the Name of Soul is vain And that we only well mix'd Bodies are In Judgment of her Substance thus they vary And vary thus in Judgment of her Seat For some her Chair up to the Brain do carry Some sink it down into the Stomach's Heat Some place it in the Root of Life the Heart Some in the Liver Fountain of the Veins Some say She 's all in all and all in ev'ry part Some say she 's not contain'd but all contains Thus these great Clerks their little Wisdom show While with their Doctrines they at Hazard play Tossing their light Opinions to and fro To mock the Lewd as learn'd in This as They. For no craz'd Brain could ever yet propound Touching the Soul so vain and fond a Thought But some among these Masters have been found Which in their Schools the self-same thing have taught God only wise to punish Pride of Wit Among Men's Wits hath this Confusion wrought As the proud Tow'r whose Points the Clouds did hit By Tongues Confusion was to ruin brought But Thou which didst Man 's Soul of Nothing make And when to Nothing it was fall'n again To make it new the Form of Man didst take And God with God becam'st a Man with Men. Thou that hast fashion'd twice this Soul of ours So that she is by double Title thine Thou only know'st her Nature and her Pow'rs Her subtile Form thou only canst define To judge her self she must her self transcend As greater Circles comprehend the less But she wants Pow'r her own Pow'rs to extend As fetter'd Men cannot their Strength express But thou bright Morning-Star thou Rising Sun Which in these latter Times hast brought to Light Those Mysteries that since the World begun Lay hid in Darkness and Eternal Night Thou like the Sun dost with an equal Ray Into the Palace and the Cottage shine And shew'st the Soul both to the Clerk and Lay By the clear Lamp of th' Oracle divine This Lamp through all the Regions of my Brain Where my Soul sits doth spread such Beams of Grace As now methinks I do distinguish plain Each subtile Line of her Immortal Face The Soul a Substance and a Spirit is Which God himself doth in the Body make Which makes the Man for every Man from this The Nature of a Man and Name doth take And though this Spirit be to th' Body knit As an apt Means her Pow'rs to exercise Which are Life Motion Sense and Will and Wit Yet she survives although the Body dies SECT I. That the Soul is a Thing subsisting by its self and has proper Operations without the Body SHE is a Substance and a real Thing 1. Which hath its self an actual working Might 2. Which neither from the Senses Power doth spring 3. Nor from the Body's Humours temper'd right She is a Vine which doth no propping need To make her spread her self or spring upright She is a Star whose Beams do not proceed From any Sun but from a Native Light For when she sorts Things present with Things past And thereby Things to come doth oft fore-see When she doth doubt at first and chuse at last These Acts her Own without her Body be When of the Dew which th' Eye and Ear do take From Flow'rs abroad and bring into the Brain She doth within both Wax and Honey make This Work is her's this is her proper Pain When she from sundry Acts one Skill doth draw Gath'ring from divers Fights one Art of War From many Cases like one Rule of Law These her Collections not the Senses are When in th' Effects she doth the Causes know And seeing the Stream thinks where the Spring doth rise And seeing the Branch conceives the Root below These things she views without the Body's Eyes When she without a Pegasus doth fly Swifter than Lightning's Fire from East to West About the Centre and above the Sky She travels then although the Body rest When all her Works she formeth first within Proportions them and sees their perfect End E'er she in Act doth any Part begin What Instruments doth then the Body lend When without Hands she doth thus Castles build Sees without Eyes and without Feet doth run When she digests the World yet is not fill'd By her own Pow'rs these Miracles are done When she defines argues divides compounds Considers Virtue Vice and general Things And marrying divers Principles and Grounds Out of their Match a true Conclusion brings These Actions in her Closet all alone Retir'd within her self she doth fulfil Use of her Body's Organs she hath none When she doth use the Pow'rs of Wit and Will Yet in the Body's Prison so she lies As through the Body's Windows she must look Her divers Powers of Sense to exercise By gath'ring Notes out of the World 's great Book Nor can her self discourse or judge of ought But what the Sense collects and home doth bring And yet the Pow'rs of her discoursing Thought From these Collections is a diverse Thing For though our Eyes can nought but Colours see Yet Colours give them not their Pow'r of Sight So though these Fruits of Sense her Objects be Yet she discerns them by her proper Light The Workman on his Stuff his Skill doth show And yet the Stuff gives not the Man his Skill Kings their Affairs do by their Servants know But order them by their own Royal Will So though this cunning Mistress and this Queen Doth as her Instruments the Senses use To know all things that are felt heard or seen Yet she her self doth only judge and chuse Ev'n as a prudent Emperor that reigns By Sovereign Title over sundry Lands Borrows in mean Affairs his Subjects Pains Sees by their Eyes and writeth by their Hands But Things of weight and consequence indeed Himself doth in his Chamber them debate Where all his Counsellors he doth exceed As far in Judgment as he doth in State Or as the Man whom Princes do advance Upon their gracious Mercy-Seat to sit Doth Common Things of Course and Circumstance To the Reports of common Men commit But when the Cause it self must be decreed Himself in Person in his proper Court To grave and solemn Hearing doth proceed Of ev'ry Proof and ev'ry By-Report Then like God's Angel he pronounceth Right And Milk and Honey from his Tongue doth flow Happy are they that still are in his sight To reap the Wisdom which his Lips do sow Right so the Soul which is a Lady free And doth the Justice of her State maintain Because the Senses ready Servants be Attending nigh about her Court the Brain By them the Forms of outward Things she learns For they return into the Fantasie Whatever each of them abroad discerns And there inrol it for the Mind to see But when she sits to judge the Good and Ill And to discern betwixt the False and True She is not guided by the Senses Skill But doth each thing in her own Mirror view Then she the Senses checks which oft do
which the World contains Then she of nothing must created be And to create to God alone pertains Again if Souls do other Souls beget 'T is by themselves or by the Bodies Pow'r If by themselves what doth their Working let But they might Souls engender ev'ry Hour If by the Body how can Wit and Will Join with the Body only in this Act Since when they do their other Works fulfil They from the Body do themselves abstract Again if Souls of Souls begotten were Into each other they should change and move And Change and Motion still Corruption bear How shall we then the Soul immortal prove If lastly Souls do Generation use Then should they spread incorruptible Seed What then becomes of that which they do lose When th' Acts of Generation do not speed And though the Soul could cast spiritual Seed Yet would she not because she never dies For mortal things desire their Like to breed That so they may their Kind immortalize Therefore the Angels Sons of God are nam'd And marry not nor are in Marriage giv'n Their Spirits and ours are of one Substance fram'd And have one Father ev'n the Lord of Heaven Who would at first that in each other thing The Earth and Water living Souls should breed But that Man's Soul whom he would make their King Should from himself immediately proceed And when he took the Woman from Man's side Doubtless himself inspir'd her Soul alone For 't is not said he did Man's Soul divide But took Flesh of his Flesh Bone of his Bone Lastly God being made Man for Man's own sake And being like Man in all except in Sin His Body from the Virgin 's Womb did take But all agree God form'd his Soul within Then is the Soul from God so Pagans say Which saw by Nature's Light her heavenly Kind Naming her Kin to God and God's bright Ray A Citizen of Heav'n to Earth confin'd But now I feel they pluck me by the Ear Whom my young Muse so boldly termed blind And crave more heav'nly Light that Cloud to clear Which makes them think God doth not make the Mind SECT VIII Reasons from Divinity GOd doubtless makes her and doth make her good And grafts her in the Body there to spring Which though it be corrupted Flesh and Blood Can no way to the Soul Corruption bring Yet is not God the Author of her Ill Though Author of her Being and being there And if we dare to judge our Maker's Will He can condemn us and himself can clear First God from infinite Eternity Decreed what hath been is or shall be done And was resolv'd that ev'ry Man should be And in his turn his Race of Life should run And so did purpose all the Souls to make That ever have been made or ever shall And that their Being they should only take In Humane Bodies or not be at all Was it then fit that such a weak Event Weakness it self the Sin and Fall of Man His Counsel's Execution should prevent Decreed and fix'd before the World began Or that one Penal Law by Adam broke Should make God break his own Eternal Law The settled Order of the World revoke And change all Forms of Things which he foresaw Could Eve's weak Hand extended to the Tree In sunder rend that Adamantine Chain Whose golden Links Effects and Causes be And which to God's own Chair doth fix'd remain O Could we see how Cause from Cause doth spring How mutually they link'd and folded are And hear how oft one disagreeing String The Harmony doth rather make than marr And view at once how Death by Sin is brought And how from Death a better Life doth rise How This God's Justice and his Mercy taught We this Decree would praise as right and wise But we that measure Times by First and Last The sight of things successively do take When God on all at once his View doth cast And of all Times doth but one Instant make All in Himself as in a Glass he sees For from him by him thrô him all things be His Sight is not discoursive by degrees But seeing the whole each single part doth see He looks on Adam as a Root or Well And on his Heirs as Branches and as Streams He sees all Men as one Man though they dwell In sundry Cities and in sundry Realms And as the Root and Branch are but one Tree And Well and Stream do but one River make So if the Root and Well corrupted be The Stream and Branch the same Corruption take So when the Root and Fountain of Mankind Did draw Corruption and God's Curse by Sin This was a Charge that all his Heirs did bind And all his Off-spring grew corrupt therein And as when th' Hand doth strike the Man offends For Part from whole Law severs not in this So Adam's Sin to the whole Kind extends For all their Natures are but part of his Therefore this Sin of Kind not personal But real and hereditary was The Guilt thereof and Punishment to all By Course of Nature and of Law doth pass For as that easie Law was giv'n to all To Ancestor and Heir to First and Last So was the first Transgression general And all did pluck the Fruit and all did taste Of this we find some Foot-steps in our Law Which doth her Root from God and Nature take Ten thousand Men she doth together draw And of them all one Corporation make Yet these and their Successors are but one And if they gain or lose their Liberties They harm or profit not themselves alone But such as in succeeding Times shall rise And so the Ancestor and all his Heirs Though they in number pass the Stars of Heav'n Are still but one his Forfeitures are theirs And unto them are his Advancements giv'n His Civil Acts do bind and bar them all And as from Adam all Corruption take So if the Father's Crime be capital In all the Blood Law doth Corruption make Is it then just with us to disinherit Th' unborn Nephews for the Father's Fault And to advance again for one Man's Merit A thousand Heirs that have deserved nought And is not God's Decree as just as ours If he for Adam's Sin his Sons deprive Of all those native Virtues and those Pow'rs Which he to him and to his Race did give For What is this contagious Sin of Kind But a Privation of that Grace within And of that great rich Dowry of the Mind Which all had had but for the first Man's Sin If then a Man on light Conditions gain A great Estate to him and his for ever If wilfully he forfeit it again Who doth bemoan his Heir or blame the Giver So though God make the Soul good rich and fair Yet when her Form is to the Body knit Which makes the Man which Man is Adam's Heir Justly forthwith he takes his Grace from it And then the Soul being first from Nothing brought When God's Grace fails her doth to Nothing fall And this
And are astonish'd when they view the same Nor hath he giv'n these Blessings for a Day Nor made them on the Body's Life depend The Soul though made in Time survives for ay And though it hath Beginning sees no End SECT XXX That the Soul is Immortal proved by several Reasons HER only End is Never ending Bliss Which is the Eternal Face of GOD to see Who Last of Ends and First of Causes is And to do this she must Eternal be How senseless then and dead a Soul hath he Which thinks his Soul doth with his Body dye Or thinks not so but so would have it be That he might Sin with more Security For though these light and vicious Persons say Our Soul is but a Smoak or airy Blast Which during Life doth in our Nostrils play And when we die doth turn to Wind at last Although they say Come let us eat and drink Our Life is but a Spark which quickly dies Though thus they say they know not what to think But in their Minds ten thousand Doubts arise Therefore no Hereticks desire to spread Their light Opinions like these Epicures For so their stagg'ring Thoughts are comforted And other Men's Assent their Doubt assures Yet though these Men against their Conscience strive There are some Sparkles in their flinty Breasts Which cannot be extinct but still revive That though they would they cannot quite be Beasts But whoso makes a Mirror of his Mind And doth with Patience view himself therein His Soul's Eternity shall clearly find Though th' other Beauties be defac'd with Sin 1. Reason First in Man's Mind we find an Appetite To learn and know the Truth of ev'ry thing Which is co-natural and born with it And from the Essence of the Soul doth spring With this Desire she hath a native Might To find out ev'ry Truth if she had time Th' innumerable Effects to sort aright And by Degrees from Cause to Cause to climb But since our Life so fast away doth slide As doth an hungry Eagle through the Wind Or as a Ship transported with the Tide Which in their Passage leave no print behind Of which swift little Time so much we spend While some few things we through the Sense do strain That our short Race of Life is at an end E're we the Principles of Skill attain Or God who to vain Ends hath nothing done In vain this Appetite and Pow'r hath giv'n Or else our Knowledge which is here begun Hereafter must be perfected in Heav'n God never gave a Pow'r to one whole Kind But most part of that Kind did use the same Most Eyes have perfect Sight though some be blind Most Legs can nimbly run though some be lame But in this Life no Soul the Truth can know So perfecty as it hath Pow'r to do If then Perfection be not found below An higher place must make her mount thereto 2. Reason Again How can she but Immortal be When with the Motions of both Will and Wit She still aspireth to Eternity And never rests till she attain to it Water in Conduit-pipes can rise no higher Than the Well-head from whence it first doth spring Then since to Eternal GOD she doth aspire She cannot be but an Eternal Thing All moving things to other things do move Of the same kind which shews their Nature such So Earth falls down and Fire doth mount above Till both their proper Elements do touch And as the Moisture which the thirsty Earth Sucks from the Sea to fill her empty Veins From out her Womb at last doth take a Birth And runs a Nymph along the grassy Plains Long doth she stay as loth to leave the Land From whose soft Side she first did issue make She tasts all Places turns to ev'ry Hand Her flow'ry Banks unwilling to forsake Yet Nature so her Streams doth lead and carry As that her Course doth make no final stay Till she her self unto the Ocean marry Within whose watry Bosom first she lay Ev'n so the Soul which in this Earthly Mould The Spirit of God doth secretly infuse Because at first she doth the Earth behold And only this material World she views At first her Mother Earth she holdeth dear And doth embrace the World and worldly things She flies close by the Ground and hovers here And mounts not up with her Celestial Wings Yet under Heav'n she cannot light on Ought That with her heav'nly Nature doth agree She cannot rest she cannot fix her Thought She cannot is this World contented be For who did ever yet in Honour Wealth Or Pleasure of the Sense Contentment find Who ever ceas'd to wish when he had Health Or having Wisdom was not vex'd in Mind Then as a Bee which among Weeds doth fall Which seem sweet Flow'rs with lustre fresh and gay She lights on that and this and tasteth all But pleas'd with none doth rise and soar away So when the Soul finds here no true Content And like Noah's Dove can no sure Footing take She doth return from whence she first was sent And flies to him that first her Wings did make Wit seeking Truth from Cause to Cause ascends And never rests till it the first attain Will seeking Good finds many middle Ends But never stays till it the last do gain Now GOD the Truth and First of Causes is GOD is the last good End which lasteth still Being Alpha and Omega nam'd for this Alpha to Wit Omega to the Will Since then her heav'nly Kind she doth display In that to GOD she doth directly move And on no mortal thing can make her Stay She cannot be from hence but from above And yet this first true Cause and last good End She cannot here so well and truely see For this Perfection she must yet attend Till to her Maker she espoused be As a King's Daughter being in Person sought Of divers Princes who do neighbour near On none of them can fix a constant Thought Though she to all do lend a gentle Ear Yet can she love a foreign Emperor Whom of great Worth and Pow'r she hears to be If she be woo'd but by Ambassador Or but his Letters or his Pictures see For well she knows that when she shall be brought Into the Kingdom where her Spouse doth reign Her Eyes shall see what she conceiv'd in Thought Himself his State his Glory and his Train So while the Virgin-Soul on Earth doth stay She woo'd and tempted is ten thousand Ways By these great Pow'rs which on the Earth bear sway The Wisdom of the World Wealth Pleasure Praise With these sometimes she doth her Time beguile These do by fits her Fantasie possess But she distastes them all within a while And in the sweetest finds a Tediousness But if upon the World 's Almighty King She once doth fix her humble loving Thought Who by his Picture drawn in ev'ry thing And sacred Messages her Love hath sought Of him she thinks she cannot think too much This Honey tasted still is ever
sweet The Pleasure of her ravish'd Thought is such As almost here she with her Bliss doth meet But when in Heav'n she shall his Essence see This is her sov'reign Good and perfect Bliss Her Longing Wishings Hopes all finish'd be Her Joys are full her Motions rest in this There is she crown'd with Garlands of Content There doth she Manna eat and Nectar drink That Presence doth such high Delights present As never Tongue could speak nor Heart could think 3. Reason For this the better Souls do oft despise The Body's Death and do it oft desire For when on Ground the burthen'd Ballance lies The empty part is lifted up the higher But if the Body's Death the Soul should kill Then Death must needs against her Nature be And were it so all Souls would fly it still For Nature hates and shuns her Contrary For all things else which Nature makes to be Their Being to preserve are chiefly taught And though some things desire a Change to see Yet never Thing did long to turn to nought If then by Death the Soul were quenched quite She could not thus against her Nature run Since ev'ry sensless thing by Nature's Light Doth Preservation seek Destruction shun Nor could the World's best Spirits so much err If Death took all that they should all agree Before this Life their Honour to prefer For what is Praise to things that nothing be Again If by the Body's Prop she stand If on the Body's Life her Life depend As Meleagers on the fatal Brand The Body's Good she only would intend We should not find her half so brave and bold To lead it to the Wars and to the Seas To make it suffer Watchings Hunger Cold When it might feed with Plenty rest with Ease Doubtless all Souls have a surviving Thought Therefore of Death we think with quiet Mind But if we think of being turn'd to nought A trembling Horrour in our Souls we find 4. Reason And as the better Spirit when she doth bear A Scorn of Death doth shew she cannot die So when the wicked Soul Death's Face doth fear Ev'n then she proves her own Eternity For when Death's Form appears she feareth not An utter Quenching or Extinguishment She would be glad to meet with such a Lot That so she might all future Ill prevent But she doth doubt what after may befal For Nature's Law accuseth her within And saith 'T is true what is affirm'd by all That after Death there is a Pain for Sin Then she who hath been hood wink'd from he Birth Doth first her self within Death's Mirrour see And when her Body doth return to Earth She first takes care how she alone shall be Who ever sees these irreligious Men With Burthen of a Sickness weak and faint But hears them talking of Religion then And vowing of their Souls to ev'ry Saint When was there ever cursed Atheist brought Unto the Gibbet but he did adore That blessed Pow'r which he had set at nought Scorn'd and blasphemed all his Life before These light vain Persons still are drunk and mad With Surfeitings and Pleasures of their Youth But at their Death they are fresh sober sad Then they discern and then they speak the truth If then all Souls both good and bad do teach With gen'ral Voice That Souls can never die 'T is not Man's flatt'ring Gloss but Nature's Speech Which like GOD's Oracles can never lye 5. Reason Hence springs that universal strong Desire Which all Men have of Immortality Not some few Spirits unto this Thought aspire But all Men's Minds in this united be Then this Desire of Nature is not vain She covets not Impossibilities Fond Thoughts may fall into some idle Brain But one Assent of all is ever wise From hence that gen'ral Care and Study springs That Launching and Progression of the Mind Which all Men have so much of future things That they no Joy do in the present find From this Desire that main Desire proceeds Which all Men have surviving Fame to gain By Tombs by Books by memorable Deeds For she that this desires doth still remain Hence lastly springs Care of Posterities For Things their Kind would everlasting make Hence is it that old Men do plant young Trees The Fruit whereof another Age shall take If we these Rules unto our selves apply And view them by Reflection of the Mind All these true Notes of Immortality In our Heart's Tables we shall written find 6. Reason And though some impious Wits do Questions move And doubt if Souls immortal be or no That Doubt their Immortality doth prove Because they seem immortal things to know For he who Reasons on both Parts doth bring Doth some things mortal some immortal call Now if himself were but a mortal thing He could not judge immortal things at all For when we judge our Minds we Mirrors make And as those Glasses which material be Forms of material things do only take For Thoughts or Minds in them we cannot see So when we God and Angels do conceive And think of Truth which is eternal too Then do our Minds immortal Forms receive Which if they mortal were they could not do And as if Beasts conceiv'd what Reason were And that Conception should distinctly show They should the Name of Reasonable bear For without Reason none could Reason know So when the Soul mounts with so high a Wing As of Eternal Things she Doubts can move She Proofs of her Eternity doth bring Ev'n when she strives the contrary to prove For ev'n the Thought of Immortality Being an Act done without the Body's Aid Shews that her self alone could move and be Although the Body in the Grave were laid SECT XXXI That the Soul cannot be destroy'd AND if her self she can so lively move And never need a Foreign Help to take Then must her Motion everlasting prove Because her self she never can forsake But though Corruption cannot touch the Mind By any Cause that from it self may spring Some outward Cause Fate hath perhaps design'd Which to the Soul may utter Quenching bring Perhaps her Cause may cease and she may die God is her Cause his Word her Maker was Which shall stand fix'd for all Eternity When Heav'n and Earth shall like a Shadow pass Perhaps some thing repugnant to her Kind By strong Antipathy the Soul may kill But what can be Contrary to the Mind Which holds all Contraries in Concord still She lodgeth Heat and Cold and Moist and Dry And Life and Death and Peace and War together Ten thousand fighting things in her do lie Yet neither troubleth or disturbeth either Perhaps for want of Food the Soul may pine But that were strange since all things bad and good Since all God's Creatures Mortal and Divine Since God himself is her eternal Food Bodies are fed with things of mortal kind And so are subject to Mortality But Truth which is eternal feeds the Mind The Tree of Life which will not let her die Yet Violence perhaps the