people dare not say, “I will obey no precept from the king, unless I find it in the public code.” Such language would breathe rebellion. And dare we treat thus the King of kings, who is an absolute monarch, and by his propriety in the universe has a right to be such? Will the scriptures themselves warrant this behavior? Can we despise the message and them who heard it, and them who obeyed it, and the angels who brought it, and yet stand guiltless before Him who sent it? ”

“ Can you produce a single instance out of all history, in which so many persons were thus impressed, while in reality they saw and heard nothing? But suppose further, that this Spectre informs you of events which you cannot possibly know by other means, what then would be the inference? “I make a distinction, says Doctor Johnson, between what a man may experience by the mere strength of his imagination, and what imagination cannot possibly produce.” ”

“ But after she had produced her strange, unexpected, unheard of message, our behaviour soon fixed the meaning of these enigmas, and rendered them like apples of gold and pictures of silver. Her speaking so much in a by-place (a cellar) separate from the common dwelling of man, like John in the wilderness, has offended us. If her paths were the Lord’s, instead of making them strait, we have made them crooked by misconception, misrepresentation, and falsehood. While the ghost was then speaking, one of the company was near eternity. Therefore “seek the Lord while he may be found.” ”

“ As to the Cocklane ghost, which produced so much noise and credit in London; there was neither articulate voice, nor any kind of apparition. All these artifices, and a thousand more which history commemorates, are swallowed up by the subsequent phenomena, as Aaron’s rod swallowed up the rods of the magicians.
Pause then, reader, and consider a few moments what evidence would convince you of the existence of a Spectre. Before you stands a creature encircled with radiance resembling the sun. Through the rays you behold a personal form as plainly as possible. ”

“ Now can we conceive that the person struck entirely out of existence a thousand years ago, and this person newly created in his likeness, should be one and the same? No, we can as well conceive that two small houses built a thousand miles apart, and entirely resembling each other, are one and the same house. These new persons, if they reason, as some of us do, will think it somewhat strange that they should be accountable for crimes said to have been committed by them long before they were created. ”

“ But the consciousness of what is past, does thus ascertain our personal identity to ourselves, yet to say that it makes personal identity, is to say that a person has not existed a single moment, nor done one action but what he can remember, and none but what he reflects upon. And one should really think it self evident that consciousness of personal identity presupposes, and therefore cannot constitute personal identity, any more than knowledge in any other case can constitute the truth which it presupposes. ”

“ To say that the whole will of God is so revealed in the Scriptures, that no case whatever can require any extraordinary exhibition of his will, is to say what is never said in that sacred volume, and is no better than begging the question.
There may be miracles and heavenly messages without innovation of Scripture doctrine or worship. “To say that God does not send his angels to any of his saints to communicate his mind unto them, as to some particulars of their own duty according to his word, seems in my judgment, says the great Doctor Owen, to limit unwarrantably the Holy One of Israel.” ”

“ Every mouth will be stopped. And the mouths of wicked men will be stopped, not merely by the testimony of foreign angels, but by witnesses taken from their own family, and such too as have been the greatest and most constant friends that ever they had in the world: such as had counselled and warned them—had experienced the most cordial and warmest zeal for their salvation and had often wept for them in secret places. Thus mankind will be judged by their peers. ”

“ The certificate of divine revelation, such is the conduct of every mountebank, while the spectator is left ignorant of his art. His false miracles spread a cloud of uncertainty over the minds of men, so that many are at loss how to distinguish the true miracle, the true seal of the King of heaven, from its counterfeit. And they who countenance and encourage such persons, are guilty of far greater evil than the great evil of wasting time and property. But such behaviour is the food of infidelity. ”

“ More than thirty witnesses of both sexes, are against you; all declaring that though at first the ghost excited terror; yet, after a little discourse with her, their fears were entirely dissipated, and succeeded by peculiar pleasure: so familiar and delightful was the mode of her address and conversation. At this time Mr. Blaisdel heard the conversation distinctly, but saw nothing. ”

“ Now as intelligence is the very essence of personality, distinction of intelligence must be the distinction of personality. Therefore the Divine Intelligence is the Divine Person, and the human intelligence, is the human person. ”

“ I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord and make his paths strait. But you who are sinners, do not make them strait. Some of you say that I am not a Spirit. Others, that I am an evil Spirit. ”

“ However certain laws and dispensations of Divine Providence, accommodated to the rude apprehensions of mankind in early ages, punished the posterity of sinners; yet it is one of the first dictates of reason as well as of a better covenant, that justice does not require any person to be rewarded or punished for the virtues or vices of another. [1] If soul and body die together; if all intelligence and cogitation cease from that moment to the last day, what becomes of personal identity and accountability? The essence of personality is intelligence. ”

“ It is not on the evidence of an ignorant, illiterate person, who has more fancy and fear than judgment, that we are to rest our belief of what is supernatural.” Here again their weapon is from the arsenal of those who oppose our Saviour’s resurrection, known first to some of “the timorous and pious sex,” as Hume has termed them, and then to illiterate, ignorant fishermen, who, say the deists, had more fancy and fear than judgment. The truth is, some ignorant men have no more fancy nor fear than the learned, and a much better judgment than many of the latter. ”

“ Our souls will survive our bodies. We shall think and reason and know the moral conduct of this world, and perhaps the very names of particular persons, after our bodies are turned to dust.
Among us are a considerable number of people who say that the Spectre knew and told them their thoughts past, present or future, or all three; and such thoughts as she could not have known or conjectured by ordinary means. To one of them, whose veracity is doubted by none, she foretold the time, before several witnesses, when his mind would be struck with horror for opposing her messages. ”

“ What was the consequence? “Go,” said the Spectre, “to one of those two persons, collect all those in the neighborhood, who give the best evidence of piety and veracity. Let them hear and see: for they will tell the truth.” ”

“ Tavernor did not at first execute this commission, but he was continually haunted by the apparition in the most hideous shapes, which even threatened to tear him in pieces, till at last he delivered the message. Now had this Spectre the least common sense, it would have appeared first to Eleanor Welsh and her husband, Davis, and frightened them into compliance at once, and not have kept poor Tavernor in such constant disquietude, who had no concern in the matter. ”

“ If this account of personal identity be just, then, by the doctrine here opposed, death puts an end to it. Affection, thought, intelligence, consciousness, all are no more, and therefore the person is no more. And as he is no more, nothing can be his. Now existence is entitled to no reward, deserves no punishment: is guilty of nothing and accountable for nothing. In a future day something may be raised up just like him in body and natural faculties of mind. But for this something, creation, not resurrection, is the appropriate term. ”

“ For the same reason the features of her face were observed to be like those of the person she professed to be, by some who knew her in her life time. And though her voice had no indication of breath and was inimitably distinct from any voice of the living, yet it had the same sound which she had uttered in her last hours, as they, who attended her in her last sickness have testified. Sometimes a part of the company could understand her words without the least difficulty; while others with advantages of hearing, every way equal, perceived only a sound, without the least articulation whatever. ”

“ The Jews, besides their public code of revelation, had their Urim and Thummim for the particulars of duty. Is it certain? Is it even rational to suppose that the few answers of that oracle mentioned in the scriptures, are the only ones ever communicated? Prophets, too, were sent to manifest the particulars of duty, and angels, some of whom might be the spirits of just men. And we have no reason to doubt but Moses was a Spectre when he conversed with Christ on the Holy Mount; notwithstanding that old fiction of his resurrection, which has dishonored the antiquities of Josephus. ”

“ When a creature professedly brings us a message from God, be this message ever so small, ever so strange, ever so unexpected; yet, if it does not oppose his word, we have not the least evidence that the profession is counterfeit, unless we obtain it by other means; because we are as yet ignorant of its connections, and God’s thoughts and plans are not like ours.
Some say, if the message appear not in the scriptures, that will sufficiently condemn it and the messenger too, whatever be the credentials, “I will obey nothing but what I see in the scriptures.” ”