Linguistic DNA - Concept Modelling Demonstrator

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	body_n	good_a	soul_n	2,711	5	5.0049	4	true

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A49843	Observations upon a sermon intituled, A confutation of atheism from the faculties of the soul, alias̀, Matter and motion cannot think preached April 4, 1692 : by way of refutation.	Layton, Henry, 1622-1705.	1692 (1692)	Wing L756; ESTC R39115	14,582	19

World daily communicates for supplying the daily Decays of them I conceive Matter thus constituted impregnated irrigated and enlivened may by Divine Power be made cogitative That the Insects work according to Rules of Art and Science I know none who can observe them and deny it that Brutes have their Senses Affections Passions Appetites and Motions all Men do grant but the most blind and wilful among the Cartesians also that they have Phansie Memory and Perceivances acted in and by their Brains and Dr. Willis dict lib. p. 59. says in Hominibus Brutis eadem prorsus est conformatio organorum animalium And the Evidences that Cogitation and all other rational Acts in Men depend upon the Brain and are performed in it and by it seem to me so clear and undeniable as that joined to the rest it may pass for a strong Proof that the Brain of Man is cogitative Matter or very like it And as to his phrasing it that Omnipotence it self cannot make cogitative Body there may be applied a Saying of Dr. Willis p. 5. such Men it seems do think quod Deus nihil amplius fabricare valeat quam quod homo possit concipere aut effingere Well but our Preacher says this cannot be done because of the Incapacity of the Subject to this I answer that Aaron's Rod laid upon the Tabernacle was dry Wood and seemed to be under an incapacity of bearing Fruit and yet in the morning by Divine Power it had budded and brought forth Blossoms and yielded Almonds the Red Sea stood like Walls and Jordan staid its Waters from running downwards the Chaldean Fire forbore to burn God's Servants or so much as to singe their Cloths all which are Acts beyond the natural Capacities of the Agents of them and so was the multiplying of the Loaves and Fishes under the Gospel and what will our Preacher say to Matth. 19.24 Hath a Camel the Capacity of going through the Eye of a needle Christ says with Men this is impossible but not with God for with him all things are possible whence it seems possible with him to make cogitative Body notwithstanding our Preachers assurance to the contrary That the cogitative Power very much depends upon the good Disposition Soundness and Temperament of the Brain is a thing so well known as it seems to need very little confirmation David Psal 146.3 says When the breath of man goeth forth he shall turn again to his earth and then all his thoughts perish the new Translation reads Mans breath goeth forth he returns to his earth and that very day his thoughts perish The perishing of his Thoughts may be expounded his Intentions or Designs but more literally and fully it seems to intend the Man's power and faculty of Thinking for the Man dead can think no more But what is it that dies our Preacher will deny that his Soul dies and yet by Death the Man's Faculty of Thinking is certainly destroyed viz. by Death of the Body and the Parts and Organs of it ergo the Body or some Organs of it are materia cogitativa And the same may be further proved ex principiis for during Childhood and whilst the cogitative Parts and Organs are immature we think like Children but grown to maturity we put away childish Thoughts or modes of Thinking and yet then if the Brain happen to be clouded with Fumes from the Spleen or other Distempers or even by those from Wine or Strong-drink the Man cannot think orderly or rationally and in phrenetick Distempers Mens Thoughts rave and rove without Order or any Coherence or Connexion at all in Diseases where the Head is stupified as Apoplexies the Man becomes temporally incapable of any Thoughts at all From all which I collect that the Particles of Blood inflamed ascending from the Heart unto the Head are there further rarified and made lucid irradiating the Brain and the Ventricles thereof and that to these Spirits and Organs God hath imparted a discerning Faculty or Power and that when these Organs are sound and perfect and the flaming Particles clear bright and lucid they work to a perfection of degrees in the Minds Reason and Thoughts of Men unto which God adds when he pleases afflatum divini numinis and that accumulates an excellency of Perfection to Man and in him of thinking inventing and discerning P. 31. Our Preacher says he hath sufficiently shewn that Sense and Perception can never be the product of any kind of Matter or Motion And if this be true let our Readers make themselves the Judges Well but says he if this cannot be corporeal it must come from an incorporeal Substance within us If he will take a material Spirit for an incorporeal Substance we are agreed but if he will have this incorporeal Substance to be an immaterial intelligent angelical Spirit I answer he hath not proved the necessity of its being so nor that the thing is so nay here he confesses we cannot conceive the manner of our Souls Action and Passion nor what hold it can lay on the Body when it voluntarily moves it this is what we cannot conceive of such a Soul But I desire him to tell us what he doth conceive or know concerning such a Soul that he will evince to Reason quod sit quid sit unde oritur quando ingreditur ubi residet quomodo operatur an separatim subsistit quo avolat deficiente corpore If he can teach scientifically concerning these Points his word will be better taken in many other things and yet even then I could hardly credit his next Assertion viz. tho we cannot conceive the Soul nor its Actings yet we are as certain of them as of any Mathematical Truth whatsoever which I both can conceive and may be easily demonstrated to me The Truth and Reasonableness of this Assertion shall be left to those who are at leisure to consider of them P. 32. He confesses his Ignorance in causes of Mens Pleasure Pain Sleep Activity he says this Knowledge exceeds Man's narrow Faculties and is out of the reach of our Discovery he discerns excellent Final Causes of the vital Conjunction of Body and Soul but the Instrumental he knows not nor how they are united or tied together he resolves all into God's good Pleasure but he shews us no Evidence that it is or ever was his Pleasure to inform Mankind by an Immaterial Intelligent Spirit which is capable of living in a State of Separation from the Body And if Corporeal Powers be confessedly too hard for him it may seem strange he should attempt upon the Disquisition concerning the Being and Operations of an Immaterial Soul in Man without so much as offering to make any positive proof of the Thing from the Grounds either of Reason or Scripture I am not able to credit his bare Word for it nor his negative proof that it must be so because he thinks it cannot be otherwise These persuasions seem of small force with those who think the

OBSERVATIONS upon a Sermon Intituled A Confutation of Atheism from the Faculties of the Soul aliÃ s Matter and Motion cannot think Preached April 4. 1692. By way of REFUTATION THE whole Sermon is comprehended in 39 pages the first 12 of which or to page 12 are employed as an Introduction or Apparatus to his Text and Design and page 12 the Preacher says he intends to prove that the Life Motion Essence and Nature of Man is derived from God and may direct Men to the knowledge of him but all this need not be proved to Men of my opinion who do willingly agree the Truth of his Assertion P. 13. he says he will prove That there is an Immaterial Substance in Man which we call Soul and Spirit essentially distinct from our Bodies And this if he shall substantially perform it shall pass for heroic and above all ordinary power but presently he seeks to avoid and shift off his performance of Proving by saying that the thing is evident in it self But this I do utterly deny and think the contrary more evident viz. That the humane Soul is a material Spirit generated growing and falling with the Body and rising again with it at the sound of the voice of the Archangel and the trump of God And upon this Difference between our Positions the state of our present Controversie will depend I have denied this his Assertion That the thing is self-evident Why but says he There is something in Man's Composition that thinks deliberates consents and actuates all humane Sensations and Powers these Activities cannot come from nothing therefore they come from an immaterial Soul or Spirit in Man To this I answer his Consequence is not good viz. These Powers come from something ergo from an Immaterial Spirit for they may come from a Material Spirit In proof whereof I argue Ã simili The Plants live grow flourish and fructifie by a Material Spirit The Insects act admirably by a like Spirit The Brutes act sensibly and knowingly by a like Spirit ergo Man may perform all his natural Functions by the like means of a Material Spirit inspiring and acting the proper Organs which God hath made apt for such purposes We see in a Musical Organ every Pipe hath its proper Sound and Function and the same Breath acts them all and therein appears a great Effect and Power of Matter and Motion rightly fabricated and acted by the hand of Artists and what then may not God do with them and by them when he pleaseth I take a second Exception to his saying there is something in Man's Composition that thinks argues c. He says there is no Man so sceptical as to deny this or to doubt of it but his Mistake is great in it for I do believe that there is not any particular thing in Man's composition that thinks argues c. but that it is the Man himself viz. the whole Composition of Soul and Body by a divine and admirable Contexture united which thinks argues and doth all other natural things which God hath given him a Power and Propensity to do It is not the Preacher's something in Man that doth all those things which he mentions but it is the Man that doth them not that something which he will surmise to be the Soul for that cannot act without the bodily Organs not think without the Brain nor remember without the Organ of Memory any more than see without an Eye or speak without a Tongue or generate without a proper Organ for that purpose And this needs be no news to our Preacher for his Master Aristotle in his treatise of the Soul lib. 2. cap. 5. counts it a great impropriety of speaking to say that the Soul is sorrowful fearful sensitive or rational angry or the like and that one may say as properly that the Soul weaves or builds and that it is not proper to say the Soul learns or reasons but the Man doth so viz. the whole Compositum of Soul and Body doth them further he saith there To love hate think or use reason are not properly Affections or Actions of the Soul but of him who hath the Soul In his 1. cap. dicti Lib. he questions whether the Soul have any Affections or Actions not communicated to the Compositum or Person but kept as peculiar to itself Finally he says It seems to him that the Soul hath neither Desire Anger Fear c. nor can do or suffer by them without the Body nor that it can so much as perceive or be sensible without it the very Intellect he thinks either is the Phansie or cannot be acted without it and then cannot the Soul use it without help of the bodily Organs Dicaearchus maintains his Master's doctrine in this point and Pliny in his Natural History lib. 7. cap. 55. says the like Shew if you can says he what is the Substance and Body of the Soul as it were what kind of Matter is it apart from the Body where lieth the Cogitation which she hath how doth she see or hear what toucheth she nay what one thing doth she how is she employed or if there be none of all this in her what good can be to her without them surely these are but Imaginations of Men who fain would live always And there is the like Foolery in preserving of Mens Dead Bodies yea such is the Folly and Vanity of Men that they think the human Soul extends naturally to future Ages and that Ghosts separated from their Bodies have Sense and thereupon render Men them honour and worship making a God of him who is not so much as a Man as if the manner of Mens Breathing differ'd from that of other Creatures These were all persons eminently learn'd and yet they denied that Man's Powers were acted by any particular or specifical something that was in him and affirmed as I do that all are Actions of the Compositum or the Man a Contexture of Soul and Body and by no means can our Preacher's something perform such Offices without the divine and admirable Contexture of Soul and Body for that the one of these without the other can do no such things nor can probably do or suffer anything at all P. 14. Our Preacher says Such Powers and Actions must have an Efficient Cause and I grant it and assign the Contexture of Soul and Body in Man as the Efficient and proper Cause of all such Actions Then he says that Cogitation Volition and Sensation are neither inherent in Matter as such nor acquirable to Matter by any Motion or Modification of it To this I answer that Sensation and Perception are inherent in Man and Beast and to each of them belonging as they are divine Compositions or rather Contextures of Soul and Body Gen. 2.7 says God formed Man of the dust of the ground so c. 3. v. 19. God says to Man out of the ground wast thou taken for dust thou art and to dust shalt thou return We know

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