were of this opinion Wherefore I think we owe so much at least to the Memory of those grave Sages as to examine this Doctrine of theirs and if neither of the later Hypotheses can ease our anxious minds or free themselves from absurdities and this Grey Dogma fairly clear all doubts and be obnoxious to no such contradictions I see no reason but we may give it a favourable admittance till something else appear more concinnous and rational Therefore let us take some account of what the two first opinions alledge one against another and how they are proved by their promoters and defendants Now if they be found unable to withstand the shock of one anothers opposition we may reasonably cast our eyes upon the third to see what force it brings to vouch its interest and how it will behave it self in the encounter CHAP. II. Daily creation of Souls is inconsistent with the Divine Attributes THe first of these opinions that offers it self to Tryal is that God daily creates humane souls which immediately are united unto the bodies that Generation hath prepared for them Of this side are our later Divines and the generality of the Schoolmen But not to be born down by Authorities Let us consider what reason stands against it Therefore 1 If our Souls came immediately out of the hands of God when we came first into these bodies Whence then are those enormously brutish inclinations that strong natural proclivity to vice and impiety that are exstant in the children of men All the works of God bear his image and are perfect in their kind Purity is his nature and what comes from him proportionably to its capacity partakes of his perfections Every thing in the natural world bears the superscription of his wisdom and goodness and the same fountain cannot send forth sweet waters and bitter Therefore 't is a part of our allegiance to our Maker to believe * that he made us pure and innocent and if we were but just then framed by him when we were united with these terrestrial bodies whence should we contract such degenerate propensions Some tell us that this impurity was immediately derived from the bodies we are united to But how is it possible that purely passive insensible Matter should transfuse habits or inclinations into a Nature that is quite of another Make and Quality How can such a cause produce an effect so disproportionate * Matter can do nothing but by motion and what relation hath that to a moral contagion How can a Body that is neither capable of sense nor sin infect a soul as soon as 't is united to it with such vitious debauched dispositions But others think to evade by saying That we have not these depravities in our natures but contract them by Custome education and evil usages How then comes it about that those that have had the same care and industry used upon them and have been nurtured under the same discipline and severe oversight do so vastly and even to wonder differ in their inclinations * How is it that those that are under continual temptations to vice are yet kept within the bounds of vertue and sobriety And yet that others that have strong motives and allurements to the contrary should violently break out into all kinds of extravagance and impiety Sure there is somewhat more in the matter than those general causes which may be common to both and which many times have quite contrary effects 2. This Hypothesis that God continually Creates humane souls in these bodies consists not with the honour of the Divine Attributes For 1. How stands it with the goodness and benignity of that God who is Love to put pure and immaculate spirits who were capable of living to him and with him into such bodies as will presently defile them deface his image pervert all their powers and faculties incline them to hate what he most loves and love what his Soul hateth and that without any knowledge or concurrence of theirs will quite marre them as soon as he hath made them and of dear Children render them rebels or enemies and in a moment from being like Angels transform them into the perfect resemblance of the first Apostates Devils Is this an effect of those tender mercies that are over all his works And 2. Hath that Wisdom that hath made all things to operate according to their natures and provided them with whatever is necessary to that end made myriads of noble Spirits capable of as noble operations and presently plunged them into such a condition wherein they cannot act at all according to their first and proper dispositions but shall be necessitated to the quite contrary and have other noxious and depraved inclinations fatally imposed upon their pure natures Doth that wisdom that hath made all things in number weight and measure and disposed them in such exact harmony and proportions use to act so ineptly And that in the best and noblest pieces of his Creation Doth it use to make and presently destroy To frame one thing and give it such or such a nature and then undo what he had done and make it another And if there be no such irregular methods used in the framing of inferiour Creatures what reason have we to suspect that the Divine Wisdom did so vary from its self in its noblest composures And 3 Is it not a great affront to the Divine Jâ—stice to suppose as we are commonly taught that asâ—oon as we are born yea and in the Womb we are obnoxious to eternal wrath and torments if our Souls are then immediately created out of nothing For To be just is to give every one his due and how can endless unsupportable punishments be due to innocent Spirits who but the last moment came righteous pure and immaculate out of their Creators hands and have not done or thought any thing since contrary to his will or Laws nor were in any the least capacity of sinning I but the first of our order our General head and Representative sinned and we in him thus we contract guilt as soon as we have a Being and are lyable to the punishment of his disobedience This is thought to solve all and to clear God from any shadow of unrighteousness But whatever truth there is in the thing it self I think it cannot stand upon the Hypothesis of the Souls immediate Creation nor yet justifie God in his proceedings For 1. If I was then newly Created when first in this body what was Adam to me who sinned above 5000 years before I came out of nothing If he represented me it must be as I was in his Loins that is in him as an effect in a cause But so I was not according to this Doctrine for my soul owns no Father but God its immediate progenitour And what am I concern'd then in his sins which had never my will or consent more than in the sins of Mahomâ—t or Julius Caesar Nay than in the sins of Beelzebub or
Lucifer And for my body 't is most likely that never an Atom of his ever came at me or if any did he was no cause on 't Besides that of it self is neither capable of sense sin guilt nor punishment or 2. Admitting that we become thus obnoxious assoon as in the body upon the account of his default How doth it comport with the divine Justice in one moment to make such excellent Creatures and in the next to render them so miserable by thrusting them into a condition so fatally obnoxious especially since they were capable of living and acting in bodies more perfect and more accommodate to their new undefiled natures Certainly could they have been put to their choice whether they would have come into being upon such termes they would rather have been nothing for ever And God doth not use to make his Creatures so as that without their own fault they shall have cause to unwish themselves Hitherto in this second general Argument I have dealt against those that believe and assâ—rt the original depravity of our natures which those that deny may think themselves not pinâ—â—'t by or concern'd in Since they think they do no such dishonour to the divine Attributes while they assert that we were not made in so deplorable and depraved a condition but have so made our selves by our voluntary aberrations But neither is this a fit Plaister for the sore supposing our souls to be immediately created and so sent into these bodies For still it seems to be a diminutive and disparaging apprehenâ—ion of the infinite and immense Goodness of God that he should detrude such excellent creatures as our souls into a state so hazardous * wherein he seeth it to be ten thousand to one but that they will corrupt and defile themselves and so make themselves miserable here and to eternity hereafter And certainly be we as indifferent naturally to good and evil as can be supposed yet great are the disadvantages to virtue that all men unavoidably meet with in this state of imperfection For considering that our infant and growing age is an age of sense in which our appetites and passions are very strong and our reasons weak and scarce any thing but a chain of imaginations 't is I say great odds but that we should be carried to inordinacy and exceed the bounds the divine laws have set us So that our lower powers of sense and passions using to have the head will grow strong and impetuous and thus 't is an hundred to one but we shall be rooted in vice before we come to the maturity of our reasons or are capable of the exercise of virtue And woful experience teacheth us that most men run so far before they consider whither they are a-going that the care and diligence of all their lives after will scarce reclaim them Besides the far greatest part of the world are led into wickedness and all kinds of debauchery by corrupt and vitious education And 't is not difficult to observe what an enormous strength bad education hath to deprave and pervert well dispos'd inclinations Which things consider'd this way also methinks reflects a Disparagement on the Divine Attributes Since by creating souls daily and putting them into such bodies and such parts of the world as his infinite Wisdom sees will debauch them and pervert them from the ways of righteousness and happiness into those of vice and misery he deals with them less mercifully than a parent among us would with his Off-spring And to suppose God to have less goodness than his degenerate creatures is to have very narrow apprehensions of his perfections and to rob him of the honour due to his Attributes 3 It hath been urged with good probability by great and wise Sages that 't is an unbecoming apprehension of the Majesty on high * to suppose him assistant to unlawful and unclean coitions by creating a soul to animate the impure foetus And to think It is in the power of brutish lust to determine Omvipotence to create a Soul whensoever a couple of unclean Adulterers shall think fit to join in their bestial pleasures is methinks to have a very mean apprehension of the divine Majesty and Purity This is to make him the worst of Servants by supposing him to serve his creature's vices to wait upon the vilest actions and to engage the same infinite Power that made the world for the perfecting what was begun by dissolute Wantons This Argument was used of old by pious and learned Origen and hath been imployed in the same service since by his modern defendents But I foresee an evasion or two that possibly with some may stand for an answer the removal of which will clear the business It may be pretended that God's attending to create souls for the supply of such generations is but an act of his justice for the detection and consequently punishment of such lawless offenders which therefore will be no more matter of disparagement than the waiting of an Officer of justice to discover and apprehend a Malefactour But this Subterfuge cannot elude the force of the Argument for it hath no place at all in most Adulteries yea great injustice and injury is done many times by such illegitimate births the Child of a Stranger being by this means admitted to carry away the inheritance from the lawful off-spring Besides God useth not ordinarily to put forth his Almighty power to discover secret miscarriages except sometimes for very remarkable and momentous ends but leaves hidden iniquities to be the objects of his own castigations And if discovery of the fault be the main end of such creations * methinks that might be done at a cheaper rate that should not have brought so much inconvenience with it or have exposed his own innocent and harmless off-spring to undeserv'd Reproach and Infamy But further it may be suggested that it is no more indecent for God to create souls to furnish those unlawful Generations than it is that a man should be nourisht by meat that he hath unlawfully come by or that the Cattle which he hath stoln should ingender with his own But the difference of these instances from the case in hand is easily discernable in that the nourishment and productions spoken of proceed in a set orderly way of natural causes which work fatally and necessarily without respect to moral circumstances and there is no reason it should be in the power of a sinful creature to engage his Maker to pervert or stop the course of nature when he pleaseth But in the case of creating souls God is supposed to act by explicite and immediate Will the suspending of which in such a case as this is far different in point of credit and decorum from his altering the setled Laws he hath set in the Creation and turning the world upside down I might further add 4ly That * it seems very incongruous and unhandsome to suppose that God should create two souls for the supply
at first view that such variety of distinct and orderly representations should be made at once upon a single atom or the whole image is imprest upon every point and then there would be as many objects as there are points in this matter and so every thing would be infinitely multiplied in our delâ—sive senses Or finally every part of the soul must receive a proportionable part of the image and then how could those parts communicate their perceptions to each other and what should perceive the whole This Argument is excellently managed by the great Dr. H. More in whose writings this fond Hypothesis is fully triumpht over and defeated Since therefore the very lowest degree of perception single and simple sense is incompatible to meer body or matter we may safely conclude that the higher and nobler operations of imagining remembring reasoning and willing must have a cause and source that is not Corporeal Thus therefore those that build the souls traduction upon this ground of its being only body and modified matter are disappointed in the foundation of their conclusion But 2 Another sort of assertors of traduction teach the Soul to be spiritual and incorporeal and affirm that by a vertue deriv'd from the first benediction it can propagate its like one soul emitting another as the body doth the matter of Generation The manner of which spiritual production useth to be illustrated by one Candle's lighting another and a mans begetting a thought in anothers mind without diminishing of his own This is the most favourable representation of this opinion that I can think on And yet if we nearly consider it it will appear most absuâ—d and unphilosophical For if one soul produce another 't is either out of nothing or something praeexistent If the former 't is an absolute creation which all philosophy concludes impossible for a Creature And if it be pretended that the Parent doth it not by his proper natural virtue but by a strength imparted by God in the first blessing Increase and multiply so that God is the prime agent he only the instrument I rejoin that then either God hath thereby obliged himself to put forth a new and extraordinary power in every such occasion distinct from his influence in the ordinary â—ourse of nature Or else 2 he only concurrs by his providence as he doth to our other natural actions we having this Ability bestowed upon our very natures He that asserts the first runs upon all the rocks that he would avoid in the former Hypothesis of continual Creation and God will be made the cause of the sin and misery of his spotless and blameless Creatures which absurdities he cannot shun by saying that God by interposing in such productions doth but follow the rules of acting which he first made while man was innocent For certainly infinite goodness would never have tyed up it self to such Laws of working as he foresaw would presently bring unavoidable inconvenience misery and ruine upon the best part of his workmanship And for the second way it supposeth God to have no more to do in this action than in our eating and drinking Consequently here is a creation purely natural And methinks if we have so vast a power to bring the ends of contradictories together something out of nothing which some deny to Omnipotence it self 't is much we cannot conserve in being our Creature so produced nor our own intimate selves since conservation is not more than Creation And 't is much that in other things we should give such few specimens of so vast an ability or have a power so divine and excellent and no faculty to discern it by Again 2 if the Soul be immediately produced out of nothing be the agent who it will God or the Parent it will be pure and sinless For supposing our parents to be our Creators they make us but as natural agents * and so can only transmit their natural qualities but not their moral pravities Wherefore there can no better account be given from this way how the Soul is so debauched and infected assoon as it comes into the body than in the former and therefore it fails in the main end it is designed for Thus we see then that the traduction of the Soul supposing it to be produced out of nothing cannot be defended Nor doth the second general way yield any more relief to this Hypothesis For if it be made of any thing praeexistent it is either of matter or spirit The former we have undermined and overthrown already in what was said against those that hold it to be body And if it be made out of any Spiritual substance it must be the soul of the parent except we will revive the old enthusiastick conceit of its being a particle of the divine essence which supposition is * against the nature of an immaterial being a chief property of which is to be indiscerpible Nor do the similitudes I mentioned in the proposal of the Hypothesis at all fit the business for one candle lights another * by separable emissions that pass from the flame of that which is kindled to the wick of the other And flame is a body whose parts are in continual flux as a river But the substance of the soul is stable permanent and indivisible which quite makes it another case And for a mans informing anothers mind with a thought which he had not conceived it is not a production of any substance but only an occasioning him to exert an operation of his mind which he did not before And therefore makes nothing to the illustrating how a Soul can produce a Soul a substance distinct and without it self Thus we see how desperate the case of the souls original is in the Hypothesis of Traduction also But yet to let it have fair play we 'l give it leave to plead it's cause and briefly present what is most material in its behalf There are but two reasons that I can think of worth the naming 1 A man begets a man and a man he is not without a Soul therefore 't is pretended that the soul is begotten But this argument is easily detected of palpable sophistry and is as if one should argue a man is mortal therefore his Soul is mortal or is fat and lusty therefore his Soul is so The absurdity of which kinds of reasoning lyes in drawing that into a strict and rigorous affirmation which is only meant according to vulgar speech and is true only in some remarkable respect or circumstance Thus we say A man begets a man because he doth the visible and only sensible part of him The vulgar to whom common speech is accommodate not taking so much notice of what is past the ken of their senses And therefore Body in ordinary speaking is oft put for Person as here man for the body Sometimes the noblest part is used for the whole as when 't is said 70 Souls went down with Jacob into Egypt therefore such arguments as
Divine Goodness And I have been the longer on it because I thought 't was in vain to propose it without taking to task the principal of those objections that must needs arise in the minds of those that are not used to this way of arguing And while there was no provision made to stop up those Evasions that I saw this Argument obnoxious to the using of it I was afraid would have been a prejudice rather than a furtherance of the cause I ingaged it in And therefore I hope the ingenious will pardon this so necessary piece of tediousness CHAP. X. A third Argument for Praeexistence from the great variety of mens speculative inclinations and also the diversity of our Genius's copiously urged If these Arguments make Praeexistence but probable 't is enough to gain it the Victory BUt now I proceed to another Argument Therefore Thirdly If we do but reâ—â—ect upon what was said above against the Souls daily Creation from that enormous pravity which is so deeply rooted in some mens natures we may thence have a considerable evidence of Praeexistence For as this strong natural propensity to vice and impiety cannot possibly consist with the Hypothesis of the souls coming just out of Gods hands pure and immaculate so doth it most aptly suit with the doctrine of its praeexistence which gives a most clear and apposite account of the phaenomenon For let us but conceive the Souls of men to have grown degenerate in a former condition of life * to have contracted strong and inveterate habits to vice and lewdness and that in various manners and degrees we may then easily apprehend when some mens natures had so incredibly a depraved tincture and such impetuous ungovernable irreclaimable inclinations to what is vitious while others have nothing near such wretched propensions but by good education and good discipline are mouldable to vertue This shews a clear way to unriddle this amazing mystery without blemishing any of the divine Attributes or doing the least violence to our faculties Nor is it more difficult to conceive how a soul should awaken out of the state of inactivity we speak of with those radical inclinations that by long practice it had contracted * than how a Swallow should return to her old trade of living after her winter sleep and silence for those customs it hath been addicted to in the other state are now so deeply fastened and rooted in the soul that they are become even another nature Now then if Praeexistence be not the truth 't is very strange that it should so exactly answer the Phaenomena of our natures when as no other Hypothesis doth any whit tolerably suit them And if we may conclude that false which is so correspondent to all appearances when we know nothing else that can yield any probable account of them and which is not in the least repugnant to any inducement of belief we then strangely forget our selves when we determine any thing We can never for instance conclude the Moon to be the cause of the flux and reflux of the Sea from the answering of her approaches and recesses to its ebbs and swellings Nor at this rate can the cause of any thing else be determined in nature But yet besides 2 we might another way inforce this Argument from the strange difference and diversity that there is in mens wits and intellectual craseis as well as in the dispositions of their wills and appetites Even the natural tempers of mens minds are as vastly different as the qualities of their bodies And 't is easie to observe in things purely speculative and intellectual even where neither education or custom have interposed to sophisticate the natural 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that some men are strangely propense to some opinions which they greedily drink in as soon as they are duly represented yea and find themselves burthened and opprest while their education hath kept them in a contrary belief * when as others are as fatally set against these opinions and can never be brought favourably to resent them Every Soul brings a kind of sense with it into the world whereby it tastes and relisheth what is suitable to its peculiar temper And notions will never lie easily in a mind that they are not fitted to some can never apprehend that for other than an Absurdity which others are so clear in that they almost take it for a First Principle And yet the former hath all the same evidence as the latter This I have remarkably taken notice of in the opinion of the extension of a spirit Some that I know and those inquisitive free and ingenuous by all the proof and evidence that is cannot be reconciled to it Nor can they conceive any thing extended but as a Body Whereas other deep and impartial searchers into nature cannot apprehend it any thing at all if not extended but think it must then be a mathematical point or a meer non-entity I could instance in other speculations which I have observ'd some to be passionate Embracers of upon the first proposal when as no arguments could prevail on others to think them tolerable But there needs no proof of a manifest observation Therefore before I go further I would demand whence comes this meer notional or speculative variety * Were his difference about sensibles yea or about things depending on the imagination the influence of the body might then be suspected for a cause But since it is in the most abstracted Theories that have nothing to do with the grosser phantasmes since this diversity is found in minds that have the greatest care to free themselves from the deceptions of sense and intanglements of the body what can we conclude but that the soul it self is the immediate subject of all this variety and that it came praejudiced and praepossessed into this body with some implicit notions that it had learnt in another And if this congruity to some opinions and averseness to others be congenial to us and not advenient from any thing in this state 't is methinks clear that we were in a former * For the Soul in its first and pure nature hath no idiosyncrasies that is hath no proper natural inclinations which are not competent to others of the same kind and condition Be sure they are not fatally determin'd by their natures to false and erroneous apprehensions And therefore since we find this determination to one or other falshood in many if not most in this state and since 't is very unlikely 't is derived only from the body custom or education what can we conceive on 't but that our Souls were tainted with these peculiar and wrong corruptions before we were extant upon this stage of Earth Besides 't is easie to observe the strange and wonderful variety of our genius's one mans nature inclining him to one kind of study and imployment anothers to what is very different Some almost from their very cradles will be addicted to the making of figures
and Result of the Form A Spirit is one simple Specifick Essence or substance and that true Specifickness in its Essence is the real and intimate Form or Conceptus formalis thereof but that which we know not as I noted above out of Julius Scaliger though we know the essential and inseparable Attributes thereof which may be many though in one simple specifick Substance as there are many Attributes in God immediately and inseparably resulting from his most simple specifick Nature Tenthly Yea you compound saith he Peâ—etrabilitie and Indiscerpibilitie with a quite different notion life and the faculty of motion which is truly the Form and is one thing and not compounded of notions so different as Consistence and Vertue or Power Ans I say again as I said before that neither Penetrability nor Indiscerpibility nor Life nor Motion are the specifick Form it self of a Spirit which is a simple Substance but the Fruits and Results of this specifick Form and all these have a proper Cognation with one another as agreeing in Immateriality or Spirituality and how the common sagacitie of mankind has presaged that the most noble functions of life are performed by that which is most subtile and most one as Penetrability and Indiscerpibility makes the consistence of a Spirit to be the Doctor has noted in his Discourse of the true notion of a Spirit Mr. Baxter in reading Theological Systems may observe That Attributes as much differing among themselves as these are given to the most simple Essence of God Eleventhly You say says he pag. 82. Life intrinsecally issues from this Immaterial Substance But the Form is concreated with it and issues not from it Ans I grant that the Form is concreated with the Spirit For a Spirit is nothing else but such a specifick simple Substance or Essence the Specifickness of whose nature onely is its real intimate Form And if we could reach by our Conception that very Form it self it would be but the Conceptus inadaequatus of one simple Substance and be the true Conceptus formalis thereof and the Conceptus fundamentalis to speak in Mr. Baxters or Dr. Glissons language would be Substance in general which is contracted into this Species by this real intimate Form which both considered together being but one simple Essence they must needs be created together according to that Idea of a Spirit which God has conceived in his eternal mind And life will as naturally and necessarily issue from such a Species or Specifick Essence or from Substance contracted into such a Species by the abovesaid Form as Mobility does issue from the form of a Globe From whence it is plainly understood how Life does intrinsecally issue from immaterial Substance nor is the Form it self but the Fruit thereof And as it were but trifling to say that the power of easie rolling every way on a Plain were the very Form of a Globe the word Power or Vertue being but a dark loose general dilute term and which belongs to every thing and is restrained onely by its Operation and Object but it is the Form or Figure of the Globe that is the immediate cause that that Vertue or Power in general is so restrained to this easie rolling so it is in Mr. Baxters pretended Form of a Spirit which he makes Virtus vitalis a power of living Power there is such a dark dilute term loose and general But that it is determined to life it is by that intimate specifick Form which we know not but onely this we know That it is to the Power of living as the Figure of a Globe is to the Power of easie rolling and that in neither one can be without the other There must be a Specifick Essence which is the root of those Powers Properties or Operations from whence we conclude distinct Species of things For 't is too coarse and slovenly to conceit that these are clarted on them but the Specifick Powers arise immediately and inseparably from the Specifick Nature of the thing else why might they not be other powers as well as these Twelfthly and lastly pag. 32. But do you verily believe saith he that Penetrability or Subtility is a sufficient Efficient or Formal cause of Vitalitie Perception and Appetite and so of Intellection and Volition I hope you do not Ans I hope so of the Doctor too and before this I hoped that Mr. Baxter had more insight into the nature of a Formal cause and into the Laws of Logick than once to imagine that any one in his Wits could take Penetrability to be the Formal cause of Intellection and Volition For then every Spirit being Penetrable every Spirit even of a plant at least of the vilest Animalonium would have Intellection and Volition Nor for the same reason can any body think that Penetrability is a sufficient Efficient cause of Intellection and Volition Nor is it so much as the Efficient cause of Vitality Perception Appetite much less the Formal So infinitely is Mr. Baxter out in these things But the case stands thus The Substance of that species of things which we call a Spirit and is so by that intimate specifick Form which I named before this substance is the cause of Vitality in such a sense as the round Form of a Globe or any matter of that Form is quatenus of that Form the cause of its own rolling Mobilitie I say therefore that Vitality is as immediate and necessarie a Fruit or Effect of the real and intimate Form of a Spirit as that easie mobilitie is of the Form of a Sphere or Globe And such a kind of Vitality Vegetative Sensitive Intellective of such a Species of Spirit These kinds of Vitalities are the Fruits or Effects necessarie and immediate of the abovesaid so specificated Substances that is to say they are immediately Self-living and all of them Penetrable and Indiscerpible of themselves quatenus Spirits all these essential attributes arising from the simple essence or specificated substance of every Spirit of what Classis soever created according to its own Idea eternally shining in the Divine Intellect As for example In the Idea of a Plastick Spirit onely Penetrability Indiscerpibility and Plastick Vitality whereby it is able to organize Matter thus and thus are not three Essences clarted upon some fourth Essence or glewed together one to another to make up such an Idea But the Divine Intellect conceives in itself one simple specifick Essence immediately and intrinsecally of it self indued with these essential Properties or Attributes So that when any thing does exist according to this Idea those three properties are as immediately Consequential to it and as effectually as Mobility to the Form of a Globe It is the specifick Substance that is the necessary Source of them and that acts by them as its own connate or natural instruments fitted for the ends that the eternal Wisdom and Goodness of God has conceived or contrived them for For it is manifest that those essential
the asserters of traduction make use of which are drawn from vulgar schemes of speech argue nothing but the desperateness of the cause that needs such pitiful sophistries to recommend it Such are these proofs which yet are some of the best I meet with The seed of the Woman shall break the Serpents head Sixty six souls descended out of Jacobs loins Adam begat a son in his own likeness and such like According to this rate of arguing the scripture may be made speak any thing that our humour some phancies please to dictate And thus to rack the sacred writings to force them whether they will or no to bring evidence to our opinions is an affront to their Authority that 's next to the denying on 't I might add 2 that begetting also hath a latitude and in common speech signifies not a strict and philosophical production So that a man â—egets a man though he only generates the body into which fitly prepared descends a soul And he that doth that upon which another thing necessarily follows is said to be the cause of both 2 The adherents to traduction use to urge that except the whole man soul and body be propagated there is no account can be given of our original desilement And scripture gives evident testimony to that early pollution for we are said to be conceived in sin and transgressors from the Womb. We have already seen that indeed the way of daily creating souls cannot come off but with vilely aspersing the divine attributes And it hath been hinted that neither can Traduction solve the business for if the Parent beget the soul out of nothing it will be as pure and clean as if God himself were it's immediate Creator for though a clean thing cannot come out of an unclean when any thing of the substance of the producent is imparted to the effect yet where 't is made out of nothing the reason is very different Yea the soul in all the powers that arâ— concern'd in this production is now as clean and pure as ever 't was for it is suppos'd to do it by a capacity given at its first creation while pure and innocent in which respect it is not capable of moral contagion this being an ability meerly natural and plastick and not at all under the imperium or command of the will the only seat of moral good and evil Or if our souls are but particles and decerptions of our parents then I must have been guilty of all the sins that ever were committed by my Progenitors ever since Adam and by this time my soul would have been so deprav'd and debauch'd that it would be now brutish yea diabolical Thus then we see that even upon this reason 't is necessary to pitch upon some other Hypothesis to give an account of the pravity of our natures which both these fail in the solution of And since the former commits such violence upon the honour of the divine attributes since the latter is so contrary to the nature of things and since neither can give any satisfaction in the great affairs of providence and our natures or have any incouragement from the Sacred Volume 'T is I think very excusable for us to cast our eyes abroad to see if there be no other way that may probably unriddle those mysteries and relieve the minds of anxious and contemplative inquirers In which search if we light on any thing that doth sweetly accord with the Attributes of God the nature of things and unlocks the intricacies of Providence I think we have found what the two former opinions aim at but cannot make good their pretences to And may salute the truth with a joyful 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Wherefore from the modern disputants let us look towards the ancient Sages those Eastern Sophi that have fill'd the world with the fame of their wisdom And since our inquiries are benighted in the West let us look towards the East from whence 't is likely the desired light may display it self and chase away the darkness that covers the face of those theories Therefore it was the opinion of the Indian Brachmans the Persian Magi the Aegyptian Gymnosophists the Jewish Rabbins some of the Graecian Philosophers and Christian Fathers that the souls of men were created all at first and at several times and occasions upon forfeiture of their better life and condition dropt down into these terrestrial bodies This the learned among the Jews made a part of their Cabbala and pretend to have received it from their great Law-giver Moses which Hypothesis if it appear but probable to an impartial inquiry will even on that account be preferrible to both the former which we have seen to be desperate CHAP. IV. 1 Praeexistence cannot be disproved Scripture saith nothing against it It 's silence is no prejudice to this Doctrine but rather an Argument for it as the case standeth Praeexistence was the common opinion of our Saviour's times How probably it came to be lost in the Christian Church THerefore let us see what title it can shew for our assent or whether it can prove it self worthy of the Patronage of those great Authors that have owned it 1 Then Whether this Doctrine be true or no I 'm confident it cannot be proved false for if all Souls were not made together it must be either because God could not do it or because he would not For the first I suppose very few have such narrow Conceptions of the divine power as to affirm that omnipotence could not produce all those beings at first which apart he is suppos'd to create daily which implies no contradiction or as much as difficulty to be conceived and which de facto he hath done in the case of Angels Or if inconsistence with any Attribute should be pretended that shall be prov'd quite otherwise hereafter And the amicable consistence of this Hypothesis with them yea the necessity of it from this very consideration of the divine Attributes shall be argued in the process Therefore whoever concludes that God made not all souls of old when he produced the world out of nothing must confess the reason of this assertion to be because he would not And then I would ask him how he came to know what he affirms so boldly Who acquainted him with the Divine Counsels Is there a word said in his revealed Will to the contrary or hath he by his holy pen-men told us that either of the other ways was more sutable to his beneplaciture Indeed 't is very likely that a strong and ready phancy possest with a perswasion of the falshood of this Hypothesis might find some half phrases in Scripture which he might suborn to sing to the tune of his imagination For in such a Miscellaneous piece as the Bible is it will not be difficult for a man that 's strongly resolv'd against an opinion to find somewhat or other that may seem to him to speak the language of his phancy And therefore
and in little mechanical contrivances others love to be riming almost as soon as they can speak plainly and are taken up in small essays of Poetry Some will be scrawling Pictures and others take as great delight in some pretty offers at Musick and vocal harmony Infinite almost are the ways in which this pure natural diversity doth discover it self * Now to say that all this variety proceeds primarily from the meer temper of our bodies is me thinks a very poor and unsatisfying Account * For those that are the most like in the Temper Air Complexion of their bodies are yet of a vastly differing Genius Yea they that have been made of the same clay cast in the same mould and have layn at once in the same natural bed the womb yea whose bodies have been as like as their state and fortunes and their education and usages the same yet even they do not unfrequently differ as much from each other in their genius and dispositions of the mind as those that in all these particulars are of very different condition Besides there are all kind of makes forms dispositions tempers and complexions of body that are addicted by their natures to the same exercises and imployments so that to ascribe this to any peculiarity in the body is me seems a very improbable solution of the Phaenomenon And to say all these inclinations are from custom or education is the way not to be believed since all experience testifies the contrary What then can we conjecture is the cause of all this diversity but that we had taken a great delight and pleasure in some things like and analogous unto these in a former condition which now again begins to put forth it self when we are awakened out of our silent recess into a state of action And though the imployments pleasures and exercises of our former life were without question very different from these in the present estate yet 't is no doubt but that some of them were more confamiliar and analogous to some of our transactions than others so that as any exercise or imployment here is more suitable to the particular dispositions that were praedominant in the other state with the more peculiar kindness is it regarded by us and the more greedily do our inclinations now fasten on it Thus if a Musician should be interdicted the use of all musical instruments and yet might have his choice of any other Art or Profession 't is likely he would betake himself to Limning or Poetry these exercises requiring the same disposition of wil and genius as his beloved Musick did And we in like manner being by the â—ate of our wretched descent hindred from the direct exercising our selves about the objects of our former delights and pleasures do yet as soon as we are able take to those things which do most correspond to that genius that formerly inspired us And now 't is time to take leave of the Arguments from Reason that give evidence for Praeexistence If any one think that they are not so demonstrative but that they may be answered or at least evaded I pray him to consider how many demonstrations he ever met with that a good wit resolv'd in a contrary cause could not shuâ—â—le from the edge of Or let it be granted that the Arguments I have alledged are no infallible or necessary proofs yet if they render my cause but probable yea but possible I have won what I contended for For it having been made manifest by as good evidence as I think can be brought for any thing that the way of new creations is most inconsistent with the honor of the blessed Attributes of God And that the other of Traduction is most impossible and contradictioâ—s in the nature of things * There being now no other way left but Prae-existence if that be probable or but barely possible 't is enough to give it the victory And whether all that hath been said prove so much or no I leave to the indifferent to determine I think he that will say it doth not can bring few proofs for any thing which according to his way of judging will deserve to be called Demonstrations CHAP. XI Great caution to be used in alledging Scripture for our speculative opinions The countenance that Praeexistence hath from the sacred writings both of the old and new Testament Reasons of the seeming uncouthness of these allegations Praeexistence stood in no need of Scripture-proof IT will be next expected that I should now prove the Doctrine I have undertaken for by Scripture evidence and make good what I said above That the divine oracles are not so silent in this matter as is imagined But truly I have so tender a sense of the sacred Authority of that Holy volume that I dare not be so bold with it as to force it to speak what I think it intends not A presumption that is too common among our confident opinionists and that hath occasioned great troubles to the Church and diâ—â—epute to the inspired writings For for men to ascribe the odd notions of their over-heated imaginations to the Spirit of God and eternal truth is me thinks a very bold and impudent belying it Wherefore I dare not but be very cautious what I speak in this matter nor would I willingly urge Scripture as a proof of any thing but what I am sure by the whole tenor of it is therein contained And would I take the liberty to fetch in every thing for a Scripture-evidence that with a little industry a man might make serviceable to his design I doubt not but I should be able to â—ill my Margent with Quotations which should be as much to purpose as have been cited in general CATECHISMS and CONFESSIONS of FAITH and that in points that must forsooth be dignified with the sacred title of FVNDAMENTAL But Reverend ASSEMBLIES may make more bold with Scripture than private persons And therefore I confess I 'm so timorous that I durst not follow their example Though in a matter that I would never have imposed upon the belief of any man though I were certain on 't and had absolute power to enjoyn it I think the only way to preserve the reverence due to the oracles of Truth is never to urge their Authority but in things very momentous and such as the whole current of them gives an evident suffrage to But to make them speak every trivial conceit that our sick brains can imagine or dream of as I intimated is to vilifie and deflowre them Therefore though I think that several Texts of Scripture look very fairly upon Praeexistence and would encourage a man that considers what strong Reasons it hath to back it to think that very probably they mean some thing in favour of this Hypothesis yet I 'le not urge them as an irrefutable proof being not willing to lay more stress upon any thing than it will bear Yea I am most willing to confess the weakness of my Cause in
infinite fulness is to be communicating and overflowing And the most congruous apprehension that we can entertain of the Infinite and eternal Deity is * to conceive him as an immense and all glorious Sun that is continually communicating and sending abroad its beams and brightness which conception of our Maker if 't were deeply imprinted on us would I am confident set our apprehensions right in many Theories and chase away those black and dismal notions which too many have given harbour to But I come to erect the Second Pillar 2 Then There is an exact Geometrical Justice that runs through the Vniverse and is interwoven in the contexture of things THis is a result of that wise and Almighty Goodness that praesides over all things For this Justice is but the distributing to every thing according to the requirements of its nature And that benign wisdom that contrived and framed the natures of all Beings doubtless so provided that they should be suitably furnisht with all things proper for their respective conditions And that this Nemesis should be twisted into the very natural constitutions of things themselves is methinks very reasonable since questionless Almighty Wisdom could so perfectly have formed his works at first as that all things that he saw were regular just and for the good of the Vniverse should have been brought about by those stated Laws which we call nature without an ordinary engagement of absolute power to effect theâ— And it seems to me to be very becoming the wise Author of all things so to have made them in the beginning as that by their own internal spring and wheels they should orderly bring about whatever he intended them for without his often immediate interposal For this looks like a more magnificent apprehension of the Divine power and Prescience since it supposeth him from everlasting ages to have foreseen all future occurrences and so wonderfully to have seen and constituted the great machina of the world that the infinite variety of motions therein should effect nothing but what in his eternal wisdom he had concluded fit and decorous But as for that which was so it should as certainly be compast by the Laws he appointed long ago as if his omnipotence were at work every moment On the contrary to engage Gods absolute and extraordinary power in all events and occurrences of things is mâ—sâ—â—ms to think meanly of his wisdom as if he had made the world so as that it should need omnipotence every now and then to mend it or to bring about those his destinations which by a shorter way he could have effected by his instrument Nature Can any one say that our supposition derogates from the Divine concourse or Providence For on these depend continually both the being and operations of all things since without them they would cease to act and return to their old nothing And doubtless God hath not given the ordering of things out of his own hands but holds the power to alter innovate or change the course of nature as he pleaseth And to act by extraordinary means by absolute omnipotence when he thinks fit to do so The sum of what I intend is that Gods works are perfect and as his Goodness is discover'd in them so is his Justice wrought into their very essential constitutions so that we need not suppose him to be immediately engaged in every event and all distributions of things in the world or upon all occasions to exercise his power in extraordinary actions but that he leaves such managements to the Oeconomy of second causes And now next to this for they are of kâ—n I raise The third Pillar 3 Things are carried to their proper place and state by the congruity of their natures where this fails we may suppose some arbitrary managements THE Congruity of things is their suitableness to such or such a state or condition And 't is a great Law in the Divine and first constitutions that things should incline and move to what is suitable to their natures This in sensibles is evident in the motions of consent and sympathy And the ascent of light and descent of heavy bodies must I doubt when all is done * be resolv'd into a principle that is not meerly corporeal Yea supposing all such things to be done by the Laws of Mechanicks why may we not conceive that the other rank of Beings Spirits which are not subject to corporeal motions are also dispos'd of by a Law proper to their natures which since we have no other name to express it by we may call congruity We read in the sacred History that Judas went to his own place And 't is very probable that Spirits are conveyed to their proper states and residence * as naturally as the fire mounts or a stone descends The Platonists would have the Soul of the world to be the great Instrument of all such distributions as also of the Phaenomena that are beyond the powers of matter And 't is no unlikely Hypothesis But I have no need to ingage further about this nor yet to speak more of this first part of my Principle since it so nearly depends on what was said in behalf of the former Maxim Yet of the latter we need a word or two When therefore we cannot give account of things either by the Laws of Mechanicks or conceivable Congruities * as likely some things relating to the States of Spirits and immaterial Beings can be resolv'd by neither I say then we may have recourse to the Arbitrary managements of those invisible Ministers of Equity and Justice which without doubt the world is plentifully stored with For it cannot be conceived that those active Spirits are idle or unimployed in the momentous concerns of the Vniverse Yea the sacred volume gives evidence of their interposals in our affairs I shall need mention but that remarkable instance in Daniel of the indeavours of the Prince of Persia and of Grecia to hinder Michael and the other Angel that were ingaged for the affairs of Judea Or if any would evade this what think they of all the apparitions of Angels in the old Testament of their pitching their Tents about us and being Ministring Spirits for our good To name no more such passages Now if those noble Spirits will ingage themselves in our trifling concernments doubtless they are very sedulous in those affairs that tâ—nd to the good and perfection of the Vniverse But to be brief I advance The Fourth Pillar 4 * The Souls of men are capable of living in other bodies besides Terrestrial And never act but in some body or other FOr 1. when I consider how deeply in this state we are immersed in the body I can methinks scarce imagin that presently upon the quitting on 't we shall be stript of all corporeity for this would be such a jump as is seldom or never made in nature since by almost all instances that come under our observation 't is manifest that she useth
them should be taught by their miseries to renounce and forsake their impieties or should have any dispositions to vertue and divine love re-inkindled in them meer Philosophy would conclude that in time they might then be delivered from their sad durance But we know what Theology hath determined And indeed those brutish Apostates are so fixt and rooted in their sensual and rebellious propensions that those who are not yet as far distant from their Maker as they can be are still verging downwards And possibly being quite void of the divine grace and any considerable exercises of reason and conscience they may never stop till they have run through all the infernal stages and are arriv'd to the extremest degree of misery that as yet any are obnoxious to Wherefore the earth and all the infernal Regions being thus monstrously depraved 't is time for the Divine Justice to shew some remarkable and more than ordinary severity upon those remorseless Rebels and his goodness is as ready to deliver the virtuous from this stage of wretchedness and impiety When therefore those have compleated the number of their iniquities and these are sit for the mercy of so great a deliverance then shall the great decree for judgment be executed which though it cannot be expected that meer Philosophy should give an unerring and punctual account of yet we shall follow this light as far as it will lead us not intrenching upon the sacred rights of Divinity nor yet baulking what the ancient Eastern Cabbala assisted by later discoveries into nature will dictate But sincerely following the Hypothesis we shall leave all its errours and misguidances to be corrected by the more sacred Canons So that where we shall discern the wisdom of the World to have misdirected the most knowing and sedulous inquirers we may duly acknowledge the great benefit of that light which we have received to guide us in matters of such vast and concerning speculation The Conflagration of the Earth THerefore at length when the time preappointed by the divine wisdom for this execution is come * The internal central fire shall have got such strength and irresistible vigour that it shall easily melt and dissolve that fence that hath all this while inclosed it And all those other smaller fires which are lodged in several parts of the lower Regions joyning themselves with this mighty flame shall prey upon what ever is combustible and so rage first within the bowels of the earth beginning the tragick execution upon those damned spirits that are there confined these having been reserved in the chains of darkness to the judgment of this great day and now shall their hell and misery be compleated and they receive the full reward of their impieties which doubtless will be the most intolerable and severe torment that can be imagined these fierce and merciless flames sticking close to yea piercing through and through their bodies which can remove no where to avoid this fiery over-spreading vengeance And now the subterranean vaults being thus all on fire it cannot be long ere this prevailing cumbustion take hold of the upper regions wherefore at last with irresistible violence it breaks forth upon these also So that the great pyre is now kindled smoak fire darkness horror and confusion cover the face of all things Wherefore the miserable inhabitants of the earth and inferiour air will be seized on by the devouring Element and suffer in that fire that was reserved for the perdition of ungodly men But shall the righteous perish with the wicked And shall not the Judge of all the earth do right Will not the sincere and vertuous both in the Earth and Air be secured from this sad fate And how can their deliverance be effected Doubtless Providence that in all things else hath been righteous and equal will not fail in this last scene but provision will be made for their recovery from this vengeance that hath taken hold of the wicked But all natural causes failing here since their bodies are not pure enough to waft them up the quiet regions of the un infested aether and the higher congruity of life being yet but imperfectly inchoated they would be detained prisoners here below by the chains of their unhappy natures were there not some extraordinary interposure for their rescue and inlargement wherefore when we contemplate the infinite fertility of the divine goodness we cannot think that he will let those seeds of piety and vertue which himself hath sown and given some increase to to come to nought or the honest possessors of them fatally to miscarry But that he will imploy his power for the compleating what he hath begun and the deliverance of those who have relyed upon his mercies But for the particular way and method how this great transaction will be accomplisht Philosophy cannot determine it Happy therefore are we who have the discoveries of a more certain Light which doth not only secure us of the thing but acquaints us with the way and means that the Divine Wisdom hath resolv'd on for the delivery of the righteous So that hereby we are assured that our ever blessed Redeemer shall appear in the clouds before this fiery Fate shall have quite taken hold of the Earth and its condemned inhabitants The Glory of his appearance with his Coelestial Legions shall raise such strong love joy and triumph in his now passionately enamoured expectants as shall again enkindle that high and potent principle the Spirit which being throughly awakened and excited will melt the grossest consistence into liquid Aether so that our bodies being thus turned into the purest flame we shall ascend in those fiery Chariots with our Glorious Redeemer and his illustrious and blessed Attendants to the Coelestial habitations This is the Resurrection of the just and the Recovery of our antient blessedness Thus have some represented this great transaction But I dare warrant nothing in this matter beyond the declarations of the Sacred Scriptures therefore to proceed in our Philosophical conjectures However the good shall be delivered be sure the wicked shall be made a prey to the Scorching Element which now rageth every where and suffer the Judgment threatned But yet the most degenerate part of Mankind if we consult meer Reason and the Antient Eastern Cabbala who are detained Prisoners in the now inflamed Atmosphere shall not for ever be abandon'd to misery and ruin For they are still pretended to be under the eye and tender care of that Almighty goodness that made and preserveth all things that punisheth not out of malice or revenge and therefore will not pursue them to their utter undoing for ever But hath set bounds to their destruction and in infinite Wisdom hath so ordered the matter that none of his Creatures shall be lost eternally or indure such an endless misery than which not Being it self were more eligible Wherefore those curious contemplators phancy that the unsupportable pain and anguish which hath long stuck to those miserable
must make this great difference as they grow up in the Body but that their Souls were different before they came into it And how should they have such a vast difference in the proclivity to Vice but that they lived before in the state of Pre-existence and that some were much deeper in rebellion against God and the Divine Reason than others were and so brought their different conditions with them into these Terrestrial Bodies Pag. 75. Then how a Swallow should return to her òld trade of living after her Winter sleep c. Indeed the Swallow has the advantages of Memory which the incorporate Soul has not in her incorporation into a Terrestrial Body after her state of Silence But the vital inclinations which are mainly if not onely fitted in the Plastick being not onely revived but signally vitious of themselves revived with advantage by reason of the corruption of this coarse earthly Body into which the Soul is incorporate they cannot fail of discovering themselves in a most signal manner without any help of memory but from the mere pregnancie of a corrupt Body and formerly more than ordinarily debauched Plastick in the state of Pre-existence Pag. 76. Whenas others are as fatally set against the Opinions c. And this is done as the ingenious Author takes notice even where neither Education nor Custom have interposed to sophisticate their Judgments or Sentiments Nay it is most certain that they sometime have Sentiments and entertain Opinions quite contrary to their Education So that that is but a slight account to restore this Phaenomenon into Education and Custom whenas Opinions are entertained and stiffly maintained in despight of them This I must confess implies that the aerial Inhabitants philosophize but conjecturally onely as well as the Inhabitants of the Earth And it is no wonder that such Spirits as are lapsed in their Morals should be at a loss also in their Intellectuals and though they have a desire to know the truth in Speculations it suiting so well with their pride that yet they should be subject to various errours and hallucinations as well as we and that there should be different yea opposite Schools of Philosophie among them And if there be any credit to be given to Cardans story of his Father Facius Cardanus things are thus de facto in the aereal Regions And two of the Spirits which Facius Cardanus saw in that Vision left upon Record by him and of which he often told his Son Hieronymus while he was living were two Professors of Philosophie in different Academies and were of different Opinions one of them apertly professing himself to be an Aven-Roist The story is too long to insert here See Dr. H. Moore his Immortality of the Soul book 3. chap. 17. So that lapsed Souls philosophizing in their Aerial State and being divided into Sects and consequently maintaining their different or opposite Opinions with heat and affection which reaches the Plastick this may leave a great propension in them to the same Opinions here and make them almost as prone to such and such Errours as to such and such Vices This I suppose the ingenious Author propounds as an Argument credible and plausible though he does not esteem it of like force with those he produced before Nor does his Opposer urge any thing to any purpose against it The main thing is That these Propensities to some one Opinion are not universal and blended with the constitution of every person but are thin sown and grow up sparingly Where there are five says he naturally bent to any one Opinion there are many millions that are free to all If some says he descend into this life big with aptnesses and proclivities to peculiar Theories why then should not all supposing they pre-existed together do the like As if all in the other Aereal State were Professors of Philosophie or zealous Followers of them that were The solution of this difficulty is so easie that I need not insist on it Pag. 78. Were this difference about sensibles the influence of the body might then be suspected for a cause c. This is very rationally alleadged by our Author and yet his Antagonist has the face from the observation of the diversity of mens Palates and Appetites of their being differently affected by such and such strains of Musick some being pleased with one kind of Melodie and others with another some plâ—ased with Aromatick Odours others offended with them to reason thus If the Bodie can thus cause us to love and dislike Sensibles why not as well to approve and dislike Opinions and Theories But the reason is obvious why not because the liking or disliking of these Sensibles depends upon the grateful or ungrateful motion of the Nerves of the Bodie which may be otherwise constituted or qualified in some complexions than in other some But for Philosophical Opinions and Theories ' what have they to do with the motion of the Nerves It is the Soul herself that judges of those abstractedly from the Senses or any use of the Nerves or corporeal Organ If the difference of our Judgment in Philosophical Theories be resolvible into the mere constitution of our Bodie our Understanding itself will hazard to be resolved into the same Principle also And Bodie will prove the onely difference betwixt Men and Brutes We have more intellectual Souls because we have better Bodies which I hope our Authors Antagonist will not allow Pag. 78. For the Soul in her first and pure nature has no Idiosyncrasies c. Whether there may not be certain different Characters proper to such and such Classes of Souls but all of them natural and without blemish and this for the better order of things in the Universe I will not rashly decide in the Negative But as the Author himself seems to insinuate if there be any such they are not such as fatally determine Souls to false and erroneous apprehensions For that would be a corruption and a blemish in the very natural Character Wherefore if the Soul in Philosophical Speculations is fatally determined to falshood in this life it is credible it is the effect of its being inured thereto in the other Pag. 79. Now to say that all this variety proceeds primarily from the mere temper of our Bodies c. This Argument is the less valid for Pre-existence I mean that which is drawn from the wonderful variety of our Genius's or natural inclinations to the employments of life because we cannot be assured but that the Divine Providence may have essentially as it were impressed such Classical Characters on humane Souls as I noted before And besides if that be true which Menander says 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That every man as soon as he is born has a Genius appointed him to be his Instructer and Guide of his Life That some are carried with such an impetus to some things rather than others may be from the instigations of his assisting
and fountain of Truth That in these I say consists the Truth in the Object and that the Truth in the Subject is a conception conformable to these or to the Truth of them whether in the uncreated or created Understanding So that the niceness of the point is this Whether the Transcendental Truth of things exhibited in their Objective Existence to the Theoretical Intellect of God consists in their Conformity to that Intellect or the Truth of that Intellect in its Conformity with the immutable natures and Relations or Respects of things exhibited in their Objective Existence which the Divine Intellect finds to be unalterably such not contrives them at its own pleasure This though it be no 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or strife about mere words yet it seems to be such a contest that there is no harm done whethersoever side carries the Cause the two seeming sides being but one and the same Intellect of God necessarily and immutably representing to it self the natures Respects and Aptitudes of all things such as they appear in their Objective Existence and such as they will prove whenever produced into act As for example The Divine Understanding quatenns exhibitive of Idea's which a Platonist would call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 does of its infinite pregnancy and fecundity necessarily exhibit certain and unalterable Idea's of such and such determinate things as suppose of a Cylinder a Globe and a Pyramid which have a setled and unalterable nature as also immutable properties references and aptitudes immediately consequential thereto and not arbitrariously added unto them which are thus necessarily extant in the Divine Intellect as exhibitive of such Idea's So likewise a Fish a Fowl and a four-footed beast an Ox Bear Horse or the like they have a setled nature exhibited in their Idea's and the properties and aptitudes immediately â—lowing therefrom As also have all the Elements Earth Water and Air determinate natures with properties and aptitudes immediately issuing from them Nor is a Whale fitted to fly in the Air nor an Eagle to live under the Water nor an Ox or Bear to do either nor any of them to live in the Fire But the Idea's of those things which we call by those names being unchangeable for there are diâ—ferences indeed of Idea's but no changing of one Idea into another state but their natures are distinctly setled and to add or take away any thing from an Idea is not to make an alteration in the same Idea but to constitute a new one As Aristotle somewhere in his Metaphysicks speaks of Numbers where he says that the adding or taking away of an Unite quite varies the species And therefore as every number suppose Binary Quinary Ternary Denary is such a setled number and no other and has such properties in it self and references immediately accrewing to it and aptitudes which no other number besides it self has so it is with Idea's the Idea's I say therefore of those things which we call by those names above-recited being unchangeable the aptitudes and references immediately issuing from their nature represented in the Idea must be also unalterable and necessary Thus it is with Mathematical and Physical Idea's and there is the same reason concerning such Idea's as may be called Moral Forasmuch as they respect the rectitude of Will in whatever Mind created or uncreated And thus lastly it is with Metaphysical Idea's as for example As the Physical Idea of Body Matter or Substance Material contains in it immediately of its own nature or intimate specifick Essence real Divisibility or Discerpibility Impenetrability and mere Passivity or Actuability as the proper fruit of the Essential Difference and intimate Form thereof unalterably and immutably as in its Idea in the Divine Intellect so in any Body or Material Substance that does exist So the Idea of a Spirit or of a Substance Immaterial the opposite Idea to the other contains in it immediately of its own nature Indiscerpibility Penetrability and Self-Activity as the inseparable fruit of the essential difference or intimate form thereof unalterably and immutably as in its Idea in the Divine Intellect so in any Immaterial Substance properly so called that doth exist So that as it is a contradiction in the Idea that it should be the Idea of Substance Immaterial and yet not include in it Indiscerpibility c. so it is in the being really existent that it should be Substance Immaterial and yet not be Indiscerpible c. For were it so it would not answer to the Truth of its Idea nor be what it pretendeth to be and is indeed an existent Being Indiscerpible which existent Being would not be Indiscerpible if any could discerp it And so likewise it is with the Idea of Ens summè absolutè perfectum which is a setled determinate and immutable Idea in the Divine Intellect whereby were not God himself that Ens summè absolutè perfectum he would discern there were something better than Himself and consequently that he were not God But he discerns Himself to be this Ens summè absolutè perfectum and we cannot but discern that to such a Being belongs Spirituality which implies Indiscerpibility and who but a mad man can imagine the Divine Essence discerpible into parts Infinity of Essence or Essential Omnipresence Self-Causality or necessary Existence immediately of it self or from it self resulting from the absolute and peculiar perfection of its own nature whereby we understand that nothing can exist ab aeterno of it self but He. And lastly Omniscience and Omnipotence whereby it can do any thing that implies no contradiction to be done Whence it necessarily follows that all things were Created by Him and that he were not God or Ens summè perfectum if it were not so And that amongst other things he created Spirits as sure as there are any Spirits in the world indiscerpible as himself is though of finite Essences and Metaphysical Amplitudes and that it is no derogation to his Omnipotence that he cannot discerp a Spirit once created it being a contradiction that he should Nor therefore any argument that he cannot create a Spirit because he would then puzzle his own Omnipotence to discerp it For it would then follow that he cannot create any thing no not Metaphysical Monads nor Matter unless it be Physically divisible in infinitum and God Himself could never divide it into parts Physically indivisible whereby yet his Omnipotence would be puzzled And if he can divide matter into Physical Monads no further divisible there his Omnipotence is puzzled again And by such sophistical Reasoning God shall be able to create nothing neither Matter nor Spirit nor consequently be God or Ens summè absolutè perfectum the Creator and Essentiator of all things This is so Mathematically clear and true that I wonder that Mr. Rich. Baxter should not rather exult in his Placid Collation at the discovery of so plain and useful a truth than put himself p. 79. into an Histrionical
Attributes of a Spirit contrarie to Matter are not in vain For whenas a Plastick Spirit is to actuate and organize Matter and inwardly dispose it into certain forms Penetrability is needful that it may possess the Matter and order it throughout As also that Oneness of Essence and Indiscerpibility that it may hold it together For what should make any mass of Matter one but that which has a special Oneness of Essence in it self quite different from that of Matter And forasmuch as all Souls are indued with the Plastick whether of Brutes or Men not to add the Spirits of Angels still there holds the same reason in all ranks that Spirits should be as well Penetrable and Indiscerpible as Vital And if there be any Platonick 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that have no Plastick yet Penetrability must belong to them and is of use to them if they be found to be within the verges of the Corporeal Universe and why not they as well as God himself and Indiscerpibility maintains their Supposital Unitie as it does in all Spirits that have to do with Matter and are capable of a vital coalescencie therewith But I have accumulated here more Theorie than is needful And I must remember that I am in a Digression To return therefore to the particular point we have been about all this while I hope by this time I have made it good that the Dr.'s Definition of a Spirit is so clear so true so express and usefully instructive and that is the scope of the Doctors Writings that neither he himself nor any body else let them consider as much as they can will ever be able to mend it And that these affected Cavils of Mr. Baxter argue no defects or slaws in the Doctors Definition but the ignorance and impotencie of Mr. Baxters Spirit and the undue elation of his mind when notwithstanding this unexceptionableness of the Definition he pag. 82. out of his Magisterial Chair of Judicature pronounces with a gracious nod You mean well but all our Conceptions here must have their ALLOWANCES and we must confess their weakness This is the Sentence which grave Mr. Baxter alto supercilio gives of the Doctors accurate Definition of a Spirit to humble him and exalt himself in the sight of the populacie But is it not a great weakness or worse to talk of favourable allowances and not to allow that to be unexceptionable against which no just exception is found But to give Mr. Baxter his due though the extream or extimate parts of this Paragraph pag. 82. which you may fancie as the skin thereof may seem to have something of bitterness and toughness in it yet the Belly of the Paragraph is full of plums and sweet things For he saies And we are all greatly beholden to the Doctor for his so industrious calling foolish Sensualists to the study and notion of invisible Beings without which what a carcass or nothing were the world But is it not pity then while the Doctor does discharge this Province with that faithfulness and industrie that Mr. Baxter should disturb him in his work and hazzard the fruits and efficacie thereof by eclipsing the clearness of his Notions of Spiritual Beings for Bodies may be also invisible by the interposition or opposition of his own great Name against them who as himself tells the world in his Church-History has wrote fourscore Books even as old Dr. Glisson his Patron or rather Pattern in Philosophy arrived to at least fourscore Years of age And Mr. Baxter it seems is for the common Proverb The older the wiser though Elihu in Job be of another mind who saies there I said Days should speak and multitude of Years should teach Wisdom But there is a Spirit in man and the Inspiration of the Almighty giveth him Vnderstanding But whither am I going I would conclude here according to promise having rescued the Doctors Definition of a Spirit from Mr. Baxters numerous little Criticisms like so many shrill busie Gnats trumpeting about it and attempting to insix their feeble Proboscides into it and I hope I have silenced them all But there is something in the very next Paragraph which is so wrongfully charged upon the Doctor that I cannot forbear standing up in his justification The Charge is this That he has fathered upon Mr. Baxter an Opinion he never owned and nick-named him Psychopyrist from his own fiction As if says he we said that Souls are Fire and also took Fire as the Doctor does for Candles and hot Irons c. onely But I answer in behalf of the Doctor as I have a little toucht on this matter before That he does indeed entitle a certain Letter which he answers to a Learned Psychopyrist as the Author thereof But Mr. Baxters name is with all imaginable care concealed So that he by his needless owning the Letter has notched that nick-name as he calls it of Psychopyrist upon himself whether out of greediness after that alluring Epithet it is baited with I know not but that he hangs thus by the gills like a Fish upon the Hook he may thank his own self for it nor ought to blame the Doctor Much less accuse him for saying that Mr. Baxter took Fire in no other sense than that in Candles and hot Iron and the like For in his Preface he expresly declares on the Psychopyrists behalf that he does not make this crass and visible Fire the Essence of a Spirit but that his meaning is more subtile and refined With what conscience then can Mr. Baxter say that the Doctor affirms that he took Fire in no other sense than that in Candles and hot Iron and the like and that he held all Souls to be such Fire whenas the Doctor is so modest and cautious that he does not affirm that Mr. Baxter thinks any to be such though even in this Placid Collation he professes his inclination towards the Opinion that Ignis and Vegetative Spirit is all one pag. 20 21. I have oft professed saith he that I am ignorant whether Ignis and Vegetative Spirit be all one to which I most incline or whether Ignis be an active nature made to be the instrument by which the three spiritual natures Vegetative Sensitive and Mental work on the three passive natures Earth Water Air. And again pag. 66. If it be the Spirit of the world that is the nearest cause of illumination by way of natural activity then that which you call the Spirit of the World I call Fire and so we differ but de nomine But I have saith he as before professed my ignorance whether Fire and the Vegetative nature be all one which I incline to think or whether Fire be a middle active nature between the spiritual and the mere Passive by which Spirits work on bodie And pag. 71. I doubt not but Fire is a Substance permeant and existent in all mixt bodies on Earth In your bloud it is the prime part of that called the
Any Angel or man may as truly be said to know all things as God himself c. Because this supposition takes away all the steadie and scientifick Knowableness in things it taking away their setled fixt and necessary habitudes one to another as if double proportion of Four to Two did no more belong to it in Truth and Reality than Sub-double and that Four in Truth were no more the Quaternarie number than the Binary but indifferently either as the Will of God will have it This plainly pulls up by the roots all pretence of Science or Knowledge in God Angels and Men. And much more flatly to assert That if God will contradictions may be true For this plainly implies that there is really no Repugnancy nor Connection of one thing with another and that therefore no one thing can be proved or disproved from another Pag. 171. If we distinguish those two Attributes in God c. namely of Wisdom and Knowledge as if the one were Noematical the other Dianoetical although that discursiveness is more quick than lightning or rather an eternal intuitive discernment of the consequence or cohesion of things at once Sect. 6. pag. 172. Because they suppose that God is mutable and changeable c. This can be no allegation against the other Arguings because we cannot be assured of the Immutability or Unchangeableness of God but by admitting of what those arguings drive at namely That there is an immutable necessary and unchangeable reference and respect or connection of things one with another As for example of Immutableness or Unchangeableness with Perfection and of Perfection with God For to fancie God an imperfect Being is nonsense to all men that are not delirant and to fancie him Perfect and yet Changeable in such a sense as is here understood is as arrant a Contradiction or Repugnancie Wherefore they that would oppose the fore-going Alguings by supposing God Unchangeable must acknowledge what is aimed at That there is a necessary and unchangeable respect and connection betwixt things or else their opposition is plainly weak and vain But if they grant this they grant the Cause and so Truth has its just victory and triumph This Section is abundantly clear of it self Sect. 8. pag. 174. Will spoil God of that universal Rectitude which is the greatest perfection of his nature c. In the fifth Section it was said That the making the Will of God the Fountain of all Truth robs him of all his Attributes And there it is proved how it robs him of his Wisdom and Knowledge Here it is shewn how it robs him of his Justice Mercy Faithfulness Goodness c. Pag. 175. For to say they are indispensably so because God understands them so c. This as the Author saies must be extream Incogitancy For the Truth of the Divine Understanding Speculative consists in its Conformitie with the Idea's of things and their Respects and Habitudes in the Divine Understanding Exhibitive which necessarily unchangeably and unalterably represents the natures of things with their Respects and Habitudes in their Objective Existence such as they necessarily are when they do really exist As of a Sphere Pyramid Cube and Cylinder And there is the same reason of all natures else with their Respects and Habitudes that they are as necessarily exhibited as the Cube and Cylinder and their Habitudes and Respects one to another as the proportion that a Cylinder bears to a Sphere or Globe of the same altitude and equal diameter Which Archimedes with incomparable clearness and subtiltie of wit has demonstrated in his Treatise De Sphaera Cylindro to be ratio sesquealtera as also the Superficies of the Cylinder with its Bases to bear the same proportion to the Supersicies of the Sphere And as these Idea's are necessarily and unalterably with their Respects and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 represented so are all Idea's else Physical and Moral as I have noted above And the nature of Justice Mercy Faithfulness and Goodness are with their habitudes and respects as sixedly determinately and unalterably represented in their Idea's as the Sphere and Cylinder or any other Form or Being whatsoever Sect. 9. pag. 178. For we are to know that there is a God and the Will of God c. That is to say If there be no setled natures and respects and habitudes of things in the order of Nature antecedent to any Will whatever Meditation or Contrivance nor there be any certain nature respects habitudes and connections of things in themselves it will be necessary that we first know there is a God and what his Will is touching the natures respects and habitudes of things Whether these which we seem to discern and do argue from are the same he means and wills or some other And so there will be a necessity of knowing God and his Will before we have any means to know him or which is all one we shall never have any means to know him upon this false and absurd Hypothesis Sect. 11. pag. 181. Then it infallibly follows that it is all one what I do or how I live c. This as the following words intimate is to be understood in reference to the pleasing God and to our own future Happiness But it is manifest it is not all one what I do or how I live though I did suppose there were no real distinction betwixt Truth and Falshood Good and Evil in the sense here intended in reference to this present condition in this World where the sense of pain and ease of imprisonment and liberty and of the security or sasety of a mans own person will oblige him to order his life in such a manner as hath at least the imitation of Temperance Faithfulness and Justice Sect. 12. pag. 183. If the opposition of Contradictory Terms depend upon the arbitrarious resolves of any Being whatsoever The plainness and irrefragableness of this Truth that the opposition of contradictory Terms is an affection habitude or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 betwixt those terms that no power in Heaven or Earth can abolish methinks should assure any that are not pure Sots or crazie Fantasticks that there may be many other such unalterable and immutable habitudes of Terms Natures or Things that are every jot as unabolishable as this Which is no derogation to the Divine Perfection but an Argument of it unless we should conceit that it is the height of the Perfection of Divine Omnipotence to be able to destroy himself And truly to fancie an ability in him of destroying or abolishing those eternal necessary and immutable habitudes or respects of the natures of things represented in their Idea's by the Divine Intellect Exhibitive is little less than the admitting in God an ability of destroying or abolishing the Divine Nature it self because ipso facto the Divine Wisdom and Knowledge would be destroyed as was shewn in the fifth Section and what a God would that be that is destitute thereof Wherefore it is