14.  Objection against a Changeling being something between a Man and Beast, answered.

Here everybody will be ready to ask, If changelings may be supposed something between man and beast, pray what are they?  I answer, changelings; which is as good a word to signify something different from the signification of man or beast, as the names man and beast are to have significations different one from the other.  This, well considered, would resolve this matter, and show my meaning without any more ado.  But I am not so unacquainted with the zeal of some men, which enables them to spin consequences, and to see religion threatened, whenever any one ventures to quit their forms of speaking, as not to foresee what names such a proposition as this is like to be charged with:  and without doubt it will be asked, If changelings are something between man and beast, what will become of them in the other world?  To which I answer, I. It concerns me not to know or inquire.  To their own master they stand or fall.  It will make their state neither better nor worse, whether we determine anything of it or no.  They are in the hands of a faithful Creator and a bountiful Father, who disposes not of his creatures according to our narrow thoughts or opinions, nor distinguishes them according to names and species of our contrivance.  And we that know so little of this present world we are in, may, I think, content ourselves without being peremptory in defining the different states which creatures shall come into when they go off this stage.  It may suffice us, that He hath made known to all those who are capable of instruction, discoursing, and reasoning, that they shall come to an account, and receive according to what they have done in this body.

15.  What will become of Changelings in a future state?

But, Secondly, I answer, The force of these men’s question (viz.  Will you deprive changelings of a future state?) is founded on one of these two suppositions, which are both false.  The first is, That all things that have the outward shape and appearance of a man must necessarily be designed to an immortal future being after this life:  or, secondly, That whatever is of human birth must be so.  Take away these imaginations, and such questions will be groundless and ridiculous.  I desire then those who think there is no more but an accidental difference between themselves and changelings, the essence in both being exactly the same, to consider, whether they can imagine immortality annexed to any outward shape of the body; the very proposing it is, I suppose, enough to make them disown it.  No one yet, that ever I heard of, how much soever immersed in matter, allowed that excellency to any figure of the gross sensible outward consequence of it; or that any mass of matter should, after its dissolution here, be again restored hereafter to an everlasting state of sense, perception, and knowledge, only because it was moulded into this or