Selected quad for the lemma: book_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
book_n	call_v	signify_v	word_n	1,913	5	4.1167	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A26976	Of the immortality of mans soul, and the nature of it and other spirits. Two discourses, one in a letter to an unknown doubter, the other in a reply to Dr. Henry Moore's Animadversions on a private letter to him, which he published in his second edition of Mr. Joseph Glanvil's Sadducismus triumphatus, or, History of apparitions by Richard Baxter.	Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.	1682 (1682)	Wing B1331; Wing B1333; ESTC R5878	76,803	192

Spirits should be a meer Virtus or Potentia Activa or Actus seemeth hard to believe And many words intimate that it is not your Judgment but that Substantiality signifieth not only the Modus of the Existence of the Actus Entitativus or Virtus but is the first half and fundamental Conceptus of a Spirit as Res speaking halfly its Entity In this I think we agree And now if this be so this very Conceptus of Fundamental Reality is but that same which Schibler and abundance others call Materia Metaphysica as different from Materia Physica and which Dr. Crakenthorpe many others take the general and most proper sense of Materia to contain therefore I say but that you should not take an equivocal word for univocal and lay so great a stress on an ambiguous name And I confess still all your names of Indiscerpibility Penetrability and Immateriality give me no scientifical notion of the true difference between the lowest Substantiality of a Spirit and the highest of Fire or Aether or Aristotelis quinta Essentia which you call Matter But I am fully satisfied of an Incomprehensible Purity of Substance 2. And of the true Form of a Soul and I find my self to need no more § 2. The Thomists take the Faculties of the Soul to be but Accidents as Mr. Pemble de Orig. Formar doth the Souls of Brutes to be but Qualities of Matter which I have elsewhere confuted And these must needs think that the Notion of 〈◊〉 is almost all of the Soul § 3. You add out of your Ethicks nulliu●● 〈◊〉 in●●mam nudamque essentiam cognosci posse sed Attributa tantum essentialia essentialesque habitudines We are not any way able to discover the very bare Essence or Substance of any thing Ans Yet you say before What can be more plain and It 's obvious to every observing Eye I contess I understand you not I know no essentia that is not intima And if by nudam you mean accidentibus nudatam we know no Substance so because there is none such created but we can abstract the Essence from the Accidents And if we know not the nudam essentiam of any accident we know nothing Essential Attributes and Habitudes are hard words If by the Attributes you mean the names or second signal notions we know the Essence of Letters Names Sentences but by them ut per signa we know the things themselves but scientia abstractiva non intuitivâ But this is true knowledge of the Essence signified If by the Attributes you mean any Accidents signified by those Names those are not essential Attributes But if you mean the Essence signified you say and unsay I am past doubt that we know the Essences of the immediate Objects of Sense and also of our own Intellectual Acts. But how There is scientia adaequata and inadaequata I am past doubt that nihil scitur scientiâ adaequatâ but only inadaequata And so stricte Res ipsa non scitur quia tot a ejus Essentia non scitur but aliquid rerum scitur and this is true of the Essence itself All our knowledge is partial and imperfect a half Science but it reacheth Essences Ad SECT VIII § 1. WHereas I think that only Vsage must expound the difference between the sense of Substance and Matter you deny it not but still mis-suppose that use taketh Matter but in one sense and never applieth it to spiritual Substance All this de nomine is to little purpose but I will recite some words of your own Ench. Metaph. c. 2. p. 8 9 10. Essentia quae nihil aliud est quam materia forma simul sumptae Duo principia illa Entis interna incomplexa quatenus ens est esse Materiam formam Logicam Et uniuscujusque rei quatenus ens est Essentia consistit ex Amplitudine Differentia quae amplitudinem ab amplitudine discriminat Nam quod res quaelibet aliquatenus Ampla sit ex eo patet tum quod id voci materiae valde consonum sit quae tanquam principium Entis quatenus Ens est consideratur tum etiam quod nullam aliam ideam menti nostrae ea afferre potest praeter hanc amplitudinem Nec revera quicquam ab animis nostris concipi omni amplitudine destitutum p. 10. Ex quibus omnibus tandem profluit praeclarum hoc consectarium quod omne Ens quatenus Ens est Quantum Quale Ens dicitut respectu formae legitimaeque conditionis materiae Quod omne Ens sit Quantum ex illius Materiâ intelligitur Then you blame them qui imaginantur quaedam Entia omni Materia carentia etiam hac Logica omnique ad materiam relatione p. 12. Omnis substantia ex eo quod Ens sit Materiam quandam vel Amplitudinem in se includat You see here how much more now you write against your self than me I never said that Spirits are material nor that every Substance hath some matter as you do § 2. But this is but Materia Logica Ans And those that I excuse do but call it Materia metaphysica And what 's the meaning of Materia Logica If Logick or Grammar use second Notions Names and Signs if they be not rebus aptata they are false What is it now but the aptitude of the Name that we speak of Yea you that make Spatium to be God calling it Locus internus really distinct from Bodies yet say that you prove by Apodectical Arguments that it is tribus dimensionibus praeditum And no doubt God is a Spirit so that you your self make a Spirit even the Father of Spirits to be Matter that hath Amplitude Quantity and the three dimensions And yet write a Book against one as asserting Spirits to be matter who never asserted it unless the word Matter signifie but Substance For I ascribe no more to it than your Amplitude if so much And yet I take the word Amplitude to signifie no form at all no more than Quantity or Dimensions or Indivisibility or Penetrability but to be the Consistent Dispositio Substantiae And you once hit on that true notion of the Conditio materiae as a necessary Conceptus Entis praeter ipsam materiam formam Metaphys c. 2. p. 10. Verum Ens dicitur respectu formae Legitimaeque Conditionis materiae Neque enim Galea ex tenui Papyro fabricata concinnata vera galea est sed potius ludicrum illius imitamentum And so elsewhere Yet now you make the 〈…〉 to be the Form 〈…〉 you make all Spirits to 〈…〉 some matter You 〈…〉 to be but Anima Mund●● 〈…〉 it either as a 〈…〉 Substance as we say 〈…〉 the Body or else as the forma 〈…〉 which is but Conceptus inadaequatu● 〈◊〉 Vitality is forma animae If in the first 〈◊〉 you that say that operation of the Soul proveth locality and ascribe Amplitude and Quantity to God and the three dimensions do seem to make

Indivisibility though perhaps th●se also may be useful Sir I crave your pardon of these curt expressions of the thoughts which you desired concerning the description of a Spirit If God make us truly holy we shall quickly know more to our satisfaction I rest Nov. 17. 1681. Your obliged Servant Rich. Baxter You make a Spirit to be Ens ideoque Unum Verum and that True denotes the answerableness of the thing to its proper Idea and implies right matter and form duly conjoined Q. Do you not here make Spirits material But no doubt whether to be called Material or Substantial the form is not an Adjoyned thing but the form of a simple essence is but an inadequate conceptus making no composition OF THE NATURE OF SPIRITS A Placid Collation with the Learned Dr Henry More upon his Answer to à private Letter published in the second Edition of Mr. Glanviles Sadduceismus Triumphatus Reverend Sir § 1. THat my hasty Letter should occasion you to benefit the World with more of your Information in so considerable a point as is the nature of a Spirit was more than I thought of or could hope for Had I imagined that you would have so far honoured it I should have so written it as might have drawn out more of your Instruction and made your Animadversions yet more edifying § 2. I desired you to have forborn the title of Psychopyrist for these Reasons 1. Because it tendeth plainly to misinform the Reader as if I held that Souls or Spirits are Fire whereas in my Books and Letters I still say otherwise And that they may be so called not formaliter or univoce but only eminenter and analogice And when a name on the Title page through the whole and a supposition in much of your arguing implyeth that I hold what I renounce it may wrong your Reader 's understanding though I am below the capacity of being wronged 2. And the fastning of Nick-names on one another in Controversies of Religion hath so much caused Schisms and other mischiefs that I confess I the less like it about Philosophy But I must submit § 3. My understanding is grown so suspicious of ambiguity in almost all words that I must confess that what you say also against those whom you call Holenmerians and Nullibists satisfieth me not unless many terms used in the controversies were farther explained than I find them here or in your Metaphysicks your Books against Judge Hale I have not seen But I may take it for granted that you know that they who use the saying of Tota in toto tota in qualibet parte ordinarily tell us 1. That they use the word Tota relatively and improperly seeing that which hath no parts is improperly called Tota 2. That they mean it but negatively viz. That the Soul is not in the parts of the body per partes part in one part and part in another but indivisibly And one would think this should suit with your own hypothesis And when I better know in what sense Locus is used I shall be fitter to enquire whether Spirits be in loco When some take it for a circumscribing body and some for a subjective body on which it operateth and some for a meer room possest in vacuo and some for God himself in whom are all things the name of a Nullibist is as ambiguous to me § 4. You tell your Reader that All created Spirits are Souls in all probability and actuate some Matter or other Sir Philosophers freedom is usually taken easilyer than Divines I will therefore presume that our mutual freedom shall not be in the least distastful to either of us And so I must tell you that I have long taken it for a matter of very great use to distinguish unknown things from known and to bridle my understanding from presuming to enquire into unrevealed things And I take that holdness of Philosophers to have had a great hand in corrupting Divinity Secret things are for God and things revealed for us and our Children saith Moses And when I presume most I do but most lose my self and misuse my understanding nothing is good for that which it was not made for Our understandings as our Eyes are made only for things revealed In many of your Books I take this to be an excess And I have oft wondred at your Friend and sometime mine Mr. Glanvile that after his Scepsis scientifica he could talk and write of doubtful things with that strange degree of confidence and censuring of Dissenters as he did I am accused of overdoing and curiosity my self But I endeavour to confine my enquiries to things revealed This premised I say undoubtedly it is utterly unrevealed either as to any certainty or probability that all Spirits are Souls and actuate Matter Alass how should we come to know it Neither Nature nor Scripture tells it us But 1. If this be so the difference between you and the Psychopyrists must be opened as it is much like that of Mammertus and Faustus whether the Soul or a Spirit have Matter by composition or simply uncompounded for a body you suppose it still to have Is it separable from a Body or not If it be why should you think that it is never separated If it can subsist without a Body who can say that it doth not If it cannot but be inseparable it is a strange composition that God cannot dissolve And if it perish upon the dissolution then it was but an Accident of the body and not a compounding Substance Dr. Glissons and Campanella's way is as probable as this And I marvel that when you have dealt with so many sorts of Dessenters you meddle not with so subtile a piece as that old Doctor 's de Vita Naturae I have talkt with divers high pretenders to Philosophy here of the new strain and askt them their judgment of Dr. Glissons Book and I found that none of them understood it but neglected it as too hard for them and yet contemned it He supposeth all Matter to be animated without composition the Matter and Form being but conceptus inadequati of an uncompounded being however that Matter as such be divisible into atomes every atome still being uncompounded living Matter You suppose all Spirit to be in Matter but by way of composition as distinct substances I go the middle way and suppose that substance simple is Active or Passive that the three Passive Elements Earth Water and Air are animated only by composition or operation of the active But that the active substances have no composition but intellectual but Substance and Form are conceptus ejusdem inadequati So that what Dr. Glisson saith of every clod and stone I say only of Spirits of fire I shall speak after 2. And do you think that the Soul carrieth a body out of the body inseparable with it or only that it receiveth a new body when it passeth out of the old If the latter is there any instant of time

Ignis formaliter I have often said that I think Substances differ so gradually that the lower ●ath still some Analogy to the higher And I still say that Natura Mentalis sensitiva are not Ignis formaliter But whether the Natura Vegetativa be any other than ipse ignis I know not but think it is no other Do you that better know its consistence call it Spirit or not as you please Ad Sect. 22. 23 24 25 26 27. § 1. YOU puzzle me more and more Before you said Fire is nothing but motion of sulphureous particles and only in Candles Fire-sticks hot Irons c. And yet now The vehicles of Angels are Igneous or aethereal Is an Angel only in a Candle or hot Iron c. Is motion yea motion of sulphureous particles their vehicle If they are Animals and have bodies as you think they are such as deserve a nobler Character § 2. I tell you still the Greek Fathers I think as well as I call'd mental and sensitive Spirits Ignis but Analogically which you call Symbolically If that satisfy you what have you all this while disputed against And if Fire be the vehicle of Angels it is a substance And when you se● the Motion Light and feel the heat d● you think what ever is the Recipient moved Matter that the invisible Mover is not present and contiguous It is that immediate mover which I call Fire and am fully satisfied doth it not by Motion only but the exerting of its triple Virtue § 3. You confess Sect. 24. the common use of the name of Fire applied to Souls by the old Philosophers and still you say it was but Symbolically and did they find no Reason to make Fire a Symbol rather than Earth or Water When I still tell you that it is only analogically that Souls may be called Fire did you fairly to pretend the contrary § 4. Yea Sect. 25. You are at it again saying that I seem to conceive the Fathers to speak not symbolically but properly Ans where and when did I say any such thing will you tell the world that a Man holds that which he never said and hath oft written against and write a Book against him on such a supposition and at last have nothing to say but Putarem I use not the words Symbolical and Proper they are not precise enough for this subject I said more when I said that Souls and Angels are called fire only eminenter analogice but not formaliter and forma dat nomen But you are offended that I say those Greek Fathers spake tolerably and informingly and you say It was mischievously inducing men to believe the Soul mortal For Light may be blown out and hot Iron cooled Ans Alas What dry Philosophy is this of Fire Is any thing annihilated when the Candle goeth out Was there not an invisible active principle moving your supposed sulphureous particles which was as immediate an Agent as your Soul is of Sensation or Intellection which remaineth the same But indeed it is Air and not Sulphur which is the first and nearest Recipient of the illuminating Act and is Conjux Ignis I suppose you 'l say The Spirit of the World doth this Ans Call it by what name you will It is a pure active Substance whose form is the Virtus motiva illuminativa calefactiva I think the same which when it operateth on due seminal matter is Vegetative But the World hath Spiritual Natures more noble than this viz. sensitive and intellective § 5. Ad Sect. 26. You say against the Fathers When we enquire into the distinct Nature of things we must bid adieu to Metaphors Ans When I am ignorant of my own Ignorance I will hear you I am far from dreaming that I have one formal Conception of God but only Analogical Only that of Ens is disputed between the Thomists and Scotists whether it be Univocal de Deo Creaturis And here Analogical is but Metaphorical And yet it is not nothing to see as in a Glass enigmatically And when I can perceive that your two hard words do not only signifie more than negatively and modally or qualitatively but also give us an Idea of a Spirit which hath nothing Metaphorical but all formal I shall magnifie them more than I do § 6. You say we must search out the adequate defi●ition Ans That adequate is a word too big for me I dare say that you have not an adequate knowledg of any thing in the World not of one Fly or Flea or Pile of Grass And can you make adequate Definitions of Angels and all Spirits Even who before twice told us that we know not the intimate essence of things but the Attributes Indeed I perceive your Attributes are such as will not notifie Essences I ask my own experience whether Indiscerpible is a word that giveth any Idea of the Essence save negative that it cannot be torn into pieces and modal and I find no other that it maketh on my Mind The common note of Matter is that it hath partes extra partes and I think you thus make Spirits material You make them parts of the compound Animal and you deny them to be toti in toto and you give them locality amplitude quantity And if so though they be indiscerpible they have continued parts intelligible and that part of the Soul is not in one hand which is in the other and as partes Animalis they are actually separable from the matter The Spiritus Mundi you suppose to be a great continued amplitude or extended Substance And Atomes are in some Elements a closely continued Substance You seem to make all Substance to be Atomes spiritual atomes and material atomes And I am not sure that God cannot make material atomes so continued a matter as that no Creature can discerp them is it any contradiction and I doubt not but Souls and Angels are so indivisible as that their Nature tendeth to continued undivided Unity and no Creature can divide them But that God cannot do it I cannot say Even of the Souls Mortality not only Arnobius but many other Christian Writers maintain that it is mortal naturâ but immortal ex dono which is unfitly spoken but well meant that is God hath made their Natures such as have no tendency in themselves to a Dissolution or Destruction but not such as he cannot dissolve or destroy Yea I doubt not but without a continued Divine Sustentation all the World would in a moment be annihilated Preservation being a continued sort of Creation Your owning nothing in Fire but what 's visible I have spoke to Ad SECT XXVIII § 1. THat Spirits are each Ens unum per se so as to have no divided parts or such as tend to dissolution I doubt not that they are each one by the continued uniting Influx of that God who continueth their Being and so far per aliud is past doubt You here make Metaphysical Monades

the truly pious Conclusion in your 34. Sect. I not only agree with you but in my own name and many others humbly tender you unfeigned Thanks § 3. And because I would not seem more distant from you than I am I shall first tell you that on these Subjects your thoughts and mine have been so long working to the same ends much in the same way that 1655. your Book against Atheism and my popular discourses of the unreasonableness of Infidelity coming out together we both used many of the same Histories of Apparitions Witches c. for Confirmation and in that Book of yours you have these following words which if they are not as I think they are not mischievous it 's like mine of the same importance are not so nor are more so proved by you than your own Antid Li. 1. p. 17. The parts of a Spirit can be no more separated though they be dilated than you can cut off the Rays of the Sun by a pair of Scissars made of pellucide Chrystal Appen p. 304. Suppose a point of Light from which rayes out a luminous Orb according to the known Principles of Optiques This Orb of Light doth very much resemble the Nature of a Spirit which is diffused and extended and yet indivisible For wee 'l suppose in this Spirit the Center of Life to be indivisible and yet to diffuse itself by a kind of circumscribed Omnipotency as the point of Light is discernible in every point of the luminous Sphere And yet supposing that central lucid point indivisible there is nothing divisible in all that Sphere of Light For it is ridiculous to think of any Engine or Art whatsoever to separate the luminous Raies from the shining Center and keep them apart by themselves as any man will acknowledge that does but consider the thing we speak of Now there is no difficulty to imagine such an Orb as this as Substance as well as a Quality And indeed this Sphere of Light itself it not inhering in any Subject in the place it occupieth looks far more like a Substance than any Accident And what we fanry unadvisedly to befal Light and Colours that any point of them will thus ray orbicularly is more rationally to be admitted in spiritual Substances whose central Essence spreads out into a secondary Substance as the luminous Rays are conceived to shoot out from a lucid point From whence we are enabled to return an Answer to the greatest difficulty in the foregoing Objection viz. That the conceived parts in a Spirit have an inseparable dependance on the central Essence from which they flow and in which they are radically contained and therefore though there be an extension of this whole substantial power yet one part is not separable or discerpible from another but the entire Substance as well secondary as primary or central is indivisible But let us again cast our Eyes on this lucid point and radiant Orb we have made use of It is manifest that those Raies that are hindered from shooting out so far as they would need not lose their Virtue or Being but only be reflected back toward their shining Center and the Obstacle being removed they may shoot out to their full length again so that there is no Generation of a new Ray. And p. 357. When I speak of Indivisibility that imagination create not new troubles to her self I mean not such an Indivisibility as is fancied in a Mathematical point but as we conceive in a Sphere of Light made from one lucid point or radiant Center For that Sphere or Orb of Light though it be in some sense extended yet it is truly indivisible supposing the Center such For there is no means imaginable to discerpe or separate any one Ray of this Orb and keep it apart by itself disjoined from the Center Now a little to invert the Property of this luminous Orb when we would apply it to a Soul or Spirit As there can be no alteration in the radiant Center but therewith it is necessarily in every part of the Orb so there is also that Vnity and Indivisibility of the exterior parts if I may so call them of a Spirit or Soul with their inmost Center that if any of them be affected the Center of Life is thereby also necessarily affected and these exteriour parts of the Soul being affected by the parts of the Object with such Circumstances as they are in the inward Center receives all so circumstantiated that it hath necessarily the entire and unconfused Images of things without though they be contrived into so small a compass and are in the very Center of this spiritual substance This Symbolical Representation I used before and I cannot excogitate any thing that will better set off the nature of a Spirit c. Here is the same and more than I have said unless you think Light here to be no Fire but take Light for a Substance and Fire but for Motion which if you say I am willing to believe you will recal And that a Spirit is in its Contraction impenetrable let your words testifie p. 312. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I define thus A Power in a Spirit of offering so near to a corporeal Emanation from the Center of Life that it will so perfectly fill the Receptivity of Matter into which it has penetrated that it is very difficult or impossible for any other Spirit to possess the same and of hereby becoming so firmly and closely united to a Body as both to actuate and be acted upon to affect and be affected thereby So here is a Spirit when it hath filled a Body that can no more be penetrated by another Spirit or Body and so in this contracted state is impenetrable So that this is but bringing diffused parts closer together and then no other can be in the same place And is this the necessary Form of a Spirit But may not this extension and Indivisibili●y also be omitted as too hard without all the mischief mentioned by you and a truer notifying Form found out Let us hear your self p. 359. To prevent all such Cavils we shall omit the Spinosities of the Extension or Indivisibility of a Soul or Spirit and conclude briefly thus That the manifold Contradictions and Repugnancies we find in the nature of matter to be able to either think or spontaneously to move itself do well assure us that these operations belong not to it but to some other substance Wherefore we finding those operations in us it is manifest that we have in us an immaterial Being really distinct from the Body which we ordinarily call a Soul The speculation of whose bare Essence though it may well puzzle us yet those properties that we find incompetible to a Body do sufficiently inform us of the different Nature thereof for it is plain she is a Substance indued with the power of Cogitation that is of perceiving and thinking of Objects as also of penetrating and spontaneously moving of a