of his own kinde as totally and adequately as one beast does generate another doth not speak like a Philosopher and besides doth unjustly disparage and disgrace his own lineage and violates the rights of 〈◊〉 creation CHAP. XII A solution of the Adversaries objections together with some others of Doctour Daniel Sennertus THese former notandums having been premised we need not dwell long upon answering of objections for by them the way is opened already and that which before hath been delivered will not need any more then application Object 1. Whole man is generated by man therefore all his parts both soul and body and if both be generated then both are mortall Answ Whole man is generated by man I grant it Therefore both soul and body are generated I distinguish That both soul and body are made parts of man by generation and a creature produced like in nature to him that generates I also grant and do affirm that by doing of this onely the compleat act of generation or procreation is performed according to the received definition of generation before exhibited in the Chapter precedent But that both soul and body must be therefore made and have their entities or beings given them by procreation that consequence I deny as false and absurd yea so absurd as it suffers a thousand instances to the contrary For example a whole horse is generated both matter and form and yet his matter did not receive any being by generation and so it falls out in other creatures If then it be not necessary that the matter receive the being by procreation though the whole Animal consisting of matter and forme be truely generated what reason can there be why to the generation of the whole Animal a new being of the forme by vertue of procreation should be necessary or why can one be necessary to generation when as we see evidently the other is not or why again should we exact the new production of either of them by generation See Argenter com in Aphor. 1. Hippocr Zacutus Lusitanus tom 2. l. 3. Hist ad praxin c. 7. § sed alia when without any such act the definition of generation is fulfilled and agrees both unto the generation of beasts whose matter is not generated and to the generation of man whose forme is not generated any more then his matter is By force of this solution all his imaginary absurdities which he labours to fasten upon the non-procreation of the soul doe of themselves dissolve If the soul saith he be infused then Christ did not take whole Humanity from the seed of the woman Answ He received from the seed of the woman as much of the Humanity as was to be received thence that which he took did not come unto him by procreation nor was it so to do As for the fourteenth to the Hebrews which he cites for his purpose our answer to it is That it is not found in our books neither Greek nor Latin neither do the Editions of Raphelengius or Elzevir contain any more Chapters than thirteen If saith he we consist of soul and body and are not men without both and receive not our soules from him he means the Generatour as I suppose then Adam is the father of no man nor Christ the son of man because his manhood 's constitutive part even that which should make him a man could not be by the seed of the woman and a man is as much a father of fleas and lice which receive their matter from him as of his children Answ Surely fleas and lice whence soever they receive their matter do not proceed from him in likeness of nature as by the definition they if they were generated by man ought to do Moreover they are not generated by man but of him neither is he the agent but the patient and so is of these vermin no generatour at all proper or improper Secondly men do receive their soules by force of generation although they be not generated and so notwithstanding this non-generation of the soul Adam might truly and univocally be the father of all men and also the soul of Christ might come by the seed of the woman although it were not made or procreated by it If the soul addes he be infused after the conception then there is growth before there is life which is impossible for the soul is made the vegetative as well as the motive sensitive or rationall part Answ I grant that before the infusion of the soul there may be vegetation and this by the sole virtue of the sperme but I deny that therefore there be in man more souls than one that is than the rationall for this same force of vegetation which is in the seed holdeth it self upon the part of the matter onely and doth not performe the office of a soul or forme the substance and operation thereof being no more then to fashion an organicall body and to make it fit for the reception of the soul and the union with it after whose infusion both the vitall and animall spirits do but serve as instruments to it and to accomplish the body in making it to be so perfectly organicall as the eminency of a rationall spirit above other formes doth require to have it If the soul be not generated but infused into a dead body then saith he it is lawfull to be Nigromancer for Nigromancy is nothing but putting a spirit into a dead body and so it is imitation of God and God the onely Nigromancer and all the men in the world but Nigromantick apparitions whose spirits when they have done the work for which they were put into the bodies desert them as other conjured Ghosts do Answ See the shallownesse of this man who can neither speak right nor reason with common sense and probability He calls Necromancy constantly Nigromancy and he supposes that a soul in a dead body makes a living man and can exercise vitall actions in it or actions of life and so according to his grosse capacity if the soul be infused God must be a Necromancer and men but Necromantick apparitions for this Ignoramus it seems knowes no difference between a soul and body that are united and those that are not united but together onely nor between a body living by the virtue of the spirit and by virtue thereof doing vitall actions and another which is onely moved and inhabited by a spirit without any union with it or participation of life But supposing all were one yet were it not lawfull to be a Necromancer because nothing at all be it never so good is to be done by superstitious actions or by making any recourse unto the Devil and acknowledgement of his power by any dependency on him whatsoever more or lesse It is granted saith he that the body considered merely sensitive cannot sin and is but an instrument or as the pen in the hand of the writer Therefore if the soul be infused then of necessity the
divers have laboured to extinguish by denying with the old Academicks and late Socinians that there is any certainty in it and by becoming so witty as to know nothing His regall sceptte I mean his naturall liberty by the command of which the Empire of his little world was swaied is wrested out of his hands and voiced to be wholly forfeited and not any longer to appertain unto him His crown and life was the immortality of his better part as therein chiefly being superiour to beasts and all other things irrationall but behold here also a privy but a dangerous traitour endeavours to despoil him of it so that in fine if all these treacherous assailants might have their wills he shall be wholly mortall poor feeble blind and miserable dethroned from his wonted dignity and cast down unto the lower classe of Beasts Profectò plurima homini ex homine mala as Pliny justly complaineth even though he himself be one of the Authours of those evils which come from man against himself Was it not enough that all inferiour creatures do rebell against us but we must basely and treacherously conspire against our selves The man that going from Jerusalem to Jericho fell amongst thieves had hard measure offered him for he was despoiled and wounded by them and left onely half alive but those thieves amongst whom we are now fallen be farre more cruell for they would kill us outright that is to say both in soul and body and with lesse then this will not be contented But now it is time we begin to examine what urgent reasons what killing arguments there were that moved this new Authour unto so extravagant a course of rigour against all mankind for if these be not very urgent and invincible we must conclude this man guilty not onely of much folly but also of heinous malice and temerity against the rights and prerogatives of man in defense of which we now come into the field against him CHAP. II. His first Classe of arguments examined and refuted HIs first arguments be drawn from mans creation fall restitution and resurrection the principall is this That what of Adam was immortall through Innocency was to be mortalized by transgression But whole Adam quatenus animal rationale was in Innocency immortall Ergo all and every part even whole man liable to death by sinne Upon this bungling argument or syllogisme the weight of all his cause must lean which as I perceive by the posture should have been a syllogisme if the Authour could have cast it into that form but since that might not be we will be contented to take it in grosse as it lies rather then passe it over without an answer We grant then that indeed all Adam for example by sinning became mortall and all and every part of him that is to say he was after so much of his age exspired to yield up to death and be totally corrupted or which is all one he was to have his two essentiall parts disunited and after that untill the resurrection neither he nor any of his parts thus dissevered and disunited to be Adam or a man any longer All which might be without that either the matter of his body or substance of his soul should perish or be destroyed as Thomas de Argentina expresly teacheth in 2. dist 17. ar 1. ad 1. arg And forasmuch as concerns the matter of his body it is an evident case because matter is a thing both ingenerable and incorruptible and so neither produced by his generation nor destroyed by his corruption and as by generation onely fashioned and united so again by corruption or death onely defaced and disunited or dissolved And as for the soul the other part there is no more necessity death should destroy it then there was it should destroy the matter there being no more reason for the one then for the other Wherefore Saint Paul wishing death that so he might be with Christ did not desire to be destroyed as this silly Authours doctrine would infer but to be dissolved for surely if his soul was to have been destroyed by any naturall deficiency or otherwise he could not think to be with Christ during the time of that destruction or dissolution which he wished and so his words and wishing would have been very vain seeing according to this Authour he should by his being dissolved come never the sooner to be with Christ because according to him neither alive nor dead he was to come unto Christ before the generall resurrection nay further his wish would have made against himself and his own ends because he knowing Christ a little in this life might in some small measure injoy him in it but if by death his soul be killed as well as his body he should have no knowledge at all nor comfort of Christ but be cast further off from him then he was before Now as all agree that matter throughout all mutations remaineth incorrupted so also according to the judgement of sundry knowing men and diligent inquirers into the works of nature and transmutation of naturall compounds naturall and materiall forms themselves also do not perish at their parting from their matters but onely are dissolved and dissipated lying after that separation in their scattered atomes within the bosome of nature from whence they had been before extracted by force of the seed the result of whose union was the form So that the entity of the form remains still unperished after corruption though not in the essence and formality of a form or totally and compleatly Thus teacheth the learned Authour of Religio Medici and exactly declares himself of the same mind is the famous late Physician Daniel Sennertus in his Hypomnemata though sometimes not so fully as for example when he ascribes to forms precedent the full production of the subsequent assigning a genitall power or vis prolifica in every form for multiplying of it self by which doctrine he seems to recede from his former principles of Atomes and not to stick constantly to them yea and besides to deliver a conceit which is hardly understood and which moreover seems to be improbable for who can explicate what one form doth when it multiplies another or what kind of causality it doth then exercise or by what strange influence that effect is wrought and the form made up of nothing This same doctrine of Religio Medici and that also which we deliver here touching the origination of forms was the doctrine of old Democritus expressed by him in his constitution of Atomes or minima naturalia as we find it largely expressed and illustrated by Joan. Magnenus l. de Philosophia Democriti ' Disp 2. c. 2. seqq as also by Petrus Gassendus in his voluminous work de Philosophia Epicuri tomo 1. with whom in substance agreed Leucippus as we may find by that which Laertius and others do deliver of him Not that every Atome did contain a form as Sennertus seems to think but rather
Augustus c. do all note this contrariety of desires in man but none do note the same to be in beasts for even Plutarch in his Gryllus doth observe the contrary Thus we see what opposition reason finds in man from sense but reason cannot be contrary unto it self nor doth it struggle and strive with its own powers and dictamens and therefore it is a different power from sense And so much in answer to this chapter omitting the particular examination of his other inferences of absurdities as he calls them against the doctrine of immortality because either they are answered beforehand in that which hath been said already or else are such wretched fluffe as they can afford no matter for any sensible answer or serious undertaking CHAP. V. Arefutation of certain shifting Answers given unto sundry Texts of holy Scripture THe first place 2 Cor. 5.6.8 where Saint Paul declareth that while we are present or at home 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the body we are absent from our Lord but he desireth rather to be absent from the body and to be present with our Lord. Out of this it may be inferred not that immediately after death we all shall be present with God and attain to glory as this Authour idlely objecteth but that during the time of our absence from the body we may be present with Christ and enjoy God whether this be immediately after death or no about which point we do not now contend His answer is that the Apostle speaks not of the interim betwixt Death and the last Judgement but of the state of the Resurrection This Glosse of his corrupts the Text for the state of the Resurrection is not the state of separation or separated souls but the Apostle speaks plainly and expresly of absence or peregrination from the body which is the state of separation during which state he might as he saith be present with Christ I do not deny but that in the precedent and subsequent Texts he may speak also of the Resurrection but it does not therefore follow that he speaks of that state onely and as for his words they clearly bear witnesse to the contrary therefore after death and before any re-union with the body the soul remaineth And by this clear sense his second shift is taken away whereby he seeks to elude a like place of the same Apostle Phil. 1.23 24. Gen. 35.18 It is said of a woman that her soul was departing therefore there was such a thing as a soul that continued after death He answers that the meaning was she died Be it so yet the words do not import that onely but besides that this dying of hers was by the departing of her soul from her body and not by the perishing or destruction of the soul departing For example when we say The enemy is departed from such or such a place we do not mean he is slain but onely gone and do intimate that he is still alive She could not die saith he if her soul were living This is both false and also absurd for it was not the living of her soul which made her live but the being of it living within her body and the informing of it with the same as then this presence and union of a living soul made her live so on the contrary side the taking away of this presence and dissolving this union must make her die to which effect the living of her soul afterward or the dying of it was a businesse impertinent for whether it after lived or died it being once separated she was dead and remained no woman any longer for the soul of a man or woman is not a man or woman though indeed the Platonicks together with Cicero Macrobius and Hierocles not knowing any thing of the Resurrection and of glorified bodies yet being sure that man was to remain and be rewarded after death they knew not how to defend this truth without their holding an errour viz. that the soul onely was the man and the body but as a prison of it but Aristotle he was wiser than to think so for he defined man not Anima rationalis but Animal rationale and this Doctrine is truly Christian and Philosophicall taught expresly by Marcus Varro apud Augustinum lib. 19. de Civit. dei cap. 3. His choice of the three opinions is saith S. Augustine of Varro that man is neither soul alone nor body alone but body and soul together and therefore that the supream good of man which is to make him happy consists in the goods of both that is to say of soul and body and by Saint Athanasius in his Creed Anima rationalis caro unus est homo Aquinas 1. p.q. 75. c. 4. A reasonable soul and flesh is one man and by Saint Methodius Bishop of Olympus in Lycia and afterwards of Tyrus in excerptis apud Photium Cod. 224. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A man according to nature is most truely said to be neither a soul without a body nor yet a body without a soul but a compound of them both joyned together in one form and beauty Thus he with whom consenteth the Prince of Roman Historians Crispus Salustius l. de Bello Jugurth Nam uti genus hominum compositum ex corpore et anima est c. For as the race of man is compounded of body and soul c. All these according with Aristotle who would not feign false principles for the avoiding of true difficulties which he could not solve though now they dissolve of themselves the Article of the Resurrection and of glorified bodies having been revealed to us which before was Mysterium à seculis absconditum A mystery hidden from the beginning of the world But after all this light some mens eyes it seems were dazzeled with it and by name John Wicliffes who as we may see in Waldensis tom 1. l. 1. ar 2. c. 33. 34. adhered still to the false opinion of Plato concerning the souls being the whole man and also stood stifly in the defense thereof his reasons for it are examined and effectually impugned by the same Waldensis in the places cited Dicaearchus an ancient Peripatetick ranne into another extreme holding that man was nothing else but body and that he had no soul at all neither mortall nor immortall which grosse errour of his needed no confutation but was hissed out of the schools as an open and manifest falshood Besides if it had not been manifestly false yet needed it no other confutation then those arguments by which the immortality thereof is proved to be a truth because according to the received old Maxime Rectum est index sui et obliqui The rest of the Authours evasions of this nature are forestalled and prevented by this that hath been answered already and so without any more ado about them may be dismissed Fear not them saith Christ who kill the body but are not able to kill the soul Therefore when the body is killed
morte immort Ferrariens Philippus Faber Collegium Complut others especially Albertinus Tom. 1. Corol. Alexander Valignanus apud Possevinum Tom. 1. Biblioth Select Thomas Carmelita l. 11. c. 12. de conversione Gentium Bagotius tom 2. Instit d. 4. Menasseh Ben Israel de Resurr Mortuorum à c. 8. Zanchy de oper Creat l. 2. c. 8. Fromundus l. 4. de Anima Carleton in Philosophia tract de Anima q. 10. Morisanus in Philosophia tract de Anima Quaest 5. Petrus Gassendus tom 1. de Philosophia Epicuri where he musters up all the objections made by Lucretius and confutes them all which men of Learning did not only hold the reasonable Soul to be an immortall substance but also that thus much might be proved of it by naturall reason Thom. Campanella in his Metaph. very copiously This high preeminence in the Soul of immortality we trace out chiefly by the operations of it as by so many steps which lead unto the knowledge thereof because according to the rule in Philosophy sicut se habet res ad esse sic ad operari sicut ad operari sic ad esse By the nature of any thing we may search out the operations and again by the operations the nature One of the chief operations of the soul is the act of understanding by the indication of which we learn it to be immateriall and again by the being so not to be corruptible or dissolvable by any naturall agent or which is all one to be immortall These acts or operations intellectuall do by three wayes prove the immortality First because they simply are intellectuall Secondly because they terminate upon objects spirituall and are apprehensive of them Thirdly because they fall even upon materiall objects after a manner immateriall First according to Aquin. 1. p. q. 14. a. 1. Valentia ibid. Raynaud Nat. Theol. d. 2. q. 2. a. 3. Aquin. l. 10. con Gent. c. 44. and others no power or substance that is not devoid of matter can be intellectuall nor again any object directly and immediately intelligible which is not also immateriall the reason is because corporeity or matter darkens the power and confines it to singularities The words of Petrus de Aquila called Scotellus 1. Sent. dist 35. q. 1. are very pertinent and these By how much saith he any thing is freed from matter by so much is it both objectively and also actively intelligible because according to Avicenna and Aristotle Immateriality is the cause of Intellection But God is the most remote from matter and therefore is the most of all intellective Wherefore since matter and corporeity are over-grosse to admit of intellection and that the soul of man is intellective it can be neither materiall nor corporeall but contrariwise of nature elevated above matter that is to say spirituall and incorruptible Secondly The soul doth not onely understand mean objects but the highest and the purest of all that is to say all objects spirituall and God himself I grant to Aureolus that the object and the power need not be alike in nature and therefore it is no formall consequence that because the object is spirituall therefore the power must be so but yet neverthelesse the materiall consequence is very good because it is wholly necessary that the power intellective should be free from all those impediments of understanding whether like or unlike which are situate within the sphere of the object or without it and that moreover as Pet. Aureolus 2. Sent. dist 19. himself confesses there ought to be some resemblance or proportion between the object and the power at least quoad rationem cognoscentis cognoscibilis but between a materiall power and a spirituall object there is none First because the power is too low and gross Secondly because a spirituall entity is situate without the sphere or compasse of the object as for example an Angell is quite without the compasse of any eye corporeall because he is such an object as is not visible but intelligible onely that is to say perceptible onely by a power that is higher then any sense and properly intellective which the eye is not because materiall and a spirit is therefore imperceptible to our sight and beyond the lines of the object because the object of the sight is colour figure magnitude c. none of which are in a spirit And though as Arriaga teacheth in some kinde a corporeall agent may act upon a spirit for a body united to a soul as it is in man according as it is severally disposed may transmit something upon the soul cause alterations in it contristate or rejoice it yet neverthelesse can it not do any thing by way of vision because the soul hath nothing in it wherewith to terminate the sight in which case it must be wholly invisible even although it were no spirit but some other kind of entity as namely a sound is which though it partake of materiality yet is it invisible and therefore imperceptible by the eye though not by another sense For this cause it seems improbable that any corporeal eye can be enabled to see the Deity by means of any elevation or sublevation whatsoever contrary to the opinion of a late learned Grecian Leo Allatius l. de consen Eccl. Occid Orient As then one reason why an eye corporeall cannot see a spirit is because the organ of vision is corporeall so on the other side one reason why a soul may be sensible of a spirit is because the soul is spirituall and thereby prepared to receive an impression from it and also is conformably to the object a power intellective as the same object is intelligible I said before that a sound cannot be seen but I add now that it may be seen easier then any spirit can because a sound is material and therefore one degree nearer to visibility then a spirit and for this cause needing no intellective faculty to apprehend it as every spirit doth so that against the eyes seeing of a spirit there be two impediments whereas against the seeing of a sound there is but one Out of all this I deduce that if the Object be spirituall the Faculty perceiving must be no lesse Thirdly the soul doth not entertain materiall objects after a material manner but contrariwise after a manner immateriall for it abstracts them from the dross of matter the grossnesse of singularity Now it is a certainty that Vnumquodque recipitur secundū modum recipientis Every thing is received according to the form of the recipient not according to the own wherefore seeing the manner of being is correspondent to the manner of operation seeing again that the manner of the souls operation even upon things materiall is immateriall therefore the manner of being of it must be also immateriall The impression declares the figure of the seal If then the souls impression upon material objects be spirituall the soul it self is also spirituall The understanding
their materiality namely by conceiving them conformably unto it self that is to say after a manner abstracted and immateriall declaring thereby the spirituality of it's being for it is as great a signe of a spirituall Being to understand a matter immaterially as it is to understand a spirit that hath no matter Thirdly I answer that although our power apprehensive does attire spiritual substances in formes corporeall by reason of the imaginative faculty upon which it borders yet the judging and discursive faculties do not so for these two cast of all figures and resemblances corporeall determining Angels for example to be spirits purely and devoid of all figure and corporeity as also in like sort that privations though apprehended as positive entities yet are not so in so much as the soul by meanes of judgement and discourse goes further then the phantasy and findes out truths which the phantasy could not tell it by thus surmounting forms corporeall shewes her independency upon the body and that some of her acts be inorganicall By this then it appeares that the apprehension of spirituall objects under lineaments corporeall is but the first enterteinment of them which though it do argue some imperfection in the soul concerning her manner of being yet not in the being it self Wherefore as on the one side this imperfect way of apprehension argues the soul to be in a degree inferiour unto Angels or pure Intelligences so on the other side the acts of judgement and of discourse which it doth exercise afterward do sufficiently evict that it is in a degree superiour to corporeall entities I exemplify for declaration sake God when he first arrives in our understanding by the out-portalls of simple apprehensions appeares unto us in the habite of a body an Angel in the likenesse of a man Time drest up in wings in his hands a sithe and houre-glasse Death like a raw-bon'd sire armed with a dart c. but forthwith Judgement and Discourse do waite upon them dismissing Apprehension and being thus stepped in devest this Time for example pull of his strange disguize bid him lay down his sithe clippe his wings and break his houre-glasse and to appeare in no other likenesse but his own that is to say without colours or lineaments corporeall and thus having disrobed him of his borrowed attire the soul judges of him as he is and gathers new verities of him by discurring And as the understanding proceeds in this one example so it does in others of the same nature thus the difficulty which Melinaeus made hath found out a solution A fifth head of probation is from the appetite of man that can be satiated with nothing but eternity the desire of which is universall and infinite This desire being generall must needs be from Nature and therefore right and not a vicious rapacity or greedinesse as Pliny seems to make it and so being right cannot be frustrate This argument is urged earnestly by Alex. Valignanus l. contra Japonios apud Possevinum parte 1. Biblioth l. 10. c. 4. Thomas Carmelita l. 11. de salute omnium Gentium procur c. 12. and by sundry other learned men and it seems to be very efficacious because this same appetite of perpetuity is very vehement restlesse and incessant and besides universall yea Pliny himself acknowledgeth as much Wherefore as from the generall and pressing appetite of meat we do inferre rightly a convenient provision of sustenance ordered by nature so in like sort from this ingrafted longing after a perpetuity we may inferre no lesse rightly a provision of immortality ordeined for us One Pontius a late Scotist in his Philosophia universa secundum mentem Scoti excepteth against this argument and divers others also with whom not being willing to wrangle we returne him no other answer but this viz. that he who is more in love with the determinations of any one Master be he never so eminent then he is with truth especially in doctrines of concernment is not an Eagle of the right breed nor deserves the name of a Philosopher It may be here objected that if an appetite were a good argument to prove a satisfaction it would prove we should never dye because against death man hath a great and naturall aversion I graunt it proves that either we shall not dye or else at least should not have died if we had remained in that state of innocency in which Adam was created for death entred into the world onely by sinne but this punishment of death is not of the soul but of man and againe the death of man is no more but a separation of soul and body out of which the death of the soul does not follow but that of the body onely for although a body cannot live without a soul yet no reason can be given why a soul cannot live without a body nay on the contrary side though we may easily understand how a soul may be annihilated yet it is a thing hardly intelligible how it should dy The soul is a form assistent as well as an informant and therefore may well subsist without an actuall informing It appeares that this appetite is naturall First because it is universall and followes the whole species Secondly because it cannot be supprest from breaking out into actuall and vehement longings after immortality out of which it followes first that immortality is a thing possible because nature does not incline us to impossibilities secondly that the appetite is right and rationall and cannot be erroneous as Scotus did object it might for at least in the generalities the works of nature be the works of a high intelligence thirdly that this immortality is not onely possible to be obteined but also shall be atteined Neither if this argument from naturall appetite be a good one would it follow thence as Abulensis in c. 22. Matth. q. 224. conceiveth it would namely that the Resurrection would be a naturall effect and might be proved by reason this I say doth not follow because as Aquinas teacheth 4. d. 43. q. 1. a. 1. lib. de veritate q. 24. a. 10. ad 1. in supplement q. 75. a. 3. Ferrariensis l. 4. con Gen. c. 79. the inclination of nature and her power be both of one latitude and therefore because no naturall efficient is able to reunite a body once separated nature does not incline unto it and so not unto the resurrection Wherefore that unto which nature does incline us is onely to a continuance of the soul with the body and not to a restitution of it after it is once separated from it in so much that if any longing do remaine still in man to have a body by way of resurrection it is but as hote embers the remnants of an ancient fire It is then in this case as it is in the desiring of having all our limbs perpetually entire for if by chance any be cut off as it is not then in the power of nature
it is necessary that properly they alwayes understand Forasmuch as the understanding is not a power that is subject to wearinesse then when it is separated from the body therefore it shall never be tired as having no coherence with the conditions of an organe corporeall Thus defineth he CHAP. X. An estimate of the reasons for the souls immortality THere have not wanted both in this time and also in former ages some Icarian wits who I know not why have laboured to extenuate and to diminish the force of the arguments usually brought in favour of the souls indeficiency not doubting to give it out that they be not demonstrative But this exception of theirs failes more of being demonstrative then the reasons do against which they except for admit they be not properly demonstrative yet neverthelesse may they be proofes very sufficient and able to persuade any man that is unpartiall and governed by reason and also much stronger than any which hitherto have been brought against it and so are to carry the cause on their side I will not deny but that those same reasons may not be so cleare and perspicuous as some are which we have for sundry other verities the cause whereof may seem to be the souls immuring within corporeall organs as in a dark house or prison in which it being shut up although it may behold out at the windows of the body objects abroad illustrated with light yet at home by reason of the domestick obscurity it cannot do the like This same difficulty moreover is increased because the soul of man is an entity placed in the confines betwixt the two regions of substances spiritual and corporeal and so of nature more ambiguous and hard to be discerned by reason that in this posture it may sometimes seem to be belonging to one side and sometimes again unto the others and so much also the easier because the soul while it is in the body discharges a two-sold duty viz. one of a form informing as Philosophers use to call it such namely as is performed by the souls inferiour conformably to the doctrine of Aristotle the other of a form assistent agreeable to the School of Plato unto which Campanella doth subscribe Such a form as this is God unto the world and is therefore stiled Anima mundi by very many the Soul of the Universe of which sort Intelligences be according to the Peripateticks in respect of their severall Orbes and a Pilote in a ship as also other movers and directers of that nature And this double office the soul performeth because even as it is rationall it doth not onely animate the body and is it self also a formall ingredient and constitutes man in his specificall degree of being and thereby distinguishes him essentially from all other creatures which functions belong unto the soul as it is a form informing but besides all this acts the part of a form assistent residing in the body as a high Dictatour controlling it commanding and countermanding prescribing laws inflicting punishments exercising acts of jurisdiction and absolute soveraignty thereby resembling a Judge upon the bench or Prince upon his throne more then a form meerly informing whereas contrariwise the soul of a Beast lives in subjection to the body being therein compelled to follow the prescription of every sensuall appetite after a servile or slavish manner without any power to make resistance Wherefore not without good cause did Fl. Josephus stile the power of reason a Soveraignty or Empire In consideration also of this two-old office of the soul seemed it to have two names given it one relating to it as it is a form informing namely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Anima the other to it as a form assistent viz. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Animus or Mens In the former sense it is a Soul in the later a Minde which preeminence of being a Minde over and above that other of a Soul Juvenal expresseth saying Sat. 15. venerabile soli Sortiti ingenium divinorumque capaces Atque exercendis capiendisque artibus apti Sensum è coelesti demissum traximus arce Cujus egent prona terram spectantia mundi Principio indulsit Communis conditor illis Tantum animas nobis animum quoque c. For arts a wit to man was lent Afarre from heavenly towers sent Which shining light prone creatures want Nature it seems to them was scant A soul on each to us more kinde Besides a soul bestow'd a minde How inconsiderate an act it is in men of learning to seek evasions from the usuall arguments brought in favour of immortality we have noted before out of our learned countriman Mr. Carleton and again with what ill successe men do impugne both those arguments and other received doctrines in Philosophy the experience of this last age hath taught us in which we have seen the fall of many soaring spirits that have adventured upon them Telesius Patritius Ramus Basson Gassendus though in a manner but newly sprung yet are grown already into neglect and the like destiny may Des Cartes Henricus Regius Campanella expect the last of which three though he have many strange conceptions and novelties as for example touching the sense of things insensible and also his three Primalities as he calls them which he will hardly persuade unto the world and again many trifling objections against Aristotle yet by his largenesse of contemplating starts many notable Truths which other great Wits who have gone on in a streight line have not espied in regard of which verities his labours may continue longer them other of that sort are like to do We see Aristotle yet lives and lives also in esteem and his adversaries lie buried in contempt It is an old saying Qui vult infestare fortem Perit atque quaerit mortem Those who with the strong contend Must expect untimely end Those who will be ever quarrelling with Aristotle and his School about those doctrines which have passed the Test after so many examinations by the most able Wits for no small number of ages may peradventure be overmatched and return out of the fray with broken heads To impugne this or that single doctrine this or that one argument may passe for currant and peradventure also prove successfull but he that will undertake to raise a whole new frame of Philosophy and encounter with Aristotle at every turn stands in need to have the wit of Aristotle which as it appeares few of these new undertakers have had yea such bold attempts do shew the adventurers capacities not to have been very great Let the quarrellers go on and try their fortune and by experience they may finde that the arguments for immortality had deeper roots then they imagined Surely that doctrine to which the most intelligent persons of the very Heathens gave their assent either wanted not good arguments to prove it or else bad arguments had very strange and incredible successe It could not be but those proofes were
circles of humane mortality just as the ignorant vulgar did conceive that the Sun when it goes down to us did lye concealed and bathed it self in Tethis salt waves untill the following morn began to call upon it Can I say these reasons of persuasion be counted weak that were able from age to age to carry on the doctrine of immortality against the violent streams of death and dissolution which seemed to be diseases irrecoverable and by them a man brought into a state that is desperate and never to be altered and therefore it was an usual saying Mors ultima linea rerum Death is the utmost line of things beyond which there is no going and as it were the pillars of Hercules with the Nil ultra graven on them Neither were those same reasons able after corruption and ashes to reare up a single frame of life for perpetuity onely in the soul of man but also to attempt it for the body yea and to come very neare the absolute proving of it and the evicting of a Resurrection as a thing due unto the principles of nature and as a sequele also of the attribute of Justice divine in consideration of which two reasons it appeares that albeit the Resurrection cannot be naturall yet it is a very neare borderer upon nature and that we may so speak not distant from it three fingers breadths the intervall or distance between them being no more then the want of a naturall agent that might be able to reunite the soul and body after separation Whereupon I conclude that the Resurrection of the body is none of the hardest articles of our faith but contrariwise such a one as may be persuaded easily In confirmation of this truth I cannot passe over in silence a memorable conference between Almaricus king of Jerusalem and William B. of Tyrus recorded by Tyrius himself libro 19. capite 3. de bello sacre The question propounded to by the king was this viz. Whether setting aside the doctrine of our Saviour and of the Saints that followed him the Resurrection could be proved by any evident and convincing arguments To which being moved with the newnesse of the word I answered That the doctrine of our Saviour and Redeemer was sufficient who in many places of the Gospel doth teach us most manifestly that the Resurrection is to be and that he is to come as Judge to judge both the living and the dead the world by fire as also that he will give unto the elect a kingdome prepared for them from the constitution of the world to the wicked fire everlasting prepared for the Devil and his angels Besides the pious assertion of the Apostles and Fathers of the old Testament may be sufficient To which he made answer All this I firmly hold but yet do desire a reason wherewith I might prove it to one who should deny this and did not receive the doctrine of Christ namely that the Resurrection is to come and after death another life To whom my answer was Take upon you then said I the person of one so affected and let us try whether or no we can finde out any thing Content said he Then I You do confesse that God is just Then he I hold nothing to be more true Then I replied Is it justice to return to the just good things for their good deeds and to the wicked evil things for their wickednesse Then he It is very right Then I But in our present life this is not done because in this world good men finde nothing but afflictions and adversities but the wicked enjoy a continued prosperity as dayly examples do teach us Then he It is a certainty Then I proceeded Therefore this is to be done in another life because God cannot be otherwise then a just rewarder therefore there is to be another life and a resurrection of this body of ours in which we deserved good or evil and therefore ought to receive a reward accordingly Then he This pleases me exceedingly and by it all my doubting is taken off Thus farre are the words of the grave and faithfull historian Guil. Tyrius Besides this the soul being a forme of a body organicall is not in a full perfect state nor in a full contentment without the body as Argentina in 4. d. 49. Tostat c. 4. Deut. q. 7. c. 25. Matth. q. 63. Aquin. in supplem q. 75. ad 4. 1 2. q. 4. a. 5. 4. con Gentes c. 79. Ferrarien ibid. Albertus l. 7. Comp. c. 16. do evict for indeed all formes informing do receive perfection from the matter informed by them as well as communicate perfection to it and again in things created every totall entity is more perfect then a part as S. Bonaventure clearly sheweth in 4. d. 43. q. 1. CHAP. XI Mans being by Procreation no argument of his Soul's mortality THat mans soul must have the being by generation because the man himself hath his being by it is no good consequence and the reason why some have been deceived in judging it a good one or that of due his soul ought to be generated as well as the souls of Beasts hath been partly a false apprehension what the true nature and essence of generation was partly also what was the perfection essence of man As for the first misprision it was that generation was not only to make the composituÌ„ or whole to be but also the parts by the conferring unto them not onely the being parts but also the simple Being or the being â—â—â—ties that is to say not onely the formality of them but even the naturality which conceit of theirs is a false conception and against all reason and principles of Philosophy for by them we are clearly taught that it is Man which is procreated or made by generation and not his soul his body is made or framed by it and not the matter of which it is composed For it is a received maxime and most true touching the power of naturall causes at least though no farther Quòd ex nihilo nihil fit Of nothing there is nothing to be made out of which it follows that before generation both matter and formes of all corporeall things must have before-hand a being in rerum natura at least an incompleat one and cannot possibly have it from generation Wherefore by the work of generation they are not made or receive any new absolute entity but onely are collected ordered and at last substantially linked and united one with another which union is not by a sole approximation contiguity or juxta-position that I may so speak of one of them with another as it falls out in artificiall compounds where colours for example though they be not pictures yet being thus or thus chosen formed and united make up such or such a picture but it is by a continuity or an inward and substantiall knot which is in our power better to conceive then explicate and yet not to
immortall thing and not our mortall flesh is the authour of all sin and so God's immediate hand the cause of all sin That the body is onely an instrument of the soul is false See Soto of this in 4. d. 43. q. 1. a. 2. Rat. 3. for it is a living co-agent with it and a partaker both in the good and evil actions and is both rewardable and punishable with it whether in the mean time it be created or generated for this variation makes no difference in this matter of merit or demerit Neither doth the creation of the soul make God the authour of sin more than the generation of it that is to say not at all for still the soul and body are authours of their own actions and the deformity ariseth from their misdemeanour and not from God's creation or concurrence Doctour Sennertus although he admit not of any mortality in the soul yet he holds it probable that it comes by procreation and that from the first instance of conception the seed is ammated with the rationall soul which Doctrine of his by his leave inferrs mortality for whatsoever is generated is corruptible and is to go out according to the ordinary lawes of Nature at the same gate of corruption at which it entred in Neither is it true or likely or lastly any way Philosophicall to say as he doth Hypom 4. c. 10. as also in his Paralipomena c. 7. n. 3. ad Hypomn. 5. that nothing created is immortall by the principle of Nature but onely by the free will or gift of God because as it is amongst bodies some are very durable as Marble and Cedar some by and by corrupted as Flowers Fruits even out of the several natures of their composition which God hath appointed for them and not our of the free will of God immediately without any farther relation so in like sort some substances are perpetuall out of the nature of their being as spirituall substances and bodies that are simple and unmixt other some out of their own natures corruptible as those that are mixt and made up of Elements which as by some naturall agents they were knit up together so by the operation of other some they are dissolvable Souls then if generated are compounds and if so may be uncompounded by the agency and operation of causes naturall wherefore to seek an immortality onely from a decree extrinsecall without any foundation in their naturall beings seems neither to be Philosophicall nor true wherefore the immortality of Souls and Angels is not to be reared upon this weak foundation according to which a Fly may be as much immortall as an Angel one by nature according to Sennertus having no preeminence over the other the free determination of God for their perpetuall conservation being equally applicable to either of them Conformably to this position of his Sennertus Hypomn. 4. ca. 10. lib. de consens Chymic cum Arist Galeno c. 9. he will needs have the sperme alwayes animated with a reasonable soul but then consider how many more souls are cast away without any bodies organicall and humane then are actuated and preserved by bodies I ask what must become of these innumerable souls must they perish or have bodies made them at the Resurrection neither of these two can be admitted without great temerity and absurdities Besides this we know God did not inspire Adam with a living spirit while he was a lumpe of clay but when he had a face and a body that was organicall and not before Again why does the soul depart from the body but onely because it leaves to be organicall why then or with what probability can we imagine the soul is in the inorganicall sperme certainly with none at all The winde that did drive Sennertus upon this inhospitall shore was the necessity of assigning a vis formatrix or a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say an able architect or former of humane body which though most acknowledge to be the seed yet Sennertus sees not how this can be unlesse it should be animated with the soul his reason is because the soul only is to build an house fit for it self to inhabit But this reason of his is not urgent nay more it is not likely for egges and young birds do not build their own nests but the old ones for them so that it must by this account be the parents office to erect this new building and not the childes But how sayes he can the father do this Easily and well by sending his sperme as his deputy and officer to performe that duty Argent com in 1. Aphoris Hippocr as Argenterius also teacheth which entity hath derived to it from the generatour so much natural strength and cunning as to make a sufficient architect for the effecting of this work and all this may be done with the onely form of seed without any animation of it with a soul Thus it is likely that the Acorn for example without any more form than of an Acorn collects sit particles out of the elements and materials about it and by a virtue derived from the tree on which it grew forms out and fashions the body of an Oake and for the effecting of this work the seed participates much of the nature of the tree or plant and hath ordinarily much of the same virtue Wherefore in this abstruse question or quaere that we may say something which is likely and hath for the truth thereof probable examples and instances in nature we do conceive that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or forming virtue is the seed's own form excited and assisted by the breeding cherishing and connaturall warmth of the maternall body which doth environ it as in the procreation of birds it seems to be where the semen of the Cock being cherished and stirred up by the ambient and incumbent warmth of the Hen is that which changes the egge and forms it into the shape of the bird from whence it came neither is it probable that in so small a coagulum or seed which came from the Cock the soul or essence of a Cock is resident Now whereas he tels us that by the blessing granted to all Creatures by the Creatour of them in these words Increase and multiply force was given to every soul to multiply another we confesse it to be true yet this not to be done by creating of the younger by the elder souls or by the giving of them new entities but rather by doing some other act out of which these forms should connaturally follow as materiall forms they do by a resultancy and immateriall by creation from a higher cause which creation is to follow and is due by a regular ordination and exigence of Nature and so they may truly be said to be given and communicated though not made by the force of generation And this is the true vis prolifica and not that other which Sennertus feignes unto himself
intellectuall Ergo the rationall soul and every nature intellectuall are to be perpetuall according to the exigence of nature I say according to the exigence of nature and not according to any act of grace because if we were not so then had not the efficient wrought consequently to himself and to his own ends Wherefore seeing the skilful architect of Nature knows how to work conformably to the rules of reason and to proportion his work unto the end for which he made it it followes hence that every rationall soul or substance intellectuall is by the order of nature made up immortall and incorruptible And this consequence is therefore good because it is essentiall to felicity to be perpetuall and to be an endlesse state of everlasting joy and therefore the subject in which this joy is to reside cannot be otherwise then naturally perpetuall Morcover seeing it is our soul which is directly per sc proportioned to felicity and capable thereof and our bodies onely indirectly and as it were by accident therefore immortality belongeth primarily to the soul and to the body onely by a sequel And so we argue here in conformity to that we should in other cases not unlike to this as for example upon a supposall made that the sun was created to enlighten the earth perpetually we should conclude from thence that is was framed of a nature and body incorruptible Now further that perpetuity is of the very essence of felicity or at the least an inseparable companion thereof Reason it self doth teach us our Divines do shew it plainly as by name Aquinas 1. p.q. 44. a. 3. and 1.2 q. 5. a. 4. l. 3. cont Gent. c. 62. Albertus seu Aegidius in compend l. 2. Valentia tom 2. d. 1. q. 5. p. 6. Lessins l. 3. de summ bono c. ult Estius 4. d. 49. as I perswade my self Paravicinus l. de Bono and all the rest forasmuch as of a certain true felicity ought to be devoid of care sorrow then seeing that which we possesse with delight we cannot relinquish without sorrow again what we love we cannot enjoy contentedly without our being assured not to lose it forasmuch as the onely dread or suspicion of being deprived thereof causes sorrow and is afflictive to the heart even as well though not as much as the losse it self And for this there is great reason because we do not desire alone that good which is felicity but besides to have it alwayes and to be assured of it and therefore we are unsatisfied and in pain unlesse we be really happy and withall assured so to continue Of so large a capacity is the spirit of man as that it resteth not in that alone which is present to it but besides with swift-wing'd thoughts and flying affections overtakes the future and thereafter as that same is apprehended to be good or bad pleasing or unpleasant draws from it either comfort or affliction But why is it that a man cannot be happy for a season as well as miserable for a season Jo. Pontius a late Philosopher and follower of Scotus is of opinion that he may for so he determineth q. 6. Ethic. con 3. n. 28. to whom I can by no means assent because as Cicero and Boetius do define Felicity is such a state and such a good as fully satiates and iâ— replenished with all that is justly desirable It is saith Cicero l. 3. Tuscul Secretis malis omnibus cumulata bonorum complexio And Boetius l. 3. consol pros 2. Status omnium bonorum aggregatione perfectus Wherefore it must consist either in all severall goods together or else in some one that conteins and countervails them all Wherefore though a man who is miserable now may be happy afterwards yet he who is happy now can never be miserable afterwards because happinesse that is in being now excludes misery both present and future but contrariwise misery that is now in being although it excludes a present happinesse yet not a happinesse to come The reason of which disparity is because a true and perfect happinesse includes essentially as we shewed before all good things of which number a secured perpetuity is one as on the contrary side every state of misery does not of necessity include all evill things or all the causes of infelicity and therefore not any perpetuity of them and for this reason it is that there is no repugnance why it may not have an end forasmuch as S. Dionysius defineth Bonum est ex integra causa malum ex quocunque defectu seeing that more is required to the constitution of felicity then to the destruction or abolition of it more to an efficiency then to a deficiency and so consequently although felicity cannot subsist without a perpetuity yet infelicity may contrarily to that which Pontius imagined And although felicity be the same for a day that it is for a yeare or for ever considering only the Physicall entity thereof yet considering the whole value and morall estimation thereof it is not so because an endlesse duration accruing to the possession of any good thing doth raise the value of it and the just esteem as contrariwise the same duration accruing to an evill doth make it infinitly worse and more afflictive for which cause a good which is perpetual known for such may satiate when being but for a time it cannot As for brute beasts whatsoever Mr. Hobbes conceives unto the contrary they have neither sense nor capacity of a present happinesse nor knowledge of a future And no other in former ages that I have heard of besides the false Prophet Mahomet ever asserted any happinesse to beasts whereas on the contrary part according to good Philosophy beasts neither have any happinesse nor do desire it Ignoti nulla cupido No Animal saith Aristotle l. 10. Eth. c. 8. apnd Andronicum 10. devoid of reason can be partaker of felicity because wholly destitute of the faculty contemplative The life of God is happy altogether and of man also so farre forth as he resembles him and participates of his vigorousnesse No other Animal is happy because not communicating of the hability to contemplate Such as be able to contemplate be capable of selicity and the more able to contemplate the more happy they may be and felicity extends it self as farre as that and this not by accident but per se Thus he The true reason then why beasts can have no happinesse is because they cannot possesse nor enjoy themselves for want of an understanding spirit within them and so properly speaking though they can be or not be yet can they not have any thing at all nor contrariwise lose any thing and so neither be rich nor poore happy nor miserable I argue again to the same intent Such as the operations of the soul be such is the nature of it and therefore all the proofs for immortality drawn from the natural operations do prove the soul
to have been arguments well steeled that should be of power sufficient to force theirway through the brazen wall of death and to rear up a huge pile or fabrick of another life after corruption and rottennesse of which life they could perceive few or no signes appearing in the world Wherefore although the arguments for immortality were very weighty yet they having such a strong barre laid to crosse their way no marvell if sundry of those Ancients should be brought unto a stand and the arguments as forcible as they were benummed and though not killed yet cast into a slumber For indeed because men then knew not how to dispose of souls after their separation from the body therefore they might have license granted them to speak doubtfully not knowing what to determine or to say nothing at all either pro or contra Some few we finde did contradict as by name Epicurus and Lucretius yet notwithstanding this maine obstacle the generall sense of the world was for the immortality and much more then when the other hemisphere of life came creditably to be discovered by the Messias for at that time those old reasons for immortality awaked and recovered their naturall vigour and vivacity and no wonder because this truth of immortality and that other of a life to come are mutuall inductives one unto the other and conspire so friendly as whosoever denies either of them doth disparage and weaken the other and again they give so great aides to each other as that the notice of another life made ready way for the entertainment of immortality and contrariwise the doctrine of immortality added reputation to the doctrine of the other life Moreover The incorruptible nature of the reasonable soul The state of felicity or infelicity in a life to come That God is the high Rectour of the Universe extends his providence over all and is a just and bountifull rewarder be all of them symbolizing verities and of a strict confederacy both offensive and defensive and so can hardly be overthrown I conclude this small labour as Pythagoras and Philolaus concluded their golden verses wherein the ancient doctrine is declared plainly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sic ubi deposito jam corpore libera coeli Templa penetrâris Deus immortalis omni Spretus ab illuvie terrarum eris integer avi And having once laid down our dust Through spacious aiery Lawnes we must And free in those large circles move Immortall like the Gods above 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Hierocles the Commentatour limiting and qualifying the higher expression of the verse by admonishing his reader that albeit Gods we must be yet not simply and absolutely as the words do sound but onely so farre forth as it is possible for a separated soul to be FINIS POST-SCRIPT OVer and above those reasons brought by the Authour of the precedent work all which do prove an immortalitie naturally belonging to the soul there want not divers others that do the same as amongst the rest for example this one viz. Such as the physick and food of the soul is for curing of the maladies thereof and for the strengthening and cherishing of it such is the nature of the soul it self But the physick and food of the soul is wholly immateriall and intellectuall that is to say Reasons and Truths eternall and incorruptible Therefore the nature of the soul is such I prove the minor proposition by experience for when the minde is troubled and out of peace and order by reason of some losse or misfortune then all the Materia medica of Dioscorides or of Horstius will not make a cure if so the body be not diseased or out of tune no physicians skill will be able to prevail we must not seek in such cases as these to Galen or Celsus or Paracelsus or Avicenna no druggists shop no physick-garden can furnish us with remedies against the raging sorrows or bewitching pleasures of the minde Non est medicamen in hortis Tollere nodosum nescit medicina dolorem A sick body physicians can sometimes cure but a sick mind never If so the body be then in health and that the infirmity do not proceed from thence Philosophy in that case must do the deed and not Medicina Philosophy saith Hierocles in Proem ad aureos versus Pythagora is the purger of humane life and the perfection the purger it is because it delivers it from all corruption contrary to reason and from the mortall body the perfecter because by the recovery of the true naturall constitution it reduceth it to a similitude with the divine which two things being to be done by vertue and verity by one of them it takes away the distempers of perturbations and by the other induces a God-like form into it Thus he conformably to whom determineth the wise Emperour Marcus Aurelius Antoninus l. 2. de vita sua § 15. when having numbred up a world of miseries and perplexities which haunt this life he addeth saying What is it then that must conduct us through all these Philosophia Also the great Aegyptian King Osmanduas as we find it recorded by Diodorus Siculus l. 1. p. 2. raised a goodly structure which had graven on it this inscription Medicatorium Animi 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say a store-house for curing of the minde and this same was not an Apothecaries-shop but a Library well furnished with books wherewith to charme mens cares and cure both the vain delights and bitter anguishes of the mind whose tranquillity is not procurable by medicines or receipts but contrariwise by the good documents for example of Epictetus of Seneca or Marcus Antoninus and where all Pagan doctrines and consolations be deficient by the instructions and good counsels to be found for us in the Holy Bible in Thomas de Kempis Peraldus Petrarch de remediis utrinsque fortunae and other such like The Recipes taken from hence will work when all the materiall compounds quintessences extractions and Elixirs can do nothing as not having vertue in them nor yet subtility to penetrate Now albeit the Ethnick Moralists can do much for pacifying our disordered affections and introducing a content yet do they not come home for though they be able to persuade a generous contempt of all transitory delights and fading glories and also how to draw on a kinde of sad or disconsolate way of resolution for a constant suffering of all adversities telling us that Quidquid erit superanda omnis fortuna ferendo est and read us many such melancholy lectures yet do not they assigne us any solid reasons whereupon to build content or whereby we might receive true satisfaction but contrariwise endeavour to feed us with shadows as namely by their telling us that vertue is an ample reward unto it self and again that the miseries and affliction of this present life are not evills really though we do think them so and with such empty phantasies as these would make us give our own experience the lie Moreover they sometimes speak faintly and fearfully of the life to come and the rewards thereof by means of which alone the inequalities and the great disorders of this can be made up and reconciled with providence On this sort spake Tacitus concerning the soul of his Father in law Julius Agricola then late deceased Si quis piorum manibus locus sit si ut Sapientibus placet non cum corporibus extinguuntur magnae animae placidè quiescas If saith he to the spirits of the pious there be any place remaining if as wise men are persuaded great souls be not extinguished with their bodies mayest thou sweetly rest To strong and pressing sorrows such feeble remedies did many of the Ethnicks bring but this sovereign medicine was left for Christianity to compose and shew unto the world by the belief of which those cold sweats with which many before had been sore afflicted were prevented wholly Another naturall track whereby to trace out immortality is the universall shamefastnesse of mankinde of the own nakednesse which passion is not found to be in brute beasts and the reason of the difference between them seems to be because beasts are corruptible and are so to be but men though now they also be corruptible yet it seems they were not so to be but onely by a misadventure or mischance for mans body because composed of severall disagreeing parcells is dissolvable and may be taken in sunder by the very same way that it was put together and therefore by the own right cannot lay any just claim to a perpetuity more then other composed bodies can yet it seems that by right of the being matched with a substance intellectuall it might pretend unto it and therefore holds it a disparagement and disgrace to be reputed mortall which without such a title it could not do and seeing nakednesse betrayes it to be a piece of corruption a condition so abject and inferiour it is ashamed to be seen forasmuch as sexes be the evident marks and tokens of mortality for why are sexes but to propagate and what need of propagation but onely to provide a substitute and none provides a successour or a substitute who is not himself to be turned out and to be gone of which mean and inferiour condition as not befitting men are ashamed and in relation to this grand imperfection we finde that men labour to conceale even as much and as long as possible their amorous affections as springing out of a root of corruption Thus we see that men once in high fortunes and cast down and grown into necessity are abashed at their poor and present state whenas others that were poor and low alwayes be not so And this I conceive to be the principal reason why men doe blush at businesses of corporeall love and are ashamed of their nakednesse although hitherto I do not know any that in particular have taken notice of it Now finally how immortality is consistent with the principles of Aristotle and also how it doth follow upon them is not my intention to examine as being a long and intricate piece of work and performed by others as namely by Javellus l. de indeficientia anima and of late by Card. Augustinus Oregius in a work peculiarly intended for that purpose
of it was therefore super fluous because we all shall quickly try whether it be so or no forasmuch as our Pilgrimage in this life cannot be of any large extent either in old or young To these men I returne no other answer but this one that if the soul be immort all that then indeed we shall experience whether it be so or no but if it be not we in that case shall experience nothing for though a man broad awake does feel himself to live yet one either dead or in a dead-sleep feels nothing at all and knows not what he is But betting that passe it cannot be denied but that the knowledge of a soul 's being incorruptible must needs be in this life a great consolation to any man and especially to such as be in great adversity for by that Truth he learns he may out-live his sorrows and attein at length unto a wished rest Besides by this doctrine he hath a caveat given for his good behaviour here and that for the satisfaction of any unreasonable and inordinate desire he venture not on any thing in this life that may be a hinderance of his felicity in the next It was not the Authours intention to enter here in the following Work into any disputes that were not for every English reader's understanding but contrary to his minde he was forced to stray from that purpose ever now and then for the satisfying of sundry flying objections to which condescension he was induced the easier because such disputes could not be a prejudice to any Reader in regard that those harder pieces might be passed over by him very easily and that besides all those there was enough wherewith to entertain him whereas on the other side all such digressions could not come unwelcome to others whose understandings had been acquainted exercised with speculations of greater difficulty and so both sorts of Readers receive contentment one sort by the easy the other both by the easy and the hard The Grand Prerogative of humane Nature CHAP. I. The Authours Design and the occasion of it AS bodies that are foul and do abound with peccant humours be subject to contagion and apt to be infected by each weak venome from the danger whereof cleaner and better tempered bodies live secure so in like manner minds that be corrupted and all such understandings as have lost the stayes and principles of truth are easily entrapped by every poor and childish sophistication and having once left their anchour-hold float afterwards up and down upon the waves of humane opinations are dasht against every rock of errour be it never so low or contemptible and like unto small weak flyes are caught and entangled not alwayes by the strongest and most artificially woven cobweb but by the very next though never so rude and slender This poor and sorrowfull manner of defaillance must needs be of all other the most hatefull not so much for the deadlinesse and venome as for the reproch which follows it for by it a man loseth not truth alone but withall his reputation and esteem it being a judgement very slenderly armed that with a wooden dart can be pierced through Experience verifies what I affirm for of late a sorry Animal better then so I cannot call him whose soul he himself thinks to be mortall and whose learning and capacity is so small as if indeed it were so mean as he imagineth it to be This sorry Animal having stept into the crowd of Scriblers in the defence of an old rotten heresy condemned and suffocated by consent of the wise almost at the hour of its birth hath met with some other dull souls so unhappy as to be perswaded by him and to think as meanly of themselves as the wisest of all ages have done of beasts to the dishonour and debasing of their own kind not elevating beasts to the degree of reason as sometimes Plutarch Sextus Empiricus and some others have sought to do though vainly and peradventure more for ostentation and argumentation sake then in any earnest but contrariwise reproachfully depressing man even as low as brute beasts by ascribing to them both a mortalitie alike The old and despicable heresy which this obscure authour now labours to resuscitate and to conjure up was raised in Arabia about the time of Origen and extinguished by his dispute immediately after its birth as Eusebius witnesseth l. 6. Hist c. 30. and according to the division of Rufinus 27. such as were infected with this errour were termed by Saint Augustine de Haeres c. 83. Arabici Of these Arabici and their doctrines concerning the soul see Abraham Ecchellensis in supplem Chronici Orientalis where an account is given of them by reason of the Province from whence the errour first arose so that such as now submit unto it may well be termed wilde Arabians which kind of people by reason of their rude condition and volatile natures were ever as ready to be cosened first by this heresie and after by the grand Impostour Mahomet as the Romanes prepared to betray their own liberty then when Tiberius cried shame upon them for it saying O homines ad servitutem paratos O men prepared for servitude Tacit. l. 3. Annal. who if he had lived in this age and noted the pronity of men now adaies to embrace every groundless fancy and to forgo any ancient and well-grounded truth would have changed a word or two and said O mentes ad errorem paratas O minds prepared for errour O minds corrupt enough for the receiving and applause of any folly of any errour be it never so absurd disadvantageous unto them or derogating from the dignity of humane nature O curvae in terris animae About the time of these Arabici Tatianus in an Oration of his yet extant seems to have held with them and afterwards some later Sectaries termed by reason of this their foolish errour Thnetopsychitae as Damascene relateth l. de Haeres Lastly one called Volkelius hath in our times blindly stumbled upon this same errour teaching it expresly and also labouring to prove it l. 5. c. 25. out of which puddle it is not unlikely this Adversary of ours did draw his unwholsome waters of pestiferous doctrine and went no further for them Upon the consideration of those errours that have of late infected us and betrayed humane nature I cannot think it a thing improbable but that the infernall spirit which hath suggested them and governed the hearts of men as a predominant planet in these Northern Provinces of Europe is that martiall Devil called Apocal. 9.11 Abaddon or Apollyon that is to say a Destroyer for as much as the designs of all such as have disturbed our peace of late dayes are generally for ruine and destruction For first what is the wealth and treasure of man but the dignity and value of his actions of this he hath long since been plundered His eyesight whereby his steps were to be guided was his knowledge but this
Hue migrant ex orbe suumque habitantia coelum Aethereos vivunt annos mundoque fruuntur Nor will we hide what ancient fame profest How milk that gusht from Juno's snowy breast In heaven that splendent path and circle drew From whence the name as erst the colour grew Or troops of unseen starres there joyn their light And with their mingled splendours shine more bright Or souls Heroick from their bodies freed And earthly parts attain their virtues meed This shining Orbe and from their lowly herse Ascending high enjoy the Universe And live Ethereall lives And again Jam capto potimur mundo nostrumque parentem Pars sua conspicimus genitique accedimus astris Nec dubium est habitare Deum sub pectore nostro In coelumque redire animas coeloque venire Of all the world we 're now possest And clear behold our Parent blest A part of him and from these warres Make our approches to the starres No doubt but under humane brest A sacred Deity doth rest And that our souls from heaven came And thither must return again Lo here how he doth signifie not onely the souls of men be divine and immortall but besides that they had not their originall from the earth or from any earthly agent with whom consenteth a Greek Philosopher Sallustius Emescenus in his book de Diis mundo lately published and vindicated from the moathes by Leo Allatius This Philosopher c. 8. teacheth on this sort First saith he let us know what the soul is The soul is that which makes things living or animate differ from the livelesse or inanimate Their difference consists in motion sense phantasie and intelligence The soul devoid of reason is a life that serves apparences and the senses but the rationall using reason bears rule over the sense and phantasie Indeed a soul destitute of reason follows the affections of the body for it desires and is angry without reason but a rationall according to the rule of reason contemnes the body and entring into combate with the soul irrationall if it get the better doth follow virtue if vanquisht declines to vice This of necessity must be immortall because it knows the Gods and no mortall thing can know that which is immortall besides it contemnes humane things as if they were belonging to some other person and being it self incorporeall is averse from things corporeall which bodies if they be fair and fresh it languisheth if old it begins to flourish Also every diligent soul makes use of the mind 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the soul is not generated by the body for how should any thing that wanteth reason generate that which hath it Thus Sallustius out of whose words we have first That the soul differs from the body 2. That the rationall from the irrationall or the sense 3. That the rationall is immortall and the reason why 4. That it is ingenerable and for what cause With this Greek Sallustius agrees the Roman who l. de bello Jugurth saieth Ingenii egregia facinora sicut anima immortalia sunt The egregious atchievements of the wit are like the soul immortall and by and by Omnia orta occidunt aucta senescunt animus incorruptus aeternus rector humani generis All things which rise do fall and being increased do wax old the minde is incorrupt and eternall c. From these Philosophers we descend to inquire after the disciples of Hippocrates being desirous to learn what their opinion was of which we are to make no small account they being the chief Mystae or Hierophantae of nature and men most knowing especially in the transmutation of bodies and not onely in the Anatomizing by dissection of such bodies as be organicall but also of others by the Art of Chymistry which teaches how to dissolve naturall compounds though not so farre as into their first elements yet into their secondary parts of composition True it is that divers of this excellent profession have been suspected of some sinister cogitations touching the immortall soul as namely that it was like that of beasts that is to say onely a thin and fading exhalation raised out of the pure substance of the bloud c. But I must do them right such of them as have been guilty of these thoughts or rather mean conceptions were not any of their Grandees no Apollines nor Aesculapii but contrariwise men of a farre meaner condition and onely of a midling size at the most such I say as by reason of their weaker understandings have lost themselves amongst the rubbish of materiall and grosser objects and there perished Whereas the diviner understandings have sped better as being able from materiall things to take a higher flight and by a curious inspection into the effects to finde out the first cause and mover and by the diviner operations of the soul to conclude the immortality thereof And of this eminent sort in our dayes Italy hath afforded us an Argenterius a Jul. Scal. Spain a Vallesius a Mercatus France a Fernelius a Laurentius Portugall a Zacutus Germany a Sennertus to say nothing of the great Aldrovandus Dodonaeus and others As then as Cicero observeth they were Minutuli little petty Philosophers who denied the souls immortality so also may we say that those Physicians who did the same were but an inferiour sort of men and half-witted in comparison of those other who did maintain it And as for Galen a most principall master in that profession he inclineth to the asserting of immortality for though sometimes he seem much perplexed not knowing what to determine then namely when he onely considered how the habilities of the minde held a constant proportion with the severall structures and temperatures of the body rising and falling with them yet at other times when he beheld the sublimer operations of the â—…de he durst not affirm them to be the effects of temperature nor of any corporeall principle and so being reduced into great straits confesses finally his own ignorance and that he knows not whence they do proceed as namely l. Quod anima sequatur temperaturam corporis again l. De usu spirat l. De causis pulsuum and l. 2. De causis symptom After all which l. 7. De Placitis Hippocratis he grows more resolute declaring plainly That the minde or originall of those operations is either some body Etherall or else a substance wholly incorporeall and finally l. de Conceptu his conclusion is delivered by him in these following words The soul saith he is a particle of that great soul of the Vniverse descending from the region celestiall is capable of science aspiring evermore by a way sorting to it self unto such a substance as hath affinity therewith and relinquishing things that are earthly soaring towards the highest partaking of divinity celestiall and often contemplating the heavenly mansion it gives an attendance to the Moderatour of the Vniverse Thus Galen as cited by Fernelius l. 2. de abditis rerum causis e. 4.
of yeares withdraw his preservative or conservative influence and why the same influence is not still as formerly to be continued or what exigence of nature there is or may be which shall make the difference I grant them that in compounded bodies a Philosophicall reason may be given of such an alteration because it may fall out that the natural impugnation of them by the a gency of second causes for their corruption or dissolution may require such a revolution of influxe Also the same may be allowed for the set time of desition of accidents permanent then whensoever they come to be deserted by the subjects which gave them their support which thing may happen to them either by the dissipation of those substances or else by the violence of some external agent that shall dislodge them In accidents that be fluent and by nature successive a reason also may be rendred why they should continually cease to be and besides at a certain terme or period exspire for altogether But yet why substances incompounded by nature permanent such as naturally cannot be corrupted nor perish by dissolution of which sort all Intelligences be all other substances intellectual as namely the rationall souls why they I say should have a fatall houre assigned them then require to be annihilated and forsaken by the sovereigne first cause these new Philosophers have not yet told us much lesse why it should be so without any requiring on their part or any naturall exigence for it Wherefore leaving these light phansies to the Authours of them we say with the Poet His ego nec metas rerum nec temporapono Imperium sine fine dedi c. To these no limits I intend But grant an Empire without end Of which point see more in our learned Carleton alià s Compton Without doubt that soul which hath withstood and survived the violent assaults of Death then when it was rent from the body and forced to surrender that beloved Fort there can be no suspicion that it should faile afterwards grow old with time decay and come to nothing and all this without any other force Besides if the soul be of a simple uncompounded nature as intellectuall substances be then can it not dissolve or which is all one perish by corruption Wherefore if the principles of nature whereby the soul is constituted admit of no desition nor ending by corruption there can be no reason given why these by exigence of nature should not require to be continually susteined in their being by conservation from the first cause and much lesse why at such or such a point of time or age they should require to be forsaken and by the withdrawing of the first causes benevolence to return unto their first nothing Wherefore I account these conceits of mortality and aiery possibilities of desition to be unworthy of any further examination but rather to be rejected as inventions of contentious and sophistick braines that love to entangle all right threads of discourse and to obscure those lights which lead men unto truth Having seen all this in favour of an immortality of the soul let us now behold as uniforme and favourable a consent of the ancient Sages for the divine originall of the same and not humane by procreation as our impious Authour labours to maintain Salluste the Greek Philosoper in the place before alleadged out of him speaks plainly and tells us it cannot be produced by generation Manilius derives its pedigree from heaven as we have heard out of him already which he elsewhere confirmeth saying Stetit unus in arcem Erectus capitis victorque ad sidera mitt it Sidereos oculos propiusque adspect at Olympum Inquiritque Jovem nec sola fronte Deorum Contentus manet coelum scrutatur in alto Cognatumque sequens corpus se quaerit in astris Cicero in Som. Scip. determineth saying His animus datus est ex sempiternis illis ignibê° quae sydera stellas vocatis quae rotundae globosae divinis animatae mentibus c. Marcus Antoninus seems to draw mens particular souls from the great and common soul of the world and the Gentiles in generall do acknowledge them to have a celestiall originall by the received fable of Prometheus who composing the bodies of men of clay or earthly substance is feigned to have stollen fire from heaven wherewith to animate and inform those bodies signifying thereby that the fires of earthly furnaces were not sufficient for so excellent a work The Philosophers of later times are for the major part of them against the production of souls by procreation amongst the rest Laevinus Lemnius l. 1. de Occultis nature Miraculis c. 11. speaks much after the manner of some Heathens before alleadged calling the soul scintillam divinae mentis which is a high expression yet not meaning as literally it seems that it is any particle of the Deïty or any substance increated but denoting onely the sublimity of it and that the originall is not from the earth With him agreeth the great speculatour Jeannes Argenterius med ad 1. Aphor. Hippoc. The famous Fernelius l. 1. de Abditis rerum causis c. 5 7. declaring that the cause of all forms in generall is from heaven Andrew Laurentius l. 1. Anat. c. 1. teacheth in expresse terms that the reasonable soul is not generated but created The same doctrine is confirmed by Zacutus Lusitanus one of the most famous able Physicians of this time who tom 1. oper l. 5. Medic. Princ. Histor hist 3. q. 3. doth in this behalf open himself very fully and giveth reasons also why the soul can be no other but a substance indeficient or immortal I omit the rehearsall of more votes and come to enquire after the cause why it cannot be generated like other forms In the head of this search I propound the doctrine of Cicero who l. 1. Tuscul hath laid the foundation of the truth Animorum inquit in terris nulla origio inveniri potest c. No origine saith he of souls can be found on earth for in the minde there is nothing that is mixt nothing concreate or bred from out the earth nothing which is humid or aëriall or fiery for in these natures there is nothing which hath the power of memory of minde or cogitation which may retaine things past or provide for the future and comprehend the present which alone be things divine neither is it ever to be found out how they might betide to man but from God onely Wherefore the nature and power of the minde is singular and different from these usuall and known natures For which cause whatsoever that is which apprehendeth which is wise and willeth and is vigorous that same is heavenly and divine and is of necessity eternall So discoursed Cicero and rightly also if I be not mistaken The pressing home of this argument will consist of three points or heads First from the nature of the soul it self which
the soul is not neither can man kill it and why I pray you but because it is immortall This objection can never be solved neither will all his trifling about the signification of the word Hell serve his turn for let Hell be what it will and where it will yet still it runs that the soul cannot be killed But what the true and formall signification of the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is we way find expresly declared by Eustathius in 1. Iliad and Anastasius Sinaita quaest 90. contrary to the dreams of this man and in particular that formally it does not signifie the Grave and if it did yet it could be no place for souls that remained unkilled and quick for it were a very cruell course to bury souls alive or to cast them quick into the grave Moreover that there is no Hell before the Resurrection is more than he hath proved or any other for him or else that none shall see God till then even in the mean time abstracting from the controversie that is agitated betwixt the Schismatick Greeks on the one side and the Orthodox Greeks and Latines on the other for the most schismaticall Greeks did not deny Hell or Heaven before the day of judgment but onely that till then neither all men nor devils were made happy in the one or tormented in the other for the Schismaticks themselves acknowledge that the Martyrs have the prerogative of the first Resurrection that is to say that they are happy before the Resurrection of their bodies and before the rest of the just or which in substance is all one they are admitted into Heaven and to the clear vision of God or again whether or no they will allow the vision of God to be the happinesse of the blessed yet felicity is Heaven wheresoever it is or in whatsoever good thing it consists and again eternall torments appointed for the reprobate be truely a Hell whether it be in the centre of the earth or else in some other region This day saith Christ unto the Thief thou shalt be with me in Paradise but not in body therefore in soul alone and therefore also his soul still lived after his bodies dying He answers that Christ himself was not in Paradise that day But this is a foppery for though Christs humanity was three nights and dayes in the lower parts of the earth yet his Divinity was that day every where and besides his soul was happy still and carried its Paradise along with it so that the good Thief might be with Christ that day and be in Paradise also as the sacred text doth assure us he was Christ said Luke 22. Father into thy hands I commend my spirit And Steven Acts 7. said Lord Jesus receive my spirit But if the spirit died there was nothing to be received He answers that his spirit was his life This shift was frivolous for his life was to be lost and destroyed and so was not commended into the hands of any Apoc. 6.10 11. I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God c. and they cried with a loud voice c. Therefore they were then extant and alive or else they could not have been seen nor cry But it is certain that one impiety cannot be defended without more and therefore as formerly he depraves the Scripture saying not with the Scripture 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The souls of the slain or of the men slain but with such miscreants as himself The slain souls and that they cried but like the bloud of Abel But if it were meant no otherwise then thus the bodies might then have cried also as well as the souls The Text saith it was the souls of the slain and if the souls also had been slain the Text would not have uttered it in that manner as now it doth for it were an impertinent manner of speaking to talke of the souls of the slain if the souls had been slain and dead as well as the bodies The other places as that of Ecclesiastes I have urged as also the other of the Apostle who desired to be dissolved that he might be with Christ and this later I have enforced so farre as I suppose it convinces and is unanswerable as the rest also are Behold here by example of this poore silly man how bold and sawcy ignorance is growne since the time that darknesse fell upon the face of the earth for is not this with Simon Magus Acts 13.10 of set purpose to pervert the right wayes of our Lord and to thrust men headlong into perdition But setting complaints aside which even when they are necessary be not gratefull let us examine the later remnants of this Authours follies and so leave him if it may be to repentance for them yet first take into consideration some other verityes which concerne this argument CHAP. VI. The rationall Soul of man ingenerable and incorruptible VVE have seen already that by the consent of the wisest of all times and nations the rationall soul is not subject to corruption and that it hath not a period of time assigned it beyond which it must not passe nor that it may simply leave to be and be annihilated as it were by the principles of nature it self they not requiring any longer conservation from the beneficence of the first cause but contrariwise to be deserted by it as a late Authour vainly and without any probability at all imagined much according to the old phantasie of the Stoicks who as Cicero l. 1. Tusc not without indignation and signes of derision rehearseth Vsuram nobis largiuntur tanquam cornicibus diù mansuros aiunt animos semper negant They allow us a date as they do to Crowes they grant our souls shall continue long but that for ever they deny it dealing in like manner with Souls as some did with Oracles whose silence they ascribe to no other cause than impotency of speaking any longer the spirit that fed them exspiring of it self as being wasted and consumed with age One would judge saith Cicero these men spake not of Oracles but of falsedges which by long keeping would grow unsavoury and stale Certainly these that judge thus of Souls and spirituall substances make an estimate of them as they would do of trees whose timber is of severall solidity and duration as if some of them were like Cedar wood or Oake which would last long others as Chesnut or Elme which be not of so long continuance others again like Ash or Maple which rotte within a while This is light Philosophy worthy of derision more than confutation and is a device not acknowledged by our Authours before alleadged who give no limitation to the life of souls but determine absolutely a perpetuity For my part before such time as I can assent to their Philosophy in this point I desire to be satisfied by them what reason they can shew why the first cause should at a certain date