immortall thing and not our mortall flesh is the authour of all sin and so God's immediate hand the cause of all sin That the body is onely an instrument of the soul is false See Soto of this in 4. d. 43. q. 1. a. 2. Rat. 3. for it is a living co-agent with it and a partaker both in the good and evil actions and is both rewardable and punishable with it whether in the mean time it be created or generated for this variation makes no difference in this matter of merit or demerit Neither doth the creation of the soul make God the authour of sin more than the generation of it that is to say not at all for still the soul and body are authours of their own actions and the deformity ariseth from their misdemeanour and not from God's creation or concurrence Doctour Sennertus although he admit not of any mortality in the soul yet he holds it probable that it comes by procreation and that from the first instance of conception the seed is ammated with the rationall soul which Doctrine of his by his leave inferrs mortality for whatsoever is generated is corruptible and is to go out according to the ordinary lawes of Nature at the same gate of corruption at which it entred in Neither is it true or likely or lastly any way Philosophicall to say as he doth Hypom 4. c. 10. as also in his Paralipomena c. 7. n. 3. ad Hypomn. 5. that nothing created is immortall by the principle of Nature but onely by the free will or gift of God because as it is amongst bodies some are very durable as Marble and Cedar some by and by corrupted as Flowers Fruits even out of the several natures of their composition which God hath appointed for them and not our of the free will of God immediately without any farther relation so in like sort some substances are perpetuall out of the nature of their being as spirituall substances and bodies that are simple and unmixt other some out of their own natures corruptible as those that are mixt and made up of Elements which as by some naturall agents they were knit up together so by the operation of other some they are dissolvable Souls then if generated are compounds and if so may be uncompounded by the agency and operation of causes naturall wherefore to seek an immortality onely from a decree extrinsecall without any foundation in their naturall beings seems neither to be Philosophicall nor true wherefore the immortality of Souls and Angels is not to be reared upon this weak foundation according to which a Fly may be as much immortall as an Angel one by nature according to Sennertus having no preeminence over the other the free determination of God for their perpetuall conservation being equally applicable to either of them Conformably to this position of his Sennertus Hypomn. 4. ca. 10. lib. de consens Chymic cum Arist Galeno c. 9. he will needs have the sperme alwayes animated with a reasonable soul but then consider how many more souls are cast away without any bodies organicall and humane then are actuated and preserved by bodies I ask what must become of these innumerable souls must they perish or have bodies made them at the Resurrection neither of these two can be admitted without great temerity and absurdities Besides this we know God did not inspire Adam with a living spirit while he was a lumpe of clay but when he had a face and a body that was organicall and not before Again why does the soul depart from the body but onely because it leaves to be organicall why then or with what probability can we imagine the soul is in the inorganicall sperme certainly with none at all The winde that did drive Sennertus upon this inhospitall shore was the necessity of assigning a vis formatrix or a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say an able architect or former of humane body which though most acknowledge to be the seed yet Sennertus sees not how this can be unlesse it should be animated with the soul his reason is because the soul only is to build an house fit for it self to inhabit But this reason of his is not urgent nay more it is not likely for egges and young birds do not build their own nests but the old ones for them so that it must by this account be the parents office to erect this new building and not the childes But how sayes he can the father do this Easily and well by sending his sperme as his deputy and officer to performe that duty Argent com in 1. Aphoris Hippocr as Argenterius also teacheth which entity hath derived to it from the generatour so much natural strength and cunning as to make a sufficient architect for the effecting of this work and all this may be done with the onely form of seed without any animation of it with a soul Thus it is likely that the Acorn for example without any more form than of an Acorn collects sit particles out of the elements and materials about it and by a virtue derived from the tree on which it grew forms out and fashions the body of an Oake and for the effecting of this work the seed participates much of the nature of the tree or plant and hath ordinarily much of the same virtue Wherefore in this abstruse question or quaere that we may say something which is likely and hath for the truth thereof probable examples and instances in nature we do conceive that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or forming virtue is the seed's own form excited and assisted by the breeding cherishing and connaturall warmth of the maternall body which doth environ it as in the procreation of birds it seems to be where the semen of the Cock being cherished and stirred up by the ambient and incumbent warmth of the Hen is that which changes the egge and forms it into the shape of the bird from whence it came neither is it probable that in so small a coagulum or seed which came from the Cock the soul or essence of a Cock is resident Now whereas he tels us that by the blessing granted to all Creatures by the Creatour of them in these words Increase and multiply force was given to every soul to multiply another we confesse it to be true yet this not to be done by creating of the younger by the elder souls or by the giving of them new entities but rather by doing some other act out of which these forms should connaturally follow as materiall forms they do by a resultancy and immateriall by creation from a higher cause which creation is to follow and is due by a regular ordination and exigence of Nature and so they may truly be said to be given and communicated though not made by the force of generation And this is the true vis prolifica and not that other which Sennertus feignes unto himself
Hue migrant ex orbe suumque habitantia coelum Aethereos vivunt annos mundoque fruuntur Nor will we hide what ancient fame profest How milk that gusht from Juno's snowy breast In heaven that splendent path and circle drew From whence the name as erst the colour grew Or troops of unseen starres there joyn their light And with their mingled splendours shine more bright Or souls Heroick from their bodies freed And earthly parts attain their virtues meed This shining Orbe and from their lowly herse Ascending high enjoy the Universe And live Ethereall lives And again Jam capto potimur mundo nostrumque parentem Pars sua conspicimus genitique accedimus astris Nec dubium est habitare Deum sub pectore nostro In coelumque redire animas coeloque venire Of all the world we 're now possest And clear behold our Parent blest A part of him and from these warres Make our approches to the starres No doubt but under humane brest A sacred Deity doth rest And that our souls from heaven came And thither must return again Lo here how he doth signifie not onely the souls of men be divine and immortall but besides that they had not their originall from the earth or from any earthly agent with whom consenteth a Greek Philosopher Sallustius Emescenus in his book de Diis mundo lately published and vindicated from the moathes by Leo Allatius This Philosopher c. 8. teacheth on this sort First saith he let us know what the soul is The soul is that which makes things living or animate differ from the livelesse or inanimate Their difference consists in motion sense phantasie and intelligence The soul devoid of reason is a life that serves apparences and the senses but the rationall using reason bears rule over the sense and phantasie Indeed a soul destitute of reason follows the affections of the body for it desires and is angry without reason but a rationall according to the rule of reason contemnes the body and entring into combate with the soul irrationall if it get the better doth follow virtue if vanquisht declines to vice This of necessity must be immortall because it knows the Gods and no mortall thing can know that which is immortall besides it contemnes humane things as if they were belonging to some other person and being it self incorporeall is averse from things corporeall which bodies if they be fair and fresh it languisheth if old it begins to flourish Also every diligent soul makes use of the mind 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the soul is not generated by the body for how should any thing that wanteth reason generate that which hath it Thus Sallustius out of whose words we have first That the soul differs from the body 2. That the rationall from the irrationall or the sense 3. That the rationall is immortall and the reason why 4. That it is ingenerable and for what cause With this Greek Sallustius agrees the Roman who l. de bello Jugurth saieth Ingenii egregia facinora sicut anima immortalia sunt The egregious atchievements of the wit are like the soul immortall and by and by Omnia orta occidunt aucta senescunt animus incorruptus aeternus rector humani generis All things which rise do fall and being increased do wax old the minde is incorrupt and eternall c. From these Philosophers we descend to inquire after the disciples of Hippocrates being desirous to learn what their opinion was of which we are to make no small account they being the chief Mystae or Hierophantae of nature and men most knowing especially in the transmutation of bodies and not onely in the Anatomizing by dissection of such bodies as be organicall but also of others by the Art of Chymistry which teaches how to dissolve naturall compounds though not so farre as into their first elements yet into their secondary parts of composition True it is that divers of this excellent profession have been suspected of some sinister cogitations touching the immortall soul as namely that it was like that of beasts that is to say onely a thin and fading exhalation raised out of the pure substance of the bloud c. But I must do them right such of them as have been guilty of these thoughts or rather mean conceptions were not any of their Grandees no Apollines nor Aesculapii but contrariwise men of a farre meaner condition and onely of a midling size at the most such I say as by reason of their weaker understandings have lost themselves amongst the rubbish of materiall and grosser objects and there perished Whereas the diviner understandings have sped better as being able from materiall things to take a higher flight and by a curious inspection into the effects to finde out the first cause and mover and by the diviner operations of the soul to conclude the immortality thereof And of this eminent sort in our dayes Italy hath afforded us an Argenterius a Jul. Scal. Spain a Vallesius a Mercatus France a Fernelius a Laurentius Portugall a Zacutus Germany a Sennertus to say nothing of the great Aldrovandus Dodonaeus and others As then as Cicero observeth they were Minutuli little petty Philosophers who denied the souls immortality so also may we say that those Physicians who did the same were but an inferiour sort of men and half-witted in comparison of those other who did maintain it And as for Galen a most principall master in that profession he inclineth to the asserting of immortality for though sometimes he seem much perplexed not knowing what to determine then namely when he onely considered how the habilities of the minde held a constant proportion with the severall structures and temperatures of the body rising and falling with them yet at other times when he beheld the sublimer operations of the â—…de he durst not affirm them to be the effects of temperature nor of any corporeall principle and so being reduced into great straits confesses finally his own ignorance and that he knows not whence they do proceed as namely l. Quod anima sequatur temperaturam corporis again l. De usu spirat l. De causis pulsuum and l. 2. De causis symptom After all which l. 7. De Placitis Hippocratis he grows more resolute declaring plainly That the minde or originall of those operations is either some body Etherall or else a substance wholly incorporeall and finally l. de Conceptu his conclusion is delivered by him in these following words The soul saith he is a particle of that great soul of the Vniverse descending from the region celestiall is capable of science aspiring evermore by a way sorting to it self unto such a substance as hath affinity therewith and relinquishing things that are earthly soaring towards the highest partaking of divinity celestiall and often contemplating the heavenly mansion it gives an attendance to the Moderatour of the Vniverse Thus Galen as cited by Fernelius l. 2. de abditis rerum causis e. 4.
of yeares withdraw his preservative or conservative influence and why the same influence is not still as formerly to be continued or what exigence of nature there is or may be which shall make the difference I grant them that in compounded bodies a Philosophicall reason may be given of such an alteration because it may fall out that the natural impugnation of them by the a gency of second causes for their corruption or dissolution may require such a revolution of influxe Also the same may be allowed for the set time of desition of accidents permanent then whensoever they come to be deserted by the subjects which gave them their support which thing may happen to them either by the dissipation of those substances or else by the violence of some external agent that shall dislodge them In accidents that be fluent and by nature successive a reason also may be rendred why they should continually cease to be and besides at a certain terme or period exspire for altogether But yet why substances incompounded by nature permanent such as naturally cannot be corrupted nor perish by dissolution of which sort all Intelligences be all other substances intellectual as namely the rationall souls why they I say should have a fatall houre assigned them then require to be annihilated and forsaken by the sovereigne first cause these new Philosophers have not yet told us much lesse why it should be so without any requiring on their part or any naturall exigence for it Wherefore leaving these light phansies to the Authours of them we say with the Poet His ego nec metas rerum nec temporapono Imperium sine fine dedi c. To these no limits I intend But grant an Empire without end Of which point see more in our learned Carleton alià s Compton Without doubt that soul which hath withstood and survived the violent assaults of Death then when it was rent from the body and forced to surrender that beloved Fort there can be no suspicion that it should faile afterwards grow old with time decay and come to nothing and all this without any other force Besides if the soul be of a simple uncompounded nature as intellectuall substances be then can it not dissolve or which is all one perish by corruption Wherefore if the principles of nature whereby the soul is constituted admit of no desition nor ending by corruption there can be no reason given why these by exigence of nature should not require to be continually susteined in their being by conservation from the first cause and much lesse why at such or such a point of time or age they should require to be forsaken and by the withdrawing of the first causes benevolence to return unto their first nothing Wherefore I account these conceits of mortality and aiery possibilities of desition to be unworthy of any further examination but rather to be rejected as inventions of contentious and sophistick braines that love to entangle all right threads of discourse and to obscure those lights which lead men unto truth Having seen all this in favour of an immortality of the soul let us now behold as uniforme and favourable a consent of the ancient Sages for the divine originall of the same and not humane by procreation as our impious Authour labours to maintain Salluste the Greek Philosoper in the place before alleadged out of him speaks plainly and tells us it cannot be produced by generation Manilius derives its pedigree from heaven as we have heard out of him already which he elsewhere confirmeth saying Stetit unus in arcem Erectus capitis victorque ad sidera mitt it Sidereos oculos propiusque adspect at Olympum Inquiritque Jovem nec sola fronte Deorum Contentus manet coelum scrutatur in alto Cognatumque sequens corpus se quaerit in astris Cicero in Som. Scip. determineth saying His animus datus est ex sempiternis illis ignibê° quae sydera stellas vocatis quae rotundae globosae divinis animatae mentibus c. Marcus Antoninus seems to draw mens particular souls from the great and common soul of the world and the Gentiles in generall do acknowledge them to have a celestiall originall by the received fable of Prometheus who composing the bodies of men of clay or earthly substance is feigned to have stollen fire from heaven wherewith to animate and inform those bodies signifying thereby that the fires of earthly furnaces were not sufficient for so excellent a work The Philosophers of later times are for the major part of them against the production of souls by procreation amongst the rest Laevinus Lemnius l. 1. de Occultis nature Miraculis c. 11. speaks much after the manner of some Heathens before alleadged calling the soul scintillam divinae mentis which is a high expression yet not meaning as literally it seems that it is any particle of the Deïty or any substance increated but denoting onely the sublimity of it and that the originall is not from the earth With him agreeth the great speculatour Jeannes Argenterius med ad 1. Aphor. Hippoc. The famous Fernelius l. 1. de Abditis rerum causis c. 5 7. declaring that the cause of all forms in generall is from heaven Andrew Laurentius l. 1. Anat. c. 1. teacheth in expresse terms that the reasonable soul is not generated but created The same doctrine is confirmed by Zacutus Lusitanus one of the most famous able Physicians of this time who tom 1. oper l. 5. Medic. Princ. Histor hist 3. q. 3. doth in this behalf open himself very fully and giveth reasons also why the soul can be no other but a substance indeficient or immortal I omit the rehearsall of more votes and come to enquire after the cause why it cannot be generated like other forms In the head of this search I propound the doctrine of Cicero who l. 1. Tuscul hath laid the foundation of the truth Animorum inquit in terris nulla origio inveniri potest c. No origine saith he of souls can be found on earth for in the minde there is nothing that is mixt nothing concreate or bred from out the earth nothing which is humid or aëriall or fiery for in these natures there is nothing which hath the power of memory of minde or cogitation which may retaine things past or provide for the future and comprehend the present which alone be things divine neither is it ever to be found out how they might betide to man but from God onely Wherefore the nature and power of the minde is singular and different from these usuall and known natures For which cause whatsoever that is which apprehendeth which is wise and willeth and is vigorous that same is heavenly and divine and is of necessity eternall So discoursed Cicero and rightly also if I be not mistaken The pressing home of this argument will consist of three points or heads First from the nature of the soul it self which
morte immort Ferrariens Philippus Faber Collegium Complut others especially Albertinus Tom. 1. Corol. Alexander Valignanus apud Possevinum Tom. 1. Biblioth Select Thomas Carmelita l. 11. c. 12. de conversione Gentium Bagotius tom 2. Instit d. 4. Menasseh Ben Israel de Resurr Mortuorum à c. 8. Zanchy de oper Creat l. 2. c. 8. Fromundus l. 4. de Anima Carleton in Philosophia tract de Anima q. 10. Morisanus in Philosophia tract de Anima Quaest 5. Petrus Gassendus tom 1. de Philosophia Epicuri where he musters up all the objections made by Lucretius and confutes them all which men of Learning did not only hold the reasonable Soul to be an immortall substance but also that thus much might be proved of it by naturall reason Thom. Campanella in his Metaph. very copiously This high preeminence in the Soul of immortality we trace out chiefly by the operations of it as by so many steps which lead unto the knowledge thereof because according to the rule in Philosophy sicut se habet res ad esse sic ad operari sicut ad operari sic ad esse By the nature of any thing we may search out the operations and again by the operations the nature One of the chief operations of the soul is the act of understanding by the indication of which we learn it to be immateriall and again by the being so not to be corruptible or dissolvable by any naturall agent or which is all one to be immortall These acts or operations intellectuall do by three wayes prove the immortality First because they simply are intellectuall Secondly because they terminate upon objects spirituall and are apprehensive of them Thirdly because they fall even upon materiall objects after a manner immateriall First according to Aquin. 1. p. q. 14. a. 1. Valentia ibid. Raynaud Nat. Theol. d. 2. q. 2. a. 3. Aquin. l. 10. con Gent. c. 44. and others no power or substance that is not devoid of matter can be intellectuall nor again any object directly and immediately intelligible which is not also immateriall the reason is because corporeity or matter darkens the power and confines it to singularities The words of Petrus de Aquila called Scotellus 1. Sent. dist 35. q. 1. are very pertinent and these By how much saith he any thing is freed from matter by so much is it both objectively and also actively intelligible because according to Avicenna and Aristotle Immateriality is the cause of Intellection But God is the most remote from matter and therefore is the most of all intellective Wherefore since matter and corporeity are over-grosse to admit of intellection and that the soul of man is intellective it can be neither materiall nor corporeall but contrariwise of nature elevated above matter that is to say spirituall and incorruptible Secondly The soul doth not onely understand mean objects but the highest and the purest of all that is to say all objects spirituall and God himself I grant to Aureolus that the object and the power need not be alike in nature and therefore it is no formall consequence that because the object is spirituall therefore the power must be so but yet neverthelesse the materiall consequence is very good because it is wholly necessary that the power intellective should be free from all those impediments of understanding whether like or unlike which are situate within the sphere of the object or without it and that moreover as Pet. Aureolus 2. Sent. dist 19. himself confesses there ought to be some resemblance or proportion between the object and the power at least quoad rationem cognoscentis cognoscibilis but between a materiall power and a spirituall object there is none First because the power is too low and gross Secondly because a spirituall entity is situate without the sphere or compasse of the object as for example an Angell is quite without the compasse of any eye corporeall because he is such an object as is not visible but intelligible onely that is to say perceptible onely by a power that is higher then any sense and properly intellective which the eye is not because materiall and a spirit is therefore imperceptible to our sight and beyond the lines of the object because the object of the sight is colour figure magnitude c. none of which are in a spirit And though as Arriaga teacheth in some kinde a corporeall agent may act upon a spirit for a body united to a soul as it is in man according as it is severally disposed may transmit something upon the soul cause alterations in it contristate or rejoice it yet neverthelesse can it not do any thing by way of vision because the soul hath nothing in it wherewith to terminate the sight in which case it must be wholly invisible even although it were no spirit but some other kind of entity as namely a sound is which though it partake of materiality yet is it invisible and therefore imperceptible by the eye though not by another sense For this cause it seems improbable that any corporeal eye can be enabled to see the Deity by means of any elevation or sublevation whatsoever contrary to the opinion of a late learned Grecian Leo Allatius l. de consen Eccl. Occid Orient As then one reason why an eye corporeall cannot see a spirit is because the organ of vision is corporeall so on the other side one reason why a soul may be sensible of a spirit is because the soul is spirituall and thereby prepared to receive an impression from it and also is conformably to the object a power intellective as the same object is intelligible I said before that a sound cannot be seen but I add now that it may be seen easier then any spirit can because a sound is material and therefore one degree nearer to visibility then a spirit and for this cause needing no intellective faculty to apprehend it as every spirit doth so that against the eyes seeing of a spirit there be two impediments whereas against the seeing of a sound there is but one Out of all this I deduce that if the Object be spirituall the Faculty perceiving must be no lesse Thirdly the soul doth not entertain materiall objects after a material manner but contrariwise after a manner immateriall for it abstracts them from the dross of matter the grossnesse of singularity Now it is a certainty that Vnumquodque recipitur secundū modum recipientis Every thing is received according to the form of the recipient not according to the own wherefore seeing the manner of being is correspondent to the manner of operation seeing again that the manner of the souls operation even upon things materiall is immateriall therefore the manner of being of it must be also immateriall The impression declares the figure of the seal If then the souls impression upon material objects be spirituall the soul it self is also spirituall The understanding
from virtue is no sufficient recompense nor reduceth things unto equality nor lastly commends or justifies the providence of God Thirdly this contentment received in the soul from virtue cannot keep the virtuous from being miserable because this solace is received onely in the minde or soul notwithstanding which content he may be in poverty captivity sicknesse in Perillus his Bull or upon the rack in which cases as the body suffering for a good cause receives contentment from the soul so in like sort the sorrows be reciprocall for the soul is made partaker of the miseries of the body and is afflicted by means of it so that in fine here is no full and clear contentment but a mixture of joy and sorrow and consequently here is no desired reward or felicity neither of soul nor body and much lesse of the whole man who consists essentially of both and is totally to be rewarded and not the one half of him alone whether soul or body Num saith Anastasius Sinaïta quaest 73. quando oportebat certare corpus plus sudoris expressit quando autem est tempus coronarum sola coronatur anima Shall the body endure the greatest trouble in the conflict and the soul alone receive the crown or comfort this were no justice or equity Certainly a man in this state would stand in need of patience which virtue I think was never necessary for the happy man but for the afflicted nor for the enjoying of felicity but the enduring of misery In summe it were a fury to think that while these two parts of man body and soul are linked together that one half of him can be happy while the other is miserable or that the reward of the soul alone is the reward of the whole man and able to give him satisfaction But that contrariwise as the soul of man is but one half of him though indeed much the better half so likewise the felicity of the soul alone is but one half of mans felicity and so again the affliction of his body one half of his infelicity though by much the lesser See of this point Abulensis in c. 4. Deut. q. 7. Thomas de Argentina in 4 dist 49. art 4. Vincentius Beluacensis l. de Consolat ad Regem Ludov. c. 11. also our countrey-man Jo. Bacon the famous Carmelite in 4. dist 50. q. ult and principally Marsilius in 4. d. ult The Stoicks invented for man this harsh and miserable felicity for supplying the defect of their doctrine touching providence and humane felicity which they could not patch up otherwise then with such rotten stuff as this which will not hold the examination nor indeed can be without the Christian doctrine of the resurrection So that albeit reason alone without revelation cannot prove the resurrection to be because this effect exceeds the virtue of naturall causes there being allowed in nature no regress à privatione ad habitū yet reason proves that article to be very convenient credible for an accomplishment of all without which there is no way remaining either for the justifying of providence or the rewarding beautifying of man or lastly for the giving any life and encouragement to virtue Now if a reward over and above the inward contentment of the minde be due to virtue and this reward is to be of the whole man and also to be paid him after this life then must this reward be such as will fully satisfie and content him for satisfied he is to be and also satisfied by that which is a reward consequent to his actions wherefore his contentment must be eternall for nothing else can please him as elsewhere we have endeavoured to evict and as I suppose every mans own heart will tell him without book wherefore the soul which is to enjoy this must also be eternall or which in our sense is all one immortall Pontius the Scotist struggles against this argument also for the defence of his Master Scotus but the zeal of defending truth and of delivering healthfull doctrine I value above that other of defending the sayings of any one particular Master whatsoever if he be but a man as Scotus was no more Eighthly the doctrine of the soul's immortality is the foundation of virtue without which she must needs fall unto the ground this is clearly shewed by Lessius and long before him by the Platonick and Heathen Philosopher Hierocles Unlesse saith he something should subsist in us after death fit to be adorned with verity and virtue which subsistent thing without doubt is no other than the reasonable soul we should have no pure desire of honesty or virtue For the suspicion of an abolishment would choak the desites of these and divert us to corporeall pleasures of what sort soever or whensoever they might be gotten by us And according to that doctrine how could it seem the part of a prudent or moderate man not to be so indulgent to his body as to grant it all things seeing the soul in that case was preserved for the bodies sake and of it self had no existence but accrued unto man from the conformation of his body Or why under the name of virtue should we molest our body if the soul so perish with it as virtue her self can have no subsistence left for whose sake we endure death Thus farre Hierocles and that very cordially and truly If then the doctrine of the soul's immortality be the foundation of virtue doubtlesse it is a truth assured because virtue and a rationall manner of conversation taken in the generality cannot be founded upon any falsehood or uncertainty as Ludovicus Vives hath notably declared I might add here the arguments of Scaliger Exercit. 308. n. 20. of Aureolus Renatus des Cartes and divers others but these alone well explicated and considered are sufficient These are the chief seats of arguments from whence Authours do usually fetch them which how much more or lesse valid or perspicuous they may seem yet have they been held for good by the wisest Philosophers both Heathen and Christian and to be concluding But howsoever that be the verity it self hath been counted certain and evident insomuch as Aureolus himself although he found difficulty in sundry of the arguments yet did he not doubt to say speaking of the soul's immortality in 2 Sent. dist 19. This doctrine of faith is to be held undoubtedly and it is the common conception of the minde and a verity evident of it self though to give a reason for it it is not so casie So Aureolus with whom consenteth Cicero when as he said as hath been before alleadged out of him that it is the consent of all nations Now saith he if the consent of all be the voice and verdict of Nature then are we to think the same Besides how could so many Heathen Philosophers have acknowledged unanimously this doctrine of immortality otherwise then by the light of nature and common reason out of which it is plain that naturall reason doth
it is necessary that properly they alwayes understand Forasmuch as the understanding is not a power that is subject to wearinesse then when it is separated from the body therefore it shall never be tired as having no coherence with the conditions of an organe corporeall Thus defineth he CHAP. X. An estimate of the reasons for the souls immortality THere have not wanted both in this time and also in former ages some Icarian wits who I know not why have laboured to extenuate and to diminish the force of the arguments usually brought in favour of the souls indeficiency not doubting to give it out that they be not demonstrative But this exception of theirs failes more of being demonstrative then the reasons do against which they except for admit they be not properly demonstrative yet neverthelesse may they be proofes very sufficient and able to persuade any man that is unpartiall and governed by reason and also much stronger than any which hitherto have been brought against it and so are to carry the cause on their side I will not deny but that those same reasons may not be so cleare and perspicuous as some are which we have for sundry other verities the cause whereof may seem to be the souls immuring within corporeall organs as in a dark house or prison in which it being shut up although it may behold out at the windows of the body objects abroad illustrated with light yet at home by reason of the domestick obscurity it cannot do the like This same difficulty moreover is increased because the soul of man is an entity placed in the confines betwixt the two regions of substances spiritual and corporeal and so of nature more ambiguous and hard to be discerned by reason that in this posture it may sometimes seem to be belonging to one side and sometimes again unto the others and so much also the easier because the soul while it is in the body discharges a two-sold duty viz. one of a form informing as Philosophers use to call it such namely as is performed by the souls inferiour conformably to the doctrine of Aristotle the other of a form assistent agreeable to the School of Plato unto which Campanella doth subscribe Such a form as this is God unto the world and is therefore stiled Anima mundi by very many the Soul of the Universe of which sort Intelligences be according to the Peripateticks in respect of their severall Orbes and a Pilote in a ship as also other movers and directers of that nature And this double office the soul performeth because even as it is rationall it doth not onely animate the body and is it self also a formall ingredient and constitutes man in his specificall degree of being and thereby distinguishes him essentially from all other creatures which functions belong unto the soul as it is a form informing but besides all this acts the part of a form assistent residing in the body as a high Dictatour controlling it commanding and countermanding prescribing laws inflicting punishments exercising acts of jurisdiction and absolute soveraignty thereby resembling a Judge upon the bench or Prince upon his throne more then a form meerly informing whereas contrariwise the soul of a Beast lives in subjection to the body being therein compelled to follow the prescription of every sensuall appetite after a servile or slavish manner without any power to make resistance Wherefore not without good cause did Fl. Josephus stile the power of reason a Soveraignty or Empire In consideration also of this two-old office of the soul seemed it to have two names given it one relating to it as it is a form informing namely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Anima the other to it as a form assistent viz. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Animus or Mens In the former sense it is a Soul in the later a Minde which preeminence of being a Minde over and above that other of a Soul Juvenal expresseth saying Sat. 15. venerabile soli Sortiti ingenium divinorumque capaces Atque exercendis capiendisque artibus apti Sensum è coelesti demissum traximus arce Cujus egent prona terram spectantia mundi Principio indulsit Communis conditor illis Tantum animas nobis animum quoque c. For arts a wit to man was lent Afarre from heavenly towers sent Which shining light prone creatures want Nature it seems to them was scant A soul on each to us more kinde Besides a soul bestow'd a minde How inconsiderate an act it is in men of learning to seek evasions from the usuall arguments brought in favour of immortality we have noted before out of our learned countriman Mr. Carleton and again with what ill successe men do impugne both those arguments and other received doctrines in Philosophy the experience of this last age hath taught us in which we have seen the fall of many soaring spirits that have adventured upon them Telesius Patritius Ramus Basson Gassendus though in a manner but newly sprung yet are grown already into neglect and the like destiny may Des Cartes Henricus Regius Campanella expect the last of which three though he have many strange conceptions and novelties as for example touching the sense of things insensible and also his three Primalities as he calls them which he will hardly persuade unto the world and again many trifling objections against Aristotle yet by his largenesse of contemplating starts many notable Truths which other great Wits who have gone on in a streight line have not espied in regard of which verities his labours may continue longer them other of that sort are like to do We see Aristotle yet lives and lives also in esteem and his adversaries lie buried in contempt It is an old saying Qui vult infestare fortem Perit atque quaerit mortem Those who with the strong contend Must expect untimely end Those who will be ever quarrelling with Aristotle and his School about those doctrines which have passed the Test after so many examinations by the most able Wits for no small number of ages may peradventure be overmatched and return out of the fray with broken heads To impugne this or that single doctrine this or that one argument may passe for currant and peradventure also prove successfull but he that will undertake to raise a whole new frame of Philosophy and encounter with Aristotle at every turn stands in need to have the wit of Aristotle which as it appeares few of these new undertakers have had yea such bold attempts do shew the adventurers capacities not to have been very great Let the quarrellers go on and try their fortune and by experience they may finde that the arguments for immortality had deeper roots then they imagined Surely that doctrine to which the most intelligent persons of the very Heathens gave their assent either wanted not good arguments to prove it or else bad arguments had very strange and incredible successe It could not be but those proofes were
THE GRAND PREROGATIVE OF HUMANE NATURE Namely The Souls naturall or native immortality and freedome from corruption shewed by many arguments and also defended against the rash and rude conceptions of a late presumptuous Authour who hath adventured to impugne it By G. H. Gent. Now first published according to the perfect Copie and the Authours mind Math. 22.32 I am the God of Abraham the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob God is not the God of the dead but of the living LONDON Printed by ROGER DANIEL and are to be sold by Antony Williamson at the Queens Armes in St. Pauls Church-yard An. 1653. THE PREFACE SO great and sovereigne to Man hath been the benignity of indulgent Nature as that she hath not only bestowed upon his soul above those of other creatures the high and singular Prerogative of immortality but hath moreover imparted to him light whereby he might come unto the knowledge of it and by that same knowledge be excited to make a diligent inquiry after the obligations that follow on it and how also in this life he may make his best advantages and preparations for the next Neither is this same Truth of immortality any new discovery but acknowledge of old by the Heathenish and Pagan Nations of which thing we in the Work ensuing are to give in a large evidence by our producing the many testimonies of a full and frequent Senate of ancient Sages who being destitute of revelation had nothing but nature to instruct them in this same verity Against these powerfull impulsives and clearer notions of truth the adverse party hath nothing to oppose but mere surmises or suspicions such namely as the Authour of the Book of Wisedome out of their own mouths recordeth saying There hath not any one been known to have returned from below Or else such as Pliny doth imagine who grafteth the opinion of immortality not upon an innate or naturall longing and appetite as he should have done but contrariwise upon a false ambition and greedinesse in man of never ceasing to be Or againe as Lucian who brings nothing to make good what he conceiveth besides down-right impiety dressed up and set forth with facetious scoffes and derisory jestings wherewith neverthelesse sundry ill-affected spirits and feebler understandings are easier perswaded then with solid arguments The Chorus of Seneca afterwards alleadged moved as it may seeme with no better or stronger arguments then these is driven as by a storme into dark and doubtfull cogitations touching the souls mortality and so also is another Chorus consisting of Mahumetan Alfaquies in the English Tragedy of Mustapha By such shadowes also as these a late Philosopher was affrighted and before him some of the ancients so farre forth as to be made imagine that even granting the soul should survive the body yet that it would not thence follow it were perpetuall but that contrarywise in tract of time it might decay and vapour it self at length to nothing burning or wasting out it 's own substance like a torch or candle or at least have a period of duration set it connaturally to the principles of constitution beyond which it was not to passe but at that term or point presently and naturally to extinguish or return to nothing of which vain phantasy we are to consider more hereafter But if suspicions may come to be examined we shall find that there be other sort of them perswading the souls mortality that seeme more hollow and deceitful then the former are as namely a depraved appetite or an unbridled and untamed sensuality that sollicites perpetually to be satisfied and is desirous without feare of future reckonings in the other world to wallow for the present and tumble like a swine in the mire of dirty pleasures and to conceive some shadow of security for it that so with the old Epicureans it might merrily say Ede bibe lude post mortem nulla voluptas Eate and drink and play thy fill There 's after death nor good nor ill Doubtlesse these later perswaders seem to be more ruinous and corrupt then the former and of more dangerous consequence And thus we see that on either side there want not suspicions namely as well for concluding of mortality as of immortality if we will be guided by them But into this high Court of judicature wherein causes so weighty and so grave as this are to be decided suspicions and dark imaginations will not be allowed for evidence or be able to cast the businesse either way To these other proofs which after I alleadge I adde this one which I have placed in the frontispiece of this Treatise namely these words of Christ Matth. 22. partly recited by him out of Exodus I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaak and the God of Jacob. God is not the God of the dead but of the living By force of which Text the Sadduces who denied there surrection were convinced and not onely they but this Authour also against whom we deale for the place proves the soul's immortality as well as the bodies resurrection Because if God be the God of Abraham after death then must his body one day rise againe to the end that being reunited with the soul there might result an Abraham again if he be the God also of the living then must his soul continue living without any intermission from death for as without a body there is no Abraham so without a soul there is no vivens or thing endued with life If you object that it is sufficient if it live then when the body is to rise though not before I answer that this intermitted living neither is nor can be sufficient because then according to this same supposition the soul must have a revivall and refuscitation for the which we have no warrant any where and feign it we must not or if we do it will want weight and be rejected It follows then that the soul of man after the departure of it from the body must either alwayes live or never and so by consequence seeing the soul must live once more it must live alwayes that is to say not onely at the resurrection as this Authour feigneth but continually from the time of the separation to the time of the reunion and so after everlastingly And this is the conclusion was intended And thus much touching the argument of the Treatise following Now touching the Adversary I am to let you know that if the Readers had not deserved much more regard then he and besides if the matter had not required some elucidation more then his objections did an answer I had been wholly silent and spared all this labour I have taken Peradventure it may seem to some that over and above an answer given to this erroneous Authour the paines bestowed in opening the cause of the soul's indeficiency and also the tracing out the severall paths which lead unto the places from whence arguments are to be raised for the proving
this verity in writing also of Trismegistus and the Chaldean monuments of Plato likewise Pythagoras Aratus Philo Cicero Plotinus Jamblichus Hierocles and sundry others as also of Aristotle the Prince of the Peripateticks who is judged by the greatest searchers into his doctrine to have directly taught the immortality although he had not declared himself in that point as in many others nor as others have done peradventure concealing himself on set purpose because he for want of light from divine revelation was not able to tell what to do with them after death nor was he willing to make up his matter with fictions poeticall as his master Plato had done before him and this very reason of Aristotles reservednesse in this point is rendred by Tostatus Paradox 5. c. 54. 55. For this cause peradventure he held it more expedient to leave his judgement of the souls immortality to be gathered out of the consequence of his doctrine and words let fall here and there as it were by chance rather then to deliver it in expresse terms or to handle the question on set purpose It was enough for him 1. Ethic. c. 11. to have said that the fortunes of posterity good or bad were a concernment of the dead because out of this one assertion his mind might come to be known for of a certain that which is not can have no concernment wherefore the souls of the deceased were supposed by Aristotle to have a being and consequently to be still alive and also to live intellectually because first of all as the Philosopher teacheth Viventibus esse est vivere To be and to live is with creatures indued with life all one thing so that with them to kill is as much as to annihilate secondly by the same reason Intellectualibus esse est intelligere With creatures intellectuall their being is to be intellectuall or to live intellectually so that if the intellectuall part of them be extinguished they perish wholly and have neither life nor being left them In consideration of this we may say that it is no matter at all to Bucephalus for example whether those of his race proved jades or metall'd horses and why is this because Bucephalus is extinguished hath no life nor being but contrariwise according to Aristotle it is a matter to the predecessours whether their posterity prove good or bad happy or miserable and why then must this be but because these have life though Bucephalus had none these have a being intellectuall Bucephalus hath none at all Other places also of Aristotle are consonant to this as we may find in Javellus l. 3. de Animae q. 3. and again tract 1. de Indeficientia Anima in the Conimbricenses tract de Animasepar disp 1. art 2. and lastly in Albertinus tom 1. Corollariorum Moreover Plutarch in l. de Consol ad Apollonium out of Aristotles book de Anim. ad Eudemum reciteth this passage following as the words of Silenus unto Midas Wherefore saith Silenus O most noble and happy seeing we esteem those who are departed this life to be happy and blessed we hold it a thing very wicked to speak of them any thing that is false or contumelious by that they now are made partakers of a better and more noble nature and this opinion of ours is so ancient that the Authour and the beginning thereof be wholly unknown but by an infinite descent of ages hath been devolved upon us Thus reporteth Plutarch and it is not unlike but Aristotle who alledged it was of the same mind and this is probable so much the more because his chief scholar Theophrastus a man almost equall to himself is confessed to have been very positive in this doctrine of immortality The same Philosophers also are diligently alledged by Monsieur Plessy in his book de veritate Relig. Christianae c. 15. which is every where extant Besides the same doctrine of immortality hath been constantly taught by the learned Aben Sina or Avicen in the last book of his Metaphysicks and also in his Almahad in which treatise he maintaineth constantly the immortality of the soul but earnestly impugneth the bodies resurrection and withall which is most false and improbable defends that Mahomet in his law never taught it but onely parabolically and for fashion sake complying with the peoples rudenesse whereby they were not sensible of any doctrine teaching a felicity that was spirituall Another Arabick Authour who goes under the name of Aristotle is of the same minde with Avicen Seeing saith he it is manifest out of the books of the ancient and already proved that the soul or minde is not a body nor doth perish but remain c. Thus he l. 1. de divin sap secundum Aegyptios c. 2. p. 1. 12. consonantly to other Philosophers though afterwards in the very next chapter most absurdly he affirms as much of the souls of Beasts But his reason was because he thought the souls of men did after their separation passe into the bodies of brute beasts by a transmigration Pythagoricall Afterwards c. 4. he addeth saying If our fore elders had been doubtfull of the souls immortality they had never for the confirmation thereof by natures dictamen made a law against which no man is but he who is entangled in vice And a little after The soul therefore passing out of this life and gotten into the other world doth not at all perish Lastly l. 3. c. 1. and again l. 12. a. c. 10. ad 17. he by many arguments assayeth to prove that the soul is void of corporeity Thus he of whose credit and excellency see the judicious censure of Doctour Guiliel Dunal in Synopsi doctrina Peripateticâ—â— ultimo .. Amongst the Poets let us heart ancient Epicharmus who as Plutarch relateth out of him pronounced sentence as followeth touching one departed this life A collection was first now a dissolution follows and he is returned from whence he came the earth downward the spirit upward So he in Plutarch l. de Consol ad Apollonium Conform to whom is Euripides in Supplic Res unde quaeque sumserat exordium Eò recipitur spiritus câ—â—le redit Corpusque terra Each part returns from whence 't was given Mans corps to earth his soul to heaven Next unto these I produce Manilius yet not as a light Poet but as a sage Philosopher he flourished in the time of Caesar Julius This same Authour l. 1. Astronomicoon speaking of the Galaxia and indeavouring to give a reason of it writeth on the manner following Nec mihi celanda est famae vulgata vetustas Mollior ex niveo lactis fluxisse liquorem Pectore reginae divum coelumque colore Infecisse suo quapropter lacteus orbis Dicitur nomen causa descendit abâ—ista An major densa stellarum turba Corona Contexit flammas crasso lumine candet Et fulgore nitet collato clarior orbis An fortes animae dignataque nomina coelo Corporibus resoluta suis terraque remissa
minor of it and then what kind of conclusion it hath we may easily judge For first it is false that every thing is a temperature universally speaking which is subject to intension and remission excepting such things onely as be subject unto them per se and by their own nature and not by accident onely and this appears in the very businesse now in agitation between us for a greater clerk then this man is will hardly ever prove that the augment or diminution which is found in the acts of knowledge do arise from any internal alteration in the intellective faculty and not contrariwise from the difference advantage and alteration in the organ or the species and forms intentionall for this reason therefore a man may understand better then a child namely not because his faculty intellective is better then a childs but onely for betternesse in the organ also a learned man better then an illiterate and a diligent then a negligent because those may have acquired more species or forms intentionall or else have kept them better then these other that be illiterate and negligent and not for any intension or remission in the faculty This I say may be the reason of the difference and is likely so to be and not any variation in the faculty it self notwithstanding any thing which this Authour hath said and therefore this proof of his is defective and of no validity In the same sense we deny the minor also for it does not follow that the faculties rationall be more or lesse because the acts of it be more or lesse in regard that there may be more causes then one of this intension or remission as namely the different perfection of the organ as well as the severall measure of the faculty it self Wherefore it belongeth to this Authour to prove that this ebbing or flowing of acts of knowledge is to be referred to the soul's or understanding's wanings and increases and not to the differences of the organs which thing since he faileth to do his argument can by no means conclude or be admitted as good He argueth again Temperature is a quality A quality may be absent without the destruction of the subject Reason and understanding may be so therefore they are temperatures or qualities and not substances immortall The minor is proved by example of madnesse falling sicknesse c. In answer First I deny it to follow that because Reason is a quality therefore it is a temperature for there be many qualities which neither are temperatures nor belong unto them because no other qualities belong to temperature but onely such as be elementary Secondly I deny absolutely that reason or understanding can be absent without the destruction of the soul or of man I know the act of reason may be absent and the effluence of it hindred more or lesse as in infants mad men a poplectick persons and such like but still the root remains and without death cannot be removed Hence I inferre against this Authour that although sundry actuall intellections may be improved or impaired by sense yet the radicall cannot but is wholly independent Nay further even some acts of the soul are in the manner of working independent of the body and wholly inorganicall as divers learned Authours have shewed Some old authours have ascribed to the soul a body Aethereall but that it self was a body Aercall or Elementary I conceive none of them ever yet affirmed What that obscure writer saith whom he calleth Woolnor I neither know nor regard for he is no classicall Authour nor hath any voice allowed him in the Philosophers Parliament The severall absurdities which afterwards this Authour labours to inferre do not follow out of the doctrine of immortality but onely out of his own mistakes erroneous and ignorant conceptions and therefore he may take them all home to himself which to do I know it must be to his great losse for throughout his whole book he swarms so much with this kind of vermine as they eat up all the substance of his undertakings and discourse He addeth Every form depends of the matter and by separation perishes But we must tell him that this is false doctrine and can never be proved If it were not so saith he then one might be generated without the other a soul without a body and a woman be brought to bed of a spirit I answer That an immortall soul cannot at all be generated as first being by it self and its own nature ingenerable and secondly having no principle here on earth either materiall or efficient that is able to beget it all agents created in this kind being impotent as afterwards we intend to shew against this Authour as also against Sennertus Religio Medici and some others What reason is there saith he mans and beasts Anatomy being both considered and compared together that mans faculties in a higher degree should be an immortall spirit more then beasts in a lower degree but both elementary and finite For the finitenesse we grant you that both are finite but not both elementary or mortall and this we collect not from the Anatomy but from the operations by which we do collect not a graduall difference betwixt the two souls bestiall and humane but an essentiall See Aquinas l. 2. contr Gent. c. 66. Ferrariensis ibid. So that call it reason which is in beasts or call it what you will that reason which is in man is essentially superiour unto it and if that of beasts be reason then doth mans reason deserve another better term whereby to signifie the essentiall preheminence of it as Campanellae himself acknowledges in divers works of his and proves in his Metaphysicks at large We know that bordering nations do a little symbolize in their natures but yet are not therefore the same so then albeit the highest of vegetables as the herba viva or the Agnus Tartaricus if there be such a plant and the Zoophyta have some resemblance to creatures of sense yet neverthelesse are they different from them and the Zoophyta themselves belong onely to one classe or other and not to both So in like sort although the most perfect of animals have acts of sensation that something resemble the apprehensive discursive and judging faculties of man yet are they wholly and essentially distinct Wherefore as some erroneously may imagine the sense in beasts is not a weak or imperfect reason nor again in man is reason a strong and perfect sense for these two faculties be wholly different even in one and the same man as manifestly appeareth First by the severall degrees of subordinate perfections found in creatures which perfections whensoever extant in severall sorts of creatures be specifically or essentially distinct as namely the degree of vegetation is distinguished from that other next inferiour to it in all things that be destitute of life so again is the degree superiour of sensation from the inferiour of vegetation wherefore in like sort
the soul is not neither can man kill it and why I pray you but because it is immortall This objection can never be solved neither will all his trifling about the signification of the word Hell serve his turn for let Hell be what it will and where it will yet still it runs that the soul cannot be killed But what the true and formall signification of the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is we way find expresly declared by Eustathius in 1. Iliad and Anastasius Sinaita quaest 90. contrary to the dreams of this man and in particular that formally it does not signifie the Grave and if it did yet it could be no place for souls that remained unkilled and quick for it were a very cruell course to bury souls alive or to cast them quick into the grave Moreover that there is no Hell before the Resurrection is more than he hath proved or any other for him or else that none shall see God till then even in the mean time abstracting from the controversie that is agitated betwixt the Schismatick Greeks on the one side and the Orthodox Greeks and Latines on the other for the most schismaticall Greeks did not deny Hell or Heaven before the day of judgment but onely that till then neither all men nor devils were made happy in the one or tormented in the other for the Schismaticks themselves acknowledge that the Martyrs have the prerogative of the first Resurrection that is to say that they are happy before the Resurrection of their bodies and before the rest of the just or which in substance is all one they are admitted into Heaven and to the clear vision of God or again whether or no they will allow the vision of God to be the happinesse of the blessed yet felicity is Heaven wheresoever it is or in whatsoever good thing it consists and again eternall torments appointed for the reprobate be truely a Hell whether it be in the centre of the earth or else in some other region This day saith Christ unto the Thief thou shalt be with me in Paradise but not in body therefore in soul alone and therefore also his soul still lived after his bodies dying He answers that Christ himself was not in Paradise that day But this is a foppery for though Christs humanity was three nights and dayes in the lower parts of the earth yet his Divinity was that day every where and besides his soul was happy still and carried its Paradise along with it so that the good Thief might be with Christ that day and be in Paradise also as the sacred text doth assure us he was Christ said Luke 22. Father into thy hands I commend my spirit And Steven Acts 7. said Lord Jesus receive my spirit But if the spirit died there was nothing to be received He answers that his spirit was his life This shift was frivolous for his life was to be lost and destroyed and so was not commended into the hands of any Apoc. 6.10 11. I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God c. and they cried with a loud voice c. Therefore they were then extant and alive or else they could not have been seen nor cry But it is certain that one impiety cannot be defended without more and therefore as formerly he depraves the Scripture saying not with the Scripture 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The souls of the slain or of the men slain but with such miscreants as himself The slain souls and that they cried but like the bloud of Abel But if it were meant no otherwise then thus the bodies might then have cried also as well as the souls The Text saith it was the souls of the slain and if the souls also had been slain the Text would not have uttered it in that manner as now it doth for it were an impertinent manner of speaking to talke of the souls of the slain if the souls had been slain and dead as well as the bodies The other places as that of Ecclesiastes I have urged as also the other of the Apostle who desired to be dissolved that he might be with Christ and this later I have enforced so farre as I suppose it convinces and is unanswerable as the rest also are Behold here by example of this poore silly man how bold and sawcy ignorance is growne since the time that darknesse fell upon the face of the earth for is not this with Simon Magus Acts 13.10 of set purpose to pervert the right wayes of our Lord and to thrust men headlong into perdition But setting complaints aside which even when they are necessary be not gratefull let us examine the later remnants of this Authours follies and so leave him if it may be to repentance for them yet first take into consideration some other verityes which concerne this argument CHAP. VI. The rationall Soul of man ingenerable and incorruptible VVE have seen already that by the consent of the wisest of all times and nations the rationall soul is not subject to corruption and that it hath not a period of time assigned it beyond which it must not passe nor that it may simply leave to be and be annihilated as it were by the principles of nature it self they not requiring any longer conservation from the beneficence of the first cause but contrariwise to be deserted by it as a late Authour vainly and without any probability at all imagined much according to the old phantasie of the Stoicks who as Cicero l. 1. Tusc not without indignation and signes of derision rehearseth Vsuram nobis largiuntur tanquam cornicibus diù mansuros aiunt animos semper negant They allow us a date as they do to Crowes they grant our souls shall continue long but that for ever they deny it dealing in like manner with Souls as some did with Oracles whose silence they ascribe to no other cause than impotency of speaking any longer the spirit that fed them exspiring of it self as being wasted and consumed with age One would judge saith Cicero these men spake not of Oracles but of falsedges which by long keeping would grow unsavoury and stale Certainly these that judge thus of Souls and spirituall substances make an estimate of them as they would do of trees whose timber is of severall solidity and duration as if some of them were like Cedar wood or Oake which would last long others as Chesnut or Elme which be not of so long continuance others again like Ash or Maple which rotte within a while This is light Philosophy worthy of derision more than confutation and is a device not acknowledged by our Authours before alleadged who give no limitation to the life of souls but determine absolutely a perpetuity For my part before such time as I can assent to their Philosophy in this point I desire to be satisfied by them what reason they can shew why the first cause should at a certain date
seems to be an Entity not capable of being produced by generation Secondly from the nature of the things out of which it is to be educed Thirdly by the inhability of those actions which are exercised in generation for the production of any spirituall substance or intellective faculty although the soul in it self were a thing producible and that the elements might afford sufficient materialls for the composing of it For the first I argue thus No entity which is simple and unmixt can be produced by generation but such is the intellective part of man therefore that part is not to be produced by generation and if ingenerable then is it incorruptible also That it is simple and unmixt needs no probation because it is a thing wholly improbable that an intellective power or substance should be a temperature or mixture as our Adversary conceived it to be for though a temperature and mixture may remotely or a farre off concerne understanding in as much as they belong unto the Organs yet is not an intellective Entity therefore a compound or a bodily temperature as by and by we are futher to declare That no simple Entity is producible by generation is evident because the effect or terminus of that action is the composition or compound which thing it performeth not by producing the Entity of the parts but by making a substantiall union between them and by the making those severall entities to be parts which although they were before yet were they not parts of that compounded body which by this newer generation did accrue Besides this is the cleare and expresse doctrine of Aristotle in sundry places of his works For the second head of probation I affirme that no lumpish matter or earthly concretion can yield materialls for the building up of an understanding or minde Chymists by their curious arts of dissolving bodies have found out salts sulphures oyles spirits quintessences elixirs they again can draw tinctures and magisteries and out of metalls a vitriol which shall contain in it the essence of them and have the virtue of transmutation of other metalls into their own nature but yet never any knew how to extract out of them any one dramme of understanding or to fill the least phiall with it nor could they ever finde metall or oar which contained wit and understanding in it Arnoldus de villa nova as Mariana recounteth in his Spanish story of Spain attempted by mixtures and furnaces to make a man but his art failed him and he was confounded all his ingredients could not afford him an intellective spirit wherewith he might be animated and informed You will say Sense cannot be extracted any more than reason True but sense arising from things divisible may come by a resultancy from things united as being materiall which our reason being immateriall cannot especially in the principall acts thereof which be wholly inorganicall as by name the acts of judgement be touching objects immateriall and à fortiori all such of them as transcend the spheare of Nature Cicero toucheth chiefely upon this point and his argumentation seemeth to be very solid and irresistible if pressed to the uttermost The third head of argumentation is from the improportion and imbecillity of the actions of humane generation For first the actions of vegetation and sense are of an inferiour nature and so unable to produce any thing higher and perfecter then themselves and for this cause each entity is to be produced by actions that be of its own classe and order namely per actiones congeneres cognatas therefore the soul if it were to be generated could not be so otherwise than by actions of understanding or of the intellective but it is certain that generation is not performed by acts of wit or understanding but contrariwise by acts of vegetation and sense which actions be of an inferiour degree and a man generates with his body and not with his minde so that the generation of man is no more any act elicite of reason than his eating or walking is which actions be no acts of the understanding though prescribed and directed by it Now though the act of the divine understanding be subsistent yet the acts of created understandings be only accidents for such and no better is the verbum mentis in all created understandings humane or Angelicall and therefore humane understandings beget no understandings nor any children like themselves It followeth then that the soul neither generates a soul nor again is generated by any and for this cause must be incorruptible and by the principles of nature immortall By this it appeareth that the non-generation or traduction of the soul is a verity so evident that by it the immortality may be proved and it stands not in need to be it self proved by immortality Besides all this it is plain that every substance incorporall being voyd of composition physicall hath no passive principles of corruption in it and therefore is not susceptible of any physicall generation or corruption nor is resolvable into parts and this argument is urged by Scaliger excercit 307. n. 20. Again the soul hath no contrariety of qualities within it nor is there any thing abroad which is contrary thereunto I know well that many things may cease to be and yet not by corruption as for example sundry sorts of accidents and the souls of Beasts but yet these are consequents of corruption for therefore the soule for example of a Beast perishes because the organicall body which it inhabited was destroyed or corrupted and again therefore an accident ceased to be because by a corruptive action of a contrary agent it was thrust out of doors and had nothing left it whereupon to rest no basis to sustein it any longer And by this the argument of Petrus Molinaeus l. 9. Phys c. 12. is answered by which he laboured to infringe the ancient doctrine namely That every immateriall substance and incorporeall was incorruptible and immortall and that consequently the soul of man being such a substance could not be corrupted or otherwise naturally cease to be of which point see Merat tom 1. tract de Ang. disp 9. sect 2. and Bagotius tom 2. Instit l. 1. disp 4. c. 8. To tell us here as some new masters do that a spirit may be compounded of a certain spiritual matter and of a form thereunto correspondent and that therefore every spirituall substance may not be simple but contrariwise resolvable into parts essentiall according as corporeall substances be is to tell dreames and fancies of the night instead of probabilities and therefore desiring them to dream again and to enjoy their own imaginations I leave them to their rest But howsoever this new device of theirs might have some truth in Angels which are compleat substances and abstracted from corporeall materiality yet in the soul of man it could not because the soul it self is a form a substance incompleat and therefore a prodigious thing it must needs
of a spirit spiritually might peradventure be ascribed to the virtue or aptitude of the object but the understanding after a spiritual refined manner those objects that be grosse and materiall cannot be referred to any other thing then to the virtue of the faculty it self By this then it appears that in an eye corporeall there is a two-fold repugnancy against the seeing of a spirit viz. one because the power is materiall and therefore not intellective of any object at all spirituall or corporeall the other because every spirituall Entity is without the precincts of the visive faculty Wherefore on the contrary side the eye of the minde by the being in a state able to receive some notions of a spirit and to judge it to be an Entity devoid of matter may upon a two-fold evidence be determined to be spiritual Thus by these severall wayes the action of understanding in the Soul proves the incorruptibility thereof The first is by the being precisely intellective The second because intellective of spirituall entities The third because it understands materiall objects immaterially which act is done by abstracting of which act whether it be confused or distinct we are forthwith to consider more at large The second operation of the understanding is the knowing of spirituall things by abstraction from singularities and materiall objects after a manner immateriall and by penetrating into the quiddities or essences of things for of these conceal'd and hidden entities unto which our senses can have no accesse the soul of man gets some intelligence and attaineth of them notices though not perfect intuitive or comprehensive yet not contemptible or untrue neither are these essences temperatures as Basson and some others fondly and without probability do imagine as is elsewhere to be shewed A third is a reflection upon it self which acts are above the nature of matter as Albertinus Campanella in Phys and others doe suppose for certein Against abstraction some object that it is no perfection but rather an imperfection that manner of knowledge being confused But this objection is inefficacious for supposing the infirmity of humane understanding the force of our understanding things abstractedly is most perfect and distinct and of all other hath the least confusion in it though in such understandings as be above humane and are able with one view to comprehend abstraction is needlesse and no perfection As for humane understandings we finde by experience that the meaner and grosser they are the lesse they can abstract and indeed abstraction in the understanding is a subtle act and like to extraction in Chymistry which takes the purer parts from the faeculent and resolves bodies into their severall native parts which before did lie confused in one heape and mingled together For the preventing of objections we adde that there is a great and manifest difference betwixt a knowledge confused and an abstracted because the former of these two is done by making a commixture of the superiour differences with the inferiour that is to say of the genericall perfections with the specificall and individuall but the later is done by an intentionall or intellectuall separation of one from the other namely by the considering but one yet knowing more then one that is to say both the superiour and inferiour for we do notabstract from what we know not but from what we know so that according to the humane way of understanding this abstraction is not a confused way of knowledge but a distinct not an imperfect but an exquisite because by this the understanding doth as it were anatomize the object either pitching upon severall formalityes as they use to call them or else upon severall connotations to different effects as the Nominalls speak according to the different virtues conteined in the same object An abstractive knowledge makes Genus and Species by the drawing off from matter and singularity a confused does not so but fastens upon the inferiour degrees indistinctly and in grosse As for example a confused view if it perceive a figure or a tree does not distinguish the particulars as not whether it be round or triangular an Elme or an Oake but an abstractive knowledge supposes a particular sense of all for otherwise there could be no abstraction of one from the other Campanella in his Metaphysicks and some other also related by Carleton alias Compton disp 25. would have it that the eye abstracts though but a power materiall then namely when it sees confusedly as when it perceives for example a man but discernes not whether he be Socrates or Plato This objection is prevented already because the sense cannot abstract from what it sees not in particular nor yet draw off from individualls compleat or incompleat Againe the not-knowing of a perfection is not an abstraction from it and therefore the eye seeing colour and not sweetnesse doth not abstract from that sweetnesse as Campanella did imagine it to doe A fourth is the eminency of the acts of understanding which argue a principle nobler and higher than any mortall entity This argument is largely prosecuted by Lessius Mariana and Campanella and before these by Cicero A confirmation hereof is that some acts of humane understanding be inorganicall But Molinaeus in his Summe of Philosophy lately published will not agree to this objecting that it is contrary unto experience because saith he even at that time when the understanding doth abstract most and contemplates objects that be spirituall it makes them as it were materiall ascribing extension both to God and Angels circumscribing them in places and assigning lines and limits to them Againe there is nothing saith he in the understanding which hath not been formerly in the sense Thus objecteth he Our answer is to this Maxime of Philosophie that according to the learned Thom. de Argentina q. 3. Prologi ar 4. it is to be understood with limitation namely that whatsoever is in the understanding hath been formerly in the sense some way at least or other that is to say either immediatly or mediatly in it self or in the cause effect or signe It 's true accidents may enter by themselves into the sense so forward into the understanding but substances whether materiall or immateriall doe not so nor yet things absent in time or place whether they be substances or not Actions and events of ages past also of people absent of verityes supernaturall we know by testimonies as by signes and not by our senses immediatly we know a future Eclipse by the cause the soul of man by the effects and so also doe we know God namely by his word and by his works one as by a signe the other as by an effect neither hath God ever been known unto our senses Secondly we answer that the soul being in the middle region betwixt pure bodies without spirit and pure spirits without body as on the one side it cloathes pure spirits with some corporeall vestures so on the other it doth devest materiall objects of
circles of humane mortality just as the ignorant vulgar did conceive that the Sun when it goes down to us did lye concealed and bathed it self in Tethis salt waves untill the following morn began to call upon it Can I say these reasons of persuasion be counted weak that were able from age to age to carry on the doctrine of immortality against the violent streams of death and dissolution which seemed to be diseases irrecoverable and by them a man brought into a state that is desperate and never to be altered and therefore it was an usual saying Mors ultima linea rerum Death is the utmost line of things beyond which there is no going and as it were the pillars of Hercules with the Nil ultra graven on them Neither were those same reasons able after corruption and ashes to reare up a single frame of life for perpetuity onely in the soul of man but also to attempt it for the body yea and to come very neare the absolute proving of it and the evicting of a Resurrection as a thing due unto the principles of nature and as a sequele also of the attribute of Justice divine in consideration of which two reasons it appeares that albeit the Resurrection cannot be naturall yet it is a very neare borderer upon nature and that we may so speak not distant from it three fingers breadths the intervall or distance between them being no more then the want of a naturall agent that might be able to reunite the soul and body after separation Whereupon I conclude that the Resurrection of the body is none of the hardest articles of our faith but contrariwise such a one as may be persuaded easily In confirmation of this truth I cannot passe over in silence a memorable conference between Almaricus king of Jerusalem and William B. of Tyrus recorded by Tyrius himself libro 19. capite 3. de bello sacre The question propounded to by the king was this viz. Whether setting aside the doctrine of our Saviour and of the Saints that followed him the Resurrection could be proved by any evident and convincing arguments To which being moved with the newnesse of the word I answered That the doctrine of our Saviour and Redeemer was sufficient who in many places of the Gospel doth teach us most manifestly that the Resurrection is to be and that he is to come as Judge to judge both the living and the dead the world by fire as also that he will give unto the elect a kingdome prepared for them from the constitution of the world to the wicked fire everlasting prepared for the Devil and his angels Besides the pious assertion of the Apostles and Fathers of the old Testament may be sufficient To which he made answer All this I firmly hold but yet do desire a reason wherewith I might prove it to one who should deny this and did not receive the doctrine of Christ namely that the Resurrection is to come and after death another life To whom my answer was Take upon you then said I the person of one so affected and let us try whether or no we can finde out any thing Content said he Then I You do confesse that God is just Then he I hold nothing to be more true Then I replied Is it justice to return to the just good things for their good deeds and to the wicked evil things for their wickednesse Then he It is very right Then I But in our present life this is not done because in this world good men finde nothing but afflictions and adversities but the wicked enjoy a continued prosperity as dayly examples do teach us Then he It is a certainty Then I proceeded Therefore this is to be done in another life because God cannot be otherwise then a just rewarder therefore there is to be another life and a resurrection of this body of ours in which we deserved good or evil and therefore ought to receive a reward accordingly Then he This pleases me exceedingly and by it all my doubting is taken off Thus farre are the words of the grave and faithfull historian Guil. Tyrius Besides this the soul being a forme of a body organicall is not in a full perfect state nor in a full contentment without the body as Argentina in 4. d. 49. Tostat c. 4. Deut. q. 7. c. 25. Matth. q. 63. Aquin. in supplem q. 75. ad 4. 1 2. q. 4. a. 5. 4. con Gentes c. 79. Ferrarien ibid. Albertus l. 7. Comp. c. 16. do evict for indeed all formes informing do receive perfection from the matter informed by them as well as communicate perfection to it and again in things created every totall entity is more perfect then a part as S. Bonaventure clearly sheweth in 4. d. 43. q. 1. CHAP. XI Mans being by Procreation no argument of his Soul's mortality THat mans soul must have the being by generation because the man himself hath his being by it is no good consequence and the reason why some have been deceived in judging it a good one or that of due his soul ought to be generated as well as the souls of Beasts hath been partly a false apprehension what the true nature and essence of generation was partly also what was the perfection essence of man As for the first misprision it was that generation was not only to make the composituÌ„ or whole to be but also the parts by the conferring unto them not onely the being parts but also the simple Being or the being â—â—â—ties that is to say not onely the formality of them but even the naturality which conceit of theirs is a false conception and against all reason and principles of Philosophy for by them we are clearly taught that it is Man which is procreated or made by generation and not his soul his body is made or framed by it and not the matter of which it is composed For it is a received maxime and most true touching the power of naturall causes at least though no farther Quòd ex nihilo nihil fit Of nothing there is nothing to be made out of which it follows that before generation both matter and formes of all corporeall things must have before-hand a being in rerum natura at least an incompleat one and cannot possibly have it from generation Wherefore by the work of generation they are not made or receive any new absolute entity but onely are collected ordered and at last substantially linked and united one with another which union is not by a sole approximation contiguity or juxta-position that I may so speak of one of them with another as it falls out in artificiall compounds where colours for example though they be not pictures yet being thus or thus chosen formed and united make up such or such a picture but it is by a continuity or an inward and substantiall knot which is in our power better to conceive then explicate and yet not to
of his own kinde as totally and adequately as one beast does generate another doth not speak like a Philosopher and besides doth unjustly disparage and disgrace his own lineage and violates the rights of 〈◊〉 creation CHAP. XII A solution of the Adversaries objections together with some others of Doctour Daniel Sennertus THese former notandums having been premised we need not dwell long upon answering of objections for by them the way is opened already and that which before hath been delivered will not need any more then application Object 1. Whole man is generated by man therefore all his parts both soul and body and if both be generated then both are mortall Answ Whole man is generated by man I grant it Therefore both soul and body are generated I distinguish That both soul and body are made parts of man by generation and a creature produced like in nature to him that generates I also grant and do affirm that by doing of this onely the compleat act of generation or procreation is performed according to the received definition of generation before exhibited in the Chapter precedent But that both soul and body must be therefore made and have their entities or beings given them by procreation that consequence I deny as false and absurd yea so absurd as it suffers a thousand instances to the contrary For example a whole horse is generated both matter and form and yet his matter did not receive any being by generation and so it falls out in other creatures If then it be not necessary that the matter receive the being by procreation though the whole Animal consisting of matter and forme be truely generated what reason can there be why to the generation of the whole Animal a new being of the forme by vertue of procreation should be necessary or why can one be necessary to generation when as we see evidently the other is not or why again should we exact the new production of either of them by generation See Argenter com in Aphor. 1. Hippocr Zacutus Lusitanus tom 2. l. 3. Hist ad praxin c. 7. § sed alia when without any such act the definition of generation is fulfilled and agrees both unto the generation of beasts whose matter is not generated and to the generation of man whose forme is not generated any more then his matter is By force of this solution all his imaginary absurdities which he labours to fasten upon the non-procreation of the soul doe of themselves dissolve If the soul saith he be infused then Christ did not take whole Humanity from the seed of the woman Answ He received from the seed of the woman as much of the Humanity as was to be received thence that which he took did not come unto him by procreation nor was it so to do As for the fourteenth to the Hebrews which he cites for his purpose our answer to it is That it is not found in our books neither Greek nor Latin neither do the Editions of Raphelengius or Elzevir contain any more Chapters than thirteen If saith he we consist of soul and body and are not men without both and receive not our soules from him he means the Generatour as I suppose then Adam is the father of no man nor Christ the son of man because his manhood 's constitutive part even that which should make him a man could not be by the seed of the woman and a man is as much a father of fleas and lice which receive their matter from him as of his children Answ Surely fleas and lice whence soever they receive their matter do not proceed from him in likeness of nature as by the definition they if they were generated by man ought to do Moreover they are not generated by man but of him neither is he the agent but the patient and so is of these vermin no generatour at all proper or improper Secondly men do receive their soules by force of generation although they be not generated and so notwithstanding this non-generation of the soul Adam might truly and univocally be the father of all men and also the soul of Christ might come by the seed of the woman although it were not made or procreated by it If the soul addes he be infused after the conception then there is growth before there is life which is impossible for the soul is made the vegetative as well as the motive sensitive or rationall part Answ I grant that before the infusion of the soul there may be vegetation and this by the sole virtue of the sperme but I deny that therefore there be in man more souls than one that is than the rationall for this same force of vegetation which is in the seed holdeth it self upon the part of the matter onely and doth not performe the office of a soul or forme the substance and operation thereof being no more then to fashion an organicall body and to make it fit for the reception of the soul and the union with it after whose infusion both the vitall and animall spirits do but serve as instruments to it and to accomplish the body in making it to be so perfectly organicall as the eminency of a rationall spirit above other formes doth require to have it If the soul be not generated but infused into a dead body then saith he it is lawfull to be Nigromancer for Nigromancy is nothing but putting a spirit into a dead body and so it is imitation of God and God the onely Nigromancer and all the men in the world but Nigromantick apparitions whose spirits when they have done the work for which they were put into the bodies desert them as other conjured Ghosts do Answ See the shallownesse of this man who can neither speak right nor reason with common sense and probability He calls Necromancy constantly Nigromancy and he supposes that a soul in a dead body makes a living man and can exercise vitall actions in it or actions of life and so according to his grosse capacity if the soul be infused God must be a Necromancer and men but Necromantick apparitions for this Ignoramus it seems knowes no difference between a soul and body that are united and those that are not united but together onely nor between a body living by the virtue of the spirit and by virtue thereof doing vitall actions and another which is onely moved and inhabited by a spirit without any union with it or participation of life But supposing all were one yet were it not lawfull to be a Necromancer because nothing at all be it never so good is to be done by superstitious actions or by making any recourse unto the Devil and acknowledgement of his power by any dependency on him whatsoever more or lesse It is granted saith he that the body considered merely sensitive cannot sin and is but an instrument or as the pen in the hand of the writer Therefore if the soul be infused then of necessity the