Body which properties are as immediate to her as impenetrability and separability of parts to the matter and we are not to demand the cause of the one any more than of the other So here we have the true Form as sufficient notice And if voluntary Motion be proper to a Spirit I think meer Fire Solar or Aethereal is no Spirit But if all self-moving Power be proper to a Spirit Fire is a Spirit And from the Form will I denominate while you oft tell us that the Essence of Substance is unknown By Essence meaning somwhat else than that which I can fully prove to be the Form To conclude there are these different Opinions before us I. That the whole Entity or Conceptus realis of a Spirit is Virtus vitalis and is mera sorma or rather simplex actus Entitativus and that substantia is added not as a partial real Conceptus but as respective to notifie that this Virtus vitalis is no Accident but a thing that may subsist of itself Some hold this true only of God and some of all Spirits If this be true your notions of Penetrability and Indivisibility are most easily defended II. That Spirits have two inadequate real Conceptus and that Substantia is the fundamental as truly as materia is in meer Bodies and an incomprehensible purity of Substance or that it is Immaterial not having partes extra partes with the trine dimension is Substantiae dispositio yet that this hath degrees as the Forms have all Spirits not being of equal Purity And that Virtus vitalis is the partial Conceptus viz. Formalis And this I encline to as to created Spirits III. That the Conceptus formalis of Spirit is this Virtus vitalis vel motiva perceptiva appetitiva but that all Matter is essentially informed by that Vitality and so Matter and Vitality are the inadequate Conceptus of every Substance and that not by Composition but as of one simple thing And this is Dr. Glisson's and some others IV. That a Spirit is both a real Substance as the fundamental Conceptus and informed both by Immateriality Penetrability and Indiscerpibility and also by a vital and moving Power But that it existeth only in Bodies or Matter and so always makes up a Compound of two Substances saving that God is infinite beyond all Matter And that all such Spirits were at first made together indivisible Individuals both that of the least Creature and of the greatest but changed from Body to Body and so are parts of Animals This I suppose is your Opinion Our chief difference is that I profess to be ignorant of the Consistency and Incorporation which you talk of and must be so Though I am assured of the Substantiality and Form which satisfieth me for Christ knoweth all the rest for me FINIS OF THE IMMORTALITY OF Mans Soul And the Nature of it and other Spirits Two Discourses One in a Letter to an unknown Doubter The other in a Reply to Dr Henry Moore 's Animadversions on a private Letter to him which he published in his Second Edition of Mr Joseph Glanvil's Sadducismus Triumphatus or History of Apparitions By RICHARD BAXTER LONDON Printed for B. Simons at the Three Golden Cocks at the West End of St. Pauls 1682. The PREFACE § 1. THE Author of the Letter which I answer being wholly unknown to me and making me no return of his sense of my Answer I suppose it can be no wrong to him that I publish it I have formerly thought that it is safer to keep such Objections and false reasonings from mens notice than publickly to confute them But now in London they are so commonly known and published in open Discourse and Writing that whether silencing them be desirable or not it is become impossible And tho I have said so much more especially in two Books The Reasons of the Christian Religion and the Unreasonableness of Infidelity as may make this needless to them that read those yet most Infidels and Sadduces being so self conceited and fastidious as to disdain or cast by all that will cost them long reading and consideration it may be this short Letter may so far prevail against their sloth as to invite them to read more I would true Christianity were as common as the profession of it There would then be fewer that need such Discourses But alas how numerous are thâ—se Christians that are no Christians no more than a Carcass or a Picture is a man yea worse Christians who hate Christianity whose Godfathers and Godmothers not Parents but Neighbours did promise and vow three things in their Names 1. That they should renounce the Devil and all his Works the Pomps and Vanities of this wicked World and all the sinful lusts of the flesh 2. That they should believe all the Articles of the Christian Faith 3. That they should keep Gods holy Will and Commandments and walk in the same all the days of their lives Yea before they could speak the mouth of these Godfathers speaking for them did not only promise that they should believe but profess in the Infants name That even then they did stedfastly believe the Articles of the Christian Faith The Infant is said to make both the Promise and Profession by these Godfathers who also undertake to provide that they shall learn all things which a Christian ought to know and believe to his Souls health and shall be virtuously brought up to lead a godly and a Christian life Whether these Godfathers ever intend to perform this or the Parents use to expect it of them I need not tell you But how little most of the baptized perform of it is too notorious And what wonder is it if we have Christians that in Satans Image fight against Christ even PERJURED MALIGNANT PERSECUTING Christians haters of those that seriously practice the baptismal Vow when they are PERJURED and Perfidious Violaters of it themselves as to the prevalent bent of heart and life These Hypocrite nominal Ceremony Christians become the great hinderance of the cure of Infidelity in the world It is the SPIRIT by its supernatural Works which is the great Witness of Christ and the infallible proof of supernatural Revelation These witnessing works of the Spirit are these five 1. His Antecedent Prophecies 2. His inherent Divine impress on the Person Works and Gospel of Christ 3. His concomitant Testimony in Christs uncontrolled numerous Miracles Resurrection and Ascension 4. His subsequent Testimony in the numerous uncontrolled Miracles of the Apostles and supernatural gifts to the Christians of that Age. But tho the History of these be as infallibly delivered to us as any in the world 〈◊〉 the distance hindereth the belief of some who have not this history well opened to them 5. Therefore God hath continued to the end of the world a more excellent Testimony than miracles thought not so apt to work on sense even the special regenerating sanctifying work of the Spirit of Christ on the
its Organs could rob the Soul of its Reason its Essential Faculty Tho the Workman breaks his Tools his hands do not lose their skill but ceaseth to act rather than to do ought irregularly so likewise would the Soul then act contrary to its own nature Secondly Because all the species both of the Mineral Vegitable and Animal Kingdoms appear to me but as the more eminent Works of a most excellent Operator as Engines of the most accurate Engineer they all live and have a Principle of Life manifest in their growth and augmentation and so far as they are living weights as I can perceive from the same source But then comes in those Natures and Faculties whereby each is distinguished from other even like several pieces of Clock or Watch-work the one shews the hour of the day and no more the next shews the hour and minutes another shews both the former and likewise the Age of the Moon another hath not only the three former motions but an addition of the rise and fall of Tides yet all this and many more that in that way are performed are several distinct motions arising all from the same Cause the Spring or Weight the Principle of motion in them So among living Weights the first do only grow and augment their bulk and have no possibility in nature to augment their kind the next to wit Vegitables do not only grow and increase their bulk but likewise have a power of propagating their like the third Family I mean the Animal Kingdom do not only live and encrease their kind but likewise are made sensative And lastly we our selves that are not only possest of all the former but of something I know not what we think more excellent and call Reason and all this from the same source namely that we live which if we did not we could not perform any of these acts For life in us is the same as the Spring or Weight in the Watch or Clock which ceasing all other motion ceaseth as in a Watch or Clock the Spring or Weight being down As Life therefore is the Cause of all Motion and all natural Operation and Faculties yet those multifarious Operations and Faculties manifest in and proper to the particular species of the Three Kingdoms requires not divers Principles of Life no more than divers motions specified in a Watch or Clock requires divers Weights or Springs And as the diversity of motion in Watch or Clock ariseth not from diversity of Weights or Springs but rather from other means so those diversities of Natures and Faculties manifest throughout the Three Kingdoms arise not from divers Principles of Life but from one Principle of Life manifesting its power in Bodies diversly organized So that a Tree or Herb that only vegitates and propagates its kind hath no other Principle of Life than an Animal that hath Sense and more eminent Faculties The difference only as I conceive is this Principle of Life in the vegitable is bound up in a Body organized to no other eud by which Life is hindred exerting any other power but in the Animal it 's kindled in a purer matter by which it 's capacitated to frame more excellent Orgains in order to the exerting more eminent Acts. For the Principle of Life can no more act rationally in matter capable of naught but vegitation for it acts in matter according to the nature thereof advancing it to its utmost excellency than a man can saw with a Coult-Staff or file with an Hatcher or make a Watch with a Betle and Wedges I am apt to believe those rare Endowments and eminent Faculties wherewith men seem to excel meer Sensatives are only the improvement of Speech wherein we have the advantage of them and the result of reiterated Acts until they become habits For by the first we are able to communicate our Conceptions and Experiments each to other and by the other we do gradually ascend to the knowledg of things For is all the knowledg either in the acts Liberal or Mechanical any more than this acts reiterated until they become habits which when they are we are said to know them And what is all our reasoning but an Argument in Discourse tossed from one to another till the Truth be found like a Ball between two Rackets till at last a lucky blow puts an end to the sport We come into the World hardly men and many whose natures want cultivation live having nothing to distinguish them from Brutes but the outward form speech and some little dexterity such as in Apes or Monkeys in the things they have been taught and the Affairs they have been bred to And could we imagine any man to have lived Twenty or Thirty years in the World without the benefit of Humane Converse What would appear then think you of a rational Soul which the wise man well saw when he asserted the Condition of Men and Beasts to be the same what a meer Ignorant hath Moses himself made of Adam that in his supposed best state knew not that he was naked but I believe the Nine Hundred and Thirty years Experience of his own and the continual Experiments of Posterity in that time communicated to him might quicken his Intellect So that he died with more Reason than he was created and humane nature in his posterity The next Generation was imbellished with his attainments to which their own Experiences still made a new addition The next Generation built on their Foundation and the next on their and so on and we are got on the shoulders of them all So that it 's rather a wonder that we know no more than that we know so much So that what we have seems rather times product through the means aforesaid than what our Natures were at first enricht with The which appears likewise in those whose memory fails and in whom the vestigia of things is wore out the habits they had contracted and manner of working in their several acts being forgotten what silly Animals are they Whereas were the Soul such as represented who could rob it of its Endowments It 's true the debilitating of a hand may impead a manual labour but rase what hath formerly been done out of the Memory and you render Man a perfect Bruit or worse for he knows not how to give a signification of his own mind And indeed I know not any thing wherein Man excels the Beasts but may be referred to the benefit of Speech and Hands capable of effecting its Conceptions nor find any better way to attain a right knowledg of our selves but by beholding our selves in Adam and enquiring what Nature had endued him with which will fall far short of what we now admire in our selves But now supposing all this answer'd what will it avail us to a Life of Retrobution if all return to one Element and be there immerged as Brooks and Rivers in the Sea If we lose our Individuation and all the Souls that have
usually taken for corporeal or gross and impenetrable and divisible substance uncapable of essential vital self-moving perception and appetite If this seems nothing to you God seems nothing to you and true Nature which is Principium motus seems nothing to you And all that performeth all the action which you see in the world seems nothing to you It 's pity that you have converst so little with God and your self as to think both to be nothing § 14. What you say out of Gen. 1. is little else but mistake when you say all was made out of the deep waters by the spirit of God The Text nameth what was made of them It saith nothing of the Creation of Angels or Spirits out of them no nor of the Light or Earth or Firmament And whereas you say God made man of the dust of the ground but the body only is not man ergo Ans You use your self too unkindly to leave out half the words Gen. 2. 7. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul when the Text tells us the two works by which God made man will you leave out one and then argue exclusively against it What if I said The Chandler made a Candle of Tallow and then by another kindled it or a man made an house of Bricks and cemented them with Mortar c. will you thence prove That he made a Candle burning without fire or the House without Mortar Words are useless to such Expositors § 15. Page 4. you say You know all matter is eternal But you know no such thing If it be Eternal it hath one Divine perfection and if so it must have the rest and so should be God But what 's your proof You again believe the Souls concentration in its body Ans Words insignificant It 's Idem or Aliud If Idem then dust is Essentially Vital and Intellectual Deny not spiritual forms if every clod or stone have them If Aliud how prove you it to be there rather than elsewhere And if you considered well you would not believe essential substantial life and mind to lye dead and unactive so long as the dust is so § 16. You come to the hardest Objecti The Souls defective acting in infants ideots the sick c. and say It would rather not act if it were as represented Ans 1. It cannot be denied but the Operations of the Soul here are much of them upon the organized body and tho not organical as if they acted by an Organ yet organical as acting on an Organ which is the material Spirit primarily And so there go various Causes to some Effects called Acts. 2. And the Soul doth nothing independently but as dependent on God in Being and Operation and therefore doth what God knoweth and useth it too as his Instrument in the forming of the body and in what it knoweth not it self And as God as fons naturae necessitateth the natural agency of the Soul as he doth the Soul of Bruits But as the wise and free Governor of the world he hath to moral acts given mans Soul free-will and therefore conducting Reason which it needs not to necessitated acts as digestion motion of the blood formation of the body c. And as it is not made to do all its acts freely and rationally so neither at all times as in Apoplexies Infancy Sleep c. It is essential to the Soul to have the active power or virtue of Intellection and Free-will but not always to use it As it is essential to the substance of fire tho latent in a flint to have the power of motion lighe and heat And its considerable that as a traveller in his journey thinking and talking only of other things retaineth still a secret act of intending his end else he would not go on when he perceiveth and observeth it not at all He that playeth on the Lute or Harpsical ceaseth when his Instrument is out of tune because he acteth by free-will But the Soul of an Idiot or mad-man acteth only per modum naturae not by free-acts but necessitated by God by the order of nature Only moral acts are free and that some other are but brutish and some but vegitative is no-more a wonder than that it should understand in the head and be sensible only in the most of the body and vegitative only in the hairs and nails It operateth in all the body by the Spirits as calid but about the eyes and open sensoria by Spirits also as lucid for that use § 14. But never forget this That nothing at any time doth what it cannot do but many can do that which they do not Tho the Soul in the Womb or Sleep remember not or reason not if ever it do it that proveth it had the power of doiug it And that power is not a novel accident tho the act may be so § 18. To your Explications p. 4. I say 1. None doubts but all the world is the work of one prime operating Cause Whom I hope you see in them is of perfect power wisdom aud goodness the chief efficient dirigent and final cause of all 2. I doubt not but the created universe is all one thing or frame and no one atome or part totally separated from and independent on the rest 3. But yet the parts are multitudes and heterogeneous and have their Individuation and are at once many and one in several respects And the unity of the Universe or of inferior universal Causes as the Sun or an anima telluris c. are certainly consistent with the specifick and individual differences of the parts E. g. Many individual Apples grow on the same Tree yea Crabs and Apples by divers grafts nourished on the same stock One may rot or be sower and not another Millions of Trees as also of Herbs and Flowers good and poysonous all grow in the same earth Here is Unity and great Diversity And tho self-moving Animals be not fixed on the earth no doubr they have a contiguity or continuity as parts with the Universe But for all that a Toad is not a Man nor a man in torment undifferenced from another at ease nor a bad man all one with a good § 19. And if any should have a conceâ—â— That there is nothing but God and matter I have fully confuted it in the Appendix to Reas of Christian Religion Matter is no such omnipotent sapiential thing in it self as to need no cause or maker any more than Compounds And to think that the infinite God would make no nobler Creature than dead matter no liker himself to glorifie him is antecedently absurd but consequently notoriously false For tho nothing be acted without him it 's evident that he hath made active Natures with a principle of self-moving in themselves The Sun differs from a clod by more than being matter variously moved by God even
be no Contradiction yet it will never be because he useth every thing according to its nature till he cometh to miracles Therefore their dissilution of parts is no more to be feared than their annihilation 3. But if you take Souls to be partible and unible then you must suppose every part to have still its own existence in the whole And do you think that this doth not more advance Souls than abase them Yea you seem to Deifie them while you make them all to return into God as drops into the Sea And if you feign God to be partible is it not more honour and joy to be a part of God who is joy it self than to be a created Soul If a thousand Candles were put out and their light turned into one Luminary as great as they all every part would have its share in the enlightning of the place about it Is it any loss to a single Soldier to become part of a victorious Army 4. But indeed this is too high a Glory for the Soul of man to desire or hope for It is enough to have a blessed union with Christ and the holy Society consistent with our Individuation Like will to like and yet be it self Rivers go to the Sea and not to the Earth Earth turns to Earth and not to the Sun or Fire And the holy and blessed go to the holy and blessed And I believe that their union will be nearer than we can now well conceive or than this selfish state of man desireth But as every drop in the Sea is the same Water it was so every Soul will be the same Soul 2. And as to the incapacity of misery which you talk of why should you think it more hereafter than here If you think all Souls now to be but one doth not an aking Tooth or a gouty Foot or a calculous Bladder suffer pain tho it be not the body that feeleth but the same sensitive Soul is pain'd in one part and pleas'd in another And if all Souls be now but God in divers Bodies or the Anima mundi try if you can comfort a man under the torment of the Stone or other Malady or on the Rack or in terror of Conscience by telling him That his Soul is a part of God Will this make a Captive bear his Captivity or a Malefactor his Death If not here why should you think that their misery hereafter will be ever the less or more tolerable for your conceit that they are parts of God They will be no more parts of him then than they were here But it 's like that they also will have an uniting inclination even to such as themselves or that God will separate them from all true unity and say Go you cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his Angels c. § 33. No doubt it 's true that you say page 7 and 8. That matter is still the same and liable to all the changes which you mention But it 's an unchanged God who doth all this by Spirits as second Causes who are not of such a changeable dissoluble partible nature as Bodies are It is Spirits that do all that 's done in the world And I conjecture as well as you That universal Spirits are universal Causes I suppose That this Earth hath a vegitative form which maketh it as a matrix to receive the Seeds and the more active influx of the Sun But Earth and Sun are but general Causes Only God and the seminal Virtue cause the species as such The Sun causeth every Plant to grow but it causeth not the difference between the Rose and the Nettle and the Oak The wonderful unsearchable Virtue of the Seed causeth that And if you would know that Virtue you must know it by the effects You cannot tell by the Seed only of a Rose a Vine an Oak what is in it But when you see the Plants in ripeness you may see that the Seeds had a specifying Virtue by the influx of the general Cause to bring forth those Plants Flowers c. Neither can you know what is in the Egg but by the ripe Bird nor what the Soul of an Infant is but by Manhood and its Acts. § 34. You here pag. 7. divert from the point of the Immortality or Nature of the Soul to that of the Resurrection of the Body of which I will now say but this Christ rose and hath promised us a Resurrection and nothing is difficult to God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 oft signifieth our living another life after this The Body hath more parts than Earth and Water The Spirits as we call them which are the igneous parts lodged in the purest aereal in the blood c. are that body in and by which the Soul doth operate on the rest How much of these material Spirits the Soul may retain with it after Death we know not and if it have such a body it hath partly the same and God can make what Addition he please which shall not contradict identity Paul saith of Corn God giveth it a body as pleaseth him in some respect the same c. in some not the same that was sown We do not hold That all the flesh that ever a man had shall be raised as that mans If one man that was fat grow lean in his sickness we do not say that all the flesh that sickness wasted shall rise It shall rise a spiritual body God knoweth that which you and I know not § 35. You add how easie it would have been to you to believe as the Church believeth and not to have immerged your self in these difficulties Ans 1. The Church is nothing but all individual Christians and it is their Belief which makes them capable of being of the Church As we must be men in order of Nature before we are a Kingdom of men so we are Believers before we are a Church of Believers A Kingdom or Policy maketh us not men but is made of men and Church-society or Policy maketh us not Believers but is made up of Believers Therefore Belief is first and is not caused by that which followeth it And why doth the Church believe Is it because they believe And whom do they believe Is it themselves I doubt you have fallen into acquaintance with those whose Interest hath made it their Trade to puzzle and confound men about things as hard to themselves as others that they may bring them to trust the Church and then tell them that it 's they that are that Church as a necessary means to the quieting their minds And they tell them You are never able by reason to comprehend the mysteries of Faith the more you search the more you are confounded But if you believe as the Church believeth you shall speed as the Church speedeth But it 's one thing to believe the same thing which the Church believeth and another to believe it with the same faith and upon the same Authority
If a man believe all the Articles of the Creed only because men tell him that they are true it is but a human Faith as resting only on mans Authority but the true Members of the Church believe all the same things because God revealeth and attesteth them and this is a Divine Faith And so must you If you love light more than darkness and deceit distinguish 1. Believing men for Authority 2. Believing men for their Honesty 3. Believing men for the natural impossibility of their deceiving And the foundation of this difference is here Mans Soul hath two sorts of acts Necessary and Contingent or mutably free To love our selves to be unwilling to be miserable and willing to be happy to love God as good if known c. are acts of the Soul as necessary as for fire to burn combustible contiguous matter or for a Bruit to eat so that all the Testimonies which is produced by these necessary acts by knowing men hath a Physical certainty the contrary being impossible And this is infallible historical knowledg of matter of fact Thus we know there is such a City as Rome Paris Venice c. and that there was such a man as K. James Ed. 6. Hen. 8. William the Conqueror c. And that the Statutes now ascribed to Ed. 3. and other Kings and their Parliaments are genuine For Judges judge by them Lawyers plead them Kings own them all men hold their Estates and Lives by them Contrary mens Interest by Lawyers are daily pleaded by them against each other and if any one would deny forge or corrupt a Statute Interest would engage the rest against him to detect his fraud 1. The certain effect of natural necessary Causes hath natural necessary evidence of Truth But when all knowing men of contrary Dispositions and Interests acknowledg a thing true this is the effect of nataral necessary Causes Ergo it hath natural necessary evidence of Truth 2. It is impossible there should be an Effect without a sufficient Cause But that a thing should be false which all knowing men of contrary Dispositions and Interests acknowledg to be true would be an Effect without a Cause for there is no Cause in nature to effect it It is impossible in nature that all men in England should agree to say There was a King James K. Edward Q. Mary or that these Statutes were made by them if it were false This is infallible Historical Testimony It were not so strong if it were only by one Party and not by Enemies also or men of contrary Minds and Interests And thus we know the History of the Gospel and this Tradition is naturally infallible II. But all the Testimony which dependeth on humane Acts not necessary but free have but an uncertain moral humane Credibility For so all men are Lyars i.e. fallible and not fully to be trusted And I. Those Testimonies which depend on mens Honesty are no farther credible than we know the Honesty of the men which in some is great in some is 〈◊〉 in most is mixt and lubricous and doubtful Alas what abundance of false History is in the world Who can trust the Honesty of such men as multitudes of Popes Prelates and Priests have been Will they stick at a Lye that stick not at Blood or any wickedness Besides the ignorance which invalidates their Testimony II. And to pretend Authority to rule our Faith is the most unsatisfactory way of all For before you can believe that Jesus is the Christ and his Word true how many impossibilities have you to believe 1. You must believe that Christ hath a Church 2. And hath authorized them to determine what is to be believed before you believe that he is Christ 3. You must know who they be whom you must believe whether all or some or a major vote Whether out of all the world or a party 4. And how far their Authority extendeth Whether to judg whether there be a God or no God a Christ or no Christ a Heaven or none a Gospel or none or what 5. And how their determinations out of all the world may come with certainty to us and where to find them 6. And when Countreys and Councils contradict and condemn each other which is to be believed Many such impossibilities in the Roman way must be believed before a mâ—n can believe that Jesus is the Christ In a word you must not puzzle your head to know what a man is or whether he have an immortal soul but you must 1. believe the Church of Believers before you are a Believer in Christ 2. And you must believe that Christ was God and Man and came to save man before you believe that there is such a creature as man or what he is and whether he have a soul capable of salvation But I have oft elsewhere opened these Absurdities and Contradictions where you may see them confuted if you are willing § 36. Your question about the souls nature existence and Individuation may be resolved by a surer and easier way as followeth I. By your own certain experience 1. You perceive that you see feel understand will and execute 2. You may know as is oft said that therefore you have an active power to do these 3. You may thence know that it is a substance which hath that power Nothing can do nothing 4. You may perceive that it is not the terrene substance but an invisible substance actuating the body 5. You may know that there is no probability that so noble a substance should be annihilated 6. Or that a pure and simple substance should be dissolved by the separation of parts or if that were every part would be a spirit still 7. You have no cause to suspect that this substance should lose those powers or faculties which are its essential form and be turned into some other species or thing 8. And you have as little cause to suspect that an essential vital intellective power will not be active when active inclination is its Essence 9. You have no cause to suspect that it will want Objects to action in a World of such variety of Objects 10. And you have as little cause to suspect that it will be unactive for want of Organs when God hath made its Essence active and either can make new Organs or that which can act on matter can act without or on other matter He that can play on a Lute can do somewhat as good if that be broken 11. And experience might satisfie you that several men have several souls by the several and contrary Operations 12. And you have no reason to suspect that God will turn many from being many into one or that unity should be any of their loss All this Reason tells you beginning at your own experience as I have and elsewhere more fully opened § 37. II. And you have at hand sensible proof of the individuation of spirits by Witches Contracts and Apparitions of which the world has
the truly pious Conclusion in your 34. Sect. I not only agree with you but in my own name and many others humbly tender you unfeigned Thanks § 3. And because I would not seem more distant from you than I am I shall first tell you that on these Subjects your thoughts and mine have been so long working to the same ends much in the same way that 1655. your Book against Atheism and my popular discourses of the unreasonableness of Infidelity coming out together we both used many of the same Histories of Apparitions Witches c. for Confirmation and in that Book of yours you have these following words which if they are not as I think they are not mischievous it 's like mine of the same importance are not so nor are more so proved by you than your own Antid Li. 1. p. 17. The parts of a Spirit can be no more separated though they be dilated than you can cut off the Rays of the Sun by a pair of Scissars made of pellucide Chrystal Appen p. 304. Suppose a point of Light from which rayes out a luminous Orb according to the known Principles of Optiques This Orb of Light doth very much resemble the Nature of a Spirit which is diffused and extended and yet indivisible For wee 'l suppose in this Spirit the Center of Life to be indivisible and yet to diffuse itself by a kind of circumscribed Omnipotency as the point of Light is discernible in every point of the luminous Sphere And yet supposing that central lucid point indivisible there is nothing divisible in all that Sphere of Light For it is ridiculous to think of any Engine or Art whatsoever to separate the luminous Raies from the shining Center and keep them apart by themselves as any man will acknowledge that does but consider the thing we speak of Now there is no difficulty to imagine such an Orb as this as Substance as well as a Quality And indeed this Sphere of Light itself it not inhering in any Subject in the place it occupieth looks far more like a Substance than any Accident And what we fanry unadvisedly to befal Light and Colours that any point of them will thus ray orbicularly is more rationally to be admitted in spiritual Substances whose central Essence spreads out into a secondary Substance as the luminous Rays are conceived to shoot out from a lucid point From whence we are enabled to return an Answer to the greatest difficulty in the foregoing Objection viz. That the conceived parts in a Spirit have an inseparable dependance on the central Essence from which they flow and in which they are radically contained and therefore though there be an extension of this whole substantial power yet one part is not separable or discerpible from another but the entire Substance as well secondary as primary or central is indivisible But let us again cast our Eyes on this lucid point and radiant Orb we have made use of It is manifest that those Raies that are hindered from shooting out so far as they would need not lose their Virtue or Being but only be reflected back toward their shining Center and the Obstacle being removed they may shoot out to their full length again so that there is no Generation of a new Ray. And p. 357. When I speak of Indivisibility that imagination create not new troubles to her self I mean not such an Indivisibility as is fancied in a Mathematical point but as we conceive in a Sphere of Light made from one lucid point or radiant Center For that Sphere or Orb of Light though it be in some sense extended yet it is truly indivisible supposing the Center such For there is no means imaginable to discerpe or separate any one Ray of this Orb and keep it apart by itself disjoined from the Center Now a little to invert the Property of this luminous Orb when we would apply it to a Soul or Spirit As there can be no alteration in the radiant Center but therewith it is necessarily in every part of the Orb so there is also that Vnity and Indivisibility of the exterior parts if I may so call them of a Spirit or Soul with their inmost Center that if any of them be affected the Center of Life is thereby also necessarily affected and these exteriour parts of the Soul being affected by the parts of the Object with such Circumstances as they are in the inward Center receives all so circumstantiated that it hath necessarily the entire and unconfused Images of things without though they be contrived into so small a compass and are in the very Center of this spiritual substance This Symbolical Representation I used before and I cannot excogitate any thing that will better set off the nature of a Spirit c. Here is the same and more than I have said unless you think Light here to be no Fire but take Light for a Substance and Fire but for Motion which if you say I am willing to believe you will recal And that a Spirit is in its Contraction impenetrable let your words testifie p. 312. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I define thus A Power in a Spirit of offering so near to a corporeal Emanation from the Center of Life that it will so perfectly fill the Receptivity of Matter into which it has penetrated that it is very difficult or impossible for any other Spirit to possess the same and of hereby becoming so firmly and closely united to a Body as both to actuate and be acted upon to affect and be affected thereby So here is a Spirit when it hath filled a Body that can no more be penetrated by another Spirit or Body and so in this contracted state is impenetrable So that this is but bringing diffused parts closer together and then no other can be in the same place And is this the necessary Form of a Spirit But may not this extension and Indivisibiliâ—y also be omitted as too hard without all the mischief mentioned by you and a truer notifying Form found out Let us hear your self p. 359. To prevent all such Cavils we shall omit the Spinosities of the Extension or Indivisibility of a Soul or Spirit and conclude briefly thus That the manifold Contradictions and Repugnancies we find in the nature of matter to be able to either think or spontaneously to move itself do well assure us that these operations belong not to it but to some other substance Wherefore we finding those operations in us it is manifest that we have in us an immaterial Being really distinct from the Body which we ordinarily call a Soul The speculation of whose bare Essence though it may well puzzle us yet those properties that we find incompetible to a Body do sufficiently inform us of the different Nature thereof for it is plain she is a Substance indued with the power of Cogitation that is of perceiving and thinking of Objects as also of penetrating and spontaneously moving of a
by a self-moving power also Else there were no living creature but bodies in themselves dead animated by God But it would be too tedious to say all against this that 's to be said § 20. When you tell us of One life in all differenc'd only by diversity of Organs you mean God or a common created Soul If God I tell you where I have confuted it It 's pity to torment or punish God in a murderer or call him wicked in a wicked man or that one man should be hang'd and another prais'd because the Engines of their bodies are diverse But the best Anatomists say That nothing is to be seen in the brain of other Animals why they might not be as rational as Men. And if it be an Animâ— creata communis that you mean either 〈◊〉 think it is a universal Soul to the universâ—â— world or only to this Earth or Vortex If to all the World you feign it to have 〈◊〉 Prerogative If to part of the world 〈◊〉 each Vortex Sun Star c. have a distâ—â—â— individuate superior Soul why not 〈◊〉 so inferiors And why may not millions of individual Spirits consist with more common or universal Spirits as well as the life 〈◊〉 Worms in your belly with yours That which hath no Soul or Spirit of its own 〈◊〉 not fit for such reception and communion with superior Spirits as that which hath Communion requireth some similitude We see God useth not all things alike because he makes them not like § 21. But if the difference between Beasts Trees Stones and Men be only the organical contexture of the body then 1. Either all these have but one Soul and 〈◊〉 are but one save corporeally 2. Or 〈◊〉 very Stone Tree and Beast hath an Intellectual Soul for it is evident that man hath by its Operations I. Had you made but Virtue and Vice to be only the effects of the bodies contexture sure you would only blame the maker â—f your body and not your self for any of your Crimes For yon did not make your own body if you were nothing Is the common light and sense of Nature no Evidence Doth not all the world difference Virtue and Vice moral good and evil Is it only the difference of an Instrument in Tune and out of Tune Either then all called sin is good or God or the universal Soul only is to be blamed Then to call you a Knave or a Lyar or Perjured c. is no more disgrace than to say that you are sick or blind Then all Laws are made only to bind God or the Amima mundi and all punishment is threatned to God or this common Soul And it is God or the common Soul only in a body which sorroweth feareth feeleth pain or pleasure II. And if you equal the Souls of Beasts Trees Stones and Men you must make them all to have an Intellectual Soul If man had not he could never understand And if they have so also frustra fit potentia quae nunquam producitur in actum It is certain that it is not the body Earth Air or Water that feeleth much less that understandeth or willeth If therefore all men have but one Soul why is it not you that are in pain or joy when any or all others are so Tour suffering and joys are as much theirs You hurt your self when you hurt a Malefactor Why are you not answerable for the Crimes of every Thief if all be one § 22. You vainly liken several Natures and Faculties to several pieces of Clock-work For Natures and Faculties are self-acting Principles under the prime Agent but a Clock is only passive moved by another Whether the motus gravitationis in the poise be by an intrinslck Principle or by another 〈◊〉 active Nature is all that 's controvertible there All that your similitude will infer is this That as the gravitation of one poise moves every wheel according to its receptive aptitude so God the universal Spirit moveth all that is moved according to their several aptitudes passives as passive actives as active vitals as self-movers intellectuals as intellectual-free-self-movers under him No Art can make a Clock feel see or understand But if the world have but one soul what mean you by its concentring in the Carcass Is the universal Soul there fallen asleep or imprisoned in a Grave or what is it § 23. Add page 5. You well say That Life is the cause of all motion Yea infinite Life Wisdom and Love is the cause of all but there be second Causes under it Plurima ex uno And it maketh things various which it moveth variously and maketh them vital sensitive or mental which he will move to vital sensitive and mental acts Operari sequitur esse § 24. You are apt to believe That those eminent Faculties wherewith men seem meer Sensitives are only the improvement of Speech and reiterated Acts till they become Habits Ans 1. I had a Parrot that spoke so very plainly that no Man could discern but he could have spoke as well as a Man if he had but had the Intellect of a Man and quickly would learn new words but shewed no understanding of them 2. Many men born deaf and dumb are of a strong understanding enquire of a Brother of Sir Richard Dyett's a Son of Mr. Peter Whalley of Northampton a Son in Law of the Lord Wharton's c. 3. The Faculty and the Habit are Two things The Faculty is the Essential form of the Substance The Habit or Act is but an Accident The Faculty is nothing but the active Power And the Power goeth before the Act. Doth acting without Power to act cause the Power What need you the Power if you can act without it And what 's a Contradiction if this be not to say I do that which I cannot do or I can do that which I have no power to do You are not a man without the Faculty but you are without the Act or else you are no man in your sleep The act then is but the Faculties act and Habits are nothing but the Faculties promptitude to act And this indeed is caused sometime by very strong acts and sometime and usually by frequent acts and sometime suddenly by a special Divine Operation No doubt but Oratory and all Arts and Sciences are caused by frequent acts and their Objects But those acts are caused by humane Faculties under God the first Cause You can never cause a Carcass or a Parrot or any Bruit to think of God and the glory to come nor to do any proper humane act Credible History assureth us That Devils or separate Souls have acted Carcasses and discoursed in them and seemed to commit Fornication in them and left them dead behind them and they were known to be the same that were lately executed or dead and were re-buried Here the dead Organ was capable when a Spirit did but use it You too much confound Intelléction and Ratiocination The prime acts of